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It was fine, all right? Fine.
Friend zoned from the moment we shook hands.
Jonah put a hand behind his head, sitting in a way that made him appear extremely comfortable. “Besides, no one ever asks about the cat. Have you thought about that? Maybe if a human crosses a black cat’s path, then that cat is struck with years of bad luck, and then what? You’ll feel like an asshole, that’s what. No one wants to give a cat bad luck—that’s just being a shitty human.”
I couldn’t help the silly grin on my face. Jonah was funny and charming and layered and attractive as fuck.
And also straight.
Which was a huge bummer. The chemistry he and I had was apparent from the jump. I’d never felt like this with anyone, not with my hookups or my past relationships, all of them having lasted about the length of Jonah’s interview. None of those guys had ever made me as intrigued and entertained as Jonah had in the very short amount of time I’d known him.
“Do you have any pets?” Jonah asked, his eyes searching mine. I appreciated how he was comfortable enough to ask me questions, even if they had nothing to do with Stonewall or the job. Hell, he could ask me how the rain cycle works in its entirety and I would have pulled up Wikipedia, wrote up an essay, and read it to him right there and then.
Odd, yes, but also proof that Jonah had me more than intrigued.
“No, no pets. My family, eh… we were never a pet family.”
Or a functioning family. But that’s a story for another day.
Jonah nodded, his eyes still on mine. “Fair enough. My family was kind of the same way, but when I moved out and went to college, I started raising geckos I had inherited from a roommate who up and vanished one day. Apparently he went back home to Rome and never came back, but he had left his three geckos behind. So I took care of them and fell in love with little scaly reptiles. I’ve got a pet iguana named Chibby, which you’re going to have to meet.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever met an iguana before. Well, besides the ones that sometimes end up in my driveway. But those aren’t named Chibby and would most likely whip an eyeball out with their tails if I tried meeting them.”
“Yeah, don’t bother those. Chibby won’t whip anyone, though.” Jonah paused briefly, smirking. “Me on the other hand…”
I tilted my head back. Smiled.
“All right, so back to the case,” Jonah said, clapping and redirecting the conversation, but not before I noticed the slight pink that rushed to his cheeks. “So Castel Rico, he’s the source. But why? Why not just stick to what works? And why start off so small?”
“Because he wants to be the next El Chapo. There’s not only a bottomless pit of money if he can become the only source of this Dragon shit, but also a kind of fucked-up prestige that comes with being that only source.”
“How do you know it won’t spread past him? Not like there’s copyright laws with these drugs. What’s stopping anyone else from copying it?”
“Good question.” Jonah seemed full of them, which was exactly what a detective needed to succeed. A curiosity that rivaled that of the cat Jonah wouldn’t cross. “Dragon is something no one’s seen before. I’ve talked to chemists who have deconstructed the drug and tried recreating it, and no one’s been able to. It’s impossible. Whoever is the head of this thing is the only one who knows how to make it, and I’ve got a feeling they want to keep it that way. At least for now. Being the only supplier makes them a monopoly, and that means money.”
“And what does it do? This Dragon crap?”
“It gives you an unnatural high that people have described as getting inches away from the sun. It also has the effects of putting the user inches away from the sun. Apparently, after an hour on Dragon, your skin starts to feel hotter and hotter, until people describe a sensation of burning from the inside out. They tend to pass out by that point and start seizing. If they aren’t taken to a hospital for proper medical attention, then they die. There’ve been ten deaths so far, in the span of two months. It’s only a matter of days before the media picks up on this.”
Jonah’s jaw dropped, his head moving forward. “So then why would anyone even take this?”
“The chemist I talked to said that it’s a hundred times more addictive than heroin.”
“Oh…”
“And not everyone gets that ‘burning from the inside out’ sensation. But it seems to be the majority of them.”
Jonah mulled on something. I could see him thinking, the wheels in that sexy little head of his spinning. He grabbed some papers and fingered through them, eyes scanning over them from top to bottom. I couldn’t help but watch him. I used the time that his eyes weren’t on mine to take him in, to memorize his shape. The slight tilt of his nose, the rise of his strong brows, the fullness of his lips, the light shadow of a freshly shaved beard.
