Page 33 of Artifacts

“But…okay.” Aldric, confused, forced himself to switch tracks. “It’s the end of my hours, anyway.” And he could find a way to ask about the phone call on the journey.

“No. Not you. You’re staying here.”

Sean pulled a baseball cap low on his head. “A decoy box and a decoy courier. I dunno how you talked me into this.” He vanished into the back.

“I’m not going? But—” Aldric was still protesting when the police officers set off…which was when his stubborn streak set in.

Darrell thinks I’m weak and feeble, does he?His final words had been to keep out of sight, to stay safe. So he was supposed to hide behind closed doors, while Darrell had…adventures.Like with that Mateo guy.Well, Aldric would show him. He grabbed his jacket and keys, making sure the store’s van keys were among them, then locked up, intent on following Darrell.

Chapter Fourteen

Darrell looked at Sean out of the corners of his eyes as they walked. “Could you try to look less like a cop and more like Aldric?”

“I am a cop, and I don’t know that dude very well.” Sean slowed and glanced around. They’d left the car at the very end of the visitors’ center parking lot and were trekking the long way to the church at the back of the mission, going through the lot and past the welcome point, as if they were ordinary sightseers.

“Queen of the Missions. And second place I’ve been in a week that I went to on field trips,” Darrell said, hoping his conversation would deflect any lob before Sean served it. He didn’t want to have anything evenapproachingthe conversation he could sense was looming on the horizon. Sure, Sean was his partner, even his buddy. But the risk of him reacting negatively to Darrell announcingyeah, I’m gaywas too big to take.

“Do you? Know the guy that well?” Sean prodded.

“A little.” Darrell checked his watch. They should speed up a bit, without seeming to hurry. “There’s the bastion.” He pointed to the ball of the tower-like part projecting from the fort’s corner. “Did you pronounce it ‘bastard’ when you came here as a kid?”

“Huh? Why are you changing the subject?”

“I’m not.” He was trying to. “Just making a dumb joke. We grabbed lunch the other day.” Was that enough of a bone to throw?Ooh.Unfortunate choice of word—it was too close to boner, somethingDarrellwas too close to, thinking about the other meals he’d grabbed with…and from…Aldric.

“I’m not stupid. I figured out…stuff about you.” Sean nudged him. “Like why we don’t see you with chicks.”

Darrell’s heart sank. “I don’t get why you’re asking me about this now. And I don’t expect you to understand.”

“Asking you now because you’re, I don’t know,different, somehow, now, okay?” Sean didn’t sound angry. He sounded almost like they were having one of their regular conversations about stuff.

“Am I?” Darrell wondered out loud. Aldric had gotten under his skin. Into his blood, maybe. Did that show? If it did, how did Darrell feel about it? He’d avoided commitment for so long, but now he thought he might want it—with Aldric.

Sean nudged him again, harder. “And I might understand if you fucking explained it to me,partner.”

Which was more of a concession than he’d ever imagined getting. “I’d have to understand it myself first.” He sighed. “Maybe I could try talking about it, over a beer?”

“If you’re buying.” It was Sean’s standard reply. God alone knew what he spent his money on.

“How about over a game of pool? At which I will beat you,” Darrell promised.

“Those tables in your fancy residential complex are shit. The floor slants, or something.” This reply of Sean’s was automatic too. He hated to lose. “I choose the place, okay?”

“I’ll still win.” No one could out-trash-talk Darrell, or any kid who’d grown up in his family. “And thanks.”

Sean’s upraised finger told him he was verging on ‘feelings and crap’ ground. “Better focus up here.”

The place was almost closing—the guide stationed just inside the walls by the Native American quarters was trying to convince stragglers to leave the vast square, and it took them flashing their badges and Sean turning his persuasive charm on the woman to get them in.

It was creepy, the trees seeming to absorb the light, and yet the grass looked too bright a green for the gray-brown buildings and pathways. The old limestone looked like it might crumble, and the stones, all different sizes and shapes, might pop themselves free of their cement—or whatever it was that held them together—and tumble down on them.

The church was on the far side of the mission, and as Darrell walked beside Sean, a bell tolled, the sound mournful in the late-afternoon air.

“Fuck.” Sean’s hand jerked as if he wanted to cross himself and he scowled. “Better not be any weird-ass time-slip shit going on,” he warned Darrell, as though Darrell had been plotting just that and would now drop the idea.

He knew where Sean was coming from. The gaping arches of the colonnades surrounding the church seemed to be lying in wait for them, to lure them into dead-end courtyards like a labyrinth. The hollowed-out rectangles and squares cut into the walls caught Darrell’s eye. They weren’t old doors or windows—some looked like hatches, except they didn’t go through to anywhere, and he tried to remember what the people who’d built the missions had once placed in them. A semicircle at the bottom of a wall had been for a fire. He could tell from the blackened state of the stone, and the chimney, complete with vents, built into the wall.

The empty doorways and windows in the walls added a desolate air to the building, but coming across barred ones was worse. Darrell was relatively glad to push the huge brown door to the church open, although he jumped when it was pulled from his hands—a couple were coming out as he and Sean tried to enter. He almost gasped at the richness and brightness of the church after the emptiness of outside. Well, the altar, anyway. Its blue and gold made the place seem bright, like the white of the walls and the high ceiling made the long, narrow building seem bigger.

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