This entirely original, exclusive free-to-you story features hot-man-love, explicit sex, explicit language, explicit violence, and… explicit fabulousness! If you’re NOT an m/m fan, check it out anyway… you might enjoy it.

Please read chapters one, two, and three, if you haven’t already.

Presenting Forsaken by Jamie Craig…

Five years since Detective Xavier Landis walked away from the man who loved him.

Four weeks looking for the stalker nobody but he believed existed.

Three years of his life Detective Jeff Keyes wishes he could get back.

Two cops, both brilliant, both determined, trying to move on from a past neither can forget.

One dead girl.

And now…

Chapter Four

“She never mentioned any Clancy Ruhl. I contacted her high school, and was able to learn she did have his honors English class, and his AP English class. According to Detective Villegas, he’s had no priors. He’s a fine, upstanding citizen and a beloved, if slightly eccentric teacher.”

Xavier paused and studied Jeff, noting how tightly he clenched the steering wheel. He only got to sleep for four hours. Xavier had waited until Andrea called back, informing them they had a warrant to search his home, and then he woke Jeff. He had been completely unresponsive until Xavier touched him. Then he’d jumped, his eyes flying open. Despite his shortened nap, he looked fine. Sharp. Ready to do what he had to do.

“I should never have walked away this morning. I knew that guy was bad news.”

“Why did you?”

The car jerked as Jeff turned onto the darkened residential street. “Because I’d just heard that asshole threaten to kill you. I was a little distracted.”

Xavier briefly wondered if that asshole planted the phone specifically to act as a distraction. But he couldn’t have known Jeff Keyes would be assigned the case, and very few people knew of their past together.

“Your partner is talking to a sketch artist right now. As soon as she’s done, it’ll hit the wires.” Xavier smiled. “Or, I guess the nightly news and the Internet.”

“If I know Andrea, she’ll flood every possible outlet. She’s got to be as pissed off as I am.”

“Somebody will recognize him. And I suspect he hasn’t fled the city. If he’s stupid enough to threaten a cop, he’s stupid enough to stick around and try to follow through on his threat.”

“Not on my watch,” Jeff muttered.

The car slowed then stopped as he peered through the window. It was too dark to see the house numbers clearly, and the winds that hadn’t eased all day whipped the leaves of the trees lining the sidewalk. Jeff growled and eased the car forward a few more yards.

“Can you see which one is ours? I can’t see shit.”

“Let’s see. Oh-two. Oh-four. Oh-six. It’s got to be the house up there on the corner.”

Jeff didn’t question him. The house on the corner was dark, abandoned. Just the sight of it made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He didn’t believe in premonitions, but he did believe in gut instinct. And his gut did not like that house.

“I’ll take the lead.” Jeff’s voice was low, as somber as the building awaiting them. “I’ve had more field experience with this than you have.”

Xavier almost snapped that he wasn’t some green rookie, but he had to pick his battles. This would be a ridiculous time to start a fight.

“That’s fine,” he murmured as Jeff parked in front of the house. He waited until Jeff stepped out of the car to open his own door, and he followed a few feet behind as Jeff approached the front door. He looked very tall and very imposing in the darkness. Xavier wasn’t afraid of Clancy Ruhl, but his earlier annoyance disappeared, and he was happy Jeff was on his side.

The house was a single-story bungalow, the yard neatly trimmed, the entrance free of debris. The excessive order bothered Xavier, though it fit the profile of Robin’s stalker. He’d presumed early on that the man had to be obsessive; it was the only way Xavier could explain away how few clues he’d been able to scrounge up. Whatever it was, he held his breath as Jeff knocked at the screen door.

Nobody answered. Neither of them had really expected him to.

With a nod at Xavier, Jeff opened the screen and tested the inner door. The knob didn’t turn. Jeff stepped away from the front and around the building, turning sideways in order to slither down the narrow strip between the freestanding garage and the house. Though darkness blanketed the back, the little they saw showed the same order as the front. Jeff ignored the covered barbecue and went straight for the sliding glass doors.

They were unlocked. As they slid open, a sickly sweet smell drifted from inside.

The doors opened to the kitchen, and whatever the source of the smell, it wasn’t coming from there. Even in the dim light, Xavier saw how immaculate the room was. There was nothing in the sink, the floor practically sparkled in the filtered light, and the garbage can was empty.

He listened for any sign of somebody still in the house. Nothing. Their steps and his thudding heart, that was all. He kept close to Jeff, following him deeper into the house. The further they moved from the back doors, the worse the smell got, until it forced Xavier to cover his nose with his hand in a fruitless attempt to block the worst of it.

Jeff paused in front of a closed door. His gun was still ready, but the careful cock of his head as he listened made Xavier pause. When he glanced back, his mouth was grim.

“You don’t want to see this,” he said, his voice low.

“I don’t want to see what? What’s in there?”

“You can’t tell from the smell?”

Xavier’s stomach churned. He could guess what it might be, given Jeff’s area of expertise, but he didn’t want to be the one to say it. “No.”

Shadows kept Jeff’s eyes hidden from him, but the tense lines of the rest of his face expressed more than any words he might utter. “Let’s just say, I don’t think Robin was his first. Why don’t you go call it in? You don’t need to see it.”

Xavier hesitated. On the one hand, he agreed with Jeff. This wasn’t anything he wanted to witness. On the other hand, they were partners. He couldn’t run from the case every time things got uncomfortable—or worse.

“Open the door.”

He expected argument. Jeff had been trying to protect him from the moment he’d stepped up to his desk. But Jeff surprised him by nodding and turning the knob.

The fresh assault on his nose almost made Xavier throw up. Bile rose in the back of his throat, and he pinched his lips shut, swallowing it down. He wasn’t going to lose it in front of Jeff. He owed it to Robin to be strong.

It was obviously a spare room, though its guest had probably been less than pleased with the accommodations. A body was stretched out on the bed, arms bound to the headboard, the blanket pulled up to cover it as if it was sleeping. The flesh was bloated, the wrists swollen around the ropes holding them secure, and the face was unrecognizable. The only thing he could tell was that the remains had once been a girl.

“Someone in Missing Persons is getting to close a case today, I’ll bet,” Jeff muttered.

“Oh, Christ.”

Xavier stepped forward, and Jeff put an arm out to stop him. Xavier ignored the obstacle and pushed into the room. He didn’t go to the body; his attraction was drawn to the dresser against the opposite wall—the shrine to Robin. Robin’s phone. Robin’s lipstick. A shoe. Hair. Pantyhose. Perfume. And pictures, some of which featured a little girl with light curls and a sticky smile.

Only one of the photographs on the wall wasn’t of Robin. The one featuring Xavier in the middle of the frame.

“Oh, Christ.”

Jeff’s presence at his back was warm and solid, but it did little to dispel the chill settling in Xavier’s bones. “Go call this in.” This time, Jeff wasn’t making a request. This was an order. “Now, X.”

“Right. I’m going.” His mind was stuck on the body, on the shrine, on the image of his own face, but his legs were more than happy to move. He let himself out the front door, pausing to make sure Clancy Ruhl wasn’t waiting for him in the yard, then hurried down the walk to the car.

The dispatcher promised back-up would be there immediately. Immediately ended up being close to fifteen minutes. Jeff didn’t emerge from the house, and Xavier never left the car. He just waited, his mind lingering over each detail, exploring each fact. Robin had been killed in the park. His other victim had been allowed to rot in the bed. Robin had a shrine. Robin was a long-term obsession.

Robin was never meant to be executed in the park. Xavier was certain of that.

Jeff finally came out after the others had been inside for nearly twenty minutes. Twenty minutes was a long time to spend stuck in his thoughts, mired in questions, tangled amongst images he was sure would torture him for a long time to come. He watched Jeff gratefully, relieved in some twisted way that Jeff loomed larger with every step.

Jeff came around the front of the car and slid behind the wheel. “I’m going to need another shower now,” he tried to joke. He turned to face Xavier, but when he stretched his arm as if to rest a hand on Xavier’s shoulder, the gesture stopped midway, his hand falling back against his leg. “We’ll be the first ones to get a full inventory but I’m letting Andrea take over for the night. I want to get you back to the hotel.”

“You shouldn’t be saddled with me. You should be focused on finding this fucker before he really does take off.”

“I am focused. That’s why we’ll be the first ones to get what Andrea finds.” Silence lapsed between them, long seconds that left Xavier itchy. Jeff eventually sighed in frustration. “You don’t want to hear this, but I don’t think he’s going anywhere. Not really.”

“Why do you think that?”

“I’ve been trying to figure out all night why the guy would stick around after dumping the body. I mean, he even called it in, X. And I think it all goes back to what he was doing with Robin. He needs to watch. He needed to keep an eye on her as long as possible, and he wanted to see our reactions. If he takes off, he doesn’t get to watch anymore.”

“I guess the tables have turned. I’m usually the one who gets to watch.” Xavier dropped his head back to rest on the seat, and stared at the roof. “I think something spooked him. I don’t think he planned to kill Robin the way he did. Somebody who craves control the way he does is not going to be really satisfied with what he did to Robin.”

“So what spooked him?”

“I don’t know, Detective. Maybe it was me.”

Jeff paused. “You weren’t involved with the girl, were you?”

“I’ve done a lot of things I’m not proud of, and a lot of people I shouldn’t have. But I’ve never taken advantage of a scared, teenage girl.” Xavier lifted his head to meet Jeff’s eyes. “No, we weren’t involved.”

“I had to ask.” The tone of his voice begged Xavier to believe him. “You know that’ll be the first thing out of the others’ mouths when they question you.”

“Sure it will. And I’ll tell them the truth. If anybody else in the whole goddamned department could have been bothered to believe her, maybe she’d still be alive right now.”

“And are you going to blame yourself for this girl’s death, too?” Jeff shook his head. “The man’s a psychopath. Nothing you could’ve done is going to change that.”

“Yeah, he is. But if he shot me the way he shot Robin, you’d blame yourself, wouldn’t you? I bet you would.”

His nostrils flared. “That’s not a fair comparison, and you know it.”

“Why not?” Xavier pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. “I promised to keep her safe, Jeff. I promised her. And now she’s on a table in the morgue, just one in a long line to be autopsied. She probably went with him willingly. Of course she did. He was her teacher, for Christ’s sake.” His voice rose as he spoke, the whole dreadful scene unfolding in his mind. Like a movie, it was more real than reality.

Jeff grabbed his shoulder and shook him, not hard but enough to jar the scene loose, make it crumble into pieces as Jeff forced Xavier to look at him.

“I know it’s hard. I know how much it tears you up, seeing somebody you’re convinced you could save laying there like a piece of meat. I see this every day, X. I know what guilt tastes like. I know the taste never goes away. But I also know if you let it win, so does the bastard who shot Robin. And neither one of us wants that.”

“I know…you’re right.” Xavier took a deep breath. “It’s just…it’s hard because I don’t. I don’t see this every day. And I’ve never been as strong as you.”

Jeff’s hand slid up to the back of his neck. “You are. Don’t sell yourself short.”

Xavier didn’t try to shrug Jeff’s hand away. Honestly, he liked the contact. He liked the solid weight, the rough, warm skin, and the reminder he wasn’t sitting there alone. “No, I don’t think so.”

Jeff’s thumb caressed the soft spot below his ear, too light to be comforting, too heavy to be ticklish. “For such a smart guy, you can be a real idiot sometimes,” he murmured.

Xavier looked up, startled, and froze as Jeff leaned across the space separating them to kiss him.

Stay tune next week for Chapter Five…

___________________________________________

Jamie Craig is the penname used for the collaborative efforts of Pepper Espinoza and Vivien Dean. Both successful authors on their own, they began working together in early 2006. Pepper lives with her husband and cats in Utah, where she attends graduate school, and Vivien resides in northern California with her husband and two children.

This an original story given generously to us by Jamie Craig. DO NOT post any part of this story on your site without attribution to Jamie Craig or a holla-back at her site. That’s not cool. Always give credit where credit is due, yo.

Note: Hey, other writer-types, do you want to contribute to The Serial? If so, email me and I’ll hook you up, yo.

Till, then… Love, peace, and snarkage, my babies. Peace!

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