Justin had finally finished all his paperwork and was on his way out the door when his cellphone rang. He swore, stepped back out of the elevator -- no reception for shit in there -- and checked the caller ID, then swore again and flipped it open.

"I've got a six-pack on ice and the Grizzlies game starts in an hour, Kirkpatrick," he said, ignoring the death glares he was getting from what's-his-name from Evidence trying to get around him and into the elevator. "If this is about the paperwork from the GTA, it's in your inbox. I clocked out ten minutes ago."

He was expecting some kind of smartass comment -- Kirkpatrick usually had a smartass comment -- but Kirkpatrick just said, "Yeah, I know. Can you come back up anyway?"

When Kirkpatrick asked like that, something was up. Justin sighed. "Yeah, okay. Didn't even make it off the floor. Gimme a minute."

The door to Kirkpatrick's office was closed when Justin got there; he rapped, waited for the "Come in," and entered. Kirkpatrick was finishing up a phone conversation. From the number of "sir"s and "yes"es being tossed around, it was probably someone Upstairs. Way Upstairs, from the sour look on Kirkpatrick's face. Justin leaned against the door and waited. "Sorry about that," Kirkpatrick finally said, hanging up the phone. "Politics." As always, in Kirkpatrick's mouth it was a dirty word; Justin kept expecting to see his captain spit after saying it.

"Lemme guess," Justin said. "You're about to tell me that I'm gonna be missing the game."

"You must be psychic," Kirkpatrick said, and pointed at the chair. "Sit." Justin did his best impression of a Labrador. "Dispatch got the call about forty, forty-five minutes ago. Over in Sheridan-Kalorama. Williams and McBride caught the call, got over there pretty quickly."

When Justin had first started with the DC Metro police department's robbery unit, he'd taken those little pauses as a cue to ask. He knew better by now. Kirkpatrick got up, paced over to his window. "They were called to the home of the Honorable Senator John Joseph Sherman. Of Tennessee, in case your mama didn't write you about the results of the last election. Not that it should matter, since Sherman first got elected back in the Truman administration --"

"Eisenhower," Justin corrected, without thinking. Kirkpatrick gave him the "my lecture, not yours" look; Justin rolled his eyes and made the little "get on with it" hand motion.

"--the Eisenhower administration," Kirkpatrick picked back up. "Williams and McBride arrived at the senator's residence to discover several things. A household preparing for whatever holiday party is on tonight's social calendar. The senator's lovely wife hysterical, though several political acquaintances of mine will swear that this is indistinguishable from her natural state. An alarm system that's been disabled for God knows how long, an empty jewelry case, and --"

"And a white rose petal in the jewelry case." Justin pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers. "Taggert's working the White Rose robberies. Why do you want me?"

Kirkpatrick picked up a file and lobbed it over the desk. It landed in Justin's lap. Justin winced; it was so thick that whoever'd assembled it had been forced to slice open the folder and assemble it like a sandwich, held together by rubberbands. "Because we need someone who's got experience. And I don't just mean in the department. Taggert's on medical. He's come down with a nasty case of political complications. The doctors assure us that it'll take at least three months for him to recover. Congratulations, you have a case."

Justin sighed. "You're too kind," he muttered. "No, really." Taggert was a good cop, one of the finest; thirty years on the job, and he still refused to retire. Everyone respected Taggert. Anything that was so hot it made the chief take Taggert off the case was something one Justin Timberlake, Detective Second Class and nobody's fool, did not want to touch. Especially not with his particular background. He'd lasted this long, done this well, by never once giving the brass a reason to look too closely at him.

Kirkpatrick wasn't going to budge, though. He could tell that much. "Take the file home tonight and read it," Kirkpatrick said. "And get your ass over to Shermans' house and for God's sake, go be political. I doubt you're going to close this case --" Justin winced, but it was true; Taggert had been working it for nearly a year and had gotten nowhere -- "but make it look good anyway."

"Right," Justin said. He slid the elastic onto his wrist, flipped through the case folder, found the timeline he knew was going to be in there and pulled it out. "Just promise me that Taggert's case of politics isn't contagious."

Kirkpatrick's eyes were serious. "We're trying to quarantine it. Just watch where you put your feet. And what you say, to whom."

It wasn't what Justin wanted to hear, but he'd never known Kirkpatrick to steer him wrong. If Kirkpatrick was putting him on the case, there was a good chance he'd be needed on it. Two people in the department knew about Justin's history, and one of them was himself. "Thanks," he said, under his breath, and headed for the door.

"Timberlake." Justin turned as he was reaching for the doorknob; his hand flew up automatically to catch as Kirkpatrick tossed a scrap of fabric at him. He sighed and put the folder down long enough to knot the tie around his neck. "I owe you game tickets."

"Damn right you do," Justin said, and headed for the elevator again.

*

The Sherman household looked like it had been professionally decked to appear as though the residents, overwhelmed by holiday spirit, had done it themselves in a Sunday afternoon hall-decking spree. Justin hated it on sight.

McBride answered the door when Justin rang the bell. Justin might have been imagining it, but she looked a little wild around the eyes. "Thank God," she said. "She's in the parlor. Please tell me that you're here to send us home."

"Sorry," Justin said, automatically, as he scanned the entryway. The townhouse was more of a townmansion. Justin thought that an auction house was going to be very happy someday when the Senator and his wife finally croaked; he could spot, from where he was standing alone, six pieces of furniture, artwork, or knick-knackery that would fetch top price. He'd always had a good eye for that sort of thing. "Run me down the scene."

McBride sighed. "I should have been a plumber," she said. "A female plumber? I'd've made millions." She straightened up and got serious. "Call came in at twenty-oh-nine. Mrs. Sherman's personal maid was helping her dress for the party over at the --" She looked down at the notebook in her hand. "--Brunei embassy tonight. Mrs. Sherman asked the maid to fetch her the matching set of sapphire earrings and pendant to accompany her outfit. The maid returned and informed Mrs. Sherman that she couldn't find those rocks; Mrs. Sherman went, looked, and the maid says she nearly fainted. White rose petal in the jewelry box. They called it in right away."

Justin nodded. "You dust for prints?"

"First thing, yeah. Some smudges, and we lifted a nice clear one off the top, but I'd bet my pension it's from Mrs. Sherman." McBride flipped a page over in her notebook and tore it off. "The list of the domestic help and the visitors to the household the past seven days, by the way. Inventory of what's missing is on the back."

Justin looked up, surprised. "Thanks," he said. "Nice work."

She grimaced. "Yeah, well, I had to sit through some of the most repulsive racial garbage you've ever heard to have to get them, and let me tell you, she is not happy that Williams is sitting with her right now. She wouldn't talk to him one bit. Tried to pull the us-white-girls routine on me, too."

Justin probably should have been surprised, but he knew too many old ladies from the South to be shocked. "Charming," he said, dryly. "Anyone in and out of the house today?"

"Her husband's out of town this week, so apparently they called in some political favors. Her escort to the party tonight's in the parlor with her and Williams. Name's --" A quick consult down to the notebook again. "Chasez. JC Chasez, grandson of the Virginia senator. He's doing a pretty good job of keeping her calm. Other than that, nobody in and out today, and the housekeeper backs that up." McBride blew a lock of hair out of her face. "The security system's through ADT. Pretty standard package; door and window sensors, downstairs motion detectors, phone-home feature. It didn't look tampered with, but I tried to get it to phone home and nothing happened. I left it for you; Williams said that you've got a knack for getting those things to talk to you."

"Okay," Justin said, and squared his shoulders. "Let me go talk to her. You --" He was about to say "get the names and addresses of all the help", and then checked himself. He wasn't used to uniforms with initiative. "Go knock on some doors, see if anyone saw or heard anything tonight. I'll check the alarm system once I'm done."

She nodded. "Good luck," she muttered, and pointed. "Through there."

Justin automatically noted the motion sensors as he moved into the parlor. Whatever they'd paid for the security system install had been too much; Justin could map out at least four ways past them without even trying. Ah well; the fewer good security design people there were in the business, the better chance he had at making his own home-security business successful once he retired from the force. In fifteen years, eight months, and twenty-one days.

"Mrs. Sherman?" he asked, stepping into the parlor. Without a conscious choice, he realized he'd let the accent creep back into his voice; apparently his subconscious wanted to play it like good ol'hometown boy. "I'm Detective Timberlake, ma'am. I'm here to help take care of this."

Mrs. Sherman -- and Justin vaguely remembered seeing photos, once his memory was jogged by seeing her again -- was a fairly vigorous seventy-something with white permed hair, ample bosom, and an overwhelming cloud of perfume. Justin tried not to sneeze as he took her hand in his and -- Southern manners stirring up from the long-unused primordial soup at the back of his memory -- bowed ever-so-slightly over it.

She looked up at him. "Oh, thank goodness," she said. Justin was used to listening for accents; this one belonged to someone who'd tried for years to lose it, succeeded, and then tried for years to get it back to sounding natural and only gotten halfway there. She turned to the man sitting next to her on the sofa. "Joshua, honey, did you call them and ask them to send me a real police officer?"

Justin interrupted before Williams, standing at the doorway looking like he couldn't wait to get free, could pop. "It's standard procedure, ma'am. Officer Williams, can you go assist Officer McBride with interviewing the neighbors?"

Williams shot him a thank-God glance, but only nodded and left. Justin turned back and surveyed the "date", who patted Mrs. Sherman's arm gently and said "Let the detective take care of it, Aunt Gloria." The voice was light and sweet, like a good cup of coffee; the hair spilled down to brush his shoulders in well-tamed brunette curls, and the body -- well, the body filled out the tuxedo quite nicely. Justin immediately felt underdressed, unshaven, and outclassed; he caught himself trying to gauge whether or not he'd be taller if the guy stood up.

He pulled himself together and turned fully to the date. "Timberlake," he repeated, and held out his hand.

"Chasez," the man said, standing. Which made Justin feel a little bit better, because at least he had the height advantage, if not the smooth advantage. "Call me JC. I've been a friend of the family since practically before I was born." Chasez's handshake was firm, but not challenging; Justin was about to say something in response when he looked up and caught Chasez's eyes and felt like he'd been kicked in the gut.

Get a grip on yourself, Timberlake. He might be the hottest thing you've seen in a month of Sundays, but he's not only out of your class, you're on the job. He swallowed, forced himself to smile, stepped on the impulse to make sure his tie was straight, and said, "Thanks for helping us out by sitting with Mrs. Sherman, sir. Ma'am, I'd just like to talk to you a little bit, take a look around, see if I can find something that'll help us find who did this."

"My jewelry," Mrs. Sherman said. Only the fact that genteel ladies didn't do things like that kept it from being a wail. Her eyes welled up with tears; Chasez, without being asked, produced a handkerchief seemingly from nowhere and handed it over.

Justin sighed. It was going to be a very, very long evening.

*

"...no fresh tool marks, but I could have gotten the plates off without leaving any marks. No surprises; the lead'd been clipped as neatly as anything I've ever seen, and the phone line back to the home office had been rerouted at the switch. Looked normal, tested normal, didn't do shit."

Justin glanced down at the report in his hand; he didn't need it, but it was habit. "No sign of forced entry around windows or doors, so I'm thinking it wasn't a second-story job. No prints; no hairs. No nosy neighbors. I swabbed the jewelry box and the windowsill, just in case, and Bass down in the DNA lab laughed at me and told me, quote, 'Unless he spit on it, came on it, or bled on it, come back when we don't have a fifty-homicide backlog,' unquote, which I roughly interpreted as 'when Hell freezes over'. The rose petal was fresh, not dried, which means we caught it quickly. I'd guess yesterday afternoon. I ran the help, tried to see if anyone popped as a likely candidate to have let the guy in, on purpose or by accident. And it is not a happy household and everyone hates her guts, but everyone swears up and down that there was no window for a walk-in."

Justin looked up again. "I'm pushing on the help, but I don't think that's it. This is the fifth one this year. Taggert wrote everything up, and the only common thread I can find is that someone's systematically targeting the DC social and political elite. Congressmen, lawyers, ambassadors -- the only thing I can put together is that everyone hated the marks. Smiled pretty at the parties, schmoozed at the country clubs, and planted knives the minute backs were turned."

"You're thinking it's personal." Kirkpatrick's fingers were patiently distorting a paperclip; he seemed to be unaware of it.

"I'm thinking it's personal." Justin shook his head; that wasn't quite it. "Or at least political. The victims didn't seem to know each other, at least not very well, and I can't seem to find any common enemies, but I've got a gut feeling on this one. I think we're looking for someone who hates them all, but not enough to physically harm them. Just enough to make them suffer. And I don't think the guy's used the same method of entrance twice."

Kirkpatrick's hands stilled, and he looked up. "Taggert agree with you?"

Justin sighed. "No. Taggert was working a random-victim scenario. People with the biggest haul, people with the showiest and most expensive jewelry. His theory was that it was a guy coming in as a repairman, something like that, when the household was expecting someone, and knocking off the alarm, then coming back weeks later once it had been forgotten and cleaning them out."

Kirkpatrick made a thoughtful hrm noise. "Okay. Tell me why you don't buy that."

With anyone else it would have been an unspoken challenge. Taggart was a good cop. Justin was a punk with a veneer of respectability and a reputation for closing the crazy cases. Kirkpatrick knew his methods, approved of them -- approved of him -- but sometimes his unblinking stare made Justin itch. "This guy's smart, skilled, and he's got balls of fucking steel to taunt people like this," Justin said. "He doesn't just rob them; he robs them and leaves his calling card. He's not the kind of guy who's going to take the risk of being spotted, even in disguise, and he's not going to risk having someone accidentally discover his tampering ahead of time."

This was the tricky part. "Plus, I checked with all of the major security firms around here, and none of them have any reported broken alarm systems. At least, none that were broken on purpose. The alarm's always clipped the same way, and if our guy was coming in ahead of time, there'd be at least one aborted hit by now. I don't care how good he is, I don't care how careful he is; people set those things off accidentally too often. Kid goes downstairs in the middle of the night to get a drink of water. Lady of the house forgets to disarm it before getting up in the morning. Hell, Fido or Fluffy jumps too high, breaks the beam, and the next thing you know, the home office is calling for the codeword. People would notice if it went too long without an accident. I don't think he's disarming it more than a day in advance, tops."

Kirkpatrick was back to fiddling with the paper clip. "Taggart didn't check those stats, did he?" he asked.

It was ever-so-innocent, but it smelled like a trap. Justin stared at the wall. "No, sir, he didn't. I believe I have more experience with alarm systems than he does."

Kirkpatrick made another thoughtful hrm noise. "What's your plan of attack?"

Justin squared his shoulders and prepared for it. "I'm gonna schmooze, sir."

He was expecting a snide comment, or at the very least a crack about his manners, but instead, Kirkpatrick merely seemed thoughtful. "Schmooze?"

The idea that had seemed so sound at three AM sounded silly by noon, but Justin kept going. "So my theory's that it's personal, right? And there's gotta be some common thread here, but I can't find it. Yet. If I get in, ask around -- socially, instead of officially -- I can test the waters, figure out if there's anything we're missing on paper. It's the holiday season; there's a party every night, or near enough. I figure I can get in, make some small talk, nose around. Listen in on the gossip. Maybe I'll take McBride around with me; she can listen in on what people are saying in the ladies' room. My momma says that's where all the important stuff happens. I'll keep working the case the usual way, go over all the old leads, but I don't think I'm going to crack this one until I get in there and see what's being said when I'm not on the clock."

He waited for the "no" -- he had a whole speech planned about the way he worked, about the need for as much information as possible, about the need to immerse himself in the case -- but to his complete surprise, Kirkpatrick nodded. "If you aren't any closer by Christmas, come up with something else," he said, and then paused. "You did say off the clock, yes?"

"Yes sir," Justin said, and made his escape before Kirkpatrick asked him how he planned on getting in.

*

Joshua Scott Chasez, age twenty-nine. The only son of the only daughter of the long-standing gentleman senator from Virginia, Tate William Chasez -- the Third, of course. The last names, combined with the fact that birth and death records showed that Senator Chasez's daughter had been born late in the senator's life and died early in JC's, let Justin put together a picture of a sheltered only child, an unwed mother, a scandal, and a quiet adoption by the grandfather after the mother's death.

From what Justin could turn up, JC had been a model child, perhaps to compensate for the scandals. Private boarding schools all the way, a summa cum laude degree in international affairs from Princeton, a whiff -- no, a stink -- of old money, and a job heading up Senator Chasez's business interests; on paper, Justin would have expected precisely the type of person he despised.

In person, when he rang the doorbell of Chasez's modest Georgetown townhouse, he got a cheerful "Hang on a second!" called from within. He shifted his weight on his feet, trying not to think about the paperwork that was waiting on his desk, and waited.

Chasez opened the door: barefoot, in t-shirt and jeans, his hair flying every which way. Justin closed his eyes for a second; he'd been hoping that his reaction to Chasez the night before had been due to the simple fact that everyone looks hot in a tuxedo. No such luck. Chasez didn't do the thing where he pretended not to recognize Justin for a second; the corners of his eyes crinkled immediately, and he stepped back from the door. "Detective! Come on in."

"Thank you, Mr. Chasez," Justin said. The townhouse was light and airy; the walls were a soft cream instead of industrial white, and the furnishings were a mixture of wood and brushed metal. The occasional piece of art, each one elegantly placed, provided splashes of vibrant color; paintings, sculpture, pottery, textiles. From what Justin could tell, they were predominantly contemporary. He wondered if Chasez had picked them out himself; if he had, Justin tentatively approved of his taste.

"Call me JC, please," Chasez tossed over his shoulder. "C'mon, I was working in the kitchen. I have coffee on, and I'd be happy to offer you some."

Justin followed along, trying not to look at Chasez's ass. "If this is a bad time --" he started.

Chasez laughed. "Oh, hell no. I was just writing out the Christmas cards. Believe me, I'm thrilled for the interruption." He led Justin into the kitchen, which matched the rest of what Justin had seen so far, complete down to the beautiful, hand-thrown and hand-glazed bowl on the kitchen table, full of apples and pears. One glance at that table told Justin why Chasez was grateful to be interrupted; the table was buried under stacks of paper, cards, and stamps. There was an actual inkwell and metal-nubbed pen sitting next to the small cleared work area, which made an interesting contrast to the PDA sitting on the other side, presumably containing Chasez's address book.

Chasez indicated one of the chairs with a wave of a hand. "Sit. Just shove the stuff out of the way, really, you can't get it any more out of order than it already is. How do you take your coffee, Detective?"

"Justin," Justin said, automatically. "Light and sweet, but really, please, don't go to the trouble."

"Oh, it's no trouble," Chasez said cheerfully. "I never drink the whole pot myself. What can I do for you, Justin?"

"Well, I've got a few questions --" Justin started. He watched as Chasez fetched down two mismatched mugs from a cabinet; they looked handmade as well. Something kicked in in the back of his brain, from the part that made decisions without informing Justin, and he stopped. "Actually, I've got a favor to ask you, and it's not only completely against procedure, it's probably crazy as well."

"Try me," Chasez said.

Justin steepled his fingers, trying to disturb as little of the paper explosion on the desk as possible. "I want you to take me to as many of these society parties as you think you can get away with without causing whispering."

Justin didn't know what reaction he was expecting, but he didn't quite know what to do with the one he got. Chasez brought over the two mugs of coffee, set one down in front of Justin and took the other for himself, and raised an eyebrow. "You think whoever's doing this is someone on the inside."

Justin echoed the eyebrow, and picked up his coffee mug. "What makes you think that?" He took a sip just as Chasez was about to answer, and held up a hand as it exploded on his tongue. "Hang on a second, I think I'm about to faint. Do you have any idea how long it's been since I had a cup of non-cop coffee?"

Chasez laughed. "Jamaican Blue Mountain, from Peet's. They actually carry Peet's in the Safeway, but you have to special-order that blend online. And it just makes sense to me; I thought after reading about Ambassador al-Faisal's wife's jewels being stolen last month that this couldn't be random. I'd be happy to help you out however I can. Aunt Gloria practically helped raise me, and anything I can do to help you find out who's responsible for this, I will." He smiled, and the corners of his eyes crinkled up again. "Besides, I find police work fascinating. I considered going into it myself, but I didn't want to give my grandfather a heart attack."

Justin took another sip of the coffee. "I don't want to cause any trouble for you. Personally, professionally, socially. I'm just hoping that if I can get to know the people involved a little better, find out who loves them, who hates them --"

Chasez was nodding. "That you'll be able to know the questions to ask, and look in the right directions. That makes perfect sense to me. And no, it won't be any trouble. I get invited to all those parties anyway, and my grandfather expects me to put in an appearance. If I'm going anyway, I might as well bring someone along, right? And at least there'll be some interesting conversation. I can pick your brain about some of your interesting cases. The ones you're allowed to talk about, at least."

Justin had to laugh at the expression on his face. "That stuck for someone to talk to at these things?"

Chasez rolled his eyes in an exaggerated gesture. "For the most part, yes. Hours and hours of policy and politics. Which, you know, I'm interested in, but only for so long. Yeah, I can take you around, introduce you -- it's really not a problem at all. And it's been so long since I've had a date, it'll give my grandfather something to disapprove of again. Which I was starting to look for anyway, so you'll totally be doing me a favor too."

It caught Justin in mid-sip; he choked on his coffee, frantically tried to avoid spluttering on the envelopes. He put the mug down before he could drop it, coughed again, and looked up. He just knew his ears had to be on fire. "I'm sorry?" he managed.

Chasez had the best confused-kitten face Justin had ever seen. "You didn't mean --"

"No, I didn't want to make --" Justin started.

"-- I thought everyone knew --"

"-- don't want to cause any trouble --"

"-- thought that was why --"

"I didn't know you were gay!" Justin blurted. And then stopped. "I'm sorry, I have to go drown myself in the fountain now."

Chasez burst out laughing. It was a full-on, deep-chested giggle. "No, no," he managed, waving a hand, and grabbed his mug of coffee to take a long draught. "No, I'm not laughing at you, I'm laughing at the expression on your face -- okay, I'm laughing at you -- I'm sorry, I'm sorry, hang on." He took a deep breath and composed himself, just as Justin's lips were starting to twitch and he could feel the warning signs of a laughing fit of his own coming on. "Detective Timberlake --"

"Justin," Justin said automatically.

"-- Justin -- I'm sorry, I thought you knew, and that was why you came to me. It was a seven-day scandal, oh, five, six years back. Drives my grandfather up the fucking wall, and I try to be as discreet as possible, but really, queerer than football bats." He laughed again. "I figure it does some good to shake up the good ol' boys every now and then, right? I'm sorry, does it make you uncomfortable?"

"No!" Justin said, and then got a hold of himself again. "No, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to --" He stopped. "Okay, look, let me try this from the top. Hi. I'm Justin, and I'm a complete idiot." He took a deep breath and tried to find his cool. He mostly failed. "I'm, uh, I mean, I'm completely comfortable with alternate -- I mean --" Oh, the fucking hell with it. "You don't exactly go putting rainbow stickers on your police cruiser, but --" He ran out of words and threw up his hands. "I've always said 'than a three-dollar bill', myself."

"One of my crew at Princeton used to say 'gayer than a treeful of monkeys on nitrous oxide,'" Chasez -- JC -- offered, and wrapped himself up in his chair until he was sitting on one leg with the other pulled up to his chest. "Which I always liked. Except I wondered who gave the nitrous oxide to the monkeys. Okay. So now that we've gotten that out of the way, you're asking me for a date, Detective. Justin."

Justin gave up. "I guess I am."

JC laughed again. Justin really liked the way it sounded, free and clear and almost giddy. "Are you free tomorrow night?"

*

Finding a tuxedo eight hours before the event turned out to be surprisingly easy, even if Justin did catch some razzing from the guys in Homicide when he wound up dragging the garment bag back up to his desk after lunch break, swearing the entire time, to avoid it getting wrinkled in his car. He'd had to settle for pants that were a little too long in the inseam and a little too short in the outseam, and a shirt and jacket that tugged in some places and were too loose in others, but beggars couldn't be choosers, right?

He was just struggling with the bow tie -- the little old lady who'd helped him at the rental shop had made it look so easy -- when his doorbell rang. "Fuck," he muttered under his breath, and tried one more time before letting the ends of the tie hang loose while answering the door.

JC had insisted on picking him up, instead of meeting at the senator's house. When he saw the hastily-concealed laughter on JC's face, Justin thought this might have been the very reason. JC didn't say anything though, except "Nice place," seemingly perfectly content to stand in his custom-tailored formalwear in the building's grungy hallway for as long as it took.

It took Justin a minute to find his tongue, because JC in black tie was nice. Really, really nice. He'd done something different with his hair, slicked it back a little around the sides to tame it but letting the rest of it fly freely, and it made his eyes seem bluer than Justin remembered. "Come on in," he finally said, and stepped back to hold the door open. "I'm, uh, just finishing up getting ready."

"I can see that," JC said. "Didn't they show you how to handle a bowtie?"

Justin rolled his eyes. "Yeah, once, at like, triple speed. Are you sure these things aren't designed to cut off all air circulation and choke you to death?" He remembered his manners a minute later. "You want anything? Coffee, water, soda?"

"No, thanks." The smile tugged at the edges of JC's lips a little more. "Would you like some help?"

"Nah," Justin said, peering around JC to inspect himself in the mirror on the back of the door and trying to fuss with the tie again. "I've got it, really --" The knot-in-progress fell apart under his fingers again. "Oh, fuck me."

JC muttered something under his breath, something that Justin didn't quite catch but which could have been "maybe later" and could have just been a cough. "Here," he said, and stepped up behind Justin. "I can't do it in reverse," he said, by way of explanation, and brought his hands up and over Justin's shoulders.

Justin froze. JC's skin was warm and he smelled like some kind of yuppie soap, soft and dark and fresh. As Justin fought against the urge to spend the rest of the night standing there with JC's chest warm and strong against him, breathing in that scent, JC tugged at the long end of the tie. "Here's your problem, you've gotta have this one down further. Like this."

The tie took shape under JC's slender fingers with a few quick twists. Justin tried to follow, but it was so quick that it was over before Justin could wrap his head around it. He tried to salvage his cool by saying, "Maybe I should just let you tie my tie for all of these things, right?"

He expected JC to laugh, which he did. He wasn't expecting it to be followed up by JC's hands smoothing the fabric down over his shoulders, by JC's eyes meeting his in the mirror. "That might not be a bad idea," JC murmured, and stroked the jacket down Justin's arms, then transferred his hands to Justin's sides, tugging and smoothing the clothing in place.

The little old lady at the tux shop had done the same thing, but the little old lady at the tux shop wasn't young, gorgeous, and pretty much exactly Justin's type. Justin felt like a deer in the headlights as JC's fingers slipped underneath his cummerbund, pulling here, arranging there, until some mysterious and arcane point was reached and Justin was presentable for public view.

"All done," JC said. The very tips of his fingers lingered at the base of Justin's spine. He looked up, and their eyes met in the mirror.

"I, uh," Justin said. The 'thank you' died on his lips.

"You look very nice tonight, Detective," JC said. Justin had never heard his rank sound like an endearment before. "Shall we?"

As they made their way out to JC's car, Justin thought that even he could tell that JC was hitting on him.

*

Justin had been thinking of it as any operation, albeit one with formalwear and small talk instead of Kevlar and hand signals: get in, acquire the objective, get out with the minimum amount of damage. He'd learned that way of thinking early: in, out, over.

The way that the people standing in the hallway quieted when he walked in next to JC -- the small eddies and disturbances in the flow of conversations, the whispers and the trying-to-be-polite-but-really-just-staring stares -- should have warned him. He shifted on his feet and muttered quietly to JC, "Maybe this wasn't a good idea."

"Nonsense." JC was smiling, not the crinkle-eyed smile Justin remembered but a smooth curving of the lips. He didn't look at Justin, just nudged him unobtrusively. "Smile."

Justin turned his head to look at JC just as the flashbulbs went off. "Huh?" was all he managed, and then blinked. Another photographer gestured, and JC turned his attention seamlessly while Justin struggled to keep up.

"They'll throw out the press before dinner. Smile," JC repeated. Justin blinked a few more times and then pasted his very best media-relations look on his face, just in time for the next flash. "Must be a slow news day."

"Nobody dead, nobody missing, nobody raped, no drug busts," Justin said. "That's newsworthy in and of itself."

JC quirked an eyebrow. "Slow day indeed. Do you work in any areas other than Robbery?" He rested his palm in the small of Justin's back, every inch the solicitous date, and used that hand to nudge Justin out of the country club's hallway. Justin stepped along.

Talking about work was easier than trying to figure out what he was doing here. "Not really. Not unless there's something big going down, and they need more hands. But, you know, guys talk."

JC made an interested noise. "I imagine it's nothing like the TV shows. And I imagine you get quite tired of people imagining they know what your job is like simply because they've seen every episode of Law and Order ever made."

"Oh, tell me about it," Justin said, and apparently there was enough heartfelt emotion in that sentence to have JC laughing as they stepped into the main room where the party was being held.

It must have been an intimate picture -- JC's hand still on Justin's back, both of them laughing, engaged in conversation. It was broken fairly quickly, though, when the woman swooped down on them, her hands outstretched as though to grab JC's hands, saying in a heavily accented voice, "Joshua!"

JC turned to see who was calling his name. Justin watched as the "polite media smile" was replaced by the crinkly-eyed smile, and he took her hands in his own, bringing them to his lips with a theatrical gesture. "Sophia," he said. "I didn't know you'd be here."

Italian, the accent was, Justin thought; she certainly had the coloring for it. She was tall and thin, built like a model, but older than the fashion was for models to be, this season. Justin estimated her to be in her mid-forties, even though she looked more as though she were aiming to pass for thirty, but wouldn't be upset if she slipped the mark a little. As he watched, she rose on her toes just enough to kiss both JC's cheeks. "Of course I'm here," she said. "Giuseppe and I flew in this morning." She flicked her eyes over to Justin, who was doing his best to appear unobtrusive. "You didn't tell me you had a new young man."

"Oh, he's not my young man," JC said, with a fond smile. "Yet. Sophia, please allow me to present Mr. Justin Timberlake. Justin, Mrs. Sophia Calabria. She's an old friend of the family."

Justin imagined he was at a family reunion being introduced to distant cousins, thought of what his momma would have wanted him to say, and summoned up a smile as he took the hand the woman presented and -- on impulse -- brought it to his lips. "It's a pleasure, ma'am. I imagine the two of you were in school together?" he offered.

She chuckled. "You're very kind, Mr. Timberlake. No, I was at school with Joshua's mother, God rest her, and she asked me to be Joshua's godmother. Giuseppe and I manage to visit several times a year." She turned back to JC. "We'll be here through the holidays, this year. I'll call to see when we can get together. You must fill me in on all the details of your life."

"Absolutely," JC agreed. "I'm fairly well booked through to next year, but I've always got time for you. Especially since I've recently acquired some things I know you'd love. Have I missed anything here tonight?"

Sophia rolled her eyes. "Talk, talk, talk. All the bitter old women talking behind their hands at all the bitter young women and all the men chasing after them. Everyone is talking of a law that Congress is trying to pass."

JC nodded. "The Medicare bill. I heard McCullough picked up another three votes; it's looking more and more possible." His mouth twisted. "Which I didn't think was ever going to happen. Justin, did you hear what they're trying to do?"

Justin had tuned them out, trying to sift through the hiss and buzz of conversation around them; he started slightly, then replayed the last few minutes in his head. "No," he was forced to admit. "I don't pay a lot of attention, since I don't exactly have a Congressman I can call up and bi -- complain about things."

"Ah," JC said. For a second, Justin wondered if he'd just lost points, but JC continued, smoothly. "There's a small faction in the Senate that's trying to restructure Medicare. Chop the coverage in half, double the prices, and call it progress." He shook his head. "None of us thought they'd ever manage to pass it, but it's not looking good. I nearly got thrown out of my grandfather's office last week after the argument about it."

Sophia laughed, lightly. "Of course; you would not be you if you didn't champion the needy." She glanced over JC's shoulder and straightened. "Excuse me, if you will; I need to speak with Mrs. Sherman. Did you hear about what happened to her?" She looked back at JC. "Of course you did; I remember reading, in the papers. You were there. Terrible, simply awful." She shook her head. "I will call you. Justin, it's wonderful to meet you. Be good to my Joshua."

She and JC exchanged another set of air-kisses, and then she hurried off. Justin watched her go. "Sorry about that," JC said. "Sometimes I think I know everyone in this damn town. Or they know me, at least."

"No, no, it's fine," Justin said. "It's why I'm here, right?" He straightened his shoulders. "Introduce me around?"

*

For the most part, Justin was proud of himself. He didn't step on anybody's toes, literally or metaphorically, and he didn't spill anything on anyone, including himself. He didn't learn anything useful, and he spent entirely too much time listening to endless repetitions on the theme of speculation on his and JC's relationship, but he had until Christmas and it was only the first week in December. There was time, and this was the groundwork. He could handle groundwork.

What he couldn't handle, at least not without some sort of a road map, was the way JC kept touching him. A hand on his shoulder, a brush of his knee; if Justin didn't know better, he'd say that JC was gearing up to spend the night in his bed. Which wasn't outside the realm of possibility, but it was his experience that rich, successful boys didn't look twice at closeted cops.

It wasn't until they were in the car driving home, and JC was in the middle of apologizing for some slight or another that Justin had barely noticed, until he worked up the courage to say, "You wanna come up for a cup of coffee when we get back?"

JC broke off his bit of gossip to glance sideways. "Sure," he said. "What time do you have to be into work tomorrow?"

Justin groaned. "Let's not think about it, okay? I'm up this late, I can stand a bit later."

JC kept his eyes on the road; all he did was smile.

When they got back to Justin's place, the first thing he did was look around to make sure there wasn't anything incriminating lying out. He had the case file spread across the combination kitchen table/desk, but it was barely distinguishable from the rest of his papers; there wasn't too much in the way of underwear and socks lying on his bedroom floor, from what he could remember. He shrugged out of his jacket and headed for the galley kitchen.

"Regular or decaf?" he asked.

JC came up behind him. "Either," he said. "Or neither."

The air was suddenly making it hard to breathe. Justin opened a cabinet blindly, took down two mugs. Closed it again. "I don't do this, you know," he said.

When he looked back, JC was leaning against the counter, one eyebrow raised. "Go to parties?"

"Invite strange men home. It's not a good idea." Justin shifted his weight. "The department. My job. It's -- the politics, you know how it goes. Well, of course you know how it goes. I just -- I don't do this."

JC took the mugs out of his hands and set them down on the counter. "Maybe it's time you started," he said.

Justin was lost; he'd been lost the first minute he'd laid eyes on JC. "This is such a bad, bad idea," he said, and kissed JC.

JC kissed like the world was ending. Justin closed his eyes and opened his mouth. He could feel his bones melting beneath his skin, the way JC's skin was warm and fever-bright underneath his crisp thin dress shirt. Justin knew he was wrinkling that shirt, holding tightly -- so tightly -- but somewhere along the way it had turned from him kissing JC to JC kissing him and it felt like someone had smeared the lens of the world in Vaseline, all soft focus and blurry angles.

When he realized he was bent backwards across the counter, the edge jabbing his kidneys, with one of JC's hands in the small of his back and the other making small circles under his shirt -- he'd lost his cummerbund somewhere along the way -- he pulled back, for just a second. "Wait, wait," he said, "I eat on this counter," and JC made a distracted humming noise, teeth closing on Justin's jawline. Justin pushed back a little harder. "Wait," he said. "Wait a minute."

JC stopped, but didn't pull back; his breath whispered over the side of Justin's face, and his hand was warm along Justin's stomach. "I'll go if you want me to."

"No." Justin caught his breath -- it was so difficult to breathe, to find the line where good idea met bad idea and went skipping merrily off hand-in-hand into the sunset, when his whole body was tied up in the wanting. "The bedroom," he managed, in the midst of all the things he could have said.

There was enough time on the journey from kitchen to bedroom for him to regret it, if he was going to regret it at all. JC seemed to know the way without being told; he undid his cufflinks as Justin followed and wondered at just what point he'd lost the upper hand.

The moment had passed enough for Justin to be able to notice the laundry on the floor. "The place is a mess," he said. It was halfway on the way to being an apology; it was well past the level of mess he usually allowed company to see, but it had been a bad week.

"You should see mine if the cleaning lady misses a week," JC said. He stood in the middle of Justin's cluttered bedroom, looking out of place and perfectly at home at the exact same time, and held out his hands. "Come here."

Justin hesitated for a minute. JC stepped forward, closing the distance between them, and brushed the tips of his fingers over Justin's cheekbone. "Cold feet?"

Justin found his head tilting to follow JC's touch without him telling it to. "Out of practice," he confessed.

One of JC's eyebrows went up. "You? I wouldn't believe it." He let his fingers trail down the hollow of Justin's throat. Justin let his eyes slip shut, his head tilt back, as JC unknotted the tie he'd so carefully done up five hours before.

"I pretty much live the job," Justin said. It wasn't the real reason, but it was the reason he gave people until he knew them well enough to give them the real reason.

"Mmm," JC said. He pulled off the tie and trailed his fingers down Justin's chest. Flick, flick, flick; the lightest and most subtle of touches, each one, and Justin's shirt buttons parted. "Do you top or bottom?"

It made Justin laugh, and he wasn't sure why. "Either," he said. "Both." Time to stop acting like a blushing virgin; he rested his hands on JC's hips, squeezed. He hadn't been willing to entertain the thought that the night would end in bed, though, so he was forced to add, "Tonight's probably a bad night."

JC laughed, a full and rich sound. "Good," he said. "It'll give me a chance to spend the next few days thinking about how it's gonna feel when you fuck me."

Justin felt like he was all elbows and knees next to JC's smooth grace, but he managed to undo JC's buttons without popping any of them off and without tearing anything. The part of his brain that was asking him what the fuck he was doing was slowly and gradually being shut up by the part of his brain that was busy admiring the curve and trace of JC's abs. He gave into impulse and tasted the curve of JC's jawline; JC hissed and rumbled pleasantly. "Wouldn't have pegged you as a bottom," Justin breathed.

JC made a distracted, abstract sound. "Depends," he said. "For you, yes." Justin knew it was a line, but it made the bottom of his stomach flutter anyway.

JC's skin tasted salty and sweet all at once. Justin didn't recognize the aftershave, had been wondering about it all night; it was something dark and natural and warm, like well-aged wood. Abruptly, he caught JC's hand and tugged him towards the bed. "C'mere," he said. "On the bed."

JC quirked one eyebrow. "Is that the way you talk to your suspects?" he said.

He didn't move. It annoyed Justin, the look in JC's eyes, the smugness he saw there. "Are we going to do this or not?" he demanded.

The eyebrow went up further. "Is that the way we're going to play it?" JC asked. "Sir?"

The tiny mocking lilt annoyed Justin even further. "Pain in the ass," he muttered, and put a palm flat on JC's chest. JC looked like he was about to say something, but Justin shoved, just enough, and JC went backwards over onto the bed. He landed propped up on his elbows, perfectly balanced, perfectly at ease, and laughed. Justin slid over him, planted a knee between his splayed thighs, and bent to taste one pale perked nipple.

"I'm discovering a cop fetish," JC murmured, and passed a hand over Justin's head, his fingers teasing at the soft bristles of hair. He shifted his hips beneath Justin's, nestled himself more firmly against Justin's body and brought his thigh up against Justin's dick -- not painfully, just pressure, enough for Justin to rock against.

Justin laughed, but it wasn't really funny. "Shut up," he said. He wanted JC writhing and moaning, wanted to make him lose that pretty and potent self-control. He leaned over JC to the nightstand, pulled out one of the condoms he kept there for the rare times he did bring someone home, and palmed it.

JC hummed softly and let himself fall against the bed, arching his back and running his hands up Justin's sides. "Shutting," he said, fairly amiably.

Justin laughed again, this time more honestly. He ran his tongue down the line of JC's abs, once, twice. JC's hips twitched, hitching sideways, trying to sidle out from underneath. "Ticklish," he said, breathlessly. Justin filed it away for future reference and palmed the curve of JC's erection beneath his pants.

"That's nice," JC said, on an exhaled glissando.

"It really is," Justin said, and undid the clasp of JC's pants. He was pleasantly amused, though not really quite surprised, to discover that JC wasn't wearing any underwear beneath. JC murmured something indistinct and let his hands drop, spreading himself across Justin's unmade bed.

Justin curled his fingers into the waistband of JC's pants, tugging lightly. JC took the hint and hiked his hips up with an easy flexibility that Justin envied. Justin tossed the pants on the floor, not caring where they landed or how they wrinkled, and knelt over JC for a minute, just looking.

His body was beautiful, but Justin had been expecting that. What was more beautiful was the way he didn't bother posturing or posing, just looked back up at Justin, waiting. Justin paused in the middle of tearing open the condom package. "You were pretty much planning on this happening, weren't you."

JC smiled. "The thought had crossed my mind."

"I hate being predictable," Justin grumbled, and then bent his head and set about doing his best to make sure that no other thoughts could cross JC's mind for quite some time.

*

Justin spent the next morning in a warm haze of caffeine, sleep deprivation, and afterglow. It evaporated when the noon-to-eight shift showed up, including Fatone from Homicide bearing a folded-up newspaper and a smirk on his face.

"Annnnd he keeps getting richer, but he can't get his picture on the cover of the Rolling Stone..." Fatone sang out, causing heads to turn across the bullpen. Fatone not only had a good voice, he had a powerful one. "You didn't tell me you were a superstaaaaaaah, Timberlake."

Justin closed his eyes and counted to ten. "I'm sure you think you're funny, Fatone."

"Sure do. Your mom tells me so every night." He tossed the paper down on Justin's desk. "Not your best angle."

Justin looked down to find a shot of the party. He and JC weren't the focal point, but they were clearly visible in the background of the shot. He pinched the bridge of his nose. "It's for a case."

"Of course," Fatone singsonged. "Monkey suit and all. Such a hardship to go schmooze with the pretty people. Who's the guy?"

This was the last thing he needed. "Civilian consultant. He's the one getting me in. Don't you have dead people to tend to?"

"They're dead," Fatone said with a grin. "They'll wait. Come on, tell me about all the pretty society girls. Is it true they don't wear panties under those evening gowns?"

Sometimes Justin regretted the rule against discharging firearms inside the building except in designated areas. "Work, Fatone. As in I have it. If you want to fantasize about women without underwear, go rent a porn flick." He made a shooing motion with his hand. "Get lost. Go."

It set the pattern for the rest of the day. Once the news got around, Justin was treated to a series of wolf whistles, snide comments, and general catcalls every time he turned around. By the time he had half an hour left on the clock and his phone rang, he was in a bitch of a mood. "Timberlake," he snapped, as he picked it up.

JC's voice didn't lose any of its power when it was reduced to digital form. Justin could hear him chuckle. "You sound like you're having a shitty day."

"Mere words cannot describe," Justin said. "They're all shitty days. Today was a paperwork shitty day. Tomorrow will be an interviewing-people shitty day. You don't get weekends when you're on a case like this."

"That's regrettable," JC said. "Does that mean you're not available tonight?"

There was a minute when Justin felt like saying "please God, no people tonight", but it passed quickly. It was a case; it was part of the job. He had iCal open on his desktop; he flipped over to it, consulted his schedule. "I could get out of here by like six. I returned the tux already, though, and I don't think there'd be a place I could find one in the next hour or so."

JC laughed again. "No, no, not for a party. There's nothing worth going to tonight. I was actually calling to see if you were free on Monday for Ambassador de la Paz's party and Thursday for the Daughters of the American Revolution thing, but I also wanted to know if you wanted to go out to dinner tonight. Jeans and t-shirt will be perfectly acceptable, I assure you."

"I've got a subpoena for Thursday, I'd have to be late," Justin said automatically, and then stopped and considered. "Dinner tonight?"

JC laughed. "Yes. It looks like we'll be working together for a while, and besides, I'd like to get to know you better." His voice dipped half an octave. "Socially."

Justin thought there wasn't much better you could know someone than having your mouth around their cock, but he was the first to admit that he was out of practice at the relationship thing. Maybe that was the way it worked around here. "Yeah. I think dinner would be fun."

"Excellent." He could hear JC's smile. "Shall I meet you at your apartment, say, seven PM?"

Justin looked down at himself. He was in a nice pair of work slacks and a decent shirt, but they felt grubby after having been accompanying him around the police station the whole day. "How about I meet you at your place, seven-fifteen or so? I'd like to go home, shower some of this grunge off, change my clothes. Where did you have in mind?"

"I'll take care of it," JC said mysteriously. "Seven-fifteen it is. I'll see you then. Detective."

Justin still couldn't get over the way his title sounded like an caress on JC's lips.

*

Justin took JC at his word about the jeans and t-shirt, and arrived to find JC had done the same. "You look exhausted," JC said when he opened the door. "You could have said no and stayed home to sleep, you know."

Justin shrugged. "If I'd stayed home, I'd have just spent the night with more paperwork. Or trying to chase down a lead or twelve. Or I'd still be down at the station harassing the guys down in Forensics to get my cases done faster. Trust me, it's a mercy to get me out of there."

"Mm," JC said, and stepped out on the stoop, locking the door behind him. "We've got reservations in twenty minutes at the Melting Pot over by DuPont Circle. Ever been?"

"I tend to stay out of DuPont," Justin said, dryly. "Out of my precinct."

"Pity," JC said. "Some good restaurants around there. Come on, I'll drive."

The restaurant made Justin think he was underdressed at first, until he realized that there were tables of people in casual wear seated next to tables of people in suits and dresses. Each booth was recessed, private; he took a moment to appreciate that as he slid in and picked up a menu.

JC reached over and rested a hand on Justin's wrist, stilling him. "Let me order," he said. "Do you trust me?"

"That's a loaded question," Justin said. But he put the menu down.

When the server came around, JC rattled off a series of choices that sounded like he knew the menu intimately. "And a bottle of the Fleur de Champagne," he finished up with.

Justin raised an eyebrow as the waitress smiled at them both and moved off. "Are we celebrating something and nobody remembered to tell me?" he asked.

"I love champagne," JC said. "I've always thought the rules about what you're supposed to drink when are silly. So many of the people I know are wine snobs. I love ordering a nice Riesling with my steak or something and watching their eyes widen in barely concealed horror."

Justin laughed. "Are you not supposed to do that?"

"Oh, no." JC straightened up in his seat and folded his hands in his lap, projecting the very aura of a prim and proper gentleman. "White wines with fish and chicken. Red wines with steak. There are rules, you see."

"I've never been good with rules," Justin confessed. "My captain despairs."

JC relaxed again. He nudged Justin's foot with one of his; at first Justin thought it was accidental, until JC's ankle twined around his and settled. It was curiously intimate. "Well, he must think you're doing something right, to put you on this case, right?"

Justin made a face. "Yeah, yes and no. Kirkpatrick's an old-style cop. Came up through the ranks like a bullet, and he's been sitting in the captain's chair for a while now. Nearly longer than I've been on the force. He's got his ways of doing things, and that's fine, but he thinks I'm an upstart." He sipped at his glass of water, checked to see if JC seemed bored, but JC's face was pleasantly attentive. Not in the fake kind of way, but in the interested kind of way. "I've solved one too many cases."

"I thought that's what cops were supposed to do."

"Oh, we are." Justin toyed with his fondue fork. "But not too fast. Or too well, or the way that I solve them. It makes the oldtimers look bad. The guys who just come to work every day, put in their twenty years, then retire to go make their real money. It's all politics, man. I hate politics."

"I do too," JC said, and smiled. "Which, yeah, is rich coming from me. But nobody is allowed to hate politics more than a political brat."

"You must have some stories," Justin said.

"Well, I once made out with Yassir Arafat at a holiday party in Bethlehem." JC watched as Justin choked on his water. "No, really! It was late, and there'd been a great deal of champagne. I was -- oh, seventeen? There was mistletoe involved. I shall say no more to avoid causing an international incident."

"When I was seventeen, I was mostly avoiding getting my head kicked in by the football players," Justin said. It was the story he usually offered, at least. "The rivalry between our basketball team and our football team was legend."

"Sounds like you had a far more entertaining childhood than I did," JC said. "I went to a very proper boarding school, with very proper boring children. I was lucky to escape sane. But really, enough unpleasantness." He smiled. "I'd ask you more about the job, but I have a feeling it'd fall under the category of unpleasantness."

Justin shook his head. "It's not bad. Not all bad, at least. There's a lot of crime and a lot of politics, and sometimes the only thing that gets me through it is the thought that I'll be able to retire soon enough. Fifteen years, eight months, and nineteen days. But there are days when I really enjoy the job. I get to do the right thing, you know? Truth, justice, and the American way, and all that."

It was a good line. It was easier than trying to explain that there was a wrong side and a right side, and being on the wrong side when the chips fell meant that you were going to have to be one of the good guys for the rest of your life.

JC chuckled. "Any idea what you'll do when you're ready to move on?"

"I've thought about a few things," Justin said. Something about JC, about the way he listened, made him easy to talk to. Easy to tell things to. "But mostly I think I want to open a security consulting business. Household security, small-business security, that kind of thing. All the way up to the digital and electronic stuff. There's a guy we have down in Forensics, the computer crimes guy, he really knows his stuff, and we get along pretty well. We've both got about the same amount of time on the force, so we'll be retiring at about the same time. We've talked a bit about it."

"It makes sense," JC said. "What better way to avoid getting robbed than to have your security system designed by a man with twenty years of seeing how security systems fail?"

Justin nodded. "Yeah. And you know that old saying, to catch a thief, set a thief, right?" It slipped out before he could catch it.

JC quirked an eyebrow. "I do. Are you saying it applies here?"

His mouth was going to get him in trouble, one of these days. "Well, a little bit. Let's just say that I've got some hands-on experience, okay?" But he'd said it, and he was a firm believer in explaining cryptic comments once they'd been made. "I ran into some problems when I was still a juvie. Fortunately the cops where I grew up were pretty decent. One of them adopted me, big-brother style, and when I finally graduated from high school, he got me into the academy. I came to DC after my first year on the job down in Memphis. Liked it better up north."

JC's eyes were interested. "So you've got an unusual set of skills?"

"I keep my hands in," Justin temporized. "How to crack security systems. How to pick a lock. Planning, strategy, that kind of thing. How to crack a safe. Though I was never really very good at that." JC had his chin propped in his hands and was staring at him in fascination. It made it hard to look away, though he wanted to. "Comes in handy sometimes. In reconstructing how things were done."

"I can imagine," JC said, and thankfully changed the subject. "What was your most clever criminal ever?"

Justin usually hated small talk about his job, but this was less like small talk and more like actual conversation. He paused as the waitress brought the bottle of champagne and the tray with the cheese course, constructed the pot of cheese before their eyes, and filled the table with bread and vegetables to dip into the cheese. JC picked up a fondue fork and twirled a cube of bread in the cheese as Justin thought. "This guy I'm after now is pretty clever," Justin finally said. "But the best story I've got is actually really more outrageous than clever. Do you remember reading about the rabbit robber?"

JC cocked his head to one side. "No, I don't."

Justin settled himself more firmly in the booth and sampled some of the cheese. It was good. Really, really good. So was the champagne, which was definitely more high-quality than he'd ever had before. He could feel the bubbles tickling the back of his soft palate as he swallowed. "Okay. So there's this guy knocking over 7-11s, right? Dresses in a rabbit suit. Fur, paws, ears and mask, everything. He walks into the store in bold daylight, usually right around the lunch rush. Pulls a gun on the clerk, clears out the safe. In and out in under five minutes, usually, not enough for the alarm to fetch help."

"I hate to perpetuate stereotypes," JC said, "but aren't convenience stores usually equipped with at least one officer at all times, drinking coffee in the parking lot?"

Justin laughed. "Hey, man, sometimes stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason. Yeah, you can usually find a cop sitting around and waiting, picking up a snack or something. And if you'd ever tasted the coffee at the precinct, you'd know why you always find a cop at a convenience store."

JC winced. "If convenience store coffee is a step up, I think I'll pass, thank you."

"Smart man. Anyway. This guy has an uncanny sense of timing. He always comes in right when the lot's clear. So we're thinking he's staking out the store, right? So here I am, working this with my trainer -- this was back when I was new -- and we're trying everything. Every lead we can think of. He's running down every single damn costume shop in the city to see if we can find this guy's supplier. I'm with the evidence guys tossing the every single store from top to bottom to see if I can find anything Forensics can use, and there's nothing. Not even a chewed carrot end." Justin paused, decided that a piece of carrot would go over well, and speared one, dipping it in cheese. "Meanwhile, we're both beating the bushes, trying to find someone who's seen this guy in the suit, right? Because you have to admit, even in DC, a guy in a rabbit suit's weird."

"Right." JC listened along, seemingly fascinated. "How did you finally catch him?"

Justin laughed. "I'm getting there. Okay, so eventually the memo comes down from Upstairs, telling all of us that half of us are supposed to spend more off-duty time in the parking lots of the 7-11s in uniform looking conspicuous, and the other half of us are supposed to spend more off-duty time in the parking lots of the 7-11s out of uniform looking inconspicuous. Which went over really well, let me tell you. I think every guy on the force gained about five pounds that month, and some of us still haven't shaken the Mike & Ike addiction. The guy's got some kind of bizarre rabbit radar, though. There's two more hits in the next month, and neither one of them is at any of the stores we've got guys at, though both of them did have guys at them at one point -- one of them half an hour before the hit, one of them ten minutes. So I start getting suspicious."

"I imagine that a suspicious nature is a detective's best friend," JC said.

"Right." Justin nodded. "So I go back to the precinct, sit down, grab the records. Turns out that every single one of the hits had a car there right before. Half an hour, twenty minutes, fifteen minutes. Nobody thinks to put it together, because you put your finger on it; it's not unusual for a cop to be in a convenience store. So I start cross-referencing, seeing who was there at what time. Couldn't figure out all of it, because it's not something that anyone thought was significant enough to put in a report, but eventually I figure out that it's always one of three cars that's there right before the robbery."

He told this story a lot, enough that it was smooth in the retelling, but JC was the first one to put it together this quickly. He watched the light dawning in JC's eyes. "The cops were the ones in the rabbit suit."

Justin grinned. "Exactly. They passed the suit around. One pair would case the place, make sure that the register was full enough for it to be worthwhile. Buy coffee or something, eyeball the till when they got their change. They'd go back to the car, pass the info on to the other set, and one of them would be the one who'd actually suit up and head on in. Lather, rinse, repeat. We finally busted them because one of them didn't vacuum the fake rabbit fur out of the trunk of the cruiser."

"That's wonderful," JC said. "How come I didn't read about this? I follow the papers."

Justin shrugged. "They kept it hush-hush as much as possible, once we figured out who was doing it," he said. "Black eye for the department, and all that. But that was definitely the weirdest case I've ever caught."

Somewhere along the way when he'd been telling the story, Justin's champagne glass had been emptied. He hadn't noticed drinking it, which really was a crime, given the quality of the champagne, but he was starting to feel it in his fingers and his toes. He resolved to eat more, sop some of it up; he couldn't afford a hangover, not with the amount of work he had to do tomorrow. JC laughed again. "That's something that'll never make it onto CSI, at least."

Justin winced and held up a hand. "Do not mention that show," he said. "Please."

"That bad?"

"I have to introduce you to our chief DNA guy. You mention that show, and he actually starts frothing at the mouth. It's kind of funny."

JC chuckled. "I could listen to you telling stories all night."

"Yeah, well." Justin settled back in his seat and finished off the last of the cheese. In the brief moment while he had his attention on that task, JC was refilling his champagne glass. "Oh, man, I really shouldn't drink too much. I really do have to work tomorrow."

JC waved a hand in dismissal. "You can't get hung over on expensive champagne. The bubbles keep you from a headache." He propped his chin on one hand. "Why police work?" he asked.

It seemed more small-talkish than the rest of the conversation had so far, but Justin shrugged. "I told you, really. I got into some trouble when I was a kid, and, well. Something to do."

JC's eyes were merry. "And because it gives you a chance to break into things without getting in trouble for it, right?"

"No!" Justin protested. "I'm ..." He sighed. "Okay, okay, yeah. That's got a little to do with it. Not a whole lot. I mean, I don't spend my days breaking into safes or something --"

"Pity," JC murmured. "It would be tremendous fun if you could, wouldn't it?"

Justin laughed. "Yeah, it really would. But I get to do reconstructions, sometimes. When it's a house job. See if I could manage it the way I think the perp might have managed it, that kind of thing. I like that part of things. Keeps me on my feet."

JC nodded. "I imagine it would. I've always been fascinated by things like police work. I don't suppose you'd care to give me your opinion on my house's security. Or are you unwilling to give free consults?"

Justin shook his head. "Nah, it's cool. I haven't really gotten a good look at your place. From what I saw, you've probably got the same problem most people do -- which is," he forestalled JC having to ask, "concentrating too much on the front door and not enough on the other means of entries, like windows and rooftops. I'd have to really give it a go-over, though."

"You're welcome to go over my house at your leisure," JC said. His foot brushed against Justin's again. "In the name of security, of course."

Justin put his fondue fork down on the slate table. "Okay, look," he said, abruptly. "I'm bad at subtle, okay? You're hitting on me; I'm cool with that. You want to have more mind-blowing sex, I'm cool with that. Are we looking at, you know, relationship here?"

JC blinked, then laughed. "Does it matter?" he asked. "Would it change your answer?"

Justin closed his eyes for a second. The champagne was bubbling in his blood. "I'm bad at relationships," he said. "Always have been."

JC spread his hands, then reached for his champagne flute. "Then it isn't one. Really, I'm easy." His smile turned a little sly. "In more ways than one. I just find you fascinating, and I'd like to spend more time with you."

Looking down at his hands, at the patterns of condensation the water-glass was leaving on the table, saved Justin from having to look at JC. "Cops are bad at socializing," he said. "You gotta know that. I'm married to the job, before anything else."

"Detective," JC said, "I wouldn't have expected anything else."

*

JC was, amazingly, correct about the hangover. Or lack thereof. Or maybe Justin didn't notice the hangover, because waking up in JC's bed and being sent off to a torturous day of interviews and investigation still glowing (just a little) from the good-morning sex was quite enough to distract him from any potential headache.

It kept him distracted through all of Saturday, which was spent talking to the Shermans' live-in help, and all of Sunday, which was spent (with Mrs. Sherman's reluctant cooperation) attempting to reconstruct the possible methods of entry. "I just don't see why you have to do this," the lady of the house muttered more than once, while keeping an eye on him to make sure, presumably, that he didn't steal any more of her jewelry.

"Investigation, ma'am," Justin said, trying to keep his patience while working on trying to crack the safe. "If I can see how whoever did this managed to get in, I can help figure out who did it. Our forensic investigators haven't managed to find any clues, so it's going to come down to good old-fashioned police work."

"I just don't remember the police ever being the ones to break into things," Mrs. Sherman muttered, and thankfully went away.

If Justin were being honest with himself, he didn't really need to try to crack the safe to get a feel on the case. He already had a feel on it; the guy, whoever he was, was good. Very good. It was more that JC's questions, his small talk, had gotten Justin remembering it, thinking about it. The way it felt when the tumblers fell into place beneath his fingertips; the way it felt when things parted like a pair of legs and opened for you. He did miss it sometimes.

And something like this, pitted against the talents of a serial robber who clearly outstripped Justin even when he'd been at his best -- it took him forty-five minutes to be able to crack the safe, which was far too long for any timetable; the White Rose robber had to have done it in under ten -- made him miss it more.

He'd have to settle just for catching the guy, though. He spent Sunday afternoon walking through the Shermans', his eyes as sharp as he could make them, pacing the corridors and feeling his way down the walls, diagramming the floor plans on graph paper and trying how to decide how he would have pulled it, if it had been his job to pull.

Kirkpatrick called him into his office first thing Monday morning. "Tell me you've got something that's worth Mrs. Sherman bitching at the brass that you spent all Sunday afternoon trying to break into her house."

"I'm the police," Justin said. "When I do it, it's not called breaking in. It's called willingly cooperating with an ongoing investigation. You know how I work."

"Yes, I do, which is why I put you on this job, because we clearly needed someone who could case a joint and tell us how it was happening, since nobody else has been able to come up with a decent theory." Kirkpatrick leaned back in his chair and put his feet on his desk. "Just please, for the love of God, tell me you've got some bone I can throw to the chief to get him off my back and Mrs. Sherman off his."

Justin sighed. "I can't tell you who's doing it," he said. "But I can give you a list of the ten or so people who are likely to be the next targets."

Kirkpatrick sharpened instantly. "Keep talking," he said.

Justin had been expecting it; he'd brought the folder with him. He pulled out the sheet that was on the top and passed it over to Chris. "The listing of the jobs that have gone down so far. Five this year, seven last year, three the year before that. Fifteen total. Our victims are everything from Congresspeople to ambassadors to judges to corporate CEOs. It was the corporate thing that threw me for a loop, but I pulled some of their records, checked into some of their financials, and I finally made it fit."

Kirkpatrick did this thing where he drummed his fingers on his knees when he was irritated like fuck but trying to hide it. He was doing it now. Justin watched in fascination as Kirkpatrick actually managed to get the tempo down to thirty-second notes. "Believe it or not, Timberlake, being familiar with the details of cases assigned to my men is a requisite for being a captain around here. Keep talking."

Justin grinned, but not so much that Kirkpatrick would have really noticed it. Baiting his captain was one of his small amusements in life. He pulled out the second sheet and handed it over. "Page two. The chart that connects them all. It took me a little bit of digging, like I said, but I've got business or political ties among all of them. Solid line indicates public, dashed line indicates the kind of thing that people want to keep under the table. I'll have my expense report in by Friday, by the way; the bribe money cost me more than I was expecting."

Kirkpatrick quirked an eyebrow. "You got all that from a fancy party?"

He'd gotten some of it from JC, when over the main course of dinner they'd gotten down to talking about the White Rose case and all the previous victims. He didn't think it was a good idea to mention that. "Not all of it. Some of it, yeah, and I'm going to keep doing it, because I can get some good contacts that way. Some of it from newspaper articles, from gossip, from friends-of-friends. Some of it from the guy I'm using to get into the parties. The Chasez kid."

"Kid" was the wrong word when JC was older than he was, but to Kirkpatrick, everyone was a kid. "Yeah." Kirkpatrick dropped his feet off the desk and leaned closer. "Do I need to give you the lecture against fraternizing?"

"No sir," Justin said automatically. It was true; the lecture wouldn't do any good. "I'm using my personal time, anyway. And yes, sir, I know where the line is on sharing information. He turns up clean, anyway. I even checked on his security clearance; his company does some contract work for a bunch of federal agencies. We might want to consider bringing him in as civilian consultant, to help out with some of the personalities involved here. I can learn some of it, but I can't learn all of it, and this is going to be one we crack through people and not through forensics."

Kirkpatrick shook his head. "We'll talk about that later." He tapped the diagram. "Talk to me about this now."

"Okay." Justin leaned over the desk; he was good at reading upside-down, good enough that he could follow along with what he was saying. "These are clustered by connection, yes, but they're also clustered by time. These here are '03. Three hits, all in late October to December. They're listed here; Congressman, Congressman, judge. I now present to you ..." He drew out his third sheet of paper and passed it over. "Page three. The voting and/or judicial record of each victim, boiled down to a brief summary of their stance on social care issues. You'll see that --"

"Yes," Kirkpatrick interrupted. "They're shitty human beings. We knew that, Timberlake."

Justin bit back the frustration. "Yes, but look. Each of the three is a major force against fair housing. There were a few bills that came up then, a few cases that hit the courts, and each of the victims consistently and regularly voted against any reform."

He tapped the diagram again. "'04. Victims, connections." He pulled out the next sheet of paper. "Their records. We've got two lobbyists, two CEOs, two Congressmen, and a judge this time, and the issue they've all got in common is minimum wage legislation. Namely, that they're against it. Vocally."

Back to the diagram, and out came his next graph. "This year. Victims, connections. One ambassador, one prosecuting attorney, one White House staffer, a CEO, and now a Congressman. This year's issue is --"

"Insurance reform." Kirkpatrick made his thoughtful hrm noise, the one that meant he really was thinking about something instead of just pretending to. "Tell me how the ambassador fits in."

"Hunting buddy and major influence on the judge. It's weak, but he's got a bad record of mouthing off to the press and offering his opinion on things. Now, I've got clusters here, and I've got some common things. For one thing, it's not always jewelry. Looking back over statements, reading up on what I can --" and again, consulting JC, who seemed to know everyone in this damn town, or at least half of everyone -- "I can see that whatever this guy took, it was whatever these people would miss the most. The high-ticket items, the ones that these people spent a lot of money on, yes -- but look at this, in the Cunningham hit back in February, he went right by the Picasso hanging in the living room and straight for the coin collection, which, aside from being Cunningham's pride and joy, was harder to get at and would fetch less for resale. This is personal." Justin sat back in his chair, watching Kirkpatrick's face.

"You knew it was personal to begin with," Kirkpatrick said slowly.

"Yeah," Justin said. "But now I know why. We shouldn't be calling him the White Rose bandit. We should be calling him the Robin Hood bandit."

Kirkpatrick quirked an eyebrow. "You think he's reselling this stuff and distributing the money elsewhere."

Justin nodded. "To the people he sees as the real victims -- the ones who these people are failing." He pulled out another sheet of paper and slid it across the desk. "December 31, 2003: a 23.5 million dollar donation, through an anonymous Swiss bank account, to the DC chapter of Habitat for Humanity. December 31, 2004: one hundred and seventeen million to the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty." It had taken him some digging to find those numbers. "I'm going to guess on December 31 of this year, we're going to find that something dedicated to providing free health care has suddenly come into a windfall." He extracted another sheet of paper. "Taggert's estimate of what the stolen goods could have fetched on the black market."

Kirkpatrick looked down at it, read it quickly. "Less than the numbers you're pulling for the charity contributions."

Justin shrugged. "Maybe he got lucky. Maybe he found a good fence. Maybe he's augmenting it with his own personal money. Who knows? Hell, maybe there are some hits that we didn't pick up on, some stuff that didn't pop; maybe he hasn't been signing every job he does, just the ones that he thought were really special. I don't know, sir, but I really think I'm onto something."

Another one of those thoughtful hrm noises. "You might be." Kirkpatrick shuffled the pages on his desk, rearranged them into an order that made sense to him. "You very well might be. You said you could predict who was going to get hit next?"

Justin shook his head. "Not with any degree of certainty. I think our man has passed up a few hits that would fit into his pattern; I'd guess it was because he didn't think he could pull the hit without getting caught. But I've asked a few people who follow politics more than I do, and I've got a list of ten people or so who have the worst reputations when it comes to health care legislation. And I'm going to bet one of them is going to be next."

"Interesting." Kirkpatrick steepled his fingers. "What's your next step?"

"Well," Justin said. "I want to talk to them. Explain my theory. And yes, before you say anything, I'll be diplomatic about it. I'll ask them to let me go over their security, see what can be improved and what can't be."

Kirkpatrick nodded. "And?"

This was going to be the tough part to get approved. "And then pick one and make it look like their security system sucks, so when our guy comes along to case it, he'll think it's an easy mark. And get him then."

"Hrm." For a minute, Kirkpatrick thought about it. "It'll be tough to pull off. You know the budget doesn't support a huge amount of surveillance."

Justin nodded. "I know. Which is why I want to try some gizmos. We'll put in electronic sensors, better security stuff, and have it set to call us instead of calling the alarm company. With respect, sir, most alarm systems suck balls. You know that as well as I do. If I get in there -- if I design it --"

"You really think you can design a system this guy can't break?"

Kirkpatrick was the captain, so it was his job to shoot holes in theories. Still, Justin thought, he didn't have to sound quite so skeptical. "He's good, sir." He looked up from his papers, met Kirkpatrick's eyes. "But I'm better."

There was a minute where Justin could see Kirkpatrick thinking, watch him shuffle the papers across his desk, practically hear the wheels turning. And then Kirkpatrick nodded. "Make sure you are."

It was the closest thing to permission he was going to get. "Making sure, sir," Justin said, and made as graceful an escape as possible.

*

"Hey," JC said, when Justin opened the door. "I'm sorry I'm late. I got stuck at the office. Our R&D guys are three weeks behind schedule on this software we're trying to ship, and I had to spend half the afternoon re-negotiating some contracts. I hope you weren't worried."

This time, Justin had had more than half a day's notice; he had managed to find a tuxedo that actually fit him. He'd left the bow tie for JC to tie, though. A man had to have a few moments of indulgence. "It's okay," he said, letting JC in. "I was talking to people most of the afternoon myself. Caught a bit of a breakthrough in a case, which is good, but it means I've gotta spend the next day and a half trying to get in touch with some people who are very tough to get in touch with, which is not."

"I won't ask," JC said, "because I bet you wouldn't tell me, not until it's over. But if it's anything I can help you with --"

"I might take you up on that," Justin said. He held up the tie. "You can help with this, too."

The ambassador's party was lavish, but Justin wasn't surprised. He was surprised, though, when JC took him around the room, introducing him as "my friend", with that special emphasis on "friend" that turned it into a euphemism for "man I'm fucking". He smiled and shook hands and made small talk, and after about an hour of it, found himself being introduced to one of the men who was on his list to call tomorrow.

"Senator," he said, shaking his hand. "It's good to meet you."

"Mr. Timberlake," Senator McCullough said. "Haven't seen you at one of these before."

Next to him, JC put a hand in the small of Justin's back, a small and possessive gesture Justin had been noticing more and more as the night went on. "We met recently," JC said. "Business contacts, you know how it goes."

Justin didn't really think that the senator would be interested, but the man was a politician, at least, and could make small talk with the best of them. "What line of work are you in?" he asked.

Justin had decided on his story before making his first foray. "I'm in security," he said. Which was, when you thought about it, at least not a complete lie. "Home safety, things like that."

"Oh, really?" McCullough's brows went up. "I've been considering giving my place a go-over. We've recently purchased some quite expensive art, and my insurance company wants a more recent appraisal on the home security system before they'll agree to cover it. Are you accepting new clients?"

It was a coincidence, but sometimes the universe liked to hand Justin coincidences. "Hang on a second," JC said, as Justin was about to spin some excuse why he didn't have a business card on him. "I see somebody I need to talk to. Senator, take good care of Justin for me, all right?" With a smile -- and a hand slid up Justin's back -- he bowed out of the conversation and headed for a small knot of people across the room.

Justin turned back to the senator. "Actually, I'm more in the after-the-fact line of security," he said. Better to be honest, when he was about to call on the man in his true professional capacity. "And I was going to be calling you tomorrow, sir." He pulled out his card wallet, fished out one of his business cards. "I'm with the DC Metro PD, and we're working on a series of robberies in the area. Our information indicates that you -- and your new art -- might be one of the robber's next targets."

The senator's eyes kindled with something approaching interest. Justin got the sense that the man was almost excited to hear it. "Oh?" he asked.

"Yes, sir." Justin glanced around; they were, fortunately, in one of the curious conversational eddies that seemed to happen at these parties, where no one could readily overhear. "And if you don't mind, I'd like to ask you to keep it as quiet as possible, because we don't want to risk tipping off anyone. And that includes the fact that I'm a police officer. If you have some time tomorrow, I'd like to call on you at your office and discuss what makes us think that you're a potential target, and what you can do to increase your safety."

McCullough looked thoughtful. He turned Justin's card over in his fingers, then tucked it into his breast pocket. "I don't have my schedule in front of me," he said. "But I believe I'm free in the early morning. I'll have my aide schedule you a block of time and call you."

Justin nodded. "Thank you. I'll do my best to explain things to you, and we can set up time for me to come and visit your home, do a security consult." He summoned up a smile. "I actually wasn't exaggerating that part; I've got a lot of experience in that line of work."

The senator laughed. "I suppose it's good to know that we're being protected. I suppose you have some sort of list that you're attempting to contact, as well?"

"We do, yes. I'll be contacting them this week." Justin's eyes scanned the crowd; as much as he told himself that he was trying to keep an eye on what was going on around him, the reality was that he was looking for JC.

"Well, I'll see what I can do with helping you out with that, too." McCullough clapped Justin on the shoulder. "Good to see initiative in the police. Could do with a little more of that."

Yeah, on the pennies you're willing to pay us, Justin thought, but he knew better than to say it. "Thank you, sir," he muttered, or something close to it anyway, and then the Senator was shifting his smile to the "move along now" version and saying something about getting in touch.

Justin knew a cue when he heard one. JC was still across the room talking to whoever he had been looking for -- something having to do with his business, Justin assumed, since he thought he recognized the man as someone high-placed in one of those Federal agencies with a three-letter acronym and a line-item budget so far out of Justin's concept of money that it was almost comical. He took up a spot just next to the dance floor, leaning against the wall, and watched the ebb and flow of conversation and deals being made.

It was nearly twenty minutes later when JC murmured by his elbow, "Sorry for ditching you like that. Did you get things straightened with the senator?"

Justin jumped -- he hadn't seen JC approaching -- but recovered as quickly as he could. "Yeah. He's one of the people I needed to talk to, actually. He's gonna have his aide call me in the morning. Did you get your thing dealt with, too?"

"Negotiations proceed," JC said. "It's very delicate. All of us have to pretend that we don't know what we're all talking about, until of course we do." When Justin looked over at him, he could see that JC's eyes were merry and bright, his smile easy. He looked like a man riding a wave of manic energy. "The game, man. There's nothing like it. I swear, sometimes I think I stay in business just for the thrill of the negotiation."

Justin laughed. "And you were accusing me of being a thrill-seeker."

JC slid his hand along the curve of Justin's hip, then ducked his head to lean in, as though whispering, against Justin's ear. It made Justin's skin tingle. "Have we finished our business for the evening, Detective?" JC murmured. "Because I'd really like to get home and get out of these clothes."

It was hot in here. Really, really hot. Justin resisted the urge to adjust his bowtie. "Yeah," he managed. "I think I've got it."

"Good," JC said, and began steering them towards the door.

*

McCullough's aide called Justin just as he was getting out of the shower. It took an extra cup of coffee and a few creative rearrangements of the traffic laws, but Justin made it to the senator's office in time for the appointment slot she gave him.

Once the senator had been briefed -- and Justin used every inch of flattery he could find to make it sound like his theory involved some of the politically elite, not the politically despised -- he seemed to have an unhealthy level of interest. He kept remarking about how the entire thing was like "the war". Justin, watching the senator's mouth move and trying to decide if those really were plastic surgery lines around the edges, couldn't decide if he meant Korea or Vietnam, and resolved to look it up as soon as he got back to his office. He stifled a yawn, and almost missed, "And of course you'll use my house as the target."

That caught his attention. "Actually, sir, we haven't decided which house will be most defendable --"

McCullough didn't seem to notice. "I'll have blueprints sent over to you by courier this afternoon. You'll have my full cooperation. I'll put you in touch with my security providers, show you the diagrams of the system in place."

"Sir --" Justin tried again. "It's not a guarantee that we'll be able to adequately protect the bait. We'll be doing our best, of course, but I really think that --"

"I'll sign whatever waivers you need me to sign." The senator seemed determined to mow right over any of Justin's objections. "We all have a vested interest in stopping this. I'm afraid that I have an 8:30 appointment, but I'll make sure my aide gets you everything you need --"

"Senator." Justin managed to override the flood of words with just enough emphasis to be heard, not enough to be rude. "Sir, your assistance is much appreciated, by me as well as by the department, but I won't know if it makes logical and tactical sense until I examine all of the possible scenarios." He thought that might stand a chance of getting through to the man.

McCullough shook his head. "Don't worry about it. I'll make sure everything happens the way it's supposed to."

Justin gave up. If McCullough treated politics like he treated a simple conversation, Justin could understand why he was on the list. "Thank you, sir," he said. Easier to just let it go, fight it out later. "We'll be in touch."

"Very good," the senator said, and rose, holding out a hand for Justin to shake. Justin tried a smile. "You'll have your information by this afternoon."

Without really noticing how, Justin found himself standing out in the hallway outside McCullough's office. He took a deep breath, sighed, and resolved to hit Starbucks again before going into the precinct. It was going to be a long day.

By lunchtime he'd managed to get in touch with six out of the ten names on his list, and secured their tentative cooperation. He had messages in with the other four; one was out of town until Thursday, and the other three must just not place "Metro cop" up high on their list of callback priorities. He got the courier with McCullough's blueprints just as he was starting to think about lunch, and for a minute he actually debated leaving it until he could at least stop down in the cafeteria for a slice of crappy pizza or a few french fries.

Then he sighed, handed Fatone three $1 bills and told him to buy something for himself, too, took the potato chips Fatone brought back from the vending machine, and settled in with a notebook, three different kinds of colored pencils, and a magnifying glass to start his go-over.

"Talk to me," Kirkpatrick said, dropping into the chair next to him forty-five minutes later.

Justin didn't look up. "McCullough wants in. As the bait house."

"Oh, sweet puppies fucking." Kirkpatrick scrubbed a hand over his face. "Is it any good?"

Justin sighed. "It could be. Might be. I could work with it. I'd have to see the other plans. I've got blueprints from McCullough and Farrow. Farrow's house is out; we'd never be able to wire it properly without making some serious remodeling decisions, and I don't think Mrs. Farrow would agree. I can beef up the security there, increase patrol in that area, but there's no way I'd ever be able to secure it enough to be confident to use it as the bait. McCullough -- maybe. Maybe."

"Tell me what the maybe part of it is." Kirkpatrick jiggled his leg, looked over Justin's shoulder.

"I don't know if he's tempting enough bait." Justin shook his head. "I don't know enough to be able to rank these guys about who's likeliest to get hit. I'm watching, but I can't learn enough that quickly. I'd put him at about a solid third, fourth on the list right now. Maybe. I think Mendoza is going to be the first."

"So work with Mendoza."

Justin ran a hand over his head. "Mendoza's out of town until Thursday. Can't get in touch with him until at least then, and I'm probably in court all day on Thursday for the Graham trial. I want to get started on this before then."

"All right, all right." Kirkpatrick looked off into the distance, then blew out a huff of breath. "Go with your instincts. If you think McCullough, go with McCullough. If you think it can wait, wait for Mendoza. If nothing else, you can work on getting some of the other houses secured before then."

Justin nodded. "I was planning on that. I'm going to have to pull in some of the other guys. Maybe some of the people I know out of the department."

Kirkpatrick's eyes sharpened. "If I run a background check on them, am I gonna find anything?"

The more Justin thought about it, the more he realized it was getting really old. "Come on, man, I'm not going to set a fox to guard a henhouse, okay? I can't be ten places at once, and if we want to get this done sometime before the ball drops in Times Square, I've gotta outsource a bit. I hear it's the new trend."

"Yeah, yeah, the next thing that was gonna come out of my mouth would have had me up on charges of being culturally and racially insensitive, so I'll just be in my office polishing my paperwork." Kirkpatrick pushed his chair back. "Gimme a report before you leave. I want to know how far you get."

"Further if you don't interrupt me," Justin muttered under his breath, but not so loudly that Kirkpatrick would hear.

By the end of the day, Justin had given up on some of the willing cooperation; he sent one of the rookies down to City Hall to pull as many sets of blueprints he could find and see if anyone else had been asking for them. Justin rolled them all together into a tube, threw the rest of his papers into his bag, and headed home for a hot date with some Chinese food and a set of old memories.

JC called him as he was pulling into his parking garage. "Does it count as bribing a police officer if you happen to be dating that police officer?" he asked, without preamble.

"Only if it's involved in an ongoing case," Justin said automatically, and then transferred the phone to his other ear as he turned off the ignition and got out. "And we're not dating. Were you planning on trying to bribe me?"

"I've got two tickets to the Wizards game tonight. Courtside. Would you care to occupy the other seat?"

For a second, Justin was tempted. "Oh, man. I'd love to, but I am currently staring at the backseat of my car, which is infested with paperwork. Shit I gotta finish before tomorrow morning, or I'll never be able to catch up. Raincheck?"

He was expecting JC to sound disappointed, was a little hurt when all JC did was chuckle. "Certainly. Shall I come over after the game and keep you company for a while?"

Justin juggled phone, bag, and car door handle. "I shouldn't," he said. "I really shouldn't."

"I'll see you around midnight, then," JC said, and hung up.

Justin opened his mouth to say something, but the soft hiss of the open line didn't seem like it would listen. He snapped his phone shut. "I didn't say yes," he said. It seemed important to get on the record, even if he was the only one who could hear.

He kept thoughts of JC out of his mind as he worked. Blueprints. Diagrams. Notebooks he'd built, painstakingly over the years, of alarm system specs, of electronics diagrams, of postings to everything from anonymous-remailer Internet discussion lists to respectable, above-board security sites. A burglar's toolkit, he thought, pushing aside the long-since-congealed cardboard box of lo mein noodles with the wooden chopsticks still sticking out of it. Assembled without even really thinking about it, all in the name of the job. He'd been a good burglar once. A long time ago.

Do you miss it? JC had asked, midnight discussion, revisiting old ghosts. He'd been propped up on one elbow, tracing lines along Justin's back, as Justin dozed sleepily against the pillow, confessing all his past sins. And Justin had murmured, voice thick with exhaustion, his Southern heritage bleeding through his vowels, sometimes.

He shook himself, shook loose the memories. Unproductive. There was a thousand things he could be doing. Best to let history rest.

By midnight, he'd made a plan of attack for three of the houses he thought could be targets. Weighed the options, considered the possibilities -- stopped, thrown at least one plan out, started over fresh. He built what he would do if he were trying to break those security systems, and then he turned the page and built what he thought the White Rose bandit would do to break the security systems, and then he turned the page again and listed how to close those loopholes, patch those flaws. It was doable, in most cases. Possible, if not easy. It would take some work, and some time.

"Time we probably don't have," he said, to his papers. The hits were erratic. Something in his blood said that his opponent had the taste for it, that it came in cycles. Two, sometimes three incidents in a short span of time, and then weeks, months of quiet while he planned the next ones.

Or times when he's out of the area. Or when he's busy, or distracted, or has other things to think of. He grabbed a sheet of paper, wrote notes to himself. Check on the timing. Check on the schedules of when Congress was in session, when school was on break; check on all the timetables of all of DC's migrant, part-time population and see if anything popped.

He pinched the bridge of his nose. So much to do, and never enough time to do it, and oh, he wasn't getting anywhere near enough sleep.

When the doorbell rang, he was in the middle of house number four. He kept enough presence of mind to remember to flip the plans upside-down, close the notebooks and bury them under the flurry of paper, before getting up and stretching. The doorbell rang again. "I'm coming, I'm coming," he said. For a minute, he debated the wisdom of opening the door, and then he turned the handle and JC was kissing him.

It went just like that, faster even. Justin found himself being pressed up against the back of the door -- thank God we're not out in the hallway, Justin managed to think, there are laws against-- before JC's hands were stripping away his shirt, sliding into his jeans, and JC's mouth was hot and urgent against his own. JC's skin was fever-bright, warm and wiry, and Justin could feel every inch of nervous tense energy thrumming through his body, distilled down into lips, hands, tongue.

"Bed," JC said, against Justin's throat, "I'm not letting you fuck me on this shit carpet," and Justin must have been in an alternate universe, one where things like this happened to people like him, because the next thing he knew, JC was pulling him down the hallway, shedding clothing as they went, and they were falling backwards and sideways onto the bed.

"Wait," he tried, but JC was naked beneath him, wrapping one leg around Justin's thigh, pulling him close, and JC's hips were grinding up against him, and JC was hard and hot and ready. He was muttering strings of words, like please and fuck and yes, and Justin could feel his dick stirring further with every syllable.

"Wait," he said again, but it was more of a token protest than anything else, because he wasn't exactly doing anything to slow them down. He worked his hand between their bodies, wrapped it around JC's cock, squeezed -- not too hard, just enough, just the way he already knew JC liked it -- and was rewarded with a skipped breath and a quick, musical moan. "Wait wait wait," he chanted, like a mantra, like the way JC kept saying fuck and want and Justin, and somewhere between the second and the third repetition it changed from being wait a minute until we can talk about this and started being wait for me.

Justin fumbled with the buttons of his jeans, his old and soft and threadbare house-jeans, and for a second they both were pawing at the fly to free him. Justin got it first, with the advantage of familiarity and angle, and he kicked the pants down to the floor. JC didn't give him a second to catch his balance again, just dug his fingers into the muscles of Justin's ass and pulled him down, roughly enough to bruise. "Fuck," Justin said, and please JC said, and Justin rolled over to reach for the bedside table.

He knocked over the lamp and his alarm clock on the way, but at that point he didn't give a flying fuck. The lube was too cold, it was always too cold, and he couldn't breathe right; his lungs were full of the scent of JC, that warm iron glaze that he could always half-taste when he smelled it.

"Don't wait," JC said, rough and clear, and pulled him back again.

It felt like JC was burning up with fever, like he was a bonfire set to torch an entire city block. Justin slid into him like they'd been designed to fit. "Fuck," JC said, "fuck sweet hell," and for a minute Justin thought he'd gone too fast, until JC rocked his hips and hitched himself up Justin's dick with one smooth motion. Justin hissed and pushed himself up on his knees, looking for the right angle.

JC was a fucking acrobat, more flexible than any human being had a right to be, because in the second it took Justin to rearrange himself he turned his legs wrong-way out and flexed, his muscles rippling, to rise up to his knees with his head thrown back and his hair trailing loose. It was like they were dancing, Justin's lead, JC following, and Justin found himself on his knees with JC straddling him.

JC wrapped one arm around Justin's shoulders and let his head rest against Justin's neck. He was muttering, soft syllables that Justin couldn't make out, an endless litany of need, interrupted by the way his mouth was working against Justin's skin. Justin slid a hand along the small of JC's back, supporting him, and rocked his hips once, experimentally.

JC bit the tendon in Justin's neck. "Wait," Justin said again, "let me --"

"No," JC said. He thrust against Justin, fucking himself on Justin's cock, and Justin wondered for one crazy second when his life had turned into a porn video before he closed his hand around JC's cock again and found the rhythm JC was setting.

With that pace, Justin knew it would be over quickly. He splayed his other hand over JC's hip, trying to get some kind of control, but JC slapped his hand away and got his knees under him and Justin cried out at the way it felt: hot, fast, tight, like the way he did himself when there was nobody watching, but it was JC up against him, slick and slippery, and Justin had no idea how long he was fucking JC, how long JC was fucking him, before it all narrowed down to that one instant. His toes dug into the bed and he rocked forward on his knees and came, silently, just as JC sunk his teeth into Justin's shoulder to muffle his own yell.

When it was over, Justin managed to retain just enough coordination to knot the condom and drop it on the floor before he pitched over onto the pillows. There was a thump, and the bed dipped, and JC settled in to drape over his side, still quivering with the last dregs of dissipating mania.

His exhaustion was catching up with him. "How was the game?" Justin managed.

JC laughed, a soft and satisfied sound. "Won," he said, and buried his face against Justin's bicep.

*

Justin came awake in the darkness in the middle of the night, abruptly, and held himself still until he could figure out why his subconscious wanted him awake.

The room was dark. It took him a minute to remember that he'd knocked his alarm clock to the floor; he fumbled for it, put it back on the bedside table, and blinked at the red glow of the numbers reading 4:28. His bed was empty, but his door was closed, and he could see the glow of the light spilling under the doorframe.

JC, he thought. His files.

He sat bolt upright in bed. He wasn't sure why the thought had him reaching for his boxers and slipping out into the hallway.

He'd almost been expecting to find JC sitting at his table, rummaging through his plans, and was startled to find JC standing in the tiny galley kitchen, filling a glass of water. "Hey," JC said, softly. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to wake you."

"No, it's okay," Justin said. He usually woke slowly, dazedly, but the surge of adrenalin was still skittering through his body, and he felt wide awake. JC was naked, he noticed. Gloriously, unselfconsciously so. "I'm sorry I passed out on you."

"Not precisely on me," JC said with a smile. "More like under me. It's okay. I was just going to get a drink, head on home." He stifled a yawn against the back of one hand.

"Stay," Justin said, before he realized what he was saying.

"Are you sure?" JC raised an eyebrow. "I don't mind."

Didn't mind what, Justin wondered. "It's cool," he said. "It's late. You're tired. There are idiots on the road. Well, there are always idiots on the road, but still. C'mon back to bed."

"If you insist," JC said, and snaked out an arm to wind it around Justin's waist, turning his head to nuzzle at Justin's bicep.

Justin slept poorly for the rest of the night; he wasn't used to sharing his bed, wasn't used to parceling out pillow space and covers. JC was pliant and willing to snuggle, though, and something in Justin was warmly, quietly, satisfied at the company.

JC was already in the shower when Justin's alarm woke him again, and he emerged a few minutes later wrapped in a towel, carrying another. "I hate to run," he said, leaning over to trade a quick kiss. "But I have to get back to my place, pick up a change of clothes before I head out to the office. I'll call you around five and see if you're out of court and can make it to the party tonight, okay?"

"Yeah," Justin said. It was surprisingly comfortable to have JC in his space like this, to wake up to presence. His apartment had been empty for too long. "I don't know how long this one's gonna take. The subpoena's for ten, but I'm going to guess they won't get me on the stand until after lunch, since jury selection didn't finish yesterday. Judges don't work past four-thirty, though, so I doubt I'll be much later than that."

JC ran the towel over his hair. "Sounds good. Maybe I'll come get you at the station after work, bring you back here. You could come spend the night at my place." He smiled. "I've got a better mattress. I don't know how you sleep on that thing without killing your back."

Justin wasn't quite sure when they'd progressed from "fucking" to "sleeping together", but he realized that he didn't mind the thought. "I'll call you when I get out of court. We'll see what time it is then."

"Sounds good," JC said, and snapped his towel in Justin's direction. "Go, shower, I've got to get moving. If I stay here and keep looking at you, neither one of us is going to make it out into the real world today."

Long experience made Justin remember to throw a book and some paperwork into his messenger bag and bring it along. There was nothing worse than sitting and waiting in the hallway outside the courtroom for hours with nothing to do, but witnesses weren't allowed to watch the proceedings. The judge had a bug up his nose and Justin didn't wind up getting on the stand until 3PM, and then the defense attorney was a dick on the cross, which meant that by the time he was finally out of the courtroom he was in one hell of a foul mood even despite the warm, soft feeling he always kept for a while after a night of some really good sex.

He was just turning his cell phone back on after he left the courtroom, to call JC and let him know that he was actually relatively on time, when it rang. The station, calling him.

Dammit. "Timberlake," he said.

Ten minutes later, he was on his way to Mendoza's house.

*

Javier Mendoza was the assistant Attorney General for the District of Columbia. He was also a jackass. Justin hated him right down to the heels of his $600 shoes, and had ever since a case three years ago had gone balls-up on the stand and Mendoza had wound up making Justin look like an incompetent ass in front of the jury.

Mendoza was missing a Renoir watercolor that he'd purchased at auction for 120,000, Euro. Justin wondered how an assistant AG managed to support an art habit like that, but it wasn't his job to mention shit like that. It was his job to figure out how the hit went down, and Mendoza was doing nothing but getting in the way.

"Sir," he finally said, interrupting Mendoza's diatribe about the criminal mind, which was keeping him from being able to put his own sometime-criminal mind to the task of figuring out what the hell had happened. "If you'd go downstairs, Officer McBride can take your statement."

Mendoza paused mid-blather and just stared. "Don't think I don't know what you're up to, Timberlake," he said. "Don't think I don't know that you're little better than a petty thief yourself."

Justin gritted his teeth and tried to ignore the pulse throbbing in his left temple. "If you've got concerns about the way this case is being handled," he said, as carefully as he could -- I never was a petty anything, you over-polished fuck, but I'll never give you the satisfaction of saying it -- "I'm sure my captain would be more than willing to discuss them with you. I could provide you with his home telephone number if necessary. However, until such time as I am notified otherwise by a superior officer, I remain the investigating officer on this case, and if you'd like there to be a remote chance that we could discover who's responsible, I'd like to ask you to step downstairs and allow Officer McBride to take your statement." Habit and politics had him adding, "Sir."

Once he'd finished pawning Mendoza off on McBride -- I owe her chocolates or something for Christmas -- he finally gave in and rubbed his temples, then closed his eyes.

House is wired. Better than the Shermans' was, that's for sure. Motion sensors on the windows, on the doors. The panel's inside, and besides, it's on battery backup, and the clocks aren't flashing. Our guy didn't cut the power to get in. Justin paced the upstairs hallway. The painting had been in Mendoza's bedroom, presumably so the man could wake up every morning and reassure himself that he was still wealthy and important.

He tried to picture the scene. Late at night, perhaps, with the sliver of part-moon peeking over the rooftops, with a black-clad figure scaling the side of the house?

Windows locked. Mendoza's been on vacation for a week, so nobody's been in or out. Can't have gotten in that way. The alarm's not cut, not disabled.

He paced over to the window, looked out over the street. Streetlight just in front of the house. No easy cover there; no shadows. This was the kind of neighborhood where people noticed things. He took out his notebook, made a reminder to get Mendoza to tell him if anyone had the security code.

Dust on the windowsill. Mendoza's housekeeper wasn't very diligent, but the dust hadn't been disturbed.

Justin paced the room. Twelve steps from bedroom door to the empty frame where the painting had been cut free. He touched the frame with one gloved hand. A watercolor, so there were no paint flecks to tap into a paper envelope, bring to the lab for confirmation. He closed his eyes again, one hand still on the frame, and summoned the scene. Late at night. The room dark, to avoid bringing unwanted attention. A figure ghosting through the room, steps soft and sure, heading directly for the target. In, out.

"He knew," Justin murmured. "He knew what he was going after."

There was other art in the house. Art that would fetch a better price on the black market, Justin knew. None of it was disturbed. Only the Renoir, leaving behind an empty frame, a perfect white rose-petal lying carelessly on the floor beneath.

The glow of the street-lamp. The sliver of the moon. Justin summoned the images, brought them up before his eyelids. Walked through them, felt them, invited them in through his skin, tried them on for fit.

Up the stairs. Quietly, carefully, but not so quietly as to destroy his speed. The house is empty, but who knows whether someone might see the movement, might suspect. The second step from the top creaks. He knows this, from -- a party? A showing? An appointment? Doesn't matter. He steps over it. It's cold in here, Mendoza must have turned down the heat before he left. Not quite cold enough to see his breath, but it's cold enough to make him slow if he lets it. He doesn't let it.

The hallway's dark. All the doors are closed. No matter, he knows which one he's after. Thin nylon gloves on his hands; no fingerprints, no fibers, enough to still feel the tiny hitch of the doorknob under his hand as he turns it. The streetlights aren't off yet, so his eyes, adjusted to the dark, show him half-shadows in the reflected glow. The painting's just where he saw it last. Mendoza's private treasure. Oh, the man will miss it when it's gone. Almost a pity he'll miss the shouting, but he'll hear them later: the whispers, the sly looks. It'll almost be worth it.

The knife he brought is tiny and sharp. Sharp enough to cut him, if he's careless, but he can't risk leaving any sign behind. He works carefully, around the edges. A shame to slice even a fraction of such a lovely scene, but Mendoza doesn't appreciate it. Doesn't deserve it. There are others who deserve it so much more. He has a briefcase with him, perfectly sized, unremarkable in all ways. It cradles the painting like a lover.

The thrill of it is beginning to snap in his blood. Can't let it make him careless. Check around him, make sure he didn't miss anything, no stray hair or mark. It's a nice enough bedroom, he supposes. A bit too ostentatious for his taste. He could leave the petal tucked into the picture-frame, but this room wants some disorder to it. A small bit of disarray, just enough to drive home the fact that he was here, and he understands, and he knows what will hit the hardest. He lets it fall from his hand, ghostly blur drifting gently to the floor.

And then --

Justin stopped. And then what?

Coming out of it always left his fingers itching, remembering the touch of a safe, the challenge of an alarm. He flexed them in their latex confines, barely aware he was doing it. The room looked wrong, in the light. In his head, he was seeing it by streetlamp. He flicked the light-switch, breathed a little easier in the darkness.

He stepped out into the hallway, trying to hold onto it: the sense of it, the feel of it, the way it felt to put himself in someone else's head and wear their skin. Voices coming from downstairs, one angry one, one calm one, but they didn't fit, so he ignored them.

The hallway would have been dark, too. Justin flicked the switch, tried to shut out the light coming from downstairs. In his mind, it was still and silent. He drew it around his shoulders. Dark and quiet and it was in his blood, humming with promise, the briefcase heavy and light at the same time in his hand. The second step still creaks, but he doesn't care at this point. Down the stairs and back to the front door, taking the time to tap out the alarm to re-arm the system, leave them guessing, leave them wondering who he is and how he managed to --

The alarm keypad beeped at him. "What the hell are you doing?" Mendoza demanded from over his shoulder.

It yanked Justin out of it. He hated being yanked out of it. "Investigating," he said.

Mendoza's voice was a parody of patience. "And what have you found so far, Detective?"

When Mendoza said it, his title was more of an epithet. Justin looked over his shoulder to see McBride looking an apology his way. "He knew your code," Justin said. He took some small pleasure out of the way it shut Mendoza up. "Give Officer McBride a list of anyone who might have. When you last changed it. Things like that."

Behind him, Mendoza was sputtering. Justin ignored him. The front doorknob turned under his hand. It was a quiet neighborhood, as residential and low-traffic as DC ever got. Quiet enough that Justin could go stand on the street, turn around, look back at the house.

It took him a minute, squinting at the windows and wondering if it was better to go and find a pair of binoculars from his field kit, pacing back and forth at the curb across the street and crouching, but eventually he found what he knew he had to be looking for.

Mendoza was still sputtering when Justin came back inside with his breath still puffing from the cold. Justin ignored him, spoke to McBride instead. "Parked at the curb with long-range infrared glasses. There's line-of-sight to the keypad from the curb. One tiny spot, but it's there. He waited until Mendoza unlocked the door and keyed in, and used the heat signatures of his fingertips on the pad to get the code. Pull me a list of who's got parking permits for this neighborhood, and check on any parking tickets that were issued in the past month. I don't think we'll find him that way, but it's the closest we've gotten so far."

"Yes, sir," McBride said. Her lips curved, just a little. Justin only saw it because he was sensitized to notice the little details.

"How can you know that?" Mendoza demanded.

Justin barely spared him a glance. "Because it's what I would have done," he said, and savored the small satisfaction of a barb hitting home.

*

JC called when Justin was in the process of trying to coax out a latent print on the alarm keypad. He was pretty sure it was Mendoza's -- his suspect, whoever he might be, was not so stupid as to leave behind such obvious traces -- but better to cross every 't' and dot every 'i'.

"Timberlake," he said, picking up the phone. "Hang on a second."

He stepped outside onto the porch, shivered once at the chill before getting a hold of himself. "Sorry about that," he said. "Needed to get out of earshot."

On the other end of the phone, JC laughed. "No worries. I assume from the fact that you haven't called me that you got stuck in court?"

"On the job, actually," Justin said, and grimaced. "I'm going to have to bail on tonight. I caught a call and I don't see myself getting out of here anytime even resembling soon."

"Not a problem," JC said. "Anything interesting?"

White Rose, Justin started to say, and his subconscious stopped him. JC, fresh from the thrill of negotiations at the party Monday night, looking for any excuse to touch Justin. JC last night, pressing Justin up against the door and kissing him like there was no coming up for air.

He sat down on the stoop.

"Nothing big," he said. His voice sounded far too normal in his own ears. "Just tedious. I'll call you when I get home if you still want me to come over and spend the night."

"Of course I do," JC said. His voice dropped to a low caress. "Take care of my cop, Detective. The party will be far more boring without you."

Justin snapped the phone shut and slid it back into his pocket. It was crazy. It was impossible. He had no reason to suspect JC --

I've always been fascinated by things like police work, JC whispered in his ear.

-- no reason to think JC would have the skills, the motives --

Sophia's low murmur. Of course; you would not be you if you didn't champion the needy.

-- he had a security clearance, his company did work for the DOD and the CIA and all those agencies with three-letter names that Justin had never been interested in working for --

Like security clearance means that someone's beyond reproach?

JC moved like moonlight. Danced like an invitation to sin. Easy enough to imagine him sliding through the nighttime, dressed in dark clothes, patient and organized.

It was crazy. It was impossible.

It felt right.

Did he seduce you on purpose? the voice chattered in the back of Justin's head. Another operation, another timetable, another plan of attack. The opportunity far too good to pass up. Did he kiss you to keep your mouth closed?

Justin could feel his thighs going numb from the cold underneath him. Think, he told himself, and "think," he repeated out loud. "Dammit, Timberlake. Think with your head, not with your dick."

JC, asleep in Justin's bed, one ankle crooked over Justin's calves, draped over him. The laughter in JC's eyes over a glass of wine. The way JC listened to him, really listened, made him laugh and laughed with him --

Listened to you to figure out how your mind works. Listened to your stories to see how you approach a case. Flattered you, seduced you --

Justin had the worst luck in relationships of anyone he'd ever known, but he liked to think he was smart enough to spot a long con. Surely he would have noticed. Surely?

The door opened behind him. He started, stood. McBride blinked at him; Justin wondered what his face must look like. "I've got your parking tickets list," she said. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah," Justin said. "Yeah, I'm fine."

*

Justin had been sitting on JC's stoop for nearly an hour when JC finally came home. "Hey," JC said, looking confused. "Did I miss a call?"

"Nah," Justin said. He unfolded his feet from under him, stiff from the cold. "I finished up late. Decided to just come over and wait for you, instead of calling." Had wanted the extra time to think. To plan. To strategize. The cold was like an edge, good for keeping him alert. He summoned up a smile. "I thought about breaking in, but I didn't feel like dealing with your neighbors. Or waiting for you to bail me out."

JC laughed. "You should have. I'll come rescue you from the police anytime you need." He unlocked his front door with one hand, wound the other around Justin's waist in a gesture that was rapidly becoming familiar. "You're freezing. How long have you been out here?"

"Not long," Justin said. "Things took forever tonight."

JC's house was warm and smelled like exotic incense. JC toed off the expensive shoes he was wearing with no thought for their care, leaving them strewn under the hall table with their bootly and sneakerly mates, unknotting his tie as he went. "I'll make you some hot chocolate," he said, then squinted as he took a good look at Justin. "You've got a headache."

The headache had been throbbing since the moment he'd walked into Mendoza's house. "It was a really bad day," Justin said.

"Right." JC frowned. "Have you eaten?"

"I caught a hamburger at Wendy's on my way over." And lunch had been a burrito. One of these days, Justin knew, he'd have to start eating better.

JC shook his head. "That's hardly food. But all right. Come on upstairs with me." Justin quirked a wordless eyebrow; JC gestured. "My headaches like that are always shoulder tension. I'll rub your shoulders for you."

"Rich, handsome, and he does backrubs. Are you sure you're not married?" Justin deadpanned.

JC chuckled. "Well, I don't cook. I suppose that's the flaw."

They climbed the stairs. Too out of the question to believe that JC would have invited him over, invited him to case and scour his home, if there were any signs to be found within it. If JC were the one Justin was looking for in the first place. Justin kept his eyes open anyway.

"Take your shirt off," JC said. He was doing the same as he crossed the bedroom, tossing his clothing willy-nilly. The bedroom was open, lovely, done all in cream and understated jewel-tones. It felt like a coral reef, or like sunlight through a stained-glass window. Justin watched as JC stripped down to his boxers and walked into his walk-in closet, coming out a minute later in a pair of sweatpants that looked old and worn.

"Do you mind lavender?" JC asked.

Justin couldn't quite follow. "Huh?"

"Massage oil. Some people don't like the way it smells."

"No. No, it's fine." Justin pulled his shirt over his head. "Where do you want me?"

"Is 'everywhere' an option?" JC gestured. "On the bed is fine. Face-down. I'll be right back."

Left alone, Justin pillowed his chin on his arms, scanned the room. It was lovely, really. The kind of place he wouldn't mind spending time, even though it wasn't his usual taste in decor. JC kept his house warm, and the down quilt underneath him caught Justin's body heat, held it.

He could hear running water in the other room, and a minute later, JC came back in, holding a bottle. "How was court?" he asked, sitting down next to Justin on the bed and pouring a few drops of oil into his hands.

"Long," Justin said. Against his better judgment, he was starting to relax. He turned his face sideways, rested his cheek on his arms. He could just see JC, out of the corners of his eyes.

JC put his hands on Justin's shoulders. Justin breathed out, sharply; being touched made him realize how tense he really was. "You're quiet tonight," JC said. A mild curiosity, nothing more. He pressed his fingertips along Justin's shoulders, feeling out the lines of muscle and bone.

Justin breathed in, let the breath out. Carefully, carefully. "I'm sorry," he said, sounding as contrite as possible. "I'm not trying to be a pain, really I'm not. It's just --" He sighed. "I lied to you on the phone. I felt kind of bad about it, but you know, people listening. It wasn't just one of the usual calls."

JC's hands stilled for a moment, then went back to their exploration. "Bad?"

"It was one of the White Rose. He got Javier Mendoza's house -- do you know him?"

"Mendoza," JC said, slowly. One hand cupped the curve of Justin's shoulder; the other nudged at Justin's shoulderblade, walking fingertips over muscles so tight Justin almost winced to have them touched. "I think I was at his place once for -- a party? An art showing? He's a collector, yes?"

"Yeah," Justin said. "Lost a Renoir watercolor. What's pissing me off about it is that it's like this guy is taunting me."

JC dug his thumbs into Justin's trapezius muscles. For a second it hurt like hell, hurt worse than anything Justin had felt since the last time he'd been shot, and then he groaned, because something clicked and shifted and started to relax. "You need to go see someone about this," JC said, soft chiding. "Taunting you how?"

"Two hits in two weeks. And this one -- I can't give details, but it was slick. Slicker than any of the ones he pulled when it was Taggert on the case. Like he knew I was going to be following after him, and he wanted to show off. Grab me by the shoulders --" JC's fingers rounded around the tops of Justin's shoulders and pulled, working into the tops of his pecs, heading straight for the spots that made Justin stop and hiss. "--and rub my nose in how much better than me he is."

The backrub really did feel quite good.

"Maybe," JC said, after a long minute of silence, kneading along the sides of Justin's spine with the palms of his hands. "Maybe he's complimenting you."

Whatever Justin had been expecting, it wasn't that. "What?" he asked.

JC put his palms in the hollow of Justin's back, ran them in one long stretching pushing motion up to the tops of Justin's shoulder. Justin huffed as he could feel three quick pops in between his shoulderblades as vertebrae shifted back into place. "Maybe he thinks you're good enough to do battle against," JC said. "Maybe he's -- courting you."

Justin closed his eyes. His headache was ebbing, soothed away. "I hardly think that's likely," he said.

In the darkness behind his eyelids, Justin concentrated. Take out the visual cues. Listen to the voice, to the cadences of it. Listen to the pauses, the breaths. JC's hands on his skin felt exquisite. He made himself think past it. This was the game, the way he hadn't played it in years.

"I think it might be likelier than you'd believe," JC murmured. "You're eminently courtable, Detective."

It would never stand in court, but it was enough for Justin -- the soft sweet brush of JC's voice in his ears, the lone note of subtle appreciation of the game. Justin wondered if JC could hear it in his own voice, in Justin's. "It's been a while," he said. "Since I've had someone to play the game with. Someone whose mind I could crawl into, make myself at home. Learn from the inside out."

JC worked his fingertips into the knots at the base of Justin's neck. Justin groaned. It made his hands tingle. "Should I be jealous?" JC asked, lightly.

"I don't know," Justin said. A pause, a beat. Timing was everything. "Should you?"

JC's hands were warm on the nape of Justin's neck. Warm and strong and intimate. "I think, perhaps," JC said, "we might come to an understanding, you and I, about who is permitted to court you, and who is not."

"Perhaps," Justin echoed, and decided he would play his hand gently. Better to wait. "My head's feeling better. Thank you."

JC leaned over and pressed a kiss against Justin's neck. "Of course," he said. "Anytime."

*

"You must have done something right last night," Kirkpatrick said as he plucked the spare chair from the desk next to Justin's, turned it backwards, and straddled it.

Justin started at the interruption. "Sir?"

Kirkpatrick rolled his eyes. "That's your response to everything when you don't know what to say. Stupid Southern manners. I said, you must have done something right last night. I had a message from Mendoza on my desk this morning complaining about --" He looked down at the papers in his hand. "Your attitude, your manners, and your methods of investigation. What'd you do, punch him in the nose or something?"

Justin breathed a little easier, relaxed a little more. "Kicked him out of the room when I was trying to reconstruct and pretty much told him he was a worthless sack of shit. Not in as many words. This is that politics thing you were talking about, right?"

"I think I can swing it," Kirkpatrick said. "Tell me you've got something."

Justin leaned back in his chair. His back was feeling a lot better today; he could almost sit in the God-awful police-issue chairs without the accompanying sharp stabbing pain. "I've got a mode of entry, at least. I dropped the report on your desk."

Kirkpatrick nodded. "Yeah, and it's a good theory." More than a theory, Justin thought; it was the only thing he could come up with. And the complex elegance of the solution would appeal to JC. To the thief. He had to be careful how he thought of things. "But tell me you've got a suspect. Please."

"Pressure from Upstairs?" Justin winced.

"Not quite yet, but there is starting to be a general atmospheric alteration. If you tell me you've got some names you're looking at, anything at all, it'd go a long way to evening out the barometric pressure."

Justin opened his mouth, and what came out of it was, "Not yet, but I've got a few possible leads. McBride's been a great help pulling data for me. I'm thinking we might find him in the list of people with parking permits for that area, or in the parking tickets. It's not a great lead, but it's the best I've got right now. I'm working on the schedule, trying to correlate it with anything -- Congress being in session, the judicial calendar, the school calendar, anything." He listened to the sound of his own voice, to the words coming out of his mouth. "I've added in the data on Mendoza, cross-referencing it with the other ones now. I can have some lists for you -- Monday? Tuesday? Nobody's popping as a good suspect right now, at least not yet, but I'll see what I can come up with. Is that too late?"

"It'll have to work." Kirkpatrick sounded unhappy. "Pull anyone you need. I can give you McBride, if you think she'll help. Just get me something, and fast. Knowing how he's doing it is all well and good, but we need to know who's doing it, and as fast as possible, before Mendoza decides that we're all a bunch of idiots with our thumbs up our asses."

"Yes, sir," Justin murmured.

"And for God's sake, don't let Mendoza get an eye of you at any of those fancy parties. He dropped a few hints about how the department should be paying its police officers to police, not to dance." Kirkpatrick held up a hand. "I know you're not charging it as OT, but still, you need to watch it."

"Yes, sir," Justin repeated. "I'm not getting much of anything out of it, anyway. I know you said until Christmas, but I think I've got enough data on the people involved to be able to make reasonable assumptions, and it's taking up too much of my time. One or two more, maybe. Not more than that."

Kirkpatrick nodded. "All right. And Upstairs likes your idea of laying bait, so run with that. Take as much OT as you need to get me something. Anything. This one's starting to be a real embarrassment."

"I'll see what I can do," Justin said. The blueprints stared up at him from his desk.

*

JC called him that afternoon. "Are you busy this weekend?" he asked, without preamble.

"I've just been authorized for unlimited overtime, which I assure you is roughly like saying that I've just been handed the keys to the Smithsonian and invited to help myself. My captain is breathing down my neck on this case, and I have what feels like eight thousand pieces of paper on my desk." Justin tucked the phone into the crook of his shoulder and flipped over another sheet. "I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions."

"Ouch." JC chuckled. "So I take it that your schedule won't stretch to taking the weekend off entirely, then."

A lesser man in JC's situation would have been worried, Justin thought. Unless JC knew that he didn't have any actual proof, just the bone-deep sense of knowing. "Unfortunately, no. Not unless you invent a machine that will allow me to stop time and finish this up. Why?"

"Pity." JC clucked his tongue. "I've got a last-minute business trip to Rome scheduled, and I was wondering if you wanted to come along with me."

Rome? Justin wondered which business JC meant. "I'd love to. Really, I would. Unfortunately, it's impossible."

"Next time," JC said. "When you've finished this case, maybe. I'll take you to see the Vatican museums, and we can drink espresso in a sidewalk cafe."

Justin dropped his voice, kept it playful. "Are you trying to bribe me?"

"Of course not." JC didn't miss a beat. "I just thought you might appreciate a change of scenery. Your four walls in the precinct must seem stifling sometimes."

"Sometimes," Justin said, distantly, and then caught himself. "Call me when you get back, all right?"

"Yes," JC said. "Keep Tuesday free. There's a party at the Saudi Arabian embassy I'd like you to be there for."

"Safe trip," Justin said, and hung up the phone.

With JC gone, thousands of miles and an ocean between them, Justin could breathe a little bit easier. It didn't mean he was willing to risk bringing his files home again, though. If this were a game, and Justin was fairly certain not only that it was but that he'd identified the players, it was best to keep some cards close to the chest.

He and McBride spent Saturday in a conference room at the precinct, table covered in papers, working fairly companionably in silence as she sifted through parking records, cross-referencing with all the names Justin could find as having been connected to the other thefts, and Justin built plans and designed security. They didn't share anything other than idle pleasantries until mid-afternoon, when she finally said, "If you really don't think we're going to get him this way, why am I doing it?"

Something in his face when he looked up must have scared her, because she added a hasty, "Sir," to the end. It made him realize how much Kirkpatrick must hate it when he did it himself.

"Because we've got to be able to say we tried everything," Justin said. "It's the only lead we've got right now." That we could possibly bring to court, at least. "I have to be able to say that we ran it down to the ground before giving up on it."

McBride looked down at her papers. "Makes sense," she said, and another twenty minutes of silence, broken only by the shuffle of papers and the scrape of chairs on floors, went by. "It's just that I have this sense that we're not going to close this one," she finally said.

Justin liked people who could let twenty minutes of silence go by between bits of conversation. "What makes you say that?" he asked.

She waved a hand at all the paper. "We don't have anything. In two years, he's never given us anything to go on."

"I only count time from when I picked up the case," Justin said. "And I'm not giving up on this one."

She looked up. "It's personal?"

"It's always personal." He rubbed a hand over his face. "But this one is both personal and a challenge. I'm going to win this one, McBride. I don't know how, but I'm going to win this one."

McBride nodded, and bent her head again.

Justin let another five minutes go by, but no matter how much he stared at the blueprints, he couldn't make his eyes focus on them. "I'm going to get a cup of coffee," he finally said, standing and stretching. "Bring you one?"

She nodded. Justin made his escape to the galley, where the shitty coffee lived, and stared at the wall while he waited for the current pot to finish brewing.

He was going to win this one, he told himself. He'd lost before, but not for a long time. Just because this one was mixed up with the personal element (but they're all personal) -- just because there was sex involved (more than that; how long has it been since you found someone you could respect, someone you could match, someone who could match you) --

No. He was going to win.

He just had to decide what winning meant.

*

Justin was okay until Saturday night, once McBride had left him alone with the cold pizza bones and the last of the three pots of coffee they'd put away between them. He stayed for another hour after she left, trying to convince himself that he was going to accomplish something, but after the fourth time he caught himself staring off into space, he gave up and admitted that he was going to be brooding no matter what; he might as well do it at home.

It was snowing outside, which lent a gorgeous yellowed sheen to the sky, a lovely evenness to the streets and the sidewalks, and a sense of idiocy to all the other people on the road. Justin rolled down the window of his car, partially to appreciate the quiet hush of snow falling, something that even managed to make the city seem peaceful, and partially so he could hear it if one of the cars tailgating him skidded and lost control.

He gripped the wheel and pondered turning on his cop lights as though he were running priority. "I grew up in fucking Tennessee," he muttered under his breath, "and I know how to drive in this shit. You people have no excuse."

The apartment seemed empty when he walked in; cold and dark and silent. "Dammit," he muttered. "You don't get to do this. You don't get to make me feel like you should be here when you're not."

There wasn't anything to eat; he was more than overdue for a Safeway run. He grabbed a can of Bud and threw himself on the couch. "Breakfast of champions," he mumbled as he cracked the beer, but didn't bother taking a sip from it.

If this were a case, Justin thought -- if his relationship with JC were a case, he amended -- Oh, fuck it. If he were doing anything he was used to doing, he'd chart it all out on his incident board, write things down on Post-Its, circle and tag and draw lines until he managed to figure out which of the motivations was the correct one. There was a part of his brain that was doing it anyway, building the board back behind his eyelids.

Scenario one: JC had seen a chance, and taken it. Coldly, with calculation, and everything he'd done since the first time Justin had laid eyes on him was JC's attempt to either mislead Justin, misdirect him and make him follow down the wrong path, or to seduce Justin into giving out information in the form of pillow talk. And he'd been falling for it; that was the worst part of it to admit. He'd been going over things in his head, replaying conversations from his mental tape, and he'd given JC more than he was comfortable with knowing about. Probability: High.

Scenario two: JC had met Justin and decided he would make a worthy -- what? Adversary, maybe, was the word that fit best. Maybe he'd been getting tired of the game, maybe the thrill was wearing off for him. Maybe he was looking for somebody to pit himself against, and as soon as he'd realized that Justin was someone who would give him a good run for his money, he'd taken the chance and gone. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, and under this scenario Justin didn't know which one he would be counted as. JC got a good game out of it, and the satisfaction of knowing exactly what his opponent was doing. Maybe JC was the kind of person who worked better with a little bit of pressure, and knowing what Justin was up to and how close he was behind JC was putting some life back into the deal for JC. Probability: Medium.

Scenario three: JC's subconscious was ready for him to give it up. Under the surface he wanted to get caught, wanted the world to appreciate what he was doing and how clever he was being, and he knew that the police wouldn't have a chance of even getting close to him unless he screwed up somehow -- which his pride in his work wouldn't have let him do -- or if he led the police to him. By the nose. Or by the dick, as the case might be, Justin thought sourly. So all of this was a chance for JC to control how and when the case broke, by dropping Justin enough hints, by parading himself in front of Justin until Justin put two and two together and started digging in the right places, and JC knew that Justin would have at least enough professional courtesy to appreciate a job well done, even if nobody else would. Probability: Low, really. Justin flat-out couldn't see JC being into self-sabotage, even on an unconscious level.

Scenario four: JC had been telling the absolute, complete truth the other night: he was trying to court Justin. To tempt him, to tease him, to seduce him --

But why? That was the point Justin kept sticking on. He could think of a hundred possibilities, and none of them felt right. Did JC want a pet cop, someone who could turn the other cheek and direct attention away from him? Did he want an audience, a private audience of one, to come home and share the details with, to point at something and say "wasn't that clever?" and receive back a soft word of praise and a professional admiration? Did he want a confidante? A sounding board?

A partner?

Justin's beer was going flat. He sipped at it, thoughtlessly, his mind thousands of miles away. With JC, wherever he was. Italy, fencing the stolen Renoir? Who knew?

Hypothetically, then, consider the thought of a partner. Someone to build plans with, to look over timetables and say "tighten this up", someone to research a job, someone to sit outside with the night-adapted eyes and hiss a word of warning if discovery was imminent. Someone whose hands knew that the touch of stolen goods was the sweetest, that the lure of a safe that did not belong to you was the most tempting, that the soft snick of a lock under your fingertips was a sound more lovely than the moan of a lover. Than most lovers.

Someone, maybe, who knew how the law worked, who knew how the police thought, who could sense the pursuit when it got too close and know what would trip suspicions. Someone who knew the men who'd be investigating, could pinpoint their strengths and weaknesses, could be to the pursuit what JC was to the victims. Probability?

Probability?

Justin didn't know. He wondered if there was any way he ever could.

*

By the time his phone rang on Tuesday, Justin had clocked eight hours of overtime for the week. Which started on Monday. The weekend had been for finalizing plans; on Monday, he'd started putting them into action. Do the bulk of the work when JC is out of the country, he thought. Lessen the chance that he might find out.

Justin had never been a good actor, but he should have won a fucking Academy Award for the tone he put in his voice when JC called him. Just the right combination of stress and longing. Like he'd been working like a dog all weekend, but missed JC every moment, not even consciously enough to realize it. "Hey," he said. "Can I go back to Friday and take your offer to run off to foreign countries with you?

"Bad weekend, huh," JC said. He sounded relaxed, confident.

Justin drew lines that didn't turn into anything on a piece of paper at his elbow and listened to his gut on how to play it. "Well, let's just say that my bank account is really going to like my next paycheck. How was Italy?"

"Italian. I brought you a present."

Justin's heart seized up for a minute, and he couldn't even say why. "Is it bigger than a breadbox?"

JC laughed. "Maybe. Are we still on for tonight, or are you going to have to keep working on making the world safe for truth, justice, and the American consumer?"

Justin had done a lot of work to make sure he had Tuesday night free. "Barring fire, flood, or 911 call, I think I can get out of here around seven. Would that be too late?"

"I'm sure you've been there since six this morning, too?" Justin made a face at the phone; he'd gotten in at 6:15. "How about I pick you up at your place, seven-thirty or so? If you're not ready, I can make myself at home for a little while."

"Sounds good," Justin said. "Hey, look, I -- I gotta get going." He took a deep breath, dropped his voice, like he was nervous and feeling awkward about admitting something. Or like he was trying to judge it down to the last second, get the timing and the cues just right. "But I -- Look, I missed you this weekend. While you were gone."

The bitch of it was, it was the God's-honest truth.

He might have been imagining it. Was probably imagining it. But he thought he could hear JC's smile. "I wouldn't have it any other way. I missed you too, Detective. Seven-thirty; I'll see if I can make you forget the bitch of a day you're having."

He was ready and waiting when JC showed up at his front door. JC flicked his eyes up, down; Justin felt naked. "You learned how to tie your own bowtie," JC said. "I was looking forward to doing it for you."

It had been a long time, longer than Justin cared to think about, since he'd felt this alive. The nerves, the high, the sense of walking on a tightrope and knowing what would happen to you if you fell.

Smile pretty, he thought. You're on stage. "I could untie it again if you'd like. Pretend I'm all thumbs."

"As much as I'd love to take you up on the offer to strip for me," JC said, "I would like to get to this party sometime before it ends, and if you start taking off clothes now, we won't be leaving this apartment tonight." He wound his fingers around Justin's hand, brought it to his lips, let it fall again. Justin's skin tingled where JC had kissed it. "Shall we?"

To the day he died, Justin would never remember more of that night than stolen, kaleidoscope memories. The smell of the lilies, and the thought that someone needed to tell the people in charge of the decorations that lilies were for Easter, not Christmas. The music, with its unfamiliar instruments and its hypnotic rhythm, and the jingle of the coins fringing the shawl of the dancer who whirled and swept her way through the crowds. The way JC's hand felt at the small of his back, on the sweep of his shoulder. The sweet warmth of JC's eyes on his back from halfway across the room.

The way he couldn't breathe as JC bent over the hand of a society matron, his eyes never leaving Justin's face, lifting her hand to his lips. It was only a second. If Justin hadn't been watching for it, hadn't spent the entire night in some other world where he couldn't tear his eyes away from JC's hands, his eyes, his lips, he never would have seen the split-second flash of candlelight on diamonds as JC slid the ring off her finger, as smooth as butter, and twisted his fingers slightly as he pulled them away. Justin blinked, looked again, but the ring was gone.

JC never once looked away.

Justin's throat was tight. He reached for his water glass, nearly spilled it all over his expensive rented suit. JC's lips curved, the barest breath of a smile, and then he was straightening and smiling at the woman again, all polite attention.

Freed from the prison of JC's eyes on his own, all Justin could think was: I should have known he would be good at sleight of hand; I've seen what else those hands could do.

He might have danced, as the night went on. He'd certainly never lacked for invitations at any of these events thus far. Perhaps he only sat there, feeling feverish and nigh-drunken, until JC came and slipped a hand beneath the hemline of Justin's coat, ran that hand along the waistband of Justin's pants. "I think I've had enough of other people," JC said. "Haven't you?"

Late that night, when the spell had finally been broken, when Justin was draped over JC's chest and JC was tracing stars and triangles and mystical, ancient runes against Justin's shoulder with his thumb, when the afterglow and the adrenalin letdown had pulled Justin down the road to near-sleep, JC finally said, quietly. "You haven't arrested me yet, Detective."

It should have yanked Justin back up to awareness, should have spiked the rush through his blood and had him sitting up and demanding answers, explanations, anything. He wasn't in the least bit surprised to realize that it didn't. "I can't arrest someone in an embassy. Foreign soil, you know."

"I know," JC said, soft in his ear. "But we're not in an embassy now."

It would be enough for a warrant. Possession of stolen goods, at the very least. Tacit confessions could be turned into actual confessions after long enough in an interview. If he didn't report it, didn't pursue it, he'd be staring at a charge of accessory after the crime.

"I know," Justin said, and closed his eyes. JC's chest rose and fell beneath his cheek, soft as a pillow.

*

Justin didn't hear from JC for the rest of the week.

*

It was snowing again on Friday night, and the air was cool and crisp, like biting into an apple fresh from the refrigerator.

"Tomorrow, right?" Kirkpatrick said as Justin gathered his papers, locked them in his desk. "You're pretty confident he's going to take the bait?"

"He'll take it," Justin said. His head felt heavy, like his ears were stuffed with water. "I've got five men on standby, and everything's set to go. I'm stopping in on my way home and making sure there aren't any last-minute details to clean up. McCullough and his wife are taking the weekend in Manhattan. I've got the keys."

Kirkpatrick nodded. "Good luck, then. I'll listen for updates. Call me if you need me."

"I will," Justin said. "Good night, sir."

McCullough's house was dark except for the obligatory light everyone leaves on when they leave for the weekend to fool the robbers into thinking that someone was home. Justin had never known anyone to fall for it except the stupid ones. He knew the layout of the house like he knew his own apartment by now. He didn't need lights. The streetlight reflected off the snow cover, shone distorted parallelograms on the ceiling of the bedroom. Justin sat on the bed, folding his feet up underneath him and his hands in his lap, and waited.

It was amazing, he thought as the figure crept into the room, how accurate his mental picture had been, how well he'd been able to reconstruct the scene. When he clicked on the light, JC whirled around, and for one brief second Justin could see -- shock? surprise? respect? appreciation? -- written across his face, before it locked down to a calm, neutral acceptance; he met Justin's eyes and held them.

Silently, JC held out his arms. Wrists together, knuckles touching, waiting to be cuffed. An offering, a wordless salute. The moment stretched out like spun glass.

"What if I wanted to be courted?" Justin asked.

. : | back | : .