Hidden in the Blood: A Novel of the Terribly Acronymed Detective Club (Book 5)

Chapter Fifty-Six: Al, Friday

Al watched Sunny leave the bar, wondered what the hell was going on, then saw Joanie approach the bar, equidistant from Al and Joe. He looked down at his drink so as not to be too obvious about looking. This was why he didn't like going to bars. There was a whole ritual to looking without staring, and more often than not he bungled it. It had an unsavoury connection, for him, with all the times he struck out whenever he went to bars with the Reis boys when he was younger, never working up the courage to approach women, wondering how in the world people met and formed relationships if they didn't already know each other. He thanked his lucky stars for the women who graced him with their love over the years, who approached him first; without them, he'd probably have remained a virgin.

It occurred to him that Rachel was the only woman with whom he'd taken the chance to approach first, and only then because they shared a past, and still all he'd been able to do was meet her in the middle. He still remembered it because it was such a weird situation; he'd just found out Rachel had been in conversation with an imaginary friend named Samael for a few weeks by then, and had just been in the middle of an attempt to send him back to his home world with a ritual involving a pentagram drawn in iron filings and salt. He'd been the only one to whom she'd revealed her secret, because of all her reunited friends she'd trusted him most not to think her crazy. All he could ask was if she wanted to spend the day with him after cleaning up the pentagram, just as friends so he could keep an eye on her and make sure she was okay, and then she'd stepped out of the pentagram and kissed him softly on the lips. It was probably the best first kiss story ever for him, beating Marnie's kiss at the gas station when no one was looking, even beating the time thirteen-year-old Rachel kissed him after they'd rescued her from Mr. Trybek's clutches, because this time he knew what he was doing.

He sneaked a glance at his wife, those lovely shoulders of hers exposed by her halter top, and knew that if she were a stranger at this moment, gabbing happily with her girlfriends, he'd never have had the courage to approach their table and offer her a drink. Ditto Lauren, in that tiny black dress she'd worn when entrapping the rapist Joe knocked out all those years ago; Al had to avert his eyes from her in order to concentrate on the mission, she was that distracting. Did people even buy each other drinks nowadays? Maybe, but nobody should trust a drink that didn't pass from the bartender's hand right to theirs. Too many horror stories of drinks being spiked; heck, Lauren had narrowly avoided falling victim to the aforementioned rapist, and both of them had fallen victim to another spiking. It was odd that the latter incident had caused the two of them to become closer, but that was probably due to them bonding in the search for Rachel and Joe, who'd gone missing while they'd been unconscious. 

He took another sip of his beer, which he didn't usually drink, as he didn't care for the taste, but felt he had to drink or look like an idiot occupying a stool at the bar. When he looked up again, he found Joanie still at the bar, now in conversation with one of the men from the group that had walked in earlier, the one that had drawn Sunny's attention. This must be the one who'd taken the photos of Joanie and his partner and tagged them #hotcoplangley. Al had done a quick perusal of the sites carrying pictures and videos with that hashtag after Lauren had recruited them all to this mission, which he hoped they could complete before tomorrow because they had to fly to Kelowna in the morning. When he'd seen the vile things said about Joanie, he'd been reminded of the Twitter war Rachel had been involved in when he'd first reunited with her, and felt a burning shame for his gender. Sometimes he wished he had Joe's physical courage and could just walk up to the guy and deck him, but he knew his limitations. In any case, Joanie wanted them to be eyes and ears and, in Lauren's case, a camera, so they could document anything untoward that happened.

He looked toward the women's table and saw Lauren had turned toward Joanie and the man, but then noticed the man's fellows were taking the opportunity to approach the table, so that Lauren had to turn her attention back from the bar or risk looking like she was spying. Al looked to Joe and saw his focus was solely on Joanie, so he felt comfortable leaving Joanie to him and keeping his eye on the table.