Dirty Secret by Rhys Ford

midthrust, his hand curling around his lover’s jaw and his thumb hooked into the corner of the other man’s mouth, making it harder to recognize him.
    On one hand, I wanted it to be Scarlet, just to spare her the pain of seeing her lover having sex with another man. The other part of me wanted to pretend I’d never seen it, especially if it was Scarlet. One does not need erotic images of one’s friends burnt into one’s memory. Or at least I sure the hell didn’t.
    “Shit, there’s tons of these,” Bobby said softly. “What the fuck was he doing?”
    “Something stupid,” I replied. “From what Jae told me, Dae-Hoon was running around with a pretty high-powered crowd, at least guys from influential Korean families. Shit, this blows a hole in my theory that he’s still alive. If they’d known he was taking pictures of them fucking other guys, I can’t see him surviving to talk about it.”
    “Think someone took care of him… instead of him taking a run? Yeah, it would only have to be one really pissed off guy, and that would be the end of Dae-Hoon.” He was flipping through another notebook, whistling at the pictures he found there. “What was this ? His insurance? Sex diary? Shit, I don’t even want to know what this guy is doing in this one.”
    That was saying a lot. Bobby had very few things he wouldn’t do. I was beginning to worry for Scarlet. She might have opened a can of worms there’d be no closing up. If Dae-Hoon’s disappearance was linked to the notebooks, I didn’t want Scarlet involved.
    “I’ll get Jae to help us,” I mumbled, shoving the photo back into its bag. “Why the hell couldn’t he write it in English? I don’t want Jae reading this.”
    “Better than it being in Filipino, then you’d be stuck with Scarlet translating it,” Bobby teased. “Jae’s a big boy. If he can’t handle it, he’ll tell you.”
    I made a face. “Never mind. Korean’s fine. I don’t want to go to Scarlet with this. At least not until I know what this is.”
    “Tape it up, and we’ll get this stuff back to your house.” Bobby tossed me one of the two rolls he’d come back with. “Sooner we get done here, the sooner we can get back into that damned traffic.”
    The flat dolly held all ten boxes easily, and I took up the rear as Bobby pulled it behind him. He’d left the truck’s tailgate down and spread out tarp and ropes so we could secure the load. I bent down and grabbed one of the smaller boxes. Bobby nudged my arm.
    “Dude, it’s not heavy,” I protested, nearly dropping the box. “What the fuck?”
    “Don’t look….” I don’t know why people say that. Humans’ first instinct is to turn around and look. It got me slapped on the back of the head. Bobby hissed at me, “Can’t you listen to me once in a while?”
    “If I listened to you every time you told me to do something, I’d have hooked up with that het chick you thought was a guy.”
    “She looked like a twink. Can’t blame me for that,” he grumbled. “Now, I’m telling you not to look ’cause there’s a car over there… the one with the blackout windows. It’s right past the gate. Been sitting there since we came in, pulled in after us.”
    “Yeah? So they’re getting a storage unit.” I shrugged and shoved the box onto the truck bed, then glanced at the car. It was a black sedan with windows tinted so dark they nearly matched the paint.
    “It doesn’t take that long to get a unit,” Bobby said. “They also were behind us on the freeway. I spotted it then. I was wondering what cop didn’t notice the window film’s dark enough to be illegal.”
    “Why would they be following us?” I asked softly. “No one’s interested in what we’re doing. Hell, no one even knows I’m working on Dae-Hoon’s disappearance. They’re just getting a unit. Quit being paranoid.”
    “I’m not paranoid.” He hefted one of the boxes marked “books” like it was made of air. “I’m an ex-cop. So are