“Let’s start with your shoes,” I said.

  Laughter filtered in from the windows, voices moved along the sidewalk, and Elien nodded. I ran my hand down his leg and popped off the sneakers.

  “Ok?” I asked.

  “Not freaking out yet.”

  I kissed him again. My thumb strummed his ribs. “What about this?”

  His breath hitched, and he nodded, so I peeled him out of the shirt. I ran my hand over his chest, the slight swell of his belly, back up to his nipples, up higher to his collarbone where the bite marks were still healing. He shivered.

  “Ok?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Let’s take a break, then.”

  So we kissed, and after a while, he found my hand and pressed it against his chest, and I ran it back and forth.

  “I don’t know why this is so scary,” Elien whispered when he pulled away. “We’ve done this before.”

  “You know why.” My fingers played with the button on his waistband. “Well?”

  He nodded and stood. I moved quickly so he wouldn’t have time to reconsider, undoing the button and zipper, lowering his jeans and underwear at the same time. I pulled him down onto the bed next to me, kissing again, my hands exploring him. We’d been together, yes. But this was different, and we both knew it.

  “Still thinking about going somewhere?” I asked.

  Jaw tight, he shook his head. He was hard when I slid my hand down his body. Moaning, he bucked into my touch.

  “Are you going to run away?” I asked.

  He shook his head again.

  I wrapped my fingers around his dick, the grip tight and possessive, and ran my thumb over the head.

  “Tell me where you’re going,” I said.

  He gave another jerk of his head.

  “Tell me,” I said.

  “Nowhere.”

  “That’s right,” I said, kissing him again.

  After I stripped, Elien moved slowly with me, examining me with his hands and his mouth, hesitating at every injury. Finally I was sick of it, and I grabbed his hair and yanked his head up.

  “Fuck me,” I said.

  For the first time in weeks, I got to see a real Elien Martel smirk.

  The sex didn’t last long; both of us were too keyed up, too desperate, too eager. At the end, Elien went wild, and when he’d finished, he kept whispering, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” until, laughing, I pulled him down next to me and kissed him.

  “Did I hurt you?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Let me figure out if I’m still alive, and then I’ll tell you.”

  He poked me in the ribs, and then he squirmed around until he was under my arm, his head on my chest.

  “I love you,” he murmured.

  “To my face,” I said.

  The tension turned his muscles to wire, but he lifted his head and looked at me and bit his lip and blurted out, “I love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  He grinned, relaxed, slumped down on me again. His walked his fingers across my chest. “A marine biologist?” he asked.

  “If I can get the grades.”

  “And you’re going to Tulane?”

  “I still have to apply, but I should get in.”

  The struggle in his face was real; he was trying to say something, and it wouldn’t come out. Someone in the room next to us put on “Free Bird,” and someone else screamed with excitement.

  “They are so fucking loud,” Elien grumbled. “Every night.”

  I just stroked his back, gathering the sweat there, feeling the heat still dissipating from his muscles.

  “I have some money,” Elien said carefully.

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “And I need a place to live,” Elien said.

  I nodded.

  “And I don’t want to live here anymore. I want to be away from here.”

  I nodded again.

  “I was thinking about New Orleans.”

  “It’s a great city,” I said.

  “And if you’re going to school in New Orleans, it makes more sense for you to live in the city too, instead of commuting across the lake every day.”

  “That does make sense.”

  “Would you please help me out here?” Elien asked, slapping my stomach.

  Grinning, I said, “Only because I’m so proud of you for earlier.”

  He rolled his eyes.

  “When you told me you loved me,” I said.

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “I think we could find somewhere really nice,” I said, my hand moving more slowly on his back. “I think we could find somewhere we could be really happy.” Then I nudged him toward the edge of the bed. “But until then, can we please get out of this motel right now and go just about anywhere else?”

  “You just want to go home so your mom will coo over you some more.”

  “You’re my home, Elien Martel,” I said. “Starting right now.”

  He propped himself on an elbow. “Hey, Dag? Would you—do you mind calling me Eli?”

  I shook my head.

  “I think I want to be Eli again.”

  I ran my hand through his hair, smiled, and said, “Hello, Eli.”

  THE SAME BREATH

  Keep reading for a sneak preview of The Same Breath, the first book in a new series by Gregory Ashe.

  1

  Teancum Leon had barely gotten home from the Division of Wildlife Resources when a knock came at the door. Scipio, his black Lab, was in the middle of doing a welcome / please-take-me-out-for-a-walk dance, but the Lab adjusted his priorities and began to bark.

  “All right,” Tean said, stroking the dog’s ears as he bumped him out of the way.

  Mrs. Wish, his neighbor from the end of the hall, was wearing her usual ensemble, regardless of day or night: a full-length house dress, something Tean imagined her picking from a color page in the Sears Catalogue, and a chemically pink terrycloth robe over it. Her long white hair was free of its usual bun, and her eyes were wide.

  “There’s an intruder,” she said between gasps for breath.

  “Oh my gosh. Did you call 911?”

  “Not that kind,” she said, and then she grabbed his arm and dragged him out of the apartment. “It’s a spider.”

  “In that case, I’ve got to take Scipio for a walk,” Tean said.

  Mrs. Wish drew herself up, glancing back at Tean’s door and then looking down the hall toward her own home. “I’ll walk him,” she said, like a woman offering to step in front of a firing squad. “You deal with that nasty little murderer.”

  Tean sighed and nodded. While Mrs. Wish hurried back to rescue Scipio, Tean made his way along the hall and pushed open her door. He had to snag the domestic short-hair that tried to slip out of the apartment—he thought this one was Senator Frank B. Bandegee, because he remembered the white patch on her chest—and then he was inside the apartment, pushing the door shut behind him.

  Very little ever changed about Mrs. Wish’s apartment: the smell of dander, animal and human, mixed with wet cat food and a floral scent. Collectible presidential ashtrays, holding the mounds of potpourri that provided the flowery note, were placed on occasional tables and shelves and ledges around the room. Doilies. A million doilies. A framed, larger-than-life portrait of President Woodrow Wilson, hanging where most people would have placed a television (once Mrs. Wish had sent Tean into the bedroom to examine a . . . deposit that Senator Henry Cabot Lodge had left on the carpet, and he had stumbled onto an autographed photograph of President Gerald Ford in a heart-shaped frame. President Wilson’s illicit rival? Tean was dying to know). And, of course, the Irreconcilables, perched on bookshelves and the back of the sofa, crawling through their cat mansion, swishing past Tean with disdainful looks that said they would accept a display of affection, albeit unwillingly. Their numbers varied between twelve and eighteen; Tean no longer tried to keep track.

  Setting down Senator Frank B. Bandegee, Tean made a quick tour of the apartment. He made the mistake of getting too close to Senator Poindexter, a vicious Siamese, and earned a nasty swipe at his ankle for his mistake. In what Mrs. Wish optimistically called the guest bedroom, which was a confection of pink, sateen, and spills of creamy lace—canopy bed included—he found the intruder. The closet doors were open, and Mrs. Wish had dragged one of her heavy dining chairs into place so she could reach the shelf at the top where the spider was hiding.

  Tean climbed up onto the chair and examined the shelf: several folded blankets, a lacquered wood box, and a manila folder. On the tab of the folder, Mrs. Wish’s Palmer script read: Reagan – Shirtless. In smaller letters below, she had added, with quotation marks included, “The California Showboat.” Tean was reaching to open the folder when he heard the front door. He jerked his hand back.

  “Oh, Dr. Leon,” Mrs. Wish said, wringing her hands from the guest bedroom’s doorway. “You really have to be careful.”

  Tean shifted his attention to the intruder: a small black spider hanging from its web in the closet’s upper corner.

  “He looks like a nasty customer,” Tean said.

  “Well,” Mrs. Wish said, obviously at a loss for words. “Smash him!”

  “I don’t think we need to do that.”

  “Dr. Leon, I know a black widow spider when I see one. They can kill an adult. Think of what their poison could do to the children.”

  “Venom,” Tean said absently. “Not poison. Do you have a pen? Never mind, I’ve got a Blackwing in my pocket.” He drew out the pencil, got the eraser as close to the web as he could, and tapped the wall. The spider scuttled along the web, following the vibrations. Tean withdrew the pencil, watching as the spider searched for its prey.

  “Perhaps my bust of the lesser Roosevelt,” Mrs. Wish offered.

  “I don’t think that’ll be necessary.”

  “Be honest, Dr. Leon. How much danger are the Irreconcilables in? I’ll book a hotel. I assume you’ll be available to help with their carriers. We can transport them in two trips—”

  “I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” Tean said hastily.

  “If something happened to one of the children, I’d die. I’d just die.”

  “Well, we’re all going to die, Mrs. Wish. And they’re technically not children. They’re cats.”

  That seemed to throw off the rhythm of Mrs. Wish’s performance. She put her hands on her hips, staring up at him, and said, “I hardly think a crisis is the time to wax philosophical.”

  “I’m not being philosophical. I’m just pointing out that we’re nothing but complex molecular chains that will eventually dissolve and be recycled into something else. A plant, maybe.”

  Mrs. Wish stared at him.

  “Err. Like catnip. Some of the same basic building blocks that make up Mrs. Wish could one day be inside a cloth mouse, giving some lucky cat hours of entertainment. That’d be nice, right?”

  For a moment, Mrs. Wish didn’t seem to know what to say. She settled for: “I should think not.”

  Wiping sweat from his forehead, Tean said, “Right. Well, about the spider—”

  “I’ll get the lesser Roosevelt.”

  “Hold on, and then you can decide. First of all, it’s not Latrodectus hesperus—not a black widow, I mean.”

  “I know what a black widow—”

  “You can see for yourself.” Tean offered her the chair, but she shook her head. Pointing with the Blackwing, he said, “No hourglass marking on the ventral abdomen.”

  “Perhaps you’re confused about which side the marking should be on.”

  Tean tapped the wall again, and the spider scurried across its web, exposing its dorsal side, which was also dark and unmarked.

  “Well,” Mrs. Wish said, tugging on her terrycloth sleeves. “What is it then?”

  “I think it’s Steatoda grossa, what’s called a false black widow.”

  “I still think a good smashing is in order.”

  “If you like. But just so you know, Steatoda grossa preys on a variety of pests, including Latrodectus hesperus. Real black widows, I mean.”

  Mrs. Wish thought about this. “It won’t harm the children.”

  “No, it won’t bother you or the cats.”

  “And it might even stop something from harming them.”

  “That’s right. There’s almost always one thing higher on the food chain. Predators who prey on predators, you know? All the way up to the apex.”

  After a moment, Mrs. Wish nodded and proclaimed, “Then it stays. If you’d please hand me that folder, though, while you’re up there.” She murmured something vague about “important documents” and “setting my affairs in order” and tucked the Reagan folder inside her robe like she was robbing a bank.

  Tean carried the dining chair back to the front room, with Mrs. Wish dogging him.

  “Violet will be very sorry to have missed you,” Mrs. Wish said. “She’ll be here in a couple of hours.”

  Tean smiled and nodded.

  “I’ll send her over with a plate of cookies.”

  “That’s really not necessary.”

  “She’s already got age lines, unfortunately,” Mrs. Wish said, tracing them on her own forehead to illustrate. “But I imagine if you squint, or perhaps if you close your eyes when you kiss her, they won’t bother you too much.”

  “Uh. Yes. Well—”

  “Twenty-seven, poor dear. Practically a spinster. We tell everyone she’s twenty-five because it’s just too embarrassing otherwise.”

  Edging toward the doors, Tean nodded.

  “I think she’s had the one dead tooth fixed,” Mrs. Wish was explaining, “so you won’t be bothered by that, at least.”

  “I hear Scipio barking,” Tean said, throwing open the door. “I’ve got to run.”

  “I don’t hear—”

  But he was already sprinting down the hall.

  When Tean let himself into the apartment, Scipio was waiting for him, pressing a cold nose against his arm, snuffling, trying to scent out all of the Irreconcilables that had dared get too close. Tean thought of Mrs. Wish’s granddaughter coming over with a plate of cookies that were the sugary equivalent of hard tack. He grabbed Scipio’s harness and asked the Lab, “What do you think about another walk? A really long one, this time?” The dog park, he thought, was far enough away to be safe.

  2

  “People suck,” Tean said, letting Scipio off the leash. The dog park was busy on Friday afternoon, and Scipio ran off to join Bear, a hundred-and-thirty-pound St. Bernard who dwarfed Tean’s black Lab but had still become a regular playmate.

  “Ok,” Hannah said with a sigh. She was still removing the leash from her own dog, Divorcee. She worked with Tean at DWR, and she had called as he was leaving the apartment to ask if he was interested in being set up on a blind date with a guy she knew. When Tean tried to dodge by explaining he was going to the dog park, she had insisted on joining him. It was nice to have company, even if Hannah didn’t realize she was helping a fugitive.

  October in the Salt Lake Valley was beautiful; the underbrush on the Wasatch Mountains to the east burned red, and the sun setting over the Great Salt Lake to the west painted everything else gold. Autumn in Utah was a precarious pleasure, always ready to slip early into winter and stay there. Days like this one, with the breeze coming off the mountains and the skies perfectly clear, made sure the dog park stayed busy.

  “What does that mean?” Tean asked.

  “It means you’re trying to get out of this date.”

  “Everyone’s trying to set me up today. Why won’t anyone let me have forty or fifty years of peace before I die?”

  “Go have fun, princess.” This was directed to Divorcee; the teacup Yorkie scampered five feet away, stopped, and looked back. “Go on.”

  “I’m not trying to get out of a date,” Tean said.

  “Ok.”

  “I’m just pointing out an incontrovertible fact.”

  “Here we go.”

  “People suck,” Tean said, varying the tone a little in case she’d missed the point.

  Hannah just sighed. “Can we talk about something else?”

  “Miguel asked me if you were single today.”

  “Did you tell him I’m married?” Hannah said.

  “Yes.”

  “Great. End of conversation.”

  “I saw those reports you put together on—”

  “Not work.”

  “Well, I wanted to ask—”

  “Nope. Work stays at work. I don’t want to think about work. Sook’s funeral is this weekend, and I don’t need anything else making me think about work.” Hannah studied the leash, which she wrapped around her hand as she asked, “I don’t suppose you’ve heard anything new from the detectives.”

  “I don’t think it’s that straightforward.” In fact, Tean thought, nothing had been straightforward about the case. Sook Hyeon, one of the DWR’s conservation officers, had been killed the week before. She had been in a bad part of town, late at night, and nobody could explain why a nice, smart Mormon girl with a 401k and a master’s degree, with a good job and a boyfriend, with overprotective parents who still called to make sure she was home safe at the end of every day—nobody could figure out why that kind of girl had been where she’d been, had died the way she had died.

  Hannah nodded, tears in her eyes. “I know. It’s just—she was my friend, you know? And it doesn’t seem real.”

  “I’m sure they’re doing all they can,” Tean said.

  Nodding, Hannah wiped her cheeks as the tears came faster.

  “I’m so sorry,” Tean said. He moved in for a hug, reconsidered, but was already committed. He ended up giving her an awkward, one-armed embrace from the side, and Hannah laughed brokenly and patted his arm.

  “I went through her logs and reports,” Tean said as he stepped back, “and I made some calls. Nobody could tell me anything out of the ordinary. And I gave all the information to the police.”

  “You didn’t have to do that.”