Faith: Hunter, #3

By J.V. Speyer

Rebuilding a relationship isn't as easy as either Luis or Donovan thought. Re-establishing trust while trying to take down a human trafficking ring in a hotel overflowing with ghosts? That might be impossible, even for these two.

How do two people rebuild trust when they've been betrayed by the people they trusted most? Luis and Donovan want to stay together and make their love work, but the situation is tenuous. Boundaries must be drawn, and both are afraid to step too close to the line. Life has other plans.

A human trafficking ring crops up at a luxury Boston hotel with a dark past, and Luis and Donovan are forced to go undercover to find out more. Between the dangerous criminals stealing humans from the hotel and the ghosts wandering the corridors, this couple has their hands full.

They certainly don't need complications from Luis' past to throw a wrench into the works…

• Language: English
• Publisher: J. V. Speyer
• Release date: Jun 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9781732931558

J.V. Speyer

J.V. Speyer has lived in upstate New York and rural Catalonia before making the greater Boston, Massachusetts, area her permanent home. She has worked in archaeology, security, accountancy, finance, and non-profit management. She currently lives just south of Boston in a house with more animals than people. J.V. finds most of her inspiration from music. Her tastes run the gamut from traditional to industrial and back again. When not writing she can usually be found enjoying a baseball game. She’s learning to crochet so she can make blankets to fortify herself against the cold.

Book preview

Chapter One

Luis got out of the shower and shook his curls to dry them. He’d gotten up early to come in and work out, and he had to admit this hadn’t been the best decision of his career. Oh, sure, there was an argument to be made about staying in shape and getting an early start to the day and all that nonsense. His bed, with all six blankets on it, had been a cozy and warm nest. The rest of the house had been neither, and outside had been the kind of icy hell he usually only saw in science fiction movies. He thought he’d hated Boston when he moved here. He hadn’t had to deal with Boston in February yet.

Still, the Bureau office was open, and the thought of spending even one more minute without moving in some way made his skin itch. His enforced idleness after being shot had been terrible, the kind of thing that threatened to melt his brain, and he refused to put himself through it again. There was nothing else to be said, done, or thought about it.

So he’d gotten up early, braving the chilly air of his drafty apartment, and gone to the FBI’s still-new facility in Chelsea. He preferred to work out in private, but the sheet of ice that had descended over the greater Boston area meant he had to use the Bureau’s gym. What the hell, his tax dollars were paying for it just like everyone else’s. He might as well get some use out of it, and it wasn’t like anyone else was there to gawk. At least, no one had been there to gawk when he arrived.

Dominic Fontana, known with varying degrees of affection through the office as Brick, was next to show up at the gym. He hit the elliptical just as Luis finished with the treadmill and went to work out against the heavy bag. Luis tried to ignore his colleague. Fontana wasn’t his biggest fan, and there wasn’t a whole lot Luis could do about his presence either way. All he could do was pretend he wasn’t there.

Playing pretend only worked for so long. Fontana, to his credit, did his best to focus on his workout. It wasn’t long before Luis couldn’t hear the noise from the stupid elliptical anymore. After a few seconds, he felt Fontana’s presence over his shoulder.

Something bugging you, Brick? He didn’t pause in his routine but directed a kick to the upper part of the bag. His target roughly corresponded to the chest or back of an opponent.

Fontana winced and rubbed at his sternum. You’re not going to stretch before you start kicking like that? Man, I’d be singing soprano for a year.

Now Luis did pause, catching the bag as it swung back toward him. I’m pretty sure that’s not how anything works, but okay. I’ve been here for a little while, man. I’m pretty warmed up.

Ah. Fontana nodded for a second. That’s kind of impressive, actually. The stuff you were doing. I’ve studied Tae Kwon Do for a while, and I had no idea you did any kind of martial art.

Luis gave serious thought to telling Fontana to fuck off. It was early, and he wasn’t here to chat. He was here to work out. He hadn’t even had any coffee yet.

He took a deep breath. Fontana wasn’t being hostile or rude. He was being nice. Luis not having any coffee yet wasn’t an excuse. He needed to remember to be a decent human being. Later, he’d manage without thinking about it, or at least fake it, but for now he needed the reminder.

"It comes from capoeira, he said after a second. It’s a Brazilian martial art. When it was being developed, practitioners had to disguise it from Portuguese elites and slave owners. So it tends to look a lot like acrobatics or dance, and it’s supposed to."

Huh. I’ve seen a couple of videos here and there, but it’s different the way you do it. Fontana scratched his head.

Luis ducked his head and grinned. Well, competition-style Tae Kwon Do is different from the way you’d actually fight on any given day in the military or in real self-defense, am I right? I learned some of the competition stuff, but I was never looking to get medals and crap. Just a badge.

Fontana grinned then, a smile of shared experience and community. Right? The flashy stuff can be fun, but at the end of the day, it’s about getting a job done.

Luis relaxed and got back to work. Fontana hit the elliptical again, and an observer wouldn’t know they’d spoken at all. For Luis, at least, it felt like the air weighed ten times less.

Maybe things were getting better after all.

After he finished his workout, he dressed for the day. With his suit and tie on properly, he checked his phone. He found a couple of updates from the profiler unit, looking for advice and information. Alicia had sent him a picture of Nick, who’d lost a tooth over breakfast.

And Donovan had sent him a text from the stadium.

Oh, right. Last night had been that big football game. Luis had lived in the US since he’d been all of eight years old or something like that, but he’d never managed to get into American football. He got that people took it seriously. He’d written papers, and published them, on the pathology of small-town obsession with high school football. He still couldn’t make himself care about the big championship game, and his lack of enthusiasm was going over like a lead balloon here in New England.

Donovan had been working during the game yesterday. As near as Luis could understand, the game wasn’t played in New England, but when the local team was in the championship game, pretty much every state trooper had to work that night because of chowderheads.

According to news reports, chowderheads had been fairly mild last night, only flipping a handful of cars in downtown Boston and setting one dumpster on fire. There had also been eighty-seven more DUI-involved crashes than would normally be seen on a Sunday night, 302 more assault and battery cases, and 1010 more domestic assault cases.

Donovan hadn’t sent him a text from any of those places. No, he’d sent him a text from inside a locker room. It looked like a professional team’s locker room, at least as far as Luis could tell. One locker was dented and had a number painted on it. Luis assumed the number was supposed to be significant in some way.

Exciting night in Foxboro. I’m beat.

Luis smiled and texted back. Whose head hit that locker?

Suspect’s. And my shoulder, for the record. Not that I’m bitter.

I’ll kiss it better later. It was about as explicit as Luis dared to get on his work phone.

He wasn’t worried that the Bureau would find out he was gay. Another agent had once told him the best way to avoid blackmail was to be an open book, and he’d taken it to heart—not that he’d ever had much use for the closet anyway. There were limits to what he could and couldn’t say on a work phone though. A decorated counterintelligence agent had recently been forced to resign over texts someone had dug up on his work phone. Sure, the whole thing went straight to the top of the political food chain, but Luis didn’t need that kind of drama to get him into trouble at the Bureau.

He wouldn’t give his detractors any more ammunition than he had to.

He headed up to his team’s bull pen and got himself some coffee. He avoided the coffee kiosk on the ground floor. It had better coffee, but the guy who ran it was a little too friendly. He always had been, but after everything with Donovan during the fall, Luis didn’t want to risk setting him off.

He hated himself for that, just a little. It shouldn’t be on him to change his behavior, where he got his freaking coffee, because Donovan had lost his mind. At the same time, he knew Donovan was working hard to overcome his insecurities. No one knew better than Luis how much work went into that kind of fight. Didn’t he owe it to the man he loved to support him?

He scowled and sat down. Where did obligation end and catering begin?

He opened up his laptop and got to work. He had plenty of real things to worry about, without obsessing over what was right and what he owed someone.

The BAU might have decided to spread its profilers out over the country, to include dumping Luis in the Great White North, but they still had work to do. Luis had received questions from his former comrades about profiles including a rapidly escalating serial killer in the Midwest who liked to tie his victims to posts and watch them freeze to death, a guy in southern Texas who was pressing his victims to death with old-school standard weights, and a serial child predator in the Pacific Northwest.

He was just consulting on these profiles. His former colleagues would develop the final assessments, but they wanted Luis’ expert opinion. It was up to him to trawl through the evidence and tease out any little details that might indicate something about the suspect, something to make him stand out. It didn’t take years of experience and a degree to figure out that the guy in the Midwest was a sadist, but the systems he used to watch his victims suffer would tell them a lot. And only a real history buff, either Tudor history or a fan of the Salem witch trials, would go to the trouble of finding proper standard weights for the guy in Texas.

He lost himself in the evidence for several hours, barely noticing the passage of time, until his phone rang. Gomes.

He only gave half of his attention to the phone. The pattern showing up on the map was much more interesting to him, showing a vaguely circular pattern of attacks on children in the Pacific Northwest. Could the predator be that stupid—or that compulsive?

Luis? This is Jose. Your foster dad. Jose cleared his throat, a little nervously.

Luis sat up straighter right away. Jose Perez had been a lifesaver for young Luis. He’d shepherded Luis through the whole process of turning his father in, from the moment Luis reported his father until the moment he was sentenced. Then he’d agreed to foster Luis because Brown kids don’t do well in the foster system, and he deserves better.

Jose. Hey. It’s good to hear your voice. Is everything okay? Are you hurt? Are you sick? Luis glanced around the office, dropping his voice to guard his privacy.

Jose cleared his throat again. "I’m fine. Everyone’s good. Eduardo and I got married in June. It was nice. Not a big to-do, we’re too old for that. Just us and the justice of the peace.

That’s good. I’m glad you finally did that. Luis smiled and pretended he didn’t notice the guilt burning him from the inside like acid. Jose could have had a husband and love a full decade earlier had he not had to take care of Luis.

Me too. It was time. Jose took a deep breath. Listen, Luis, it’s nice to talk, but this isn’t exactly a social call.

People didn’t usually call Luis because they wanted to hear his voice. What’s wrong?

I got a letter from the Florida Department of Corrections.

Luis’ blood ran cold.

Jose was oblivious to Luis’ sudden loss of body temperature. He had to be, all the way in Miami. They wrote to let me know your father is being released from prison in two weeks. He cleared his throat yet again. Luis could understand why he was so nervous, now. Apparently, he’s been denied parole five times already, but he’s served his whole sentence and now he’s a free man.

Luis’ stomach turned. You know, I’ve had victims and family members tell me how this moment feels. Now I can tell them I understand, I guess. He covered his mouth with his hand. He didn’t know if he was trying to stop more words or hold back screams or stop himself from throwing up. He had no more connection to his own body than he did to Fontana’s right now.

I guess you can. Jose sighed. I wish there was something I could do or say, but nothing’s going to make any of this better. With any luck, he’ll just move on. Or maybe they’ll just put him straight into deportation proceedings, since he wasn’t a citizen and he was convicted of a serious felony.

Yeah, we’ll see. Luis bit his lip. If there was ever someone who could weasel out of getting deported for murder, it would be him. But hey—with any luck, he’ll be content to just stay away.

Jose didn’t ask him if he wanted to reconnect or even to get closure. It would have been a stupid question. Luis didn’t have time for stupid questions. Neither did Jose.

All right. Well, you take care, Luis. Let me know if anything comes up, okay?

I will. Tell Eduardo I said congratulations.

I will.

Jose hung up, and Luis stared at his computer without seeing any of the data on his screen.

He’d spent his whole career—and longer—in law enforcement. He knew how these things worked, but when it came to his own family, he’d reverted to a wide-eyed civilian. He honestly hadn’t believed his father would ever get out of prison. With Carlos getting out in only a couple of weeks, Luis had no idea what to do.

Donovan was ready to go home. He’d sent Luis a text showing off the massive dent in the quarterback’s locker, courtesy of the suspect he’d taken down (and his own shoulder, which still ached to remind him of his alleged heroics). He’d been out all night the night before, wearing a uniform that no longer truly fit, and then he’d had the joy and wonder of a domestic, just as he’d been going off of his mandatory championship night shift.

He didn’t mind the chase. He loved being a detective, but every once in a while, it felt good to get out and move again—no nuances, no two sides, no maybe. An abuser was running, Donovan was chasing, and it was all good. There were no shades of gray when the suspect pulled a gun on him and the other guys chasing him either. There was the threat and the response. Donovan hadn’t even thought about it. He’d taken the guy down, tackling him into a locker without hesitation.

The only room for regrets came later—now, with the paperwork finished and his joints throbbing. His bones, ligaments, and sinews barked and reminded him he wasn’t a twenty-two-year-old rookie anymore. He was in his midthirties with plenty of living in his years, thank you very much. His body would appreciate it if he would stop throwing it into suspects and immovable metal objects and pounding the pavement while he was at it.

His boss, Lt. Power, never told him to go home. He didn’t ask either. He didn’t want to push his luck. Power hadn’t said anything about what had happened with the Freetown case back in the fall, but Donovan knew he was on thin ice there. He should be on thin ice. He’d screwed up, and he knew it. Sure, there had been some kind of a weird supernatural thing going on there to exacerbate everything, but that had just been icing on the cake.

Also, explaining to Lt. Power that he’d been acting like an ass and bringing the reputation of the state police down because he’d been infested by a noncorporeal purple haze would probably go over about as well as showing up dressed like Jimi Hendrix, blackface and all.

So he kept his head down, didn’t complain about being too old to throw himself at suspects anymore, and did his damn job. As the hours ticked by and he threw more ibuprofen down his gullet than he had in the past three months, he had to wonder what was going on. Power wasn’t usually this oblivious. He knew just how long Donovan had been here last night. If he was going to punish Donovan for what had happened in the fall, wouldn’t he have done it already?

At around two o’clock, Power summoned Donovan to his office. The lines in his face seemed deeper somehow, and Donovan’s stomach dropped. This was it. He was being demoted. He was going back out on patrol, pulling people over on the Mass Pike and hoping he didn’t get run over.

He trudged into his supervisor’s office and sat gingerly in his chair. Yes, sir?

Power rolled his steely brown eyes. I’m a cop, not an alligator, Carey. I’m not going to bite you. He sighed. I wanted to send you home once the paperwork was done on that jackass in Foxboro this morning, but there was already a good chance this was going to come through. He poked at a file on his desk.

Donovan held his breath. This could be anything. It could be a new case. It could be a demotion. It could be an invitation to the White House or the Kremlin or even a transfer to California.

"The thing is, it has to involve the state police because, while the crime in question is based in Boston, it’s affecting the whole state. The FBI is involved already because of organized crime, but they need to have local involvement. So . . .

I’ll be honest, he said after a moment. I tried to pull every detective off every other case they have going to put them on this one. You’re a good detective, and I understand you had some personal issues the last time you worked with the FBI. But that doesn’t make what happened excusable.

No, sir. Donovan tried to shrink back into his seat and make himself smaller.

The funny thing was that losing his job had been the lightest possible consequence of his actions. He still had a job, and Luis had taken him back. He still crept across eggshells in both aspects of his life, holding his breath against the moment one of the shells collapsed.

Unfortunately, none of the other cases’ detectives was quite right for this case. You are literally the only one I can send. It’s an undercover job. He sighed and shook his head. Don’t screw this one up, Carey. The living are depending on you this time, not just the dead.

Donovan rose. With an endorsement as ringing as that, how could Donovan possibly fail? I won’t let you down, sir.

See that you don’t. Power’s words were tough, but he just looked sad. I think they want you in Chelsea as soon as possible.

Donovan shuffled out again and got his things. On the one hand, he liked the Chelsea office. It was always possible he wouldn’t be working with Luis’ department. He knew working with Luis doubled the likelihood that something would blow up in his face.

On the other hand, what would be the odds that Power would have just had that conversation with him if he wasn’t going to have to work with Luis?

He sighed as he drove up to Chelsea. He still had his access badge. He half expected Luis to have had it turned off as part of their big boundary-drawing process, but it still worked. Luis would probably have said something if he’d turned it off, but Donovan couldn’t feel comfortable until he’d seen the proof he hadn’t completely shot himself in the foot.

Luis might have taken him back, but it wasn’t the same. And everyone knew it.

He presented himself to the first FBI agent he recognized. It just happened to be Kevin. Thank God, Kevin knew Donovan had been influenced by an outside force, not that he cut Donovan much slack for it.

Kevin? Lt. Power sent me.

Kevin, Luis’ partner, raised his eyebrows. You’re joking.

Donovan looked at the floor. I didn’t ask for it, you know? I just—they told me to show up, and I’m here. He deserved the doubt, every bit of it. Deserving it didn’t make it hurt any less.

Kevin put his hand on Donovan’s shoulder. Hey—relax. It might not be the worst idea. I’m just surprised, you know? Did Luis tell you yet?

Tell me what? Donovan rubbed at his chest as pain shot through it.

Was Luis keeping secrets from him? He didn’t know whether he should accept that as part of regaining Luis’ trust or be worried about the implications.

I don’t think he’s actually said a word to anyone. I only know because I sit with him. I heard the conversation or, at least, his half of it. His father’s getting out of jail. His foster dad called to tell him. Kevin winced. He’s just staring at his screen. Hasn’t moved since he got the call. I think he’s collecting dust. Come on, he’s got to come into the meeting with us anyway. Maybe you can snap him out of it.

Donovan followed Kevin over to Luis’ desk. He didn’t know how Luis would respond to a bombshell like that. He didn’t think Luis had heard from his foster father once the entire time he’d known him. Jose had always sounded like a great guy, very generous, but he also hadn’t been someone Luis could turn to when he’d found himself homeless after graduation.

When you left him homeless after graduation. He wasn’t about to let himself off the hook there. He hadn’t known, but he knew now.

Just as Kevin had said, Luis was sitting at his desk like some kind of overly handsome statue, a Brazilian Galatea. Donovan didn’t think, just as he hadn’t thought last night. He just walked up to Luis, squatted down to eye height, and wrapped his arms around him.

Luis startled, and then he squeezed Donovan. Donovan? How long have you been here?

I just got here. Kevin says you’ve been like this for a little while. Donovan stood up, bones creaking.

Luis’ face darkened. I can’t believe that waste of protoplasm has that kind of power, he muttered. Then he met Donovan’s eyes and his face softened. Didn’t you pull an overnight shift? Shouldn’t you be home in bed?

Donovan smiled and put a hand on Luis’ shoulder. Kevin grinned and stepped back a little.

Maybe I should be, but my boss thought they were going to get a request for assistance, and I was the only detective who could do the job. I still don’t know what the job is, but you know—details, right? Donovan waved his other hand.

Luis knit his eyebrows together. A request for assistance? Seriously? He rolled his shoulders. Okay. I’m sure they know what they’re doing. He took Donovan’s hand and squeezed it for a second. I guess, even with the drama, we’ve got a two-for-two track record.

Kevin snorted. "Way to find your inner optimist. Come on, I was supposed to bring you into the conference room. I’m not sure if we’re supposed