Steel Nautilus

By Erin O'Quinn

Dirk Black, a fist-and-furious undercover cop, knows nothing about lighthouses—except, in his own words, they’re put up by angels to guide seagoing idiots. So when his Detective Inspector assigns him to a crime committed at a lighthouse, the cop is forced to partner with a true expert, his lover Stephan Tavish. But his decision is one wrested from his gut-deep conviction that he—and the powers that be—are putting the man he loves in a verra dangerous position.

In his beguiling way, Stephan is stronger and smarter than any man Dirk’s ever met. But he’s a recovering paraplegic. Can he help solve a mystery in the same kind of old stone-and-masonry tower that caused his crippling injury? Or is this, as the wag said, deja vu all over again?

Deep passion meets raw danger. Here’s another glimpse of the love story, and the metamorphosis, of Dirk and Stephan.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Erin O'Quinn
• Release date: Jun 27, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215439593

Erin O'Quinn

Erin O’Quinn sprang from the high desert hills of Nevada, from a tiny town which no longer exists. A truant officer dragged her kicking and screaming to grade school, too late to attend kindergarten; and since that time her best education has come from the ground she’s walked and the people she's met.Erin has her own publishing venue, New Dawn Press. Her works cover the genres of M/M and M/F romance and also historical fantasy for all ages.

Book preview

Copyright © 2023 Erin O ’ Quinn

New Dawn Press

ISBN: 9798215439593

First electronic edition published by New Dawn Press

Published in the United States of America with international distribution.

Cover Design by Erin O’Quinn (Bonita Franks)

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author ’ s imagination or are used fictitiously; and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

WARNING: This writing contains explicit sexual descriptions and is intended for a mature audience over the age of 18.

Steel Nautilus

Lighthouse Keeper Series

Book 3

Erin O’Quinn

Year after year beheld the silent toil

That spread his lustrous coil;

Still, as the spiral grew,

He left the past year's dwelling for the new,

Stole with soft steps its shining archway through,

Built up its idle door,

Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.

From Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Chambered Nautilus

Foreword

I’ve called this series Lighthouse Keeper with tongue firmly in cheek. The lighthouse itself, until now, has been a metaphor only, since the beloved original structure was crushed sometime before the story began. The actual job of lighthouse keeper has long since gone the way of buggy whips. But keeper always was, and remains, a way to describe both millionaire Stephan Tavish and tough detective Dirk Black. In this third of a trilogy, the cop and the computer nerd come together in the real structure.

The featured lighthouse at Girdle Ness (in the Port of Aberdeen, Scotland) is new turf for me and for the narrator Dirk Black—but not for the true lighthouse keeper Stephan Tavish. For him, this and other ancient watchtowers are beacons of hope, and much more. The two hundred-year-old structure has been closed to the public for years. Part of the reason is the harbor bridge construction underway during the time the story takes place. But I suspect there are other, military/political reasons for keeping it off limits to most outsiders, so I can understand why few descriptions of the interior exist. Many of the features of Girdle Ness in this novel are based on historical references, my own educated guesswork, and the needs of my story.

Introduction

O’Quinn’s former novels Wanted: Lighthouse Keeper and Lighthouse Keeper’s Holiday introduced the principal characters whom the reader meets again in this present work.

In the first novel, Dirk Black , a former undercover detective, has left the Dundee Criminal Investigation Department under a shadow after the death of his partner. In the extreme north of Scotland’s Shetland Mainland, he meets Stephan Tavish. The victim of a killer’s greed, Stephan is a wealthy businessman who’s confined to a wheelchair but intent on recovering. He convinces Dirk to be his temporary keeper. That’s when the mystery and mystique begin for both of them…

After a year back on the CSI cop squad, Dirk is again on forced leave. But this time around, it’s because he’s earned a holiday—and his Detective Inspector is determined he’ll take it. So, the keeper flies back to Shetland for a long-overdue reunion. Except he has no wings, and no idea what kind of storm he’s getting himself into. When Dirk returns once more to the place he met Stephan, he discovers that fate, the old crow from Celtic legend, has claimed her holiday too, on the storm-battered cliffs of an isolated spit of Scottish soil that once held a lighthouse. With no beacon left to guide them, how will any of them survive the rocks in the cold North Sea?

Now for the current novel Steel Nautilus … Which, by the bye, contains a few spoilers from the earlier novels, in case you’d rather start from the beginning of the odd union of a drunk and a paraplegic.

Blurb

Dirk Black, a fist-and-furious undercover cop, knows nothing about lighthouses—except, in his own words, they’re put up by angels to guide seagoing idiots. So when his Detective Inspector assigns him to a crime committed at a lighthouse, the cop is forced to partner with a true expert, his lover Stephan Tavish. But his decision is one wrested from his gut-deep conviction that he—and the powers that be—are putting the man he loves in a verra dangerous position.

In his beguiling way, Stephan is stronger and smarter than any man Dirk’s ever met. But he’s a recovering paraplegic. Can he help solve a mystery in the same kind of old stone-and-masonry tower that caused his crippling injury? Or is this, as the wag said, deja vu all over again?

Deep passion meets raw danger. Here’s another glimpse of the love story, and the metamorphosis, of Dirk and Stephan.

Chapter 1:

The Law of Dundee

Everyone called it The Dundee Law.

To tourists, it was a popular, if windy, stopover… The top of Hill Street, Dundee’s highest point, where any cell phone camera could capture a crow’s-eye view of the panorama below—buildings belly-up, disguised as a normal, quiet city.

To those with a historical bent, The Law was monument to fallen men, a gray tower erected as a memorial to wartime soldiers. And ages before that, it was the very spot where old What’s-His-Name Dundee himself raised the standard of Jacobite protest against the wicked non-Catholic called William of Orange, Pretender to the Throne… Yada yada yada.

To geologists, it was a natural wonder—the remains of volcanic upheaval, where the soil under his brogans, even at this lofty height, was older than the dirt under Dundee’s fingernails in the sidewalk cracks far below.

To someone who knew the auld Scots tongue, and he knew a few words, law was the term for an ancient burial mound.

To Dirk Black, undercover Senior Detective for the CID, it was a fucking pain in the ass of a lonely and horny man.

Aye, this was a place of ancient and not-so recent death, maybe now a crack-pusher’s holiday house. According to his cranky superior, it was a burial mound—of heroin and dirty money and secrets. Supposedly.

Fuck.

Dirk shivered in the blast of November wind. The worn denim didnae keep an icicle from settling in his butt crack.

He’d been the CID point man for a month already—pacing, pretending, climbing, sprawling, keeping his ear to the ground and his eye on every bloody tourist who wandered past or strayed into the weeds.

His boss, Inspector Alan Ainsley, had learned from his own boss that his very site was the hub of a thriving drug culture. Dirk thought the DCI must have learned that dirty little secret from his maiden aunt who scored a reefer here from a hippie years ago. Because, to his expert eye and sense of rightness, Ainsley’s info was a pile of shite higher than Tower Hill.

Of course, he didnae stay up here 24/7. He took breaks, he tidied up a lot of loose ends from other cases. He staggered his hours of surveillance. He had time to train a new man, Brodie Shaw, in one- and two-hour spurts almost every day. He slept at home, and only at home. Because under the baleful eye of Asshole Ainsley, he was stuck in Dundee for the foreseeable future.

Bloody hell.

Fifteen days ago, he’d sat on the cracked-leather chair in front of Ainsley’s desk watching the manic fellow inhale his first mug of caffeine.

Detective Chief Inspector Grant MacDowell himself is belching his halitosis in my face, Detective. He wants this one. For the glory of the Criminal Investigation Department, for the plaque on his wall. for whatever reason. If he says jump, I nod and fall into the fucking arse-crack of any place he points to.

Which means Dirk Black falls in.

Read my lips. You. Will. Uncover that drug ring. You’re the reason I have a senior detective. For the jobs I can’t trust to anyone else.

What abut my…prior commitments?

"This job is your prior commitment."

I mean my days off. My chance to re-tool.

When this is over, you can point your tool anywhere you want, for a fucking week.

You mean—

Aye, say it. I’m mean. But I understand your, ah, your needs. So bring this one home for me, Dirk, and you can take a damn week to do anything at all, as long as it’s legal and doesn’t embarrass our new King.

And that had put an end to his feeble protests, at least to Ainsley’s face.

Dirk knew how far to go with Ainsley. The forty-ish man with his nervous tic and thinning hair was a fair enough bloke, but he was no pushover…and he hated to hear his men whine. So he’d festered alone in his flat for a few hours before calling his private angel, Stephan Tavish.

Something’s eating you, Dirk.

"How do you know it’s not some one ?"

Nobody does it better than I do, smart ass. And you won’t accept second rate.

He sighed. You’re right, my satin Stephan. The fact is, I’m on Ainsley’s shit parade.

He told Stephan about the Dundee Law assignment. I think the more I resent it, the less able I’ll be to actually get it over with and nail the bastard pushers and fly off to see you.

And if it’s a dead end?

If I have to, I’ll haul in some pimple-faced teens and their prep school cheer squad. So I can come to Shetland. Two weeks since we’ve seen each other is is too long.

Stephan was silent for a few beats.

"There are alternatives, love."

He knew without asking. Stephan was too smart and too bloody sensitive to talk about coming here to Dundee. His lover somehow knew if he barged in, he’d be showing up at a ratty dive, a gray concrete flat with no entrance ramp for the convenience of wheelchairs and leg braces and whatnot. He must also know that coming to visit an undercover detective was a huge risk—to himself, and to the cop himself.

What other alternatives did they have? None based on logic and reality. None at all.

Ainsley did promise me a week of leave time after I crack the case.

If it’s crack-able.

Aye.

Stephan’s warm voice smoothed over the chips and fractures in his heart, as always. No worries, Dirk. If being together was simple, and rote, and predictable, neither of us would like it much.

He laughed. Who in bloody hell likes meals on time, and sunrise to follow sunset, and regular sex? Not us, by cracky.

Speaking of un-regular sex, my porn vids have taught me a few new techniques…

Wait. Do your vids tell a story, Steph?

Of course.

As interesting as our own?

You mean, smartass computer nerd meets crusty cop for a night of cuss words and confessions?

Exactly. I think I’d need the compelling backstory before I fuck a stranger in front of a camera. Even for money.

You always take the back story, Mister Alpha.

Not always.

Then arrange your shapely ass so I can nuzzle it with my day-old beard.

Not in this lifetime. My ass is big, but not—

Quiet. My tongue is too close to stop now…

Their phone sex that night had been even better than usual. But the raw loneliness sat in his gut even now, two weeks later. And the sex…

He plonked his ass against the rails that kept tourists from tumbling down the embankment. The sex… Ah, even without the sex, which was always new, never routine… The man himself—steel-spined in spite of his paraplegia, working hard at wholeness. Brilliant entrepreneur, computer genius, dedicated father, caring lover…Head down, chewing the inside of his cheeks, Dirk glanced up with an embarrassed flush at the sound of an earnest young voice.

What’s next, sir?

Pretending to scan the vista below, he mumbled to his companion, Call me Dirk when others cannae hear us. Today, out here in the open, remember to call me, uh, Dad.

Sure, Dad.

He almost smiled at the tousle-haired lad he was supposed to be training. For some damn reason, Brodie Shaw reminded him of Stephan’s son Jamie. Smart, alert, a sense of ironic humor in his lively eyes.

Dirk Black was emphatically not a team-player type of cop. But his habit of working alone had cost him a partner two years ago, and damn near his own life just a few months back. So he’d volunteered to train a new man now and then. Ainsley, who’d grown used to his lone-wolf attitude, had been gobsmacked—and pleased, in spite of his signature scowl and nervous tics and wait and see response. So far, the lad seemed to be quick and adaptable.

He kept his voice low. Trying is not an option. Forget rank when we’re in the field. Even when no one’s near us. Become the illusion. We’re tourists, father and son today, remember?

Aye. Sorry. Brodie tilted his head with a pout. The whine in his voice was damn believable. "Gee, Dad, can’t we find a bite to eat? This place