“Fair enough.”
They went through the closet next, a walk-in with a light that Sullivan flipped on. Against one wall was a basket half-full of dirty laundry, a dusty box fan, and a bucket with detergent and cleaning stuff. The row of shoes included, interestingly, a pair of red stilettos. Sullivan slid a hand through the hanging clothes and came up with a black dress and several miniskirts, one of pink tweed, another of vinyl.
Sullivan nudged Tobias with an elbow and pointed. “Sure there’s no lady friend?”
When Tobias didn’t answer, Sullivan shrugged and turned to the second wall, where a long, low cabinet had been shoved back under the hanging dresses, a cheap plastic tub on top beside a beat-up shoebox. Sullivan bent to open the shoebox, getting a glimpse of notebook paper, assorted junk, and magazine clippings before it was tugged out of his hands.
“Hey, now,” Sullivan protested.
Tobias clutched the box close with visible agitation, and after a long beat of hesitation, he said, “Sorry. But that’s his private stuff, okay? It’s not related, I promise.”
Yeah, that had definitely not been Tobias’s instinctive reaction to Sullivan’s snooping. Judging from his body language and expression, Sullivan guessed there’d been a far more indignant response forming before Tobias muzzled it.
Intriguing.
Sullivan watched him, curious, as he put the shoebox on the ground, using a foot to nudge it out of the way, the lid falling closed in the process.
“No problem. Sorry. Being nosy is an occupational hazard.” Sullivan raised his hands in a compliant gesture. “I’ll be good.”
“All right. Thanks.” Tobias turned back to the bedroom.
“Maybe the lady friend knows where he went, huh?” Sullivan called after him, glancing wistfully at the shoebox. Deciding it wasn’t worth getting caught over, he turned his attention to the plastic tubs. After a peek into the main part of the room to check that Tobias was elsewhere—he was sitting on the bed, staring at the floor—Sullivan pulled the lid of the plastic tub off.
Lace and silk and a lot of it. Blinking, Sullivan pulled out a handful that looked like black stockings with a saucy seam up the back, a red bustier, and a couple of demure nightgowns. He checked the labels—unlike everything else in the apartment, the underwear wasn’t expensive, though the sizes were larger than he would’ve expected.
“You might be right about that lady friend,” Sullivan muttered. He bent and checked the stilettos, and yup, same size as the other shoes.
The girly stuff was Ghost’s.
Maybe Ghost was the one with the appreciation for nice undies, but there was a reason the stuff was here in a bin in the closet instead of in the dresser in the bedroom with the rest of Ghost’s regular underwear. Most likely, Ghost catered to a particular type of client with very particular tastes.
He put the silky stuff back and opened the cabinet underneath, where he found a fairly impressive collection of sex toys, and on this at least, Sullivan knew his shit. Dildos, vibrators, cock rings, blindfolds, and even a paddle—extensive, but nothing too uncommon.
“Sales. Yeah, right.” Sullivan stepped out, opening his mouth to say that he hadn’t found anything useful, only to find that Tobias was still staring pensively at the floor, so grave and lost that Sullivan wondered if Tobias’s worry about his pal was based in more than friendship.
The intrigue of trying to figure it out—there was no better puzzle to solve than the motivations of a human being—was undermined by a tiny, unexpected pang of regret. Yup, Sullivan could definitely appreciate the way strain suited Tobias’s sensitive features; he looked downright lovely with his eyes solemn and his mouth soft.
Stop it. You should know better by now. He’s a perfectly nice guy, and he doesn’t deserve to have you lusting all over his pain.
He distracted himself by saying, “Anyone else we could talk to about who your buddy’s been hanging out with lately?”
“He doesn’t have a girlfriend,” Tobias murmured. “Or a boyfriend. He doesn’t—he doesn’t do things like that. He only has me and—”
The sound of a distant thump from the living room made him break off, and they both turned to look at the bedroom door, as if that might somehow tell them what had made the noise.
“Ghost?” Tobias started toward the hallway. A second later Sullivan heard the faint clinking sound that came when someone wasn’t careful about letting their keys bang against the door as they unlocked it. Sullivan thought of the key on the counter and his heart leaped into his throat. Shit. Shit.
He grabbed Tobias’s wrist and wrenched him toward the closet, pulling him almost off his feet.
“Wait—” Tobias said, or tried to say, because Sullivan already had a hand over his mouth.
“That’s not Ghost,” he hissed as softly as he could. He got them into the closet, slapping the light off in the process, and swung the door half-closed behind them before prodding Tobias to duck behind the hanging rack of dresses and trousers. Fortunately, Tobias was smart enough to realize that silence was called for, because he didn’t say anything else when Sullivan pulled his hand away, just let himself be moved around. Sullivan grabbed the hangers they’d set rocking, tried to still them, and reminded himself not to snap his gum out of distracted habit.
He couldn’t see much with the light off, so hopefully they were invisible from the bedroom beyond. He could sense Tobias’s tension all the same, and that tension seemed to skyrocket when two male voices came into hearing range, speaking...Russian?
What the hell?
One of the men entered the bedroom, but he left almost immediately, not even bothering to check the closet, and Sullivan let out a slow breath. That was the nifty trick of the half-open closet. People usually assumed that if someone was going to hide inside, they’d close the door, so they took it for granted that an open closet door meant it was vacant.
They listened as the men moved around in the living
