Straight to the Heart
S.J. Coles
General Release Date: 23rd February 2021
Word Count: 33,482
Book Length: SHORT NOVEL
Pages: 142
Genres: CONTEMPORARY, CRIME, CRIME AND MYSTERY, EROTIC ROMANCE, GAY, GLBTQI, MEN IN UNIFORM
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Book Description
What happens when the person you can’t get out of your head also happens to be the number one suspect in your murder investigation?
Derek Benson, CEO of Benson Industries, is found dead in his office at a time when everyone in the building, including him, should have been at an important meeting about the company’s future. Conveniently for the killer, the security footage from the time of the murder has vanished.
None of this fazes FBI Agent James Solomon. James knows himself, his job and how to set aside his ongoing personal problems to get the job done, even when the investigation is in a small-town backwater like Winton.
There’s just one problem—the intriguing form of young lab technician Leo Hannah, an employee of Benson Industries and a key witness, who appears to know more than he’s admitting to.
As the investigation progresses, James finds that his previously steadfast ability to separate personal from professional becomes increasingly unreliable. Can he get his head in the game before he compromises the investigation and his future career?
Reader advisory: Ths book contains a scene of public sex, graphic corpse description, and scenes involving violence, abduction and attempted murder.
The brisk, salty air was threaded with sweet and savory smells from the restaurants, but James’ stomach was too tightly knotted to consider food. His thoughts bounced from Muntz to the gun, to the drawer and, inevitably, back to Hannah. At which point, he shook his head and berated himself.
People bundled in warm coats brushed past him, all warm smiles and intimate conversations. The second time he found himself watching the families having dinner through the restaurant windows and hearing his sister’s disappointed voice in his head, he turned his back on the front and ventured out onto a rickety wooden pier, which was blessedly dark and deserted. He took a deep breath of the night air. The smells were salt, iodine and the fresh snap of incoming spring. He looked up but the stars were completely blanketed in thick clouds. The hushed slosh and suck of the waves lapping at the pier legs was the only sound over the soft sighing of the wind in his ears.
“Agent Solomon?”
James jumped. He spun, his hand going to his gun.
Leo Hannah raised his hands. “Whoa there, cowboy. We met this morning, remember?”
“I remember,” James said, dropping his hand and swallowing his embarrassment.
“Long day, huh?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Your shoulders are up around your ears. I can feel the tension from here.”
“I’m fine,” he insisted and turned his back, repressing the memory of the vivid eyes he knew were hidden in the shadows.
“You wanna clear your head? I know a great place.”
“Mr. Hannah—”
“Jesus, man. That was my dad. Call me Leo, yeah?”
James took a breath. “Leo. I’m not your friend. I’m investigating the murder of your boss…”
His low chuckle was close to James’ left ear. He could smell peppermint and cigarettes. “I’m just offering to help, Solomon, not suck you off.” James stiffened, grateful the darkness hid the blood rushing to his face. “Come on, man. Loosen up, will you? I don’t bite. This way.” Hannah’s silhouette drifted down the pier. James waited a few heartbeats then, without examining the reasons why, followed.
About halfway back to the seafront, Hannah swung his leg over the railing. James was just about to shout a warning when the shadows shifted and he saw the frame and rungs of a ladder leading down into the dark.
“Come on,” Hannah called. “It’ll be worth scuffing your suit. I swear.”
James hesitated again. The wind tugged at his hair. The sea sighed and rolled below. Hannah called from somewhere out of sight, and James muttered and climbed over. The wood of the ladder was old and slippery. He swore to himself when he nearly lost his hold. He stepped off onto spongey sand, muttering more curses, then bent over to try to brush wood slime from his pant legs.
“Over here.”
Everything was shadow and breaths of sea air. The noises of the town were extinguished by the sound of the waves kissing the sand. James peered into the darkness and picked out the slim shape of Hannah at the waterline. He joined him, hunching his shoulders against the biting wind.
“What am I looking at exactly?”
“Out there.” Hannah nodded out to sea.
James raised his eyes just as the moon came from behind the cloud. It looked bigger than James had ever seen it, hanging over the water like a white lantern. Its light gilded the tops of the waves in silver. They seemed to stretch on forever, glinting and rolling in an endless dance of air and water.
“Amazing, huh?”
“It’s beautiful,” he agreed.
“Ain’t it just?” Hannah said almost dreamily. James glanced at him. His eyelashes and hair were threaded with silver moonlight. There was a soft smile on his mouth. His eyes were shining. “It’s comforting, right?” he said. “It’s so empty and full all at once. It just… I don’t know. Helps lend perspective, I guess.”
James tore his eyes away from Hannah’s moonlit profile to look back over the sea just as the cloud started to swallow the moon back into darkness.
“Feel better?”
“Yeah,” James replied carefully, “I guess I do. Why are you doing this?” he added after a moment of silence.
Hannah didn’t answer straight away. James tried to read his face in the dark, but the last of the moon’s light was fading as clouds blanketed the sky. “You looked lost.”
“I’m sorry?”
He shrugged. “On the bench. On the pier. You just looked like you could use someone on your side. That’s all.”
“I have a whole team of people on my side.”
Hannah was quiet again. James glanced back toward the seafront, knowing he should leave. Knowing, just as certainly, that he didn’t want to.
“You eaten?” Hannah asked.
“I—” James began.
“I know somewhere that does the best buffalo wings.”
“I can’t.”
“Sure you can,” Hannah said, the sand shushing as he turned on his heel to head back toward the ladder. “Even FBI agents have to eat.”
A dozen protests rose to his lips, but James found himself not voicing any of them. He hurried after Hannah, climbed the ladder and followed the younger man back to the glowing seafront with something disconcertingly like excitement rippling over his skin.
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S. J. Coles
S. J. Coles is a Romance writer originally from Shropshire, UK. She has been writing stories for as long as she has been able to read them. Her biggest passion is exploring narratives through character relationships.
She finds writing LGBT/paranormal romance provides many unique and fulfilling opportunities to explore many (often neglected or under-represented) aspects of human experience, expectation, emotion and sexuality.
Among her biggest influences are LGBT Romance authors K J Charles and Josh Lanyon and Vampire Chronicles author Anne Rice.
Find S. J. Coles at her website and follow her on Instagram.
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