“You’re thinking unhealthy thoughts,” Zachariah said. “The kind of thoughts that make people have second ones.”
Ashton started to push himself into a sitting position. “I think I need more alcohol,” he said, intending to get up to retrieve the whiskey bottle that Zachariah had left on the table.
Zachariah pressed a hand against his chest and shoved him back down on the bed then crawled on top of him, straddling his hips with a grin on his face that said he was thinking things that would most definitely get both of them into trouble. Ashton reached up to push him off, but Zachariah grasped his wrists and pressed them back down, pinning them against the bed above his head, which brought their bodies entirely too close for comfort. “I’ll make you a deal,” Zachariah said, his voice rough as he pushed his hips down more firmly against Ashton’s. His mouth was mere inches away, and all Ashton had to do to make their mouths connect was lift his chin. But he didn’t do it yet; he wanted to hear what Zachariah had to say. “You tell me to stop, and I’ll stop. Otherwise, I’m going to keep going. And I promise you, you’re going to enjoy it. And there won’t be any guns involved this time, from either of us. Deal?”
Despite his internal misgivings—primarily over the word “fraternization” that kept floating through his head—Ashton drew in a deep breath and nodded.
The grin that split Zachariah’s face was delighted. “Oh, you are in for a serious treat,” he proclaimed before closing the distance between them.
Ashton would give him one thing: he kept his promise. There were no guns involved.
Nine
Damon paced back and forth across his office, alternately looking at Henry and his telephone. He was waiting anxiously for a call, any call, to inform him whether or not the assignment had been a success. He hadn’t heard a word from anyone, and by his calculations, the courier job should have been completed by now.
“Why haven’t they called yet?” he asked out loud, not expecting an answer from the man in the chair across from his desk. “They should have been done by now.”
“You’re worrying too much,” Henry said. “They’re fine. They’ve probably gotten held up with something unrelated.”
“And that’s supposed to make me feel better?”
“Well, yeah,” Henry said. “Ashton is in charge, correct? I have total faith in him, and I know you do, too. If he hasn’t called to check in yet, then I’m sure he has a pretty good reason for it.”
“Better be a damn good reason,” he muttered.
“It will be,” Henry said with total confidence.
Damon didn’t share the feeling. He wasn’t concerned about Ashton. Far from it. Ashton was more than capable of handling himself in just about any situation; Damon had made sure of that himself by being the one to personally recruit and train the man. No, he wasn’t worried about Ashton and his capabilities. He was worried more about Zachariah.
There was a myriad of reasons why Zachariah concerned him more than Ashton. The first of those reasons was personal and not up for discussion—with anyone. The other, though, was his worry over Zachariah’s mental stability. He knew the young man had already faked a psych profile report—Damon had seen enough reports like that to be aware of the differences between the actual report and the fake one that Zachariah had planted in his personnel files; he had his reservations about sending Zachariah on this assignment, if only because the man’s real psych profile suggested he was too impressionable and too desensitized to the rigors of the job, even though he was only at a level four. Usually, desensitization didn’t start to happen until level seven or eight, and then they’d have to pull the agent from the field and put them through therapy before they got careless and started killing people who didn’t need to be killed.
Damon wasn’t a fan of collateral damage.
His concerns primarily centered around Zachariah’s psychological profile and how it would affect Ashton. Ashton had never had to go through the desensitization therapy, because he never seemed to become desensitized to killing. He always recognized the impacts of the deaths on other people—and on himself; Damon found him waiting in his office after many of his missions, and they would have deep discussions of the effects such actions would have on his soul. He’d never met an agent that was so cognizant of the harm his job could be doing to himself, emotionally and physically and spiritually, and he thought Ashton’s worries were admirable, maybe even charming—though he wasn’t sure “charming” was the word for it. He didn’t want Ashton to lose that quality, though, that self-awareness and that concern for souls and consciences, and he was worried that Zachariah would rip that out of him at the first available opportunity.
Not intentionally, of course. Damon was sure Zachariah hadn’t been around Ashton long enough to realize that the man was nearly as pure as driven snow—at least, in comparison to other agents—and probably hadn’t realized just how much his behavior could corrupt the older man.
He mentally scoffed at himself. He was sitting here worrying about Ashton like he was a child when the man was a fully grown twenty-nine-year-old covert operative with ten years of experience and tricks up his sleeve that even Damon didn’t know. He was being ridiculous stressing over whether or not working with an agent who didn’t feel compunctions at quite the level that Damon would prefer would change Ashton. But he’d known Ashton since the minute Tobias had found him wandering, bloodied and soaking wet, in the rain near the Lincoln Memorial, lost and with no idea who he was, and he’d taken him in and cared for him and gotten him to where he was now. He was sure he couldn’t be faulted for his brain’s attempts to default to treating Ashton the same way he’d treated him when he’d been found. In a way, he’d practically raised him.
The phone rang as he stewed over this, interrupting his thoughts and bringing his full attention to the device. He lurched toward it, jabbing the speaker button to answer the call so Henry could hear it, too.
“Talk,” Damon ordered. A breath of relief nearly escaped his lungs when Ashton’s voice came from the speaker.
“Mission accomplished,” Ashton said without bothering with opening pleasantries. “We took care of the courier job without any difficulties. Everything went smoothly, and Zach handled himself well.”
Zach, Damon noted. As far as he was aware, Zachariah hated being called “Zach.” It was, in Damon’s mind, telling that the younger man would allow Ashton to call him that. “And did you check into what Henry asked you to look into for me?”
“Yes, I did,” Ashton said, and he didn’t continue.
“And?” he prompted.
“And everything is fine,” Ashton said. “He hasn’t done anything that you should be worried about.”
The lie in his voice, the heavy tinge of evasiveness, was obvious to both Damon and, apparently, Henry. They looked at each other, Henry’s eyebrows raised as he slid closer to the edge of his seat.
Damon narrowed his eyes. It was so obvious that Ashton was lying that he had to have known that Damon would know he was lying, yet he did it anyway. The question was why was he lying? Was he just covering for Zachariah? Or was there something else going on?
He set it aside for now; he could dig into it more thoroughly later. Instead, he simply said, “Good to hear. I’ll give you two the night off. You can wait until morning to come in and file your reports.”
“Thank you, sir,” Ashton said, and Damon punched the button to hang up the phone.
“He’s lying,” he declared the moment the line disconnected.
“That he is,” Henry confirmed. “Ashton is a horrible liar. He usually never bothers with it because he’s so bad at it. That’s why I never send him on the assignments that involve going undercover. He’d never be able to pull it off.”
“So why choose now to start lying when he knows he isn’t good at it?” Damon asked.
“That’s an excellent question that I’d like to know the answer to myself,” Henry said. Before he could continue, Damon’s phone rang again
. Both of them turned their attention to the appliance with a mixture of surprise and curiosity.
Damon jabbed the speaker button again. “What?” he demanded.
A woman’s accented voice came out of the speaker, and it took him a second to realize it was Vanessa Ioannides, Henry’s personal secretary. “Director Hartley, it’s Vanessa,” she said. “Are you alone?”
“About as alone as I’m going to get,” he said. He grabbed the receiver to take it off speaker and lifted it to his ear. “Talk to me.”
“You’re going to want to turn on your TV to channel eight,” she told him. “There’s something on there you need to see.”
Damon opened a desk drawer and took out his remote, aiming it at the television in the corner of the room and powering it on. He navigated to the channel in question and saw that it was one of the local news stations, and the report that greeted him was of an exploded car in downtown D.C. The vehicle in question was front and center on the screen, burning merrily in the night, lighting up the street and the crowd of bystanders. An ambulance and two fire trucks were parked nearby, and firefighters worked to put the blaze out, their hoses snaking across the wet pavement, arcs of water shooting out to rain down over the flames.
“What am I looking at?” he asked Vanessa.
“A rental car that randomly exploded in downtown D.C. about thirty minutes ago,” she explained. “I caught sight of the license plate and ran it then managed to get my hands on the electronically signed rental agreement. You’ll never believe who rented it.”
“I’m almost afraid to guess,” he admitted.
“Nathan Chambers.”
Damon didn’t need to hear any more. He hung up the phone without saying anything else and scowled, resisting the urge to throw the infernal device across the room. He propped his hands against the edge of the desk and said to Henry, “Those two boys of yours and Brandon’s have ruined all my plans with that.” He lifted a hand long enough to jab a finger at the television screen.
“They have no way of knowing that it wouldn’t kill him,” Henry protested. “They don’t know what we know.”
“Which is exactly why they shouldn’t have tried this shit,” he snapped. “This has messed up every plan we’ve made. We’re going to have to go back to the drawing board because they’ve put the entire Chambers family on high alert with this. They’re going to be watching their backs even more carefully, and it’s going to be impossible to sneak up on any of them right now.”
“Well, there’s nothing we can do about it now,” Henry said. “The only thing we can do is, as you said, go back to the drawing board and come up with a new plan, maybe formulate an undercover op. We’ll come up with something, especially if the four of us put our heads together.”
“I sure hope so, because if we can’t nail this bastard, I’m taking it out on Lawrence and Miller.”
* * *
Zachariah stirred awake to the sound of water running. He was lying on his stomach, his head half buried underneath his pillow, his arms tucked up under his head. The sheets were, as far as he could tell, covering him haphazardly, and the room was cold. He groaned and shifted, dragging his wrist over to his eye level so he could see what time it was.
It was just shy of five in the morning, which also translated as entirely too early to be out of bed. He groaned again and rolled over, flopping toward the other side of the bed, flinging an arm across it. The bed was surprisingly empty, though the space beside him was still warm. He shoved the pillow off his face, letting it topple to the floor, and blinked in the room’s darkness. It sounded like rain, and it took his brain a second to process that the sound was coming from the bathroom. Clearly, his companion didn’t think it was too early to either be out of bed or to be taking a shower.
Zachariah pushed himself to a sitting position, trying to ignore his sore muscles, and grabbed the bourbon bottle from the bedside table, taking a swig to rinse his mouth out. Then he fumbled for the TV remote and pressed the power button; a few clicks and he tuned onto one of the local news stations.
The picture that greeted him was the sight of a burning car in the middle of a city street. He turned the volume up so he could hear the television, even as he sat forward to get a better look at the screen. The voiceover was the typical pleasant tone of a female reporter that was clearly reading off of cue cards.
“Police sources tell us that the cause of the explosion has yet to be determined, but they are investigating. Only one vehicle was involved, and police are confirming three fatalities in the blast. No other people were injured in the explosion.”
The report cut away from the shot of the burning vehicle and moved on to a different report, but Zachariah had seen enough to fire his imagination. He threw the covers back, ignoring the cold air on his bare skin, and scrambled out of bed. Not bothering to pull on any clothes, he walked, naked, to the bathroom door and knocked on it.
“Ash?” he called through the door. He tried the knob, but since it was locked, he knocked again and raised his voice. “Hey, Ash!”
“Jesus, keep your pants on,” he heard Ashton say through the door, and a second later, he heard the water shut off. Just after that, the door unlocked and swung open, revealing Ashton, still wet, a towel wrapped around his waist and a mildly annoyed look on his face. He glanced up and down the full length of Zachariah and added, “Or keep them off. Whatever.” He seemed to recover from his staring and asked, “What did you need?”
“Have you heard from Angelique yet?” Zachariah demanded.
“Yeah, why do you ask?”
“Because they’re talking about an exploding car on the news, and I just thought you should know,” he said.
“Yeah, she blew him up,” Ashton said, his annoyance crossing back over his face. “Fucking ping pong ball trick. I told her to make it look like an accident, and she shoves a ping pong ball full of drain cleaner into his gas tank.”
“Huh,” he hummed. “I probably would have just shot his ass. Hard to hide a bullet hole. At least maybe they’ll blame it on a faulty something in the car.”
Ashton shook his head and turned back to grab another towel then followed Zachariah back into the bedroom, scrubbing at his hair with the second towel in an attempt to dry it. “Well, mission’s accomplished,” he said as he picked up a pair of pants, studied them to see whose they were, and tossed them to Zachariah. He caught them and simply held them, staring at Ashton with confusion. “Time to pack it up and report in,” he added.
Zachariah sighed and sat down on the edge of the bed as Ashton continued to throw clothing at him. “Well, I can honestly say this is the most fun I’ve ever had on an assignment,” he said with false cheerfulness. He didn’t know what he’d been expecting out of all of this. Ashton was supposed to have been just a fun diversion.
“Yeah, and now it’s over,” Ashton said. He handed Zachariah the rest of his clothes and pulled on his own, dressing in silence before crossing the room to his suitcase. He zipped it closed, not looking at Zachariah in the bluish light coming from the television, and added, “This?” He waved his hand between the two of them. “This never happened.”
“Understood,” Zachariah managed. He was still sitting on the edge of the bed, watching as Ashton packed away the last of his belongings—he hadn’t taken much out of his suitcase. It wouldn’t be long before the other man was ready to walk out the door.
You got emotionally invested, you idiot, he cursed himself. You actually started to like the man. Never a good idea.
“Well,” Zachariah said, finally starting to untangle his clothing with the intention of putting it on. “It was fun, but I guess you’re right. We’ve got to get moving. I, for one, have a house to buy and upgrade and some time off coming my way, and I’d like to enjoy it for once.” He finished dressing, shoved the remains of his own belongings into his suitcase—adding the bottle of leftover bourbon for good measure—and zipped it closed. “You handling check-out?” he asked.
�
��Yeah, I’ll get it,” Ashton agreed.
Zachariah finished packing, dragged his suitcase onto its wheels, and rolled it to the door. He wanted to be the first one to get out of there, if only to keep Ashton from seeing the regret in his eyes.
“Hey, Zach?” Ashton spoke up from behind him.
Zachariah paused and twisted around to look back at him. Ashton was still standing by his bed, his hand still resting on his suitcase, looking a bit uncertain. “Yeah?”
There was a long pause before Ashton managed to reply. “Thank you,” he said, “for last night.”
Well, at least it wasn’t an apology this time, he thought caustically.
“Yeah, not a problem,” he said. “Maybe I’ll see you again sometime.”
I wouldn’t count on it.
Ashton nodded and lifted his hand in farewell.
Zachariah didn’t see him again for three months.
Ten
Three Months Later
* * *
Ashton was sitting at one of the terminals on the fifth floor of the Agency headquarters, trying to write up his after-action report that would explain how the assignment he’d just completed had nearly turned into an epic clusterfuck, but to say he was nowhere near successful was an understatement. He’d managed to eke out about five sentences on the narrative portion of his report, but nothing else was coming to him. His brain—as it had been after every assignment he’d had since the one he’d worked with Zachariah Lawrence—was stuck on past events, ones that he hadn’t been able to dislodge over the prior three months.
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