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A win-win, if you asked me.
I settled into my office, cracking open the window and moving the pastel-pink pot of various succulents into a direct beam of sunlight. The leather seat squeaked as I slumped into it. My desk, always kept immaculate and tidy, looked like a bomb of paperwork and manilla envelopes had gone off. Zane wanted us all familiar on the Pegasus and had given us everything we needed on the case just yesterday, so I still had to go through and organize everything.
Maybe that’s what I’ll focus on for the morning.
I took a sip of the mocha cappuccino, letting the sweet warmth coat my tongue. Before I could begin sorting through the mess of files, Austin popped his head into my office, a small pearl earring on a gold chain hanging off his ear and catching the light.
“How’d it go?” I asked, sitting up, ready to start cheering when Austin shared the good news.
Wait… he wasn’t smiling. Why wasn’t he smiling?
“Not well,” Austin said, stepping into my office. He ran a hand over the few wrinkles on his salmon-pink polo. “I didn’t do it.”
My eyebrows shot up. “What happened?” I motioned at the chair in front of my desk. “Sit, sit.”
“That’s fine—I have to run to an interview now, and it’s a short story anyway.” Austin perched on the back of the chair, arms crossed and lips pursed into a slanted half-smile. “Charlie ended up with food poisoning last night. He thinks it’s a salad he had for lunch. I wasn’t about to hide the ring in a bottle of Pedialyte, so I decided to hold off for a better time.”
“Ah, damn. And how is he feeling today?”
“Better. Ringless and a few pounds lighter, but better.”
I chuckled at that. Austin looked like he had stayed up all night with Charlie judging by the bags under his eyes and the lack of gel in his hair. Those two were a perfect pair, the kind that welcomed you in only after a few hours of meeting them, making you feel like part of their family. I was born and raised in a small town in New Jersey until my parents moved to Blue Creek for a job when I was sixteen. My paths had never crossed with Austin and Charlie until I started working at Stonewall much later, about two months after Stonewall had opened up their offices, but from the first night we went out for drinks, I could already feel a strong friendship with them forming.
Next to the reliable air-conditioning and lack of active FBI investigations, meeting Austin and Charlie was one of the best things about working here.
“It’ll happen when the time is right,” I reassured him. “Unless you’re me and get engaged the morning of a category five hurricane which gives perfect cover for your scam-artist fiancé to rob you blind and disappear across state lines.”
Austin’s eyes popped open and almost rolled across the floor. “Wait, wait, hold up—a hurricane? A scam artist?”
“Yup. I think the technical term for that is a ‘shitshow.’”
Austin laughed, still wearing a shocked expression. He glanced at the clock on the wall. If it wasn’t for his scheduled interview, I had a feeling he’d spend his entire morning in my office listening to my story. Instead, he shook his head in disbelief and started walking backward.
“I’m coming back for this story. This is me pressing pause.”
I froze in place, earning another chuckle from Austin as he said goodbye and disappeared, promising to come back the second he had a chance.
With the door closed and my “pause” over, I got to work, spreading out all the files and folders across my wide oak desk so that I could see everything. The Unicorn had terrorized the gay community in New York for years, killing innocent men by impaling their foreheads with a unicorn horn, leaving them splayed out on the bed in a pair of white briefs. It was Zane who had discovered the monster behind the killings: one of Stonewall Investigation’s own detectives. The sick fuck had weaseled his way into the detective agency without anyone suspecting a thing, continuing his killing spree right underneath Stonewall’s nose.
Leo was still serving his three life sentences behind bars and didn’t seem to have anything to do with the recent murders in Blue Creek. The pattern had been broken as well, with a woman as the first victim. Previously, only gay men had been targets, but this new Unicorn—this Pegasus— seemed to have broadened their horizons, changed up the pattern.
Dug up the terror and placed it on a platter to serve.
As I scanned a stack of crime scene photos, a knock on my door drew my attention. “Yeah?”
Darien popped his head in. “Hey, Ryan, if you’re not busy stress preening, I’ve got a client here. He asked for you by name.”
