Page 43 of Artifacts

“He must be on his rounds?”

The twist to his companion’s lips suggested the guard was making use of a more comfortable chair somewhere. Aldric had worked night shifts along with day shifts and had used the former to catch up on sleep, for all he should have been busy. Someone to show them to the depository would have been useful, and someone to turn on the lights even more so.

Elliot’s storage room, when they found it, was bigger than Aldric had expected. It had two or three shelves on each of its three walls, running most of their length, and high steel shelving units were fitted across the room in tiers, leaving narrow aisles between each one. They reminded Aldric of library stacks. He’d been in nearly empty libraries, when sounds were amplified and echoed, but none had been this cold or this creepy, making him shiver on entry.

“Thanks. I have to unpack these and, erm, catalog them,” he told Mr. Smith, hoping the guy wouldn’t ask how or why, or worse, what were the mysterious-looking shrouded objects on the higher stacks. “Mr. Douglas doesn’t expect you to wait. Thanks again.” He nodded when the man asked him if he had his own transport.Saying nothing isn’t telling a lie.

It got colder and darker and much more frightening once he was alone, the door closed via the keypad, sealing him in the windowless space. Every squeak and scurry had him tense and every rustle and thump made him retreat behind another row. This was stupid, just like his other idea had been stupid. He glared at Buck Buckman’s former possessions where he’d arranged them on a side shelf, spread out in a long row from the middle to stretch to the back of the room. He’d become obsessed with these puzzle boxes ever since he’d been attacked. A natural reaction, maybe, but stupid. No one was coming.

Or so he told himself until he couldn’t anymore, because the metallic noise had been the main door opening, the short thumps had been footsteps and the rattling at the depository door was someone trying to open it. Aldric grabbed a lamp base to use as a weapon and stood to the side. When the metal door rattled in its frame, the result of whoever was outside trying to force it open, Aldric, his heart thumping like a kettledrum, hit the command on the keypad to open the door. Hoping for the element of surprise, he raised his weapon, prepared to hit whoever was breaking in over the head, only for his hands to freeze near his shoulder.

“Darrell?”

Chapter Nineteen

Aldric!He’d been right. Darrell lowered his gun but didn’t holster it. He pushed himself inside the lock-room, taking Aldric with him. “How does this door lock?” he snapped, relief making him brittle. He’d been thinking about Aldric, and him and Aldric, and him without Aldric, almost constantly. And yet now that he was here, in front of Darrell, Darrell was still groping his way through the mental fog of the last twelve hours. “Well?”

Wordlessly, Aldric reached for a button on the keypad and the door jerked sideways from the frame, closing the entrance to the room.

“Before you ask me how I’m here, I heard it on the news. There was no one at the gallery place mentioned and the store was deserted, and when they said the goods would be kept at a safety deposit for one night, I remembered Elliot mentioning the place. So I knew you’d be here.” Darrell hated that he was still speaking in short, jerky sentences and that what they were here for had nothing to do with his feelings, with the things he knew he had to talk about.Or perhaps it does, in some ways.

Working out what Aldric had planned had put years on Darrell. He had no idea how Aldric and the rest of the Intrinsic Value people had been able to organize this so quickly, but they had. “‘Are you brave enough to brave a curse?’” he quoted, mimicking the inane blonde newsreader.

“How did you get in?” Aldric asked.

“The guard’s mooching around the parking lot and all it took was a flash of my badge. He told me which unit.” Darrell slid his gun into the holster at the small of his back and wiped his hand across his mouth. He hadn’t realized how scared he’d been until he’d caught sight of Aldric’s tangle of soft brown hair and big brown eyes on the other side of the door. Had it really only been this morning that Aldric had left him standing by the side of the road, having delivered his ultimatum? It felt a lot longer. “Why?” he asked.

“Why this? I thought it would work. Flush Nick Buckman out.” Aldric waved a hand at the room. “It was stupid. Is that why you’re here?”

“Nick B—?” Yeah, that wasn’t the important part of what Aldric had said. “Not because I think you’re stupid, no. You’re not. You’re very intelligent.”

“Like, I’m the sensitive, artistic one?”

Darrell shook his head in incomprehension. “I couldn’t let you be in danger. And not because I think you’re weak and that I’m strong.” He struggled for words, to put into speech all the things he’d been brooding on since Aldric had left him, his words hurting like blows. “Jesus, Aldric! I didn’t want to be doing this. I need more time.”

“To string me along? Tell me that you’re working on things, that I have to be patient, to understand, to wait?”

That would be the weak way to deal with it.“More time to get my shit together. To find the words to tell you that although we haven’t known each other long, I care about you. Very much, and…and I find you fascinating. And frustrating. And a whole bunch of other things that I have to say to you. But now, now that I’m with you, and you’re here with those big brown eyes and that stubborn jut of your chin…”

Aldric rubbed his chin, as if testing it. “Now, what?”

“All the thoughts left in my head about you are revolving around this.” Darrell reached out a hand to Aldric’s and slotted his fingers through Aldric’s, then held it, loosely, as if testing their fit. It was good. He squeezed, and Aldric squeezed back, the contact warming Darrell through. Darrell uncurled his fingers and steepled them, Aldric copying him, fitting his palm against Darrell’s, never breaking their bond.

“Your thoughts are about holding hands with me?” Aldric blinked. “Like—”

“Like what?”

“Nothing. Just something I saw. Out in the street, in the open.”

Aldric was the one who blushed, yet Darrell’s face heated. Even if Aldric hadn’t meant it as a rebuke, it stung. “Can we sit down?” he asked.

“I don’t think there are any seats.” Aldric turned to go look, and because Darrell was still holding his hand, he was pulled along with him.

Darrell couldn’t see any chairs and doubted there would be any. Impatient, he sank to sit against a metal row, this time bringing Aldric down with him. The floor was hard and cold to sit on and the room dim, the only light coming from somewhere overhead and out in the narrow corridor. “There’s a lot I have to say. Well, when I’ve worked it out. But I least I realize there’s a lot I have to work out, right?”

“Yes?” Aldric sounded as confused as Darrell felt. “Are you going to kiss me?”

“Do you want me to?” Darrell moved close enough to touch the tip of his nose to Aldric’s, and the bump of Aldric’s nose slid from his when Aldric nodded. Relieved by the knowledge that Aldric was giving him another chance, Darrell closed the gap between them, which was easy enough to do when he was already so close that he could feel Aldric’s breath on his face. The touch of his lips to Aldric’s was tender, asking, not demanding, and almost hesitant in a way that Darrell never let himself be.

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