Sleuth LLC: Bring Out Your Dead

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Maggie Valley, NC

that evening

QUENTIN AND NATE were sitting on the deck relaxing and watching for Tom’s car that evening. When they spotted it coming up the driveway, they hurried downstairs, opened the garage door, and walked outside to great the new arrivals.

As Marco and Dani exited Tom’s Jaguar, Quentin said, “Ready to go?”

“You bet,” Marco said.

“We’ll get them back to your place, Tom,” Quentin said.

“Or better yet, you can stop by here for a nightcap,” Nate said.

“The latter sounds good,” Tom said. “See you guys later.” The Jag made a quick turn and headed down the driveway.

“Glad you guys could come over,” Quentin said.

“I hope you brought appetites,” Nate said. “We’re going to a great little restaurant in Waynesville.”

“Sounds good,” Marco said.

“As you might imagine, we’re a little cautious about this,” Quentin said. “We thought a nice dinner and a bottle of wine might create the right atmosphere for sharing information.”

“Makes sense,” Marco said. “We’re ready when you are.”

“That’s your cue to back the car out, Nate,” Quentin said.

Nate backed his Edge SUV out of the garage, and their guests got into the backseat while the garage door was still closing.

“I like the location of your house,” Marco said. “It’s very private up here.”

“Yeah,” Quentin said. “Not quite as open as Tom and Noah’s place, and very private. I give Nate full marks for spotting the potential of this parcel.”

“How long have you guys been together?” Dani said.

“Three years, more or less,” Quentin said. “You?”

“Marco and I met when I was eighteen and he was twenty,” Dani said. “We’ll be celebrating a twenty-fifth anniversary in a year or so.”

“Wow!” Nate said. “That’s a long time to be with one person. A very long time.”

“It seems only yesterday,” Marco said.

“That was the right thing to say,” Dani said.

The conversation ebbed and flowed as they headed toward Waynesville, where Nate eventually pulled into a parking lot adjacent to a restaurant called The Sweet Onion.

“I assume this is the place,” Marco said.

“Yep,” Nate said. “Great food and atmosphere. We love it.”

“The French onion soup is out of this world,” Quentin said. “And everything on the menu is pretty darn good.”

Over a great meal, they began to get quite comfortable with their guests, and when a second bottle of wine was ordered, they started to exchange more and more personal information. Quentin and Nate learned that Marco and Dani, as they’d asked to be called, hadn’t known they were both telepathic until several years after they’d gotten together.

“You mean that you and Marco were together that long before you revealed what you can do?” Nate said, somewhat incredulously.

“Yeah,” Dani said. “It turns out, we’d both kept that part of ourselves bottled up so tightly that it just didn’t want to come out.”

“Until we finally came to the realization that we were the real thing, and there was no need to hold anything back,” Marco said.

“And in all that time, you’ve never encountered anybody else with this ability?” Quentin said.

“Not until this morning,” Marco said. “How about you guys?”

“I told you how I rescued Nate from kidnappers after I heard his mental cry for help, right?”

“Yes,” Marco said.

“It was a few months later, maybe longer; I don’t remember for sure. Anyway, I was on a case in Savannah and Nate was back home in Jacksonville. We’d been playing at getting together in the evening and visualizing having s*x with each other.”

“Been there, done that,” Dani said.

“Yeah. Well, one evening we’d gone at it pretty hot and heavy, and I don’t remember exactly what we’d just done, but one of us said, {Did you get that?} Then another voice broke into the conversation, and a stranger said, {so did every telepath in three states.}”

“I asked him how many telepaths there were in three states, and he said, {More than you think, and not all of them are friendly.}”

“Wow!” Marco said. “That must have given you pause.”

“Damn right it did,” Quentin said. “Anyway, it turned out he was in a motel on I-95, just outside Savannah; so I met him for breakfast the next morning, and he showed me how to shield myself. He warned me that other telepaths in the world might see Nate and me as a danger to themselves.”

“Really?” Marco said. “What did he mean by that?”

“He was kind of vague, but mentioned that he’d met, and kept in infrequent contact with a few telepaths over the years—I forgot to mention that he was at least fifty—but most of them had eventually disappeared, mostly under mysterious circumstances. He feared foul play, but didn’t elaborate. So, Nate and I started being very cautious.”

“Until this morning,” Marco said.

“Yeah, until this morning,” Dani said.

“This whole thing is kind of scary, isn’t it?” Nate said.

“That’s for sure,” Marco said.

“So, what do we do now?” Quentin said.

“We get on with our lives; we continue to be extremely careful with our shielding; and we take things one day at a time,” Marco said.

“When you’ve survived a couple of assassination attempts, stuff like this pales by comparison,” Dani said.

“Assassination attempts!” Quentin said. “Seriously?”

“Oh, yeah,” Marco said, and went on to relate the tale of a crooked manager who didn’t like it when he inherited the title of il Conte di Conti, and the subsequent bombing of the Duke’s Learjet.

“And that wasn’t the end of it,” Dani said. “A year or so later, the guy escaped from prison with the help of his criminal friends, and managed to toss a bomb under a van Marco and I were riding in.”

“I survived more or less intact,” Marco said. “One of my people was shot in the shoulder, and Dani lost a kidney as a result of the accident.”

“Wow!” Nate said. “You guys have led an exciting life. So what happened after that?”

“I had a kidney transplant,” Dani said. “I’m pretty much okay these days.”

“What’s it like living with the son of the ruler of a country, Dani?” Nate said.

“Except for the level of security around us, no different from living with anyone else, I suspect. Marco spent a third of the first thirty years of his life learning to be a doctor—it’s all he’s ever wanted to do. And he positively detests the bowing and scraping that occurs every time we visit Conti, and the locals tug their forelocks when il Conte di Conti enters the town.”

“Do they really?” Nate said. “Tug their forelocks, I mean?”

“Actually, I’m exaggerating, but only a little,” Dani said.

“But Marco will be the Duke one day, right?” Nate said.

“Unfortunately,” Marco said.

“Why unfortunately?” Quentin said.

“Endless council meetings, state dinners, shaking hands with dignitaries; most of whom you wouldn’t want to know, let alone have to shmooze,” Marco said. “And that’s just for openers.”

“Marco and I are really very private guys,” Dani said. “We’re not exactly looking forward to the day that il Duca steps down.”

“Father remarried a few years ago and has a nine-year-old son,” Marco said. “Maybe I can abdicate in his favor. Who knows?”

The ringing of Quentin’s cell phone took him by surprise. He looked at the display, flipped open the phone, and said, “Hi, Tom. What’s up?”

“We’re still at the restaurant, lingering over wine. … Thanks, we’ll be there. ‘Bye.”

“Choir practice was over a bit early, and they’re on the road home,” Quentin said. “It’ll take them thirty minutes to get to Waynesville, so we’ve got time to polish off this bottle. Well, some of us have. It’s time to cut our designated driver off.”

“I haven’t had that much wine,” Nate said. “And I had a huge meal.”

“Nevertheless—” Quentin said.

“Give me a break, Q. I didn’t have all that much wine.”

“That may be true, babe, but we’re five hundred miles from home, and I don’t know anybody in law enforcement around here.”

“Oh, all right,” Nate said.

THEY WERE SITTING on the deck of Quentin and Nate’s cabin when Tom’s Jaguar came up the drive and stopped at the parking pad. As soon as they heard the car doors open and close, Nate raised his voice and said, “We’re up on the deck, guys. Come join us for a nightcap.”

“You talked us into it,” Tom said, his voice carrying up the stairs.

Tom and Noah accepted glasses of Port, and Marco and Dani accepted refills.

“To a pleasant evening,” Marco said, holding his glass up as he offered a toast.

They sat, sipping and visiting, until everyone began to yawn. Then Marco and Dani thanked their hosts for a great evening, and they thanked Marco for dinner. There’d been a brief pissing contest between Quentin and Marco over the check, which Marco had won. They’d already exchanged contact information with Marco and Dani, and promised to keep in touch; and Marco and Dani followed Tom and Noah down to their car.