“I think he may have worn it today, but you are welcome to check his room,” she said with a smile. “We trust you here, Shane.”

  Shane smiled back, warmed and relieved. They trusted him. Damn, that felt good. He stood and took the plates to the sink to wash them off and then walked back into the little hallway to Mikhail’s room.

  It was orderly but not neat. There were piles of clothes in the corner, waiting for the Laundromat, and folded clothes on the bed. The bed itself had a comforter—blue and green plaid—pulled up over piled pillows, but nothing was pleated or smoothed down. Shane liked it. An orderly, self-sufficient mind, but no obsessing over tiny things like pillow creases or folds in comforters.

  Where do you keep your money?

  Where all Russian peasants keep their money. In my sock drawer.

  He was praying that Mickey hadn’t been kidding or lying about that.

  He was standing in front of the veneered dresser and about to pull out the top drawer, when he noticed the box. It was a large cedar box—the kind that women kept jewelry in—and the kind that someone might keep money in if they didn’t trust banks, so he decided to check it first.

  He spotted the two-inch tag of yarn first—one of Benny’s unwoven ends—carefully clipped and placed in one of the little cubicles in the top of the box. And then he saw everything: the receipt he’d written his number on, the little vial—now half-full—of scented oil. There was a free bookmark from the first time they’d visited the bookstore and a cheap plastic toy leftover from when Shane had taken Benny and Parry Angel to dance lessons once for Deacon. It had been floating around the bottom of the car, and he’d wondered where it had gone. Now he knew.

  In the bottom of the box—the bigger compartment—there were pictures. A heartbreakingly young Ylena, holding a brand new infant. A three-year-old boy with a thousand-yard stare, wearing dance shoes. A flyer from a performance, and another, and another. A pair of ballet slippers so small even Parry Angel couldn’t have fit in them. Two tickets to a concert, probably, but written in Cyrillic so Shane couldn’t tell who was playing.

  He closed the top of the box gently, with a shaking hand. A treasure box. Carefully hoarded mementos of a man that claimed not to keep such things. And the smallest moments spent with Shane had a place of honor.

  Shane pulled in a shaking breath and firmed up his spine with resolve, then opened up the top drawer of the dresser.

  “Have you found it yet?” Ylena called from the front room.

  “No—I’m looking in his dresser if that’s okay.” There was a silence, and then she must have figured he wouldn’t have told her this if he had meant to steal something.

  “Yes, this is fine.” And he continued on. Of course, he’d seen the scarf hanging on the coat peg at the dance studio or this whole thing would be for nothing.

  And there it was. Pay dirt. A neat stack of bills, completely out of order, rolled tightly in the corner of the drawer. Excellent. Shit. They were out of order. Shit shit shit shit….

  Shane reached into his pocket and pulled out a roll of fives, tens, and twenties almost as big as the one in the drawer. With clumsy fingers, he took the bills and shuffled them into Mikhail’s roll, trying to make them not stand out too much. He’d washed and dried them six times with brand new jeans and an old pair of tennis shoes—and his washer and dryer had the repair bill to prove it—but they were still a little crisp. He wasn’t sure they’d fool Mickey, but at this point he had no choice. The deadline for getting the money in was on Friday, and the ship left on Monday. Mikhail had told him he’d be counting the money tomorrow.

  That way, if I do not have enough money, I can panic on you when you get here. How is that for needy—am I a satisfactory fuck buddy now? It had been a mean-spirited thing for the other man to say, and if Shane hadn’t been able to read the absolute terror in his voice, he would have been hurt beyond words. But he had heard the terror, and he had been there for the nakedness of Mikhail’s past. Instead of getting angry, he had simply reached a hand across the car and cupped Mikhail’s cheek until the tension had left the other man and the shame washed over him. You should probably at least get some sex out of a person before he says something that shitty to you, shouldn’t you?

  I wouldn’t complain. Shane’s answer had been mild, but the truth was, sex had been the last thing on his mind. He’d been coming up with this crackbrained scheme, and now it might be the undoing of everything. He listened with half an ear for Ylena to decide he was too weird to be trusted in her son’s room, and with the rest of his attention he kept shuffling bills into the stack, trying to still the beating of his heart with some comfort. He was sort of committed to this, and what was Mickey going to do? Accuse him of stuffing money in his sock drawer? What kind of psychopathic loser did something like that?

  With a gasp he slipped the rubber-band back around the roll and stuffed it back in the drawer. His hands were sweating, and he’d never felt so guilty in his life, but he managed a bit of theater and started talking to Ylena on his way out the door.

  “I can’t find it in there,” he said with a good-natured sigh.

  “He might be wearing it,” she told him. She hadn’t moved from the couch in the hundred or so years he’d been rifling Mikhail’s drawer, and Shane could only be grateful. “He will be very sorry to see it go.”

  Perfect. Excellent. It was like she had read his mind for his next line.

  “You know, in that case, don’t tell him I was looking for it. Benny will understand—in fact, I think she’ll be thrilled that someone liked her work so much. It’ll give her an excuse to knit another one for me, right?”

  Ylena looked at him levelly, as though she knew exactly what he’d been doing, and nodded with complete serenity. “Yes. I think that would probably be best.” She made as though to rise from the couch to see him off, and Shane put her off with a wave of the hand, moving to the couch to kiss her cheek. The first time she had lifted her cheek in farewell, he had been surprised, but now he wouldn’t think of leaving without bidding Mikhail’s mother goodbye like she was his own.

  “You take care of yourself, Ylena—Mikhail’s counting on that cruise, you know.” She stopped him from moving away by taking his hands and peering up into his face from her place on the couch.

  “I am living for him, just so he can give me that. It will make my going so much easier.”

  Shane nodded, his throat going dry. She had never spoken of dying to him, but apparently neither of them were good at lying. “Your son is going to miss you,” he said roughly, and she nodded.

  “I kept hoping, you know, that he would find a girl, because girls will take care of boys like men will not, you know?”

  Shane blushed. “Yeah. Girls can cook.”

  And of all things, that made her smile, and the smile made him realize how young she had been in the picture, holding Mikhail as an infant—how young she truly was now.

  “I do not mind if you cook, Officer Perkins. What I care about is that you seem to see into the heart of my son and find it good. It will, perhaps, be easier to go, knowing that someone like you will be looking out for him.”

  And now that blush was everywhere. Oh God—he had not been a part of the game Ylena and Mikhail had played, the careful dance between telling her the truth and dashing her hopes that her son would find a home the way she dreamed.

  “Ylena, what does ‘loobeeamee’ mean?” he asked, feeling awkward. But she answered without hesitation.

  “It means ‘beloved’.”

  Shane nodded. He’d known Mickey had lied, but he hadn’t known the full extent of it. “So, it doesn’t mean ‘buddy’ or ‘my friend’?” Just to make sure.

  Ylena shook her head, smiling slightly. “No—it means ‘love’, like, say, a mother to a child, or, perhaps, one lover to another. Where did you hear this word?”

  “Mikhail used it.”

  Her smile widened then, almost shyly. “And he told you it meant ‘my friend’?”

  “Yeah—I didn’t buy it at the time.”

  “You should not have. My son lied. Why do you think he would do that?” The smile tilted up at the corners, and, like her son, Shane mourned her lost beauty. Oh, this woman would have been a stunner.

  “I think he knew it was important,” Shane said softly. “He was a little afraid of how much.”

  “I think you are right, lubime,” she told him, and her smile faded but not in a bad way. “I think you just keep reminding him how important you are, and one day he might not lie about it. And I will be glad when that day comes—it means that my work is done, and someone else will care for him. I can sleep with no bad dreams.”

  “No bad dreams, Ylena,” Shane murmured and bent down to kiss her cheek again. “I’ll see you tomorrow night.”

  “I look forward to it.” She said it with enthusiasm, but before Shane was out the door, she had put her head on the arm of the couch to rest.

  SHANE was patrolling in the car the next day when he got the phone call. He hit the button on his earpiece to hear Mikhail’s rapid-fire voice, pattering so quickly he might as well have been speaking in Russian.

  He pulled off into the liquor store parking lot so he could savor the conversation.

  “Mickey, slow down—you’re not making any sense!” It was the first time Mikhail had called him since that one, miraculous call the night after they’d met.

  “Money, Shane! We have money! I counted, and we have enough for the cruise, and for the better cabin. There is even enough for a new dress for Mutti….” There was a deep breath as he tried to get hold of himself. “We can do it, Shane. We leave next Monday. We’ll be back the sixth of January. We’re going!”

  Shane grinned. “That’s awesome, Mickey. Really terrific. I’ll miss you at Christmas—I sort of wanted you to meet the family, but that’s okay. We can do that when you get back.”

  There was a sudden silence, as though it had just occurred to him that they would not be together over the holidays. “I… I will miss you too,” Mikhail said, and Shane was glad he had pulled over because he could picture that look of sudden revelation the man got when something he’d never thought of just walked up and bit him on the ass. He’d seen it often—when Shane had shown up with food for lunch, the first time he’d arrived in time for their date, when he’d kissed Ylena’s cheek the first time. More recently he’d seen it when Mikhail’s head had been thrown back and his eyes closed while Shane’s mouth was on his cock.

  He’d made Mikhail look at him because that expression alone had almost made him come.

  “You’ll have to take pictures for me,” Shane said, and then he heard another stunned silence.

  “I did not even think about that. Shit. I shall have to buy a camera….”

  “No worries—you can buy those disposable ones, get them processed at the drugstore.”

  A happy laugh. “Oh God, yes. There. See? You are indispensable. You… you will be there to see us off? I… my mother’s church people could give us a ride into San Francisco if you cannot, but I… if you can get the time off, I would….”

  Shane wasn’t sure what he looked like with that goofy-assed grin on his face at the moment, but the world would have to live with his weirdness. He wouldn’t be anyone else in the world. “I’d love to see you off, Mickey—maybe I should borrow another car, though. The GTO isn’t as comfy as it might be, and it’s a long trip for your mom.”

  A silence, and it sounded like Mikhail swallowed—hard—into it. “You are a really good man, do you know that? Mutti—she has talked about you for weeks. After you brought her lunch yesterday, she thinks you hang the moon.”

  “Yeah, just don’t tell her about my designs on her son’s body—that sort of brings a mother’s esteem down a few notches.”

  Another silence. Then, shyly, “Perhaps I should keep my designs on your body to myself then?”

  Shane blushed. “I was hoping you had some of those,” he muttered. He’d wanted Mikhail to know how good he could make it in spite of how much like a pinup he was not. “Maybe you could, you know, share them with me when you get back, right?”

  “I’m looking forward to it,” Mikhail said with absolute sincerity.

  Shane opened his mouth to say something when his radio crackled. “Shit, Mickey, wait a minute.” He hit mute on his phone and listened. Levee Oaks and L street. Shit. Shit shit shit shit shit. Domestic dispute—and who knew which one was stoned on what. Didn’t matter—both the Rivas could be fucking insane.

  He picked up the radio. “Officer Perkins—responding. Be at the scene in less than five.” He started the car and hit the talk button on his phone again. “Mickey, I’ve gotta go—I’ll see you later tonight, okay?”

  “Absolutely,” Mikhail said. “Be safe.”

  “Count on it.” Shane rang off and his radio buzzed again. “Perkins.”

  “Perkins, this is Calvin. Dude, that nine-one-one call was pretty intense. Do me a favor, man, and wait for me, would ya?”

  “How far out are you?” Shane asked. The only problem with waiting for backup was that Donny and Rachel Rivas had three kids. If the kids were in foster care, fine—let them get some of their meth out on each other while he waited for backup. If one of the kids was involved, well, that was a whole other story.

  “I’m out on Elkhorn, just out of the station.”

  “Well, I’m here. I’ll just nose around a little—no door knocking ’til you get here, I promise.” Shane signed off and parked the squad car in front of the overgrown lawn. There hadn’t been enough rain to green up the valley this winter, and the long, mostly brown weeds seemed to highlight the disrepair the rest of the Rivas house stood in.

  Shane got out of the car, slammed the door, and heard a child screaming around the back of the house. Well, shit.

  He later gave himself credit. He didn’t just go running into that house, half-cocked and ready to shoot. He crept up to the side of the house and looked around the corner and saw one of those things that wake cops up in the middle of the night.

  There was Donny Rivas, with his oldest daughter—about seven years old—caught up under the armpits with one arm, a hunting knife in the other hand. He was using the hunting knife to carve slow patterns into the flesh of her upper thigh.

  “Now where’s the stash, you little shit? It was in the fuckin’ house, and now it’s fuckin’ gone—you’re always creeping around—where’d ya fuckin’ put it!”

  Shane’s heart dropped. Well, shit, this was really not a waiting-for-backup situation. It violated every law in the be-a-cop handbook, but he was going to have to step up and do something.

  “I didn’t I didn’t I didn’t!” The little girl’s wail was terrified, and what she said next was worse. “The baby ate it, I couldn’t do nothing, and now she’s sick!”

  Oh fuck. Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck. Shane pulled out the radio at his belt, and buzzed Calvin. “Calvin, send an ambulance—there’s an overdosing infant on the site.”

  “Fuck—where are you?”

  “Side of the… fuck!”

  Rachel Rivas was running at him with a kitchen knife, shrieking. He dropped the radio and ducked the clumsy swing, getting a good view of her stringy brown hair and her rotting teeth as she launched herself at him. She swung again, and the knife bounced off the Kevlar he was wearing under his uniform. He took a step back and reached for his extendable billie club at his waist, only to have his elbow connect with a solid body.

  Donny Rivas grunted and fell back just as Shane got the club out and knocked the knife out of Rachel’s hand. She screamed and fell backward, gibbering, and Shane tried to turn so that his back was toward the house, only to find Donny had him securely around the shoulders with one arm while the other was plunging the knife downward.

  The knife found the gap between the Kevlar and Shane’s rib cage and ripped through his flesh and grated on his bone. Shane howled and threw his big body back against the house, and he heard Donny groan as his stringy junkie’s body was squashed up against the wall. The hand holding the knife was driven further down before Shane threw himself back again and Donny was forced to let go. Shane managed two steps out, away from the both of them as they were panting and whining, their pain magnified by their withdrawal symptoms, and he pulled his gun from his holster and held it out with shaking hands.

  “You two,” he barked, “calm the fuck down. I’m a fucking cop, you’re both under arrest, and there’s an ambulance coming for your kid in case you forgot to give a fuck.” He had to yell that last part over the sound of the approaching sirens, and he managed to hold the gun up while his blood ran down his side and his vision blackened, until he heard Calvin’s voice from the front yard.

  “Perkins! Perkins! Where the fuck are you, man?”

  “I’m right here!” he called. Breathing was suddenly difficult, and he remembered the feeling of a punctured lung from the last time he’d ended up in the hospital. He heard the sound of Calvin approaching and tried really hard to hold it together.

  “Calvin?” he rasped, pulling in a tortured breath, “how many ambulances you got out there?”

  “Three,” Calvin said, coming up the side of the house. “Oh my God… Shane, you’re covered in—” Donny picked that moment to whimper, and Calvin shifted his gun and his focus to the two moaning junkies, writhing on the ground. The knife at Donny’s feet was covered in Shane’s blood, and Shane’s arms were shaking as he tried hard to think.

  “Get their weapons,” he said, fighting for some more air. “Now, Calvin. Don’t have much time.”