Page 45 of Sean's Sunshine
Billy grinned at him, and Sean glared back, and Billy wasn’t sure when that turned into staring moonily into each other’s eyes.
Damn. Waking up next to each other that morning had been…. God. Exactly as advertised. Exactly as he’d dreamed. Sean’s body trusting his, backed up against Billy’s. Sean’s soft breathing—or light snoring, depending on who was listening—in his ear, reminding him that they’d done it. They’d taken that step. They weren’t nurse and patient anymore—or even adversarial acquaintances. They were lovers. For real.
It was enough to make Billy hope—just hope—that maybe this was a thing that could happen.
Still beaming—and blushing—Sean and Billy walked up the path to the yellow-sided ranch style with the nicely kept AstroTurf front yard. Billy had seen a couple of these—there weren’t a whole lot of super-inviting ways to landscape a yard after nearly ten years of drought. And he had to admit, the green was a reminder of times gone by.
In an instant, Sean took a breath and seemed to transform into the cop he claimed to be but Billy hadn’t really seen. Without pause he gave a crisp knock to the door and waited for it to open. A harried woman with a baby on her hip didn’t let him down.
“Can I help you?” she asked, smiling politely. She had dark hair pulled back in a perky ponytail, brown eyes, and a round face that looked used to smiling but right now was wholly focused on the fussy infant at her side.
Sean pulled his badge out, and Billy could see why; she probably felt particularly vulnerable with two men on her porch, and some sort of legitimacy might help.
“Hi, I’m Detective Sean Kryzynski of Sac PD, and this is my assistant, Bill Carey. We’re, uhm, sort of doing a favor for a friend who asked us to look into the robberies in this neighborhood. I was hoping you could help us out?”
Ooh—Bill Carey. Nice one. A lot of John’s kids took John’s last name—Carey—if their own parents had cut them off.
“Oh!” The woman’s nearly hostile sense of distraction lightened up, and she gave a brief smile. “You must be Bob’s friends.”
Sean grinned in surprise. “You know Bob?”
“Doesn’t everybody?” she asked. “Yeah, here. I’m going to put this one—” She gave her hip a gentle bounce, and the little girl gave a quiet gurgle. “—in her crib for nap time. If you two could hang here for a moment until I get back?”
“Sure.”
She disappeared, leaving the door open but the screen shut, and Billy said, “Nice catch on Bill Carey. I’d forgotten about that.”
Sean shrugged. “All the guys at the flophouse use John’s name.”
“Mmm. I was gonna too.”
Sean gave him a look that said he wanted to talk about that later, so Billy asked a deflection question instead.
“We’re not going inside?”
“A, we have no authority,” Sean said. “B, she didn’t ask us because she’s a woman alone with a baby and that’s a particularly vulnerable position.” He gave a sigh. “And C, she’s not under suspicion.”
Billyhmmphed. “So far all the TV has lied.”
“I never claimed it was real,” Sean murmured.
“Then why do you watch it?”
Sean gave him a sweet look, showing his heart so completely in his eyes that Billy’s throat grew thick. “Same reason we watch porn. We want to buy into the fantasy, and sometimes that’s easier when we don’t see all the work that goes into it.”
Billy nodded sagely but was saved from replying by the return of their young mother. Good thing too, because he still didn’t have an answer for that question.
“Hi,” she said, coming out of the house and shutting the screen door quietly behind her. “I’m Marla Deeks. So nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you too,” Sean said, smiling. “You’re right. Bob asked me to look into this, and, you know….”
“Bob,” she said, dimpling. “Well, and Dude.”
“And Dude,” he affirmed. “So what happened?”
She shrugged and shook her head. “Well, my husband was gone on business. He’d just checked in, we’d talked for a while, and he sang to the baby. We were about to say good night when I heard something in the garage.” She grimaced. “I told Todd to hang on while I checked it out, and he immediately put me on hold and called 911. Oh my God. They gave him some shit about calling in from LA about a problem in Sacramento! Anyway, I went downstairs to see what was in the garage, and when I opened the door from the kitchen, I saw someone dressed in black disappearing out the side door to the yard with my husband’s bike and his air compressor!”
“Did you get a look at the guy?” Billy asked eagerly, and she shook her head.
