Clear Water Read Free Page B

than it already reeked, that was for certain.
    He came out of the bathroom toweling his hair and sniffing experimentally at Fly Bait’s girl-floral shampoo, which still lingered in his hair. It was a hell of a lot better than river water and diesel oil, that was for damned sure.
    “If he’s an acolyte,” Fly Bait said, looking up from her Scientific American as though their conversation had never been interrupted, “what’s he worship?”
    Whiskey raised his eyebrows in thought. “Oxygen,” he said, nodding his head. “Since I bailed him out of the river, I think he’s a fan.”
    Fly Bait blinked. For her, it was the equivalent of sitting up and shrieking, “Are you fucking shitting me?!” at the top of her lungs.
    “Is this acolyte going to have any fellows?” she asked cautiously, obviously thinking hard.
    Whiskey was way ahead of her. “I doubt it. The skeezemonkey who bailed out of the driver’s side isn’t coming back for him. Although….” Whiskey got a trash bag and stuck his hand into the bathroom for his wet clothes, then paused in front of his berth before getting Junior’s.
    “Although?”
    “Although it probably wasn’t skeezemonkey’s car.”
    “What makes you say that?”
    “’Cause it was sort of a sweet little ride, and skeezemonkey ditched it without a backward look. And… I’m probably thinking out of turn here….”
    “Which would be different because?”
    Whiskey shrugged. She had a point. The only time he wasn’t thinking out of turn was when he was applying for grants. “No reason. But I think he was drugged, and not in the fun way.”
    Fly Bait’s eyes got really large at that. “So that would be the reason he hasn’t moved?”
    “Yup. And it’s the reason I’m gonna stay up and shake him if he forgets to breathe, too. He threw up a lot of river water and probably anything else. If he wasn’t dead when the car hit the rail, I think he’ll be fine, but I want to make sure. Something about this whole thing….” Whiskey grunted. “Me no likey.”
    He walked quietly into his tiny berth and pulled the wet clothes out of the plastic hamper, shoving them in the garbage bag. They were nice—slacks, summer weight blazer, a shirt that probably cost Whiskey’s clothing budget for the year if you counted underwear and socks. (Which were, actually, the things he wore the most.) Whiskey wondered about these clothes—they were a man’s size medium, but the belt was cinched up to an impossibly thin waist, and that boy… God, he’d looked fragile.
    Whiskey walked the bag up to the deck, all the better to stink the next day when they visited the pier’s one washing machine, and returned down to the small living space, made even smaller by the equipment that he and Fly Bait were using this time out.
    Fly Bait wasn’t even pretending to read her Scientific American anymore. He went to the small fridge and grabbed a soda and some salami and bread and plopped down on the couch to have himself a snack.
    “He was pretty,” she said flatly, and Whiskey rolled his eyes.
    “And very likely underage.”
    “He’s in your bed.”
    “Jealous?”
    She blinked and canted her eyes to the side in a way that said she was honestly thinking about it. Then back. “No. Don’t think so. But we’ve got a very short time to do this—”
    “I pulled him out of the river, Fly Bait—“
    “Freya,” she corrected grimly, and she only did that when she was losing her patience with him.
    “ Freya, ” he exaggerated. “Odds are good, when he wakes up, he’ll have something else to do. If nothing else, he’ll probably have a hangover that will rock a solid twelve on the Richter scale. So maybe stop prophesying doom for a second, and let me make sure he hasn’t choked on his own vomit before we kick him to the curb?”
    “We could call the police,” she said pointedly, and he thought about it seriously.
    “I don’t think so.”
    “Any good reason why not?”
    “He’s lost.”