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“They’re not—” Sven started but Geoffrey broke in.
“Yeah, yeah, big guy, we know they aren’t my friends.” Geoffrey stroked those slim fingers over his abs. “Like a dog with a bone, you are.”
“Channeling Yoda aside,” Quinn broke in. “There’s something about him nagging me like crazy, but I can’t figure out what. It’ll come to me when I’m gaming later.”
It was an inner-office joke that Quinn quit work with puzzles and returned with them solved. He’d told Sven he was able to solve problems or figure out strategies while gaming and for the last few months, he’d been gaming in the office at night. Rowe was cool with it, but they’d all been wondering why he didn’t like to go home to the apartment he shared with two other guys. Sven, often early to the office, had caught him napping on the couch in the roomy office space he shared with Gidget.
“When did he show up?” Royce asked.
It took Geoffrey a few moments to answer. “I think about two years ago. He was with a big group we had at Shiver. We spent most of the night swapping stories about how we learned to code. Had some laughs. We hit it off so he started showing up at all our hangouts. But why would he wait all this time?”
“Because crazy people don’t make sense. Think back. When did the stalker messages start appearing?”
Geoffrey sat up and grabbed his coffee, but just held it between his hands. He stared at the pool, his forehead bunched in thought. His back went tense. “Around the time Brendon and I stopped seeing each other. But the messages didn’t start threatening. They were kind of creepy, but got worse just before that night I was drugged at the club.”
“It looks like Patrick and Kody have the skills needed to pull off the tech stunts we’ve seen so far. We’re going to filter all their comments and see if we can match a pattern to the messages. Gidget is going to look into digging up more of Kody’s past. I’m going to dig around on Patrick and have Rowe keep eyes on Brendon for a while longer.”
“Anything else?” Sven asked.
“That’s it for now. We’ll call again if we get more.”
Royce shut off his phone. “I’ll go grab the big box off the porch. You care if I open it and make sure it’s what you ordered? Anything racy I can enjoy?” He winked.
“I saved ordering the life-sized sex toys and fifty-five-gallon drum of super lube for next week. Fortunately, these are just step stools.”
“As in more than one?” Royce asked.
Geoffrey nodded and flashed Sven a cheeky grin. “One for every room in the house.”
Royce groaned and went inside when Sven laughed and pulled Geoffrey onto his lap for a kiss.Chapter 16“This is what I needed. Nothing like an early evening swim.” Geoffrey shook his wet hair off his forehead and tread water. “Come in. The water is great!”
Sven stepped off the side of the zero edge pool and sank, the water cooling his hot flesh. He groaned in pleasure as he kicked back to the surface. Two frustrating days had passed with no new information, and Geoffrey’s friends had gone silent. In person. On the different media platforms, quite a few were louder than hell like the video had instigated a big Internet party. Sven had been happy to see that some had started jumping in to defend him, although for every one, at least twenty immediately skewered that person. Understandably most backed down. But a few stood strong.
Among them were Abby, Patrick, and Kody.
The whole thing made Sven’s chest ache because it was like the dark underbelly of humanity lay blatantly exposed.
Thankfully, Geoffrey had mostly stopped looking and disappeared into his work during the day, while at night, he’d held on to Sven like he was afraid he’d disappear.
“I love to swim and so does Finn,” Geoffrey said as he floated on his back. “We didn’t have a pool growing up, but our neighbors did. They let us come over every now and then. We both wished we could swim every day, so this cemented my decision when I was house hunting. Finn swims like a fish and took first place in a couple of competitions in high school.”
“It’s a beautiful pool.” With dark blue tile, a round spa, and one massive step down along one side, the pool had an elegant scope Sven liked. But even nicer was the pride in Geoffrey’s voice when he bragged about his brother. He did that often, Sven had noticed. And it did something to Sven every time.
There had been zero hesitation on Geoffrey’s part to take over raising his brother. During those years, he’d admitted that he didn’t go out often and instead took his parenting duties very seriously. He also had regret in his voice when he spoke of the heavier partying year he had done during Finn’s first year of college.
