Private Dicks by Katie Allen Page B

everything .”
    Wash just smiled at him.
    “So,” Trevor said slowly, sneaking peeks at Rhodes through
his lashes. “Last night, in the hallway, that wasn’t just so I’d help you
guys?”
    “What happened in the hallway?” Wash jumped in.
    Rhodes raised an eyebrow. “Thought you didn’t care.”
    “I didn’t say I didn’t care ,” Wash protested but
Rhodes left him sputtering and turned to Trevor.
    “You have to know how gorgeous you are,” he told the blond
man, who blushed and dropped his eyes.
    “Well sure…I mean,” he amended hurriedly, “I do okay. It’s
just that I’ve never met anyone like you .”
    It was Rhodes’ turn to flush at the enormous amount of
longing that Trevor managed to cram into that one word. His eyes were
reluctantly drawn to Wash, afraid that his partner would be grinning at him
mockingly, but Wash was looking at Trevor with something like sympathy.
    “He’s something, isn’t he?” Wash said quietly. Trevor
glanced over at him in surprise and then nodded. The two men shared a look that
made Rhodes extremely uncomfortable.
    “Enough of this,” he grunted. “What do you think, Trev?
Don’t want to get you into any kind of trouble with your boss, even if he is a
slimy asshole.”
    Wash shuddered. “Christ, is he ever slimy.”
    “No, it’s okay,” Trevor said, looking back and forth between
the two men. “I’ll help. If Ness is mixed up in this whole missing-kids
thing, I don’t want to work for him anyway.”
    Toasting Trevor with his beer, Wash grinned happily. “Then
welcome aboard, sailor! You have no idea what you’ve just gotten yourself
into.”
    Smiling wryly, Trevor toasted him back. “Probably not,” he
agreed with a quick glance at Rhodes.

Chapter Five
     
    “Want to know what I’m thinking?” Wash asked. The game was
still muted. The three men had spread the files across the coffee table in
order to go over all the case details again.
    Rhodes rolled his eyes. “Last time you asked us that, you
were thinking about that cheese commercial and now that fucking annoying jingle
is stuck in all our heads, so no, I probably don’t want to know.”
    Wash ignored him. “We should have Gomez check for any other
missing kids from that area.”
    His look of pained forbearance dropped away as Rhodes considered
the idea. “All missing teenagers from that section of the city would be a long
list. How about only the kids who lived within walking distance of the youth
center?”
    Nodding, Wash jotted down a note. “Good idea. What’s walking
distance—a mile? Two?”
    “Do any kids get bussed to the center?” Trevor asked.
    “We should check that,” Wash agreed, making another note. He
glanced up and grinned at Trevor. “Look at you, P.I. rock star!”
    Trevor blushed and smiled. “I always wanted to be a cop.
I’ve always been good at putting things together in my head. You know, logical
stuff.”
    “Why didn’t you?” Rhodes asked. When Trevor gave him a
questioning look, he clarified, “Become a cop?”
    “Oh you know…” Trevor trailed off and frowned at his beer.
“Life. Stuff got in the way.”
    “Huh,” Rhodes grunted skeptically. “Although it’s not like
it’s too late or anything. What are you, twenty-five or so?”
    “Twenty-six.”
    “You’d only be three or four years older than most of the
guys at the academy. You should do it,” Rhodes urged him.
    Trevor shook his head.
    “Why not?” Rhodes pressed. “You’ll like it better than the
drunk-asshole patrol you do now.”
    “Just can’t.” His frown turning into a scowl, Trevor glared
at the other man. “Drop it, okay?”
    “What, you got a record or something?”
    With an exasperated huff, Trevor crossed his arms across his
chest. “What part of ‘drop it’ is so hard to understand?”
    Rhodes grinned, showing all his teeth. “What part of this
conversation makes you think you’re giving the orders?”
    Trevor flushed and dropped his eyes, suddenly looking