The Losing Game by Lane Swift

Author:Lane Swift [Swift, Lane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: gay romance
ISBN: 978-1-63477-599-1
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Published: 2016-08-08T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

LUCAS RAN home from the Blue Bell, embittered. He shouldn’t have been surprised. In this weather, even a drunkard wouldn’t brave the cold. There had been no guarantees tonight would be the night.

Not for the first time, Lucas wondered if he was losing his mind. Stalking Shaw, waiting in the dark, fretting that some distant satellite was tracking his movements. If, at some ungodly hour, there might be a knock on his door, and the dogs would be on him, sniffing out the unlawful scheme in his brain.

He’d kept his online activity clean. He’d promised his workmates a return to the old Lucas, the one who ate his lunch in company and who drank shots at the office Christmas party. He’d told Dante he’d given up on his plans to avenge Grace—to keep him out of it. To protect him should anything go wrong.

He’d covered his tracks, hadn’t he?

Lucas hid the gun in its usual place and went directly to bed without turning on a light.

Sleep took a long time to come, and when it did, in fitful bursts, disturbing dreams followed. Unlike his childhood anxieties, translated into dream-language as loose teeth or of being caught in public naked, Lucas dreamed of the gun. It took on a life of its own. It turned up in his desk at work. In his lunchbox. In his boss’s handbag.

By morning, Lucas felt hungover, mouth furry, head pounding. The thump-a thump-a in his head beat faster than his heart. It seemed to come from outside his body. Lucas buried his head under the covers as he realized the noise wasn’t in his head. Someone was knocking on his front door.

In nothing but his underpants, he rolled out of bed, staggered onto the landing, and called down the stairs, “Just a minute.” He pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt, ran his fingers through his hair.

Christmas was just over a fortnight away. Religious groups and charities often called at this time of year, asking for one’s soul or one’s money. Sometimes both. Though not usually at this ungodly hour….

Oh.

It was ten o’clock.

Lucas’s heart skipped a beat. Not because of last night’s foray into the dark, but because the last time the police had called, on that fateful spring afternoon, it had also been a Saturday. Only it couldn’t be the police bringing bad tidings. Not this time. Lucas no longer had a next of kin.

He couldn’t think straight. Not without coffee. He scrubbed his face with his hands and took the stairs two at a time. He opened the door with a labored smile.

To Dante.

“It’s you,” he said, surprised.

“Yes, I’m fairly sure it is. Hello.”

Lucas licked his lips, shockingly, embarrassingly aware of his unbrushed teeth and a crust of something foul at the corner of his mouth. The disaster continued unmitigated, from his crinkled top to his bare feet. When had he last cut his toenails?

Dante was as handsome as ever in the daylight, in a soft-looking, chestnut leather jacket and black trousers with creases down the front so sharp they could have cut through butter.

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