“Good for you. Fuck him.” Carter downed his shot as well, then refilled both their glasses. “And no disrespect to your parents but fuck them too if they can’t see how well you’re doing in the profession you chose.”
“More like lucked into it. I had an uncle who was a cop. The forensics part of his cases always fascinated me, and I was good at science and math.”
“Same part of the brain as music, right?” Carter asked as he refilled their glasses.
“To some extent, yes, the numbers and arrangements. I fell in love with it like I had with music, at first.”
“And the stage fright doesn’t bother you when teaching?”
“It did at first, no thanks to students like you.” Lincoln cut him a sly smile, like he knew exactly what Carter had been up to back then. “But I got more comfortable with it and with my role at the Bureau. Honed those skill sets. Unlike playing a concert in front of strangers, or walking into a café full of them, the classroom is a much smaller stage where I control most of the variables. That I can deal with.”
Carter angled toward him, shoulder to the back of his chair, one leg crossed over the other, glass in hand as he sipped at his second shot. He had Lincoln calm and talking, and Carter wanted to know everything. “You brought your guitar though, so you must still play.”
“For me. I still love it. I still need it.” He drummed his fingers over his glass like he would over strings, then lifted it for another slow swallow. “It’s part of who I am, but I want to continue to love it. I don’t want to resent it, and that’s where I was headed. Fast.”
“For what it’s worth, you were amazing today. I’ve never heard that hymn sound so full, so layered before.”
Lincoln’s cheeks heated, a sly grin that morphed into a fond, soft smile, all of the prickliness fading away. Carter was glad to be seated, that same swooping sensation stealing through him and knocking him wonderfully off-balance.
“It was my grandmother’s favorite,” Lincoln said. “It’s actually very basic. It was one of the first things I learned to play. Then as I learned more about music, how to compose and arrange it, I added to the hymn.”
“Did you used to go to church, then, with her?”
He nodded. “I understand the community part of it. Hell, that was evident today, and the service was pleasantly brimstone and judgment free. For me, though, I opted out when a youth minister told my Sunday school class that non-Christians had no afterlife to look forward to.”
“Had he never heard of Nirvana? As in not the band.”
Lincoln chuckled. “Exactly. Or considered that there’s no afterlife at all. That was the day I left organized religion behind. I’m sure not every minister is as ignorant as that man was, but I wasn’t there for it, or any religion, as I concluded a few years later. Maybe it’s the scientist in me, but I’m more comfortable putting my faith in the tangible, namely myself and those around me—the good, the bad, and the ugly.”
Carter nursed his tequila, turning that rationale over in his head. He wasn’t exactly religious, but he did put some faith in there being a higher power. Growing up, he hadn’t had that faith in himself, and he hadn’t had people around him to depend on either.
Lincoln shifted next to him, mirroring his posture. “You said you were an orphan but a very lapsed Jew. Was it one of your foster families?”
“Very lapsed is generous. I haven’t actually ever practiced.”
At Lincoln’s quirked brow, Carter lifted a hip, withdrew his badge from his back pocket, and removed the tiny circlet of suede from behind his badge. He always carried the yarmulke with him, but he hadn’t pulled it out in years. He didn’t want to handle it too often, the light blue fabric showing its age and the hand-stitched Star of David in the center increasingly fragile. “There was a car accident when I was very young. So young I don’t actually remember it or how I got separated from who I assume were my parents. I was thrown from the car and too young to speak my name when someone found me, so I got . . . lost. Being a foster kid is all I’ve ever known, but I always had this.” He held it out to Lincoln. “They found it on me. It was my one possession, and I’ve kept it with me always. It’s all I have.”
Lincoln gently handled the yarmulke, and his voice was similarly gentle when he spoke. “That’s why the interest in Apex? In genealogy?”
Carter nodded. “I think the accident happened here. I’m still trying to confirm that.” He gestured toward the cap. “And also figure out who I am.”
Lincoln passed back the yarmulke with a smile. “You seem pretty confident in that.”
“Okay, who I was, then.” Carter tucked it into the pocket behind his badge, then ran a thumb over the gold shield. “Figures into who I am now too. I would love to settle down someplace, stop living out of my car, feel completely comfortable in my skin and like I don’t have to constantly prove myself. But I’m a foster kid, always trying to prove myself worthy of staying. Never succeeding. I take these random assignments in this place or that thinking maybe some family member or the person who found me will recognize me. And if I’m loud and brash enough in those roles, in those places, in my life, maybe that’ll help them see me.” He pocketed the badge, then tossed back the rest of his shot. “Of course, they may see me and decide they don’t want me, that I’m not good enough for them either.”
Lincoln caught his wrist on the descent. “I don’t know how anyone could think that about you.” His thumb swept over the inside of Carter’s wrist, like Carter had done to him two nights ago. He missed the pressure point, but the touch and Lincoln’s heated gaze were causing pressure of another sort. Behind the zipper of Carter’s fly, and in his chest, drawing Carter forward. Nose to nose, lip to?—
Lincoln’s phone rang, startling them apart so forcefully that Carter had to shoot out an arm and leg to keep Lincoln from tipping backward in his chair. Amid curses and apologies, they recovered in time to catch the incoming call from Senator Kirk. “Ollie,” Lincoln answered as he put the phone on speaker. “Did you find Ruby and Chase?”
“We found them,” Kirk said through choked sobs. “They were in a warehouse, the water was rising, oh God . . .” His words died, swallowed up by emotion, and for a second, Carter feared the worst.
Until Beverley came on the line. “We got them out alive.”
“Oh, thank fuck.” Lincoln bypassed his shot glass and went straight for the bottle, taking a long swallow. He held it out to Carter, who didn’t hesitate to do the same. Victory and relief in the form of smooth, aged agave burned across his tongue and warmed him from the inside out.
“Did you catch the copycat?” Lincoln asked.
“We did,” Beverley answered. “Jeff Baxter. Name ring any bells?”
