The Intersection of Purgatory and Paradise (26 page)

Jackson ripped open the box. “Thank you!”

“It’s the least I could do.”

“Chris?” Jackson looked at him, surprised. “They let you out already?”

“He discharged against medical advice yesterday,” Brittney said, glaring at Christopher.

“The only reason to stay was so a nurse could wake me up all night long, and Doug is perfectly capable of doing that. When are they going to let you go?”

Jackson tried to shrug. Christopher saw pain wash over Jackson’s face.

“Trust me,” Christopher said sympathetically. “Don’t do that.”

“Tell me about it. I think I’m stuck here until I stop acting like a baby every time they cut off the morphine, but we’ll see.” He picked up a giant chocolate-iced donut and tried to devour it in one go. He let out a happy sigh and shut his eyes, finishing the whole thing and then licking the chocolate off his fingers.

They settled in with coffee and spent the afternoon chatting like they were all old friends. Deputies kept popping in to say hello and ask if Jackson needed anything, and all of them greeted Doug and Christopher with open, friendly smiles.

“Well, that figures,” Brittney said, after the fifth deputy invited Doug and Christopher out for beers. “They finally decide to get their heads out of their collective asses when you’re leaving.”

“Daniels did that,” Jackson told them. “Glenn told me he got everybody together and screamed at them about discrimination and bigotry and how their behavior makes the whole town look bad. Everybody in town knows what happened, mostly thanks to Reverend Liedes asking for prayers for the three of us in his services.”

Christopher noticed his hands had decided to clench into fists of their own accord, and it took conscious effort to relax them. No matter how decent Reverend Liedes had proved himself to be, Christopher could never get past the fact that he’d been Peter’s boss. No amount of support, help, or friendship could rebuild the credibility his connection with Peter had destroyed.

“Since everybody knows, he’s had to answer to people about why Doug’s quit and why Chris was never offered a job,” Jackson explained.

“I never applied,” Christopher said. “I can’t work with family.”

Doug glanced at him out of the corner of his eye, grinning.

“Daniels is mean.” Jackson looked like he was trying to be diplomatic. “Maybe blunt is a better word. When a reporter from the
Daily Inter Lake
asked why Doug was quitting, he was honest. He was kind of brutal, actually. There hasn’t been anything in the paper, but a lot of the officers who’d been jackasses were named personally. I’m not even sure if most of them realized how they were acting, you know?” Jackson hissed when he tried to shrug again.

Brittney sneered. “Oh, they knew. They’re covering their asses
now
because they knew it was wrong.”

“Huh….” Doug looked thoughtful for a bit. “It’s decent of them to make an effort, but I’m not leaving to get away from Elkin. I can apply for work in Ronan to do that. I’m leaving so Christopher and I can be happy.”

“Let Daniels do what he needs to do,” Brittney insisted, patting his arm.

“I’m glad you guys showed up,” Jackson said. “I wasn’t sure I’d get to see you again before you go.”

“We’re not leaving for a week or so,” Christopher told him. “Doug’s still got to close on the sale, and he’s got to decide what to bring with us.”

Jackson looked at Doug seriously. “That’s got to be hard. I’d offer to help, but—”

“Don’t shrug,” Christopher warned him.

“If you need another truck, though, you’re welcome to use mine.”

“I can help, too,” Brittney said with a soft smile. “But what are you going to do with all the stuff you don’t bring? We can put it in storage until you get a new place lined up.”

Doug shook his head. “I don’t want it. All that furniture was my grandparents’ stuff. It held a lot of memories for them, and for my folks too, but none of it really feels like it’s mine. We’ll get new stuff. Stuff that’s ours.”

“I’m sorry to hear you’re letting it all go. There’s some beautiful furniture out there.”

“You’re welcome to anything you want, Brit,” Doug promised her. “But we’ve got to head back out. The insurance inspector is supposed to be at the house in an hour.”

“Thanks for the donuts,” Jackson called.

Christopher led the way into the hall. Doug came behind him, pulling Brittney with him. She looked annoyed, but she smiled at him anyway. “What?”

Doug took her by the shoulders and stared into her eyes. “Just in case I forget to tell you before I leave, that boy is crazy in love with you.”

“What?” Brittney tried to look away, blushing. “I’m old enough to be his mother, Doug.”

“There are a lot of marriages out there where the man is ten or more years older than the woman.”

“Or the other man,” Christopher added.

“That’s right,” Doug said without missing a beat.

“You know what they call women who date younger men,” she said, glaring at them both.

Doug glanced at Christopher, both eyebrows raised.

“Hot?” Christopher suggested.

“Experienced?” Doug tried.

“Cougar,” she whispered.

“Brit,” Christopher leaned close and grinned. “Cougar is a word for a woman who, despite not being twenty years old, is hot enough, smart enough, or otherwise desirable enough to keep a boy toy with sexy abs to cater to her every whim. The only people who use it as an insult are jealous twenty-year-old girls.”

Brittney shook her head and pushed them away. “I am not listening to this. Go pack!”

C
HRISTOPHER
KNEW
Doug wasn’t going to get sentimental about the ranch, but he was surprised by how stoic he was when the last of the items he’d decided to claim were loaded on the truck. He was shocked by how much of his family’s furniture Doug was freely consigning to an estate-auction broker in Missoula. Aside from practical stuff like dishes and cookware, the only things Doug had boxed up to take to San Diego were hundreds of his mom’s books, a lot of pictures, and a whole workshop of well-loved tools he’d never seen Doug use. He was leaving everything else.

And Christopher was more choked up over it than Doug seemed to be.

“You sure you’re okay with this?” he asked, wrapping his arms around Doug’s waist and pressing against his back.

Doug tilted his head up and kissed his jaw. “I’m better than okay.”

“Honest?”

Doug spun in his arms so they were facing each other. “Is it so weird not to care?”

“Yes. There’s nothing wrong with it, but it’s totally weird.”

“Maybe it is,” Doug said with a shrug. “Before you came along, I resented this ranch as much as I loved it. It holds a lot of good memories, but after my mom died, I always felt trapped out here. I felt like I was tied to this place for her sake, to preserve her memory. With you, this place actually felt less like a prison and more like a home again. Part of that was because it was so nice to escape from all the bullshit in Elkin and come out here where we could be
us
.”

Christopher pressed his lips against Doug’s silky black hair, cherishing the soft, thick texture against his skin. “You won’t regret it? Leaving her stuff behind?”

“Not leaving is what I’d regret. She tried to teach me so much. It took me a long time to understand what she meant when she told me about that photo. Now that I get it, well…. Doing whatever it takes to make this work seems like the best way I can possibly honor her memory.”

Christopher held Doug tighter and kissed his forehead and temple. “I still feel like I’m asking you to give up too much. I love you, but I don’t ever want you to resent me for making you leave.”

“If you were making me leave, I would resent it. You should resent me for trying to make you stay.”

“You never tried to make me stay,” Christopher pointed out. “I stayed because I wanted you more than I wanted to get away.”

Doug leaned up to kiss his lips, chuckling. “Exactly. I want a life with you more than I want to hold on to the past.” He kissed him one more time, then slipped away.

Near the porch, Jackson stood sheepishly beside Brittney, his arm in a sling. From her body language, Christopher could tell she was probably rambling about something. Since her favorite topics to rant about were clothes and forensic pathology, poor Jackson’s nervous expression was probably justified.

“I still can’t believe that worked,” Christopher admitted. “I never saw that one coming.”

Doug tilted his head to the side and gave him a look that made it clear Christopher had missed something obvious. “Seriously?”

“Totally surprised me. You know Jackson better, and you’ve known Brittney longer, but I still don’t quite see what prompted you to try and set them up. It’s nice to see her smile, though.”

“It is,” Doug agreed. He took Christopher’s hand and tugged him toward his truck. “Come on, let’s go home.”

“T
ELL
ME
again how you can afford a place in La Jolla but you can’t afford to hire someone to help you move your shit?” Ray asked, grunting beneath one of over two dozen boxes of books.

Doug set down his box and smirked at him. “Being able to hire help doesn’t mean I need it.”

“So why were we conscripted for this if you don’t need help?”

“You weren’t conscripted,” Christopher reminded him. He set his box of books on the dark hardwood floor and stretched his back until it popped. “You eagerly volunteered.”

Ray staggered toward the door where three open beers sat on a tiny shelf. He found his and drained it in a few huge gulps. “Remind me never to do this again.”

They followed him back out to the truck. The trailer Doug had towed all the way from Montana was empty now, but the bed of the truck was still filled with boxes.

“Besides,” Doug said, climbing up onto the tailgate, “The house might be paid for, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have bills to pay. Even applying to the SDPD as a lateral transfer, I still need to go through the police academy, learn applicable codes and the policy and procedure stuff. It’s four months of class work, and I’m not even sure they’re going to have a job for me when I’m done. The recruiter said it could take another six months for an opening. I might not have to cover a mortgage payment, but the property taxes and insurance on this place aren’t cheap.”

“You’re going downtown,” Ray said immediately. “They’ve already got you slated for an IA position.”

“Internal Affairs?” Christopher chuckled.

Doug’s eyes lit up. “Really?”

“Is that what you wanted?” Christopher asked, glancing between them.

Doug shrugged and gave him a little smile. “It pretty much sums up both of the big cases I’ve worked on over the last year, and it feels right. Stepping in when another officer crosses the line, abuses the trust people put in us, seems worthwhile. Fuck, listen to me, I sound like some lame sap.” Doug glanced at Ray expectantly. “What? No idiotic insult? No new nickname?” Doug asked.

Ray rolled his eyes. He hoisted the box Doug was about to grab and settled it on his own shoulder. “I only insult people when they deserve it. IA officers are unfortunately a necessity. I hate the necessity, but not the men who decide to tackle it.”

Christopher reached for another box. He thought about trying to explain the sheer enigma that was Ray Delgado, but he didn’t know where to begin. Ray expected every other officer in the city to live up to the same standards he held to himself. If another officer screwed something up accidentally, Ray got snippy and insulted them. If they failed out of ignorance, he’d lecture them for hours on their mistake. But if a fellow officer abused their authority out of greed, corruption, or just plain spite, he was the first to turn on them. Christopher had known what Ray was like from the beginning, and because Ray was the type of officer Christopher had always aspired to be, he was more than willing to try to live up to his expectations. “You know all those lectures about duty and ethics they put new recruits through at the academy?”

“Yeah.”

“Delgado took them seriously. More seriously than anyone I’ve ever known. I’d say he’s the type of officer we should all try to be, but I think the good people of San Diego would riot if we were all like him. Just look at what he did to his family.”

“The cousin he and Elliot were after?” Doug asked.

Christopher nodded. “Alejandro, yeah. Delgado helped put most of his uncles away, and more cousins too. If he thought his mother was involved in drug trafficking, he’d be the first to report it.”

“That’s cold,” Doug said, shifting boxes toward the back of the truck.

“No, it’s not. He doesn’t do it because he’s a dick or because he especially hates his family. He loves his family. But his sense of duty comes first—over his family, his coworkers, even his friends. If I fucked up, he’d turn me in without hesitation. And I think he’d expect me to do the same to him.”

“What about his husband?”

Christopher sighed. “See, if I tell you the truth, it’s just going to make him sound like an asshole.”

“He’d turn in the man he married?”

Christopher was about to give a vague answer when Elliot Belkamp leaned against the front of the truck.

Elliot grinned and answered for him. “If the man Ray married does something he deserves to go to jail for, Ray’d better be the one to do something about it.”

“Speak of the devil. How are you doing, Elliot?” Christopher greeted him, smiling.

“Hayes. Heavy Runner. Sorry I couldn’t get over here sooner. There much left to do?”

Doug gestured to the rest of the boxes. “Just this.”

Elliot held up a thin package wrapped in brown paper. “Where do you want this?”

“It’s done?” Christopher asked, grabbing it.

“What’s that?” Doug asked.

“A housewarming gift,” Christopher announced, handing it over. “Open it.”

Doug ripped the paper open, gasping. The enlarged photo of Doug’s parents in Rhode Island was set behind a gray mat in a sleek wooden frame. “When did you do this?” Doug asked.