Page 33 of Brother's Keeper

“That’s clever.” I swallowed hard. “They have those cameras all over Main Street?”

Holland nodded. “At every stoplight. Other parts of the city, too…”

She went on to name a few, but I’d stopped listening. Video cameras surveilling downtown could have captured evidence of not one, but two of my recent crimes. Not only had I been there the night of September tenth, loading Lover Boy into the back of Donnie’s Bronco, I had also nabbed Yankee Doodle from the earthquake construction zone the week prior. In broad daylight.

The investigator had stopped speaking and looked at me as though expecting a response. I gave my coffee cup a swirl then raised it to my mouth to mutter into it. “That’s a lot of cameras.”

If I’d been caught on film leaving the construction site, or worse piling into the backseat of Yankee Doodle’s car, Grimm would never let me live it down. He might not let me live at all.

Holland must have been saying something else I’dtuned out because her voice came back mid-sentence. “… but Mister Morgan agreed to talk to us, which is more than we got from Miss Kapoor. So, let’s get started.” She ushered me around the corner to the interrogation room door.

Once inside, I studied Calvin Morgan’s remarkably forgettable face. What were the odds he’d seen me that night? I’d spent most of my time in BDSM Liv’s dungeon, convincing Lover Boy to join me for an offsite sexscapade. He ate it up. Would have eaten me up, too, if I’d let him.

There had been a vulnerable moment while I was marching Lover Boy out of the building and toward the alley where Donovan’s car was parked. But, in a place like the Blooming Orchid, most people were so busy minding their own business that they didn’t notice anyone else’s.

I had all but convinced myself this was a dead end and had moved on to other worries when Calvin Morgan answered the latest in Holland’s line of questions.

“Yeah, I saw your news guy,” he said. “He was coming down the stairs with some fairy in a crop top.”

I blinked to keep my eyes from bulging out of my skull. The moment he described played across the theater of my mind. There had been a couple held up on the ground floor while Lover Boy tiptoed down the steps.

But wait. What did he call me?

Holland paused in her studious notetaking and regarded the man over the frames of her sunglasses. “I’m sorry, a what?”

Calvin made a hacking sound in the back of histhroat. “A fairy,” he said, sneering. “You know, the kinda guy who likes to take it in the ass.”

That’s what I thought he said.

I kicked back in my seat and crossed one leg over the other. “That’s big talk coming from the most perfect, dick-sucking lips I’ve ever seen.”

Holland swung toward me with her mouth agape. “Fitch! That is highly inappropriate!”

The other man had ignored me thus far, too busy ogling Holland with a leering sort of grin. My question drew his attention, full of scorn for what must have looked to him like a pretty boy in a suit.

“What’d you say to me?” he asked.

“You really want me to say it again?” I flashed a crooked smirk, then leaned forward as I enunciated every word. “Dick. Sucking. Lips.”

Calvin’s throaty growl called to mind Jax’s attack a few days prior, and alarm bells rang in my brain. I silenced them with a shake of my head, then added, “I’ll bet you know how toworshipa cock.”

Calvin swelled, trying to bow up but lacking the muscle tone to pull it off. “You’d better shut up, you damn faggot.”

I was scorching hot now, burning from my feet to my hands as they tightened into fists.

Holland stood and made a grab for my arm, but I pitched away from her.

“What gave it away?” I asked Calvin. “Is it my hair?” Pinching a long lock between my fingers, I pulled it down to my line of sight. “I’ve been thinking about a change…”

Holland’s second swipe was more successful. She snagged my elbow and gave a yank that nearly hauled me out of my chair. “Jesus, Fitch, that’s enough!”

No sooner did she have me unseated than did she turn a pink-cheeked look of apology toward the other man. “So sorry, Mister Morgan. My associate is… unwell today. Please excuse us.”

I let her pull me out of the room and around the corner to the viewing window. She released her bruising grip with a shove that staggered me toward the desk.

“What was that about?” she demanded.

I rolled my shoulders, trying and failing to release the tension riding across my back. “I think I got a pretty good read on the guy.” Turning toward the one-way mirror, I shot Calvin a death glare he couldn’t see. “He’s a dick. But you know what they say, you are what you eat.”

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