Crime and Passion 2/10
Chapter Two
Ryan Ross had fucked Pete Wentz precisely five times and each time had been better than the last. So whenever his best friend asked him why he wasn’t still seeing Pete, he could honestly say it wasn’t because the sex was bad. He could also honestly say he’d never been ‘seeing’ Pete anyway, so it wasn’t like they’d broken up or anything. It was just one of those things where Pete was sort of flighty and Ryan was sort of busy making a career for himself and they decided to just stay friends and cut off the sex part on a high note.
They still talked fairly often, so when Ryan got a call from Pete after midnight he wasn’t surprised.
“I need a favor,” Pete said as soon as Ryan picked up the phone.
“Um,” Ryan said.
“Not that kind of favor,” Pete told him. “Look, you’re in Vegas, right? Right now?”
Ryan glanced around his empty house in the staid suburbs of Sin City and thought that standing in the middle of the kitchen where your dad once got alcohol poisoning in the middle of dinner lost in your own maudlin thoughts didn’t exactly count as ‘being in Vegas’. But he answered affirmatively anyway, frowning when Pete breathed a sigh of relief and started talking in his professional voice.
“Okay, I’ve got a situation here and I need your help.”
Ryan frowned, running a hand through his hair and tugging at the back. “Pete, I’m on vacation-“
”Which is even better,” Pete said. “Less feds breathing down my neck, at least until this gets out.”
Ryan didn’t say anything, just thought as loudly as possible that Pete was an inconsiderate bastard and rapped his knuckles against the kitchen counter.
“Okay,” he said. “What’s going on?”
“We’ve got a problem with the mafia. One girl’s dead, another one’s disappeared with millions worth in uncut diamonds and I’ve got a key witness being kept at the hospital.”
It wasn’t difficult to see where Pete was going with this and Ryan didn’t want to get involved. He was supposed to be taking care of shit, settling things out here in Vegas before making the move out to Chicago completely permanent. He was going to sell the house, his old apartment, tie up loose ends . . . it was why he was here. He hadn’t taken a plane to this shithole relic of horrible childhood memories just so he could help Pete out of the mess he’d landed in.
“Where’s Patrick?” Ryan finally asked.
“You know, Ross, you’re one rude son of a bitch,” Pete said.
“Just let me talk to Stump, Wentz,” Ryan shot back, waiting until the familiar voice drifted through the receiver before saying, “You guys are seriously fucked, aren’t you?”
Patrick Stump was never one to beat around the bush. He was as blunt as Pete was, but Pete could sometimes make himself so vague it was impossible to believe he was the same guy that would tell you to your face what a douche you were. Patrick was the sane one of the two and he was consistently brutally honest. He and Ryan hadn’t gotten along well at first, but now Ryan sort of depended on Patrick whenever he dealt with Pete because nobody knew Pete better (or how better to handle him).
“Yeah,” Patrick said drily. “That pretty much sums it up.”
Well, shit. Ryan closed his eyes and bit his lip.
“Look,” Patrick said. “I know you’ve got shit to do, but it’s just for a couple of days. We think we know who shot Audrey and Brendon and we’re pretty sure there’s enough evidence to bring them in and hold them indefinitely, but Brendon still isn’t safe.”
“This Brendon’s your witness?”
“Yeah. We need him alive and whole. And for that we need you.”
Ryan groaned. “I’m not a fucking professional babysitter.”
“Come on, Ross, it’s just until we can track the diamonds down and get the bastards who did this.”
“No,” Ryan said, leaning his hip against the nearest counter. “Because after that you’re going to go after the head of the local mafia, aren’t you?”
Patrick’s silence practically screamed ‘well, duh’ into Ryan’s ear and he huffed out a sigh.
“Fine,” he said. “I’m in.”
“Thanks,” Patrick said and then Pete’s voice was in his ear rattling off directions to a hospital on the other side of town. “We’ll meet you there in an hour. I know the kid so I want to be the one to let him know what’s going on.”
Ryan’s eyebrows inched up. “Uh-huh,” he said, knowing that Pete Wentz’s brand of ‘knowing someone’ usually involved a rimjob and a quick fuck in the shower the next morning.
“Shut up. I’ll see you soon.”
_._
The guy’s name was Brendon Urie and he was twenty-one years old with a job as a lounge singer at a place called Vegas Flowers. He lived by himself in a one-room apartment, he hadn’t spoken to his parents in three years, and he was good friends with Audrey Kitching, the girl who had died. Ryan knew all of this before he actually saw Brendon, along with a rather explicit physical description ending in ‘and a fucking fabulous ass.’ Leave it to Pete not to exclude the important parts (and to use the word fabulous in a debriefing).
“So let me get this straight,” Ryan said, waiting in line at the twenty-four hour Starbucks across the street for something with enough caffeine in it to keep him awake for another day or so. “You’ve never actually talked to him?”
“He just has a crush,” Patrick said around a mouthful of blueberry muffin. “And Brendon isn’t interested.”
“So how do you know all this? Why do you know all this?”
Pete rubbed the back of his neck and ordered an espresso brownie. “Um, Audrey told me a lot of it.”
“The rest he found out illegally,” Patrick muttered, grinning brightly when Pete turned a glare on him.
Ryan accepted his coffee from the zen-looking barista. “So how’d he get involved in this?”
Pete and Patrick shared a look.
“Details are really sketchy right now,” Pete answered. “We got a tip a while ago that Way was involved in some smuggling. Drugs, diamonds, whatever, it didn’t matter because there was no way to get him for it. And then sometime early this morning some sort of exchange, money for diamonds, was supposed to go down. But you know the Ways, they don’t really play by the rules and whatever was supposed to happen ended badly for everyone involved.”
“The feds are going to be all over your asses,” Ryan said, knowing well enough after a few years of being one himself that this was going to turn into a federal issue fast.
“Yeah,” Pete said, pulling off a corner of the brownie and waving it at Ryan. “And they’re going to want to get their claws into our boy Brendon. If the feds get a hold of him, we’ll never see him again.”
“They can probably protect him a helluva lot better than I can,” Ryan pointed out.
Pete just shook his head. “Nuh-uh, don’t even try it Ross. I know how good you are and more importantly, I know I can trust you. It’s a done deal.”
_._
Ryan hated hospitals. He’d hated hospitals since he was a kid, hated their antiseptic smell and feel and the fact that he saw them so often. He’d learned to ball up the usual anxiety he experienced while walking into one and put it to the back of his mind, but he had to do the same thing every time. It was annoying and he wished as Pete and Patrick just walked right in without a care, that he could do that, that he didn’t come with so much fucking baggage.
“You know that’s what makes you such a good agent, right?” his best friend Spencer had said once. “You’re perfect. Dark, tortured . . . they couldn’t write them better than you.”
“Except,” Spencer’s boyfriend Jon had added. “Maybe with more muscle mass.”
Being dark and tortured really wasn’t all it was cracked up to be and Ryan had to surreptitiously wipe sweaty palms on his jeans twice before he’d calmed himself down. In the time that took, Pete charmed a nurse on the early morning shift into showing her to Brendon’s room.
“Don’t worry,” he said, flashing his badge and his smile. “I’m authorized.”
“Oh,” she said, grinning at him but looking at the others. “Are they authorized, too?”
Pete glanced at Patrick who definitely appeared more official than Pete himself and at Ryan, who just looked vaguely mulish, and waved a flippant hand.
“Of course,” he said. “They’re with me.”
The nurse nodded and then, instead of pointing them in the right direction, led them down the hall herself. Ryan walked beside Patrick while Pete flirted up ahead of them. Typical Pete, really, and Ryan was surprised that it still sort of bothered him even though he knew to expect it. He glanced over at Patrick whose expression was inscrutable.
There was no telling how Patrick really felt about Pete’s tendency to flirt with and eventually fuck anyone that fluttered his or her eyelashes at him. Ryan had always suspected that Patrick’s feelings for Pete ran deeper than he would ever let on, but that was mostly speculation based on a couple of months worth of being Pete’s favorite fuck and only leaving his side for classes and for Pete’s shifts. He could just never tell with Patrick, not for sure.
“He probably won’t wake up for a few more hours,” the nurse was saying in a more professional tone. “But he’s stable.”
Pete nodded and Ryan glanced at the door they had stopped in front of. It was pretty standard for a hospital room, blank and unyielding. There was another officer standing off to the side who looked at them curiously.
“Why don’t you take a break?” Pete suggested, and they must have known each other because the officer just nodded and loped off in the direction of the vending machines.
The nurse hovered for a few moments before deciding she was no longer needed. She shot Pete one wistful look and then left the way she’d come.
“Okay,” Pete said, opening the door. “Come on in.”
It was brightly lit but the boy on the bed was motionless and obviously knocked out. Ryan stepped inside and eyed him carefully, took in the bruises on his face and the splay of dark hair across his pillow. He cocked his head to the side; there was definitely a reason Pete Wentz had effectively been stalking him. He was gorgeous even when he was pale and bruised and unconscious. Ryan raised his eyebrows and looked over at Pete who was staring at Brendon with a sad look on his face.
“Oh shit,” Ryan muttered. “Here we go. This isn’t your fault, Wentz, don’t even start.”
Pete sighed and raked an agitated hand through his hair. “I know,” he said. “But fuck, if we’d only known that he was going to get involved we could’ve stepped in, stopped this from happening.”
Ryan rolled his eyes and Patrick smacked Pete on the shoulder. Hard.
“Don’t be stupid,” Patrick said. “You didn’t know. Shit happens and he’s fine.”
“Yeah, as long as Way doesn’t get a hold of him.”
“Hey!” Ryan said, straightening his shoulders. “That’s why I’m here. Jesus, don’t sell me short. I’ll keep your kid alive, don’t worry about it.”
Pete’s smile didn’t quite reach his eyes and Ryan knew it would take more than just him and Patrick to get him to knock his usual martyr bullshit off, but eventually Pete would stop thinking this was his fault and throw himself headfirst into work to ‘right his wrongs’. If Ryan didn’t already know the name and phone number of Pete’s therapist, he’d think the guy really needed some help.
They left Brendon to sleep when the officer on duty came back and settled in the waiting room.
“Shouldn’t you be doing something a little more productive?” Ryan asked, the prolonged time spent in the antiseptic, white-washed room with its small, claustrophobic chairs making him edgy.
“They can spare us for another hour or two,” Patrick assured him. “You don’t even want to know how many cops are working this case right now. This is huge.”
“If we can bring down Gerard and Mikey,” Pete added, leaning over Patrick’s body to stare at Ryan earnestly. “We’ll be legends.”
“Not to mention the fact that the department’s going to be out for blood. There’s no fucking way we’re letting him get away again.”
Ryan could understand. It wasn’t like he didn’t know all about the Ways and their history with law enforcement. Once upon a time he’d dreamed about bringing them down. Moving from the local department to the federal bureau had changed things a bit and Ryan had spent so long with his head up his ass that people like Way and cities like Vegas had started to feel like a small subset hardly worth his while.
That was part of the reason he’d taken time off when he had. After years of no vacations and few sick days, after earning the reputation of the kind of guy who would go for days without sleep just to crack a case and after earning his stripes as one of the more inventive agents around (which really only meant he was reckless and usually partnerless because everyone was convinced that one day his own arrogance would get him killed), Ryan was jaded. Jaded and not quite bitter; in fact, he was more apathetic than anything.
Spencer had practically threatened him with death if he didn’t do something to snap himself out of it.
“Go back to Vegas,” he’d suggested. “Clean out that old house, sell your apartment, get laid, I don’t fucking know, but you need to reevaluate some things Ryan.”
Ryan wondered if Spencer had anticipated that by reevaluating things, Ryan would end up doing favors for old lovers that involved protecting witnesses from mob bosses.
The sun was coming up by the time a doctor came by to tell them that Brendon was awake.
“He’s groggy, though,” the doctor said, giving them a stern look. “And he needs to rest. You’ve got ten minutes.”
Pete grinned and stood up, stretching until his back popped. “I can do stuff in ten minutes,” he said, grunting when Patrick elbowed him in the side.
“Thanks,” Patrick told the doctor. She just pursed her lips and nodded, striding off in another direction.
Brendon’s bed was raised slightly; he didn’t really look strong enough to sit up on his own. His head lolled on his shoulders when Pete knocked briefly on the door and he narrowed his eyes in a squint in their direction. It took a few seconds for recognition to dawn and when it did, Brendon frowned.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, voice cracked and slow.
“We’re working your case,” Pete told him, sounding more professional in that moment than he had all night and all morning. “Officer Stump and I are here to ask you a few questions.”
Brendon blinked and looked over his shoulder. “Who’s he?”
Ryan swallowed, uncomfortable with the unfocused eyes resting on him. “I’m Agent Ryan Ross,” he said before Pete could introduce him.
“He’s going to be helping us out,” Patrick added.
“Oh,” Brendon said.
Brendon Urie wasn’t just groggy and Ryan frowned when he closed his eyes and didn’t open them again. Brendon Urie was still drugged up to his eyeballs. He shared a look with Pete and Patrick and nearly jumped when Brendon spoke.
“I tried to help Audrey,” he said, and he sounded more asleep than awake. “I really did. I tried.”
“Hey,” Pete said, dropping all pretenses of distant professionalism and holding Brendon’s hand. “I know.”
Brendon passed out seconds later and that was pretty much that. The doctor came in and shooed them away and they were forced to leave the hospital.
There wasn’t much Ryan could do for the rest of the day. Pete and Patrick were off-duty about thirty minutes after Brendon woke up and even though Ryan knew Pete didn’t sleep much, Patrick was starting to look tired and even Ryan felt like he could do with a nap. But when he ended up back in his old house, he didn’t feel tired. He felt weary. He felt heavy. But he didn’t feel like he could sleep.
He raked an agitated hand through his hair and paced the bare floors of the kitchen and then the living room before curling up in a corner of his dad’s old master bedroom and staring at his phone. He thought about not calling Spencer, made up a ton of excuses in his head but in the end he dialed. The sound of his best friend’s voice calmed him down enough to have him spilling the whole story of how he hadn’t even been in Vegas for two days and already he was up shit creek.
“It’s Wentz, isn’t it?” Spencer said, and Ryan couldn’t help but laugh.
“Isn’t it always?”
Chapter Three