One for the Books

Self preservation. That's all it was.

Now I just had to find a way for all of us to save some face and still get the job done.

Turning, I took Andy's face in my hands.

"Andrew Jones, you are the greatest love of my life." He sighed and smiled.

"And you are mine, Alex Cable."

"You want me to be happy."

"Yes, Alex. Of course I do."

"When am I the happiest?" He sighed again and the look softened.

"When you have a new case." I leaned in and kissed him quickly.

"So here's the deal. We help out our friends here. Just a day or two, tops. Next year you get to pick our vacation and I'll even let you pay for it." That right there was a big concession for me. Andrew had scads of money but my big macho ego always fought against him spending any of it on me, preferring to use the money we had made together.

Before he could say anything I added "Besides, Def Leppard and Styx are doing several dates in London next year. Maybe even Motley Crue." His eyes lit up with delight.

"Oh! Alex... I love you."

It was several long minutes before we remembered we had company in the room.

They didn't seem to mind the wait.

Six

My eyes swept over the rack of weapons and things, all neatly stored.

Michael and Dex had managed to find a building to rent with a big safe about the size of a walk in closet. One side was filing cabinets and the other was racks for their gear. Dex, being former military police and somewhat of a gun aficionado, had quite a collection.

Nice.

I did admire a man who knew how to accessorize.

Being more of an old school purist kind of guy myself, I didn't really go in for all of the tactical gear look with all of the kevlar and nylon webbing and stuff. But they definitely had some things which caught my eye.

After all, my toys were locked in our safe back home in the office.

A man did have to protect himself.

While I wandered through and talked muzzle velocities and calibers with the tall veteran, our partners were hunched over keyboards and computer screens. A little projector hooked to the ceiling and being run by the computers (I don't know how...) was showing a blowup picture of four different signatures on a blank space on the wall.

Andrew was using the mouse to point out different spots in the writing. "See the differences here and here and here and here? These two are authentic... supposedly, anyway... and if we assume they are then these two are forgeries. Have you read Raveneau's book on forged documents? Or Blackburn's?" When Michael shook his head Andy waved a hand and started clicking away at the borrowed computer again.

"There." He said. "I sent you PDF copies of mine. Some of them are hard to come by. They'll help if this comes up again. Anyway..."

My sweet helpful and completely crazy man had a photographic memory and could pull up any book he had ever read in his mind. It was astounding and occasionally irritating but I loved him anyway. He'd bought a book on forgeries and it was in French. Since he didn't speak French, he bought a book on that and then memorized it. Then he translated the one he wanted...

See where I'm coming from? Mad as a hatter.

At any rate, it was kind of relaxing not being the lead investigator on this caper. Dex and Michael already knew who and what and why and where. All they really needed was Andy to prove their suspicions and me for some extra backup muscle.

I could get used to this, I think. Of course I'd go anywhere Andy wanted to. Happily. Willingly. I'd live in a mud hut on the side of Mount Kilimanjaro fighting crocodiles and covered with leeches as long as that beautiful man was by my side.

I shuddered slightly.

Leeches... Ick.

I'd still do it.

At any rate, Andrew and Michael seemed to be forming a fast friendship. They were both about the same age and intelligence levels (way above mine) and it seemed they loved having someone to talk computer language with. I had a feeling I was going to have to use a shoe horn to separate them when it was time for us to go home again.

Dex wasn't a bad guy, either. Once you got past that dour demeanor of his, anyway. Although he didn't have my years of experience on the streets, his military training and his own smarts made him a pretty darn good investigator. It didn't take me long to figure out whenever he got that down and faraway look in his eyes, all I had to do was mention his partner and Dex would smile all the way down to his heart.

Those two were in love like nobody else's business. It was nice to see.

I couldn't really see Andy and I leaving the City and it's somewhat appalling crime rate for the warm sunny climes of Bay City, but I had a feeling we would be spending a lot of our free time down this way. If nothing else we'd be down here now and then for the company.

And hell... it rained often enough down here to make it feel like a second home.

So, anyway... Aside from taking the foolish hundred dollar bill counterfeiter off the streets, it seemed as if there was another type of forger at large in Bay City. It had started at the end of the previous year with the supposed "attic find" of a manuscript claiming to be the private journals of one Captain Hendrick Van der Decken and dated in the 1780's.

The three hundred-plus pages of manuscript had caused quite a stir among the local naval historians as it laid claim to the captain and his somewhat infamous ship making several stops in the area of Bay City and even as far up as Seattle (or as it was known back then as "New York-Alki") even though he was previously thought to never have left the north Atlantic ocean.

The supposed "finder" of this journal had loaned it to the local maritime museum where it had been subjected to only cursory testing before it was placed on display. After it had sat in legitimacy for six months the owner had put it up for auction. He scored two hundred thousand dollars, quickly turned it into cash and just as quickly disappeared.

It wasn't until a month later when a BBC film crew was doing a documentary about the find did someone get suspicious and subject the papers to more rigorous testing. It took a chemical engineer and a gas chromatograph to finally figure out the forger had used a commercially made formula of tannic acid rather than the naturally occurring type to make the ink and the whole thing was denounced as a fraud.

But in the mean time half a dozen more "found" historical documents of several types had shown up all up and down the coast, from all the way up to Vancouver BC and as far south as Sacramento where someone discovered the original marriage certificate for Henry Heiken and Margaret Egan, which was considered quite a feather in the cap of the Sutter County Historical Society.

All of them of course were forgeries but undiscovered until the supposed owner had managed to abscond with a large amount of cash and disappear once again.

Since it came under the heading of "Interstate Wire Fraud" the case technically belonged to the FBI, but they were offering up to a hundred grand for information leading to the arrest or capture of the person or persons unknown responsible for the crimes. And as some of it had crossed international borders, INTERPOL was offering a sizable reward as well.

Maybe we could score enough for our next vacation after all. I shook my head.

Best not to be greedy. Michael and Dex had done all of the hard work in this case. We were just along for the ride. Andrew would have my butt if we accepted a penny of it anyway.

Knowing in advance how it would play out, I'd settle for another one of those prime rib dinners.

Yummy.

Since Bay City itself wasn't really all that large compared to other places, their criminal element pool wasn't all that large either. Sure, they had their share of dope heads and petty thieves and thugs just like any other town. There had been a few drug smugglers come through over the years, always looking for an easy port to bring in their goods. Hell... they'd even had their first murder in over a decade last year.

At any rate, it was kind of surprising no one else had managed to track the forgery ring back to Bay City. I guess it showed how much importance had been placed on the case with the feds. Our two local Hardy Boys had been working the case for months and they had developed some pretty solid leads. They had worked informants and followed up on tips and finally managed to locate the elusive forger in his lair.

Up a section of Old Highway 101 just a few miles north of Bay City's only strip club was a crummy seedy little bar called "Rev's" where a handful of the local bikers and the tougher hoodlums hung out. The place was run by some nutcase who had gotten ordained as a minister through the mail and whose avowed mission was "to bring the glory of the Lord to those who live on the road." In all reality he just wanted to separate those who lived on the road from their dollars any way he could. He called his tavern a church and had been fighting the state for years to get a tax exempt status but had lost the battle year after year.

Nobody, it seemed, was buying into his bullshit.

Our erstwhile producer of forged documents needed a safe place to work and had rented the back room of the tavern and had hired a couple of the local bikers as bodyguards while he scribbled away, busily re-manufacturing history.

The boys could have just turned this all over to the FBI and waited to collect their reward, but it wouldn't have been anywhere near as fun, nor as satisfying.

Besides, they had done all of this work and it was a shame to see the credit go to someone else.

Once they were fairly sure they had found their man, Michael and Dex had installed a web of wireless game cameras to watch all the entrances of the building. Even when they weren't actively watching, Michael had designed a program which kept track of how many people came and went from the tavern and stored snapshots to run through facial recognition later.

The young man was a genius, aside from being seriously cute.

I still wouldn't trade for the world.

But I digress...

Sitting in the van out on the fire lane about a hundred yards away, we reviewed the video. Our suspect had met the day bartender at the door when he opened about ten this morning. Apparently he had things to do. Two other hairy refugees from a ZZ Top concert had pulled up on choppers a little while later. They had shown up so regularly they were either serious drunks with no place to go or our boy's hired muscle. Either way they didn't look like much of a problem.

There being only two ways in or out, we split up. Dex and I would go in the front while Andy and Michael covered the back. I fretted a little being separated from my partner, even though just recently he had shown he was more than capable of holding his own in a fight. Dex and his partner regularly practiced martial arts and armed as well as unarmed fighting styles and I was considering adding that to our morning workouts.

Andy, Dex and Michael were all dressed in tactical black. Nothing they had would fit me so I settled on jeans, a black t-shirt and my leather jacket. The pistol I'd borrowed from Dex's armory dropped down in one of the inside pockets. We each wore little headsets allowing us to communicate during the action.

We were ready. Only four people inside.

The feds had been alerted and they had a couple of agents about fifteen minutes out.

Showtime.

Seven

With his military training, Dex was of a mind to kick the door and follow the sights of his pistol into the building. In my opinion, a softer approach might buy us a few more seconds of reaction time and possibly save some property damage on the outside chance our quarry wasn't here or we were wrong after all. He saw the logic and agreed.

So we pushed the door open and walked in rather casually.

The two bikers were around the pool table and the bartender was behind the bar. When they saw us one biker raised his pool cue and the other reached a hand under his vest. The bartenders hands went down below the bar.

Okay, so much for the subtle approach.

"BADOOM!!" The Desert Eagle .50 I'd borrowed made an ear-splitting noise in the confines of the room. All three of them froze and their eyes tracked first to the dinner plate sized hole I'd just blown in the floor in front of the pool table and then to the massive hole which comprised the business end of the barrel. The laser dot from Dex's H&K .45 was just a little south of the bartenders clavicular notch and while the barrel of my gun was only ten inches long from their perspective it must have looked like an artillery piece. One which just so happened to be pointed at the biker with his hand at his waistband.

He'd turned so white and was standing so very completely still I almost expected to see ice crystals forming on his skin.

"I do suggest you gentlemen keep your hands where we can see them and move very slowly." Three pairs of hands tried their best to touch the ceiling.

The little plastic speaker crackled in my ear and Michael's voice came across.

"We got him. No problems."

Half an hour later the place was swarming with cops of all sorts and a handful of the local media. The Bay City cops had picked up the owner of the bar and his live in girlfriend on suspicion of harboring a fugitive as well as conspiracy charges. The lab techs were hauling out box after box of material from the back room.

Our little forger definitely had aspirations. They showed us an unfinished Declaration of Independence, what appeared to be a Magna Carta and what purported to be a diary written by John Dillinger.

They were all very good. I'd give him that.

My partner's hand on my elbow steered us away from the lights of the reporters and we watched from the shadows while Michael and Dex got their exposure. As usual, Dex stood back and let his partner do all of the talking. We tried to let them take all of the credit for the bust but Michael managed to slip in a line towards the end of his interview.

"We couldn't have done it without the help of the Jones and Cable Detective Agency from the City."

Damn... I might have to pay for that steak dinner after all.

Eight

I couldn't even wait for Andy to get his clothes off. Or mine.

I'd been growling in my lovers ear since the end of the press conference. Working an op like that always got me more than a little wound up and I needed some serious alone time with my beautiful sexy man to work off the pressure.

From the looks of things, Dex and Michael were in the same boat and they didn't seem to disappointed when we begged off having dinner and drinks to celebrate. I just handed Dex the weapon I'd borrowed and mumbled something about coming by in the morning to clean it, then grabbed Andrews hand and drug him out of the room.

I wanted him.

But then I always wanted him.

Just as soon as the door to our suite was shut and locked our jackets hit the floor and Andrew was in my arms with his lips open hot and insistent pressed into mine. One hand held the back of his head as he tipped it up to me and the other hand tugged his skin tight t-shirt out of the waistband of his pants and almost up to his armpits. I wanted as much access to as much of his bare skin as I could reach at the moment. His wonderful soft smooth skin felt like it was on fire with his need and I could already feel droplets of sweat forming on my brow.

My partners hands went from the small of my back and wiggled in between our bodies. Little nimble fingers undid my belt and snatched it out of the loops and tossed it across the room. The top button of my jeans surrendered moments later and my fly was barely down before his warm hand dove inside my pants to wrap around the shaft of my prick. He damn near bent me in half getting my meat free of my pants as I was already hard and he struggled then jerked my jeans down over my hips. I moaned into his mouth as his strong hand gripped and stroked me.

The sweet gorgeous little man who was normally so loquacious, especially while we were making love, didn't utter a sound as he pulled away from my lips and dropped to his knees. He just tugged back my foreskin and sucked the head of my prick between his lips. Andrew's eyes gazed up into mine as he began sucking my cock avidly with one hand sliding up and down my shaft.

Oooohhh... holy snap.

How did I end up being so lucky?

Even my wildest fantasies before we met never imagined a lover as perfect as Andy.

I was just dealt a royal flush, rolled double sixes, hit the grand prize jackpot and won all of the lotteries in the world all at the same time.

Ka-ching! I wanted to pump a fist in the air and do a little victory dance.

But I was seriously busy at the moment.

And was about to get even busier.

My hands closed on the sides of his head and stilled his motion. Even if I was holding his head still, Andrew's tongue kept lashing around and around the head of my prick, making my heart do a little samba in my chest. If I'd been getting an EKG at the moment, the doctor would have been reaching for the paddles.

"Ooohhh... I want to fuck you, Andy. I want to fill your ass with my come."

When those words left my mouth my lover let out a squeak and a moan which transmitted vibrations through the head of my prick like a megaphone. He made me feel as if all of the sperm which was roiling around in my balls was going to come spurting out of my ears like someone had stepped on a tube of toothpaste.

"Come up here, boy." My hips pulled back, removing the temptation to shoot into his mouth and my hand grabbed the front of his shirt, pulling him to his feet. As he came up my other hand went down and for once my aged fingers didn't disappoint me as the front of his tight pants opened easily. Both thumbs slid into his waistband and I jerked his pants down almost to his knees. He gasped slightly at the ferocity of my movements then gasped again as one hand gripped his prick and squeezed. My love was hard and wanting and having him in that condition always made me a little proud.

Keeping my grip on his big hard prick, I used it like a tiller on a boat and turned him towards the bed while my other hand went to the middle of his back and pushed him face down onto the mattress. I grabbed the lube from the nightstand and shot a quick dollop onto the head of my cock then slipped it between his firm little ass cheeks and presented it to the puckered opening of his ass. Andy's legs shook and he gasped and moaned and wiggled as he tried to fight his body's natural resistance to the intrusion and let me inside as the head of my prick levered open his snug little opening. I pressed determinedly and finally a little yelp came from his lips and I slipped inside of him, pressing forward and feeding him all of my cock until those wonderful ass cheeks of his pushed into my belly.

Haaahhhh... holy fuck... holy fuck... holy fuck... holy fuck... that felt amazing.

If we had any neighbors our moans would make it instantly clear what was going on in our room at that very moment.

Neither of us seemed to care, either.

As one hand gripped his prick beneath his body my other one took hold of his shoulder hard enough to leave bruises as I began thrusting into him. Andy's internal muscles gripped and squeezed and rippled against my cock as it slipped in and out of him and the motion of me fucking him caused his hard shaft to slide up and down in my grip. I could see his hands fisted into the bedspread and his head rocked back and forth with the strength of my thrusts.

Just beneath the sound of our moans and the slap-slap-slap of flesh against flesh I could hear a litany of lust whispering from his chest.

"Oooohhh yes... oh god... Alex... yes... fuck me... fuck me fuck me fuck me... Ooohhh god..."