Nightfall

by Jessica Meigs

  “I think right around the same time that I met you,” Zachariah said. He was only half joking when he said it, but even so, Ashton gave him a less-than-appreciative scowl. The expression disappeared as he turned away from him to continue pacing.

  “How fucked up in the head are you?” Ashton asked him in a carefully neutral voice.

  Zachariah rocked back on the edge of the bed a little, as if Ashton had taken a physical swipe at him that he’d been forced to dodge. His back let out a stab of pain at the suddenness of the movement, and he flinched, discreetly digging his fingers into the edge of the mattress. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” he asked indignantly.

  “Just that you’ve falsified a psych eval report before—don’t worry, I never reported that,” Ashton said, catching the worried look he shot him, “and that obviously means you have some issues. I need to know how deep they go.”

  “You mean, am I so messed up in the head that I’d imagine a wolf where there wasn’t one in a moment of high duress?” he asked. “That’s what you were coming back around to, wasn’t it?”

  Ashton’s cheeks flushed, and he didn’t look at Zachariah, the expression on his face hovering on the very edge of guilty. “Not exactly,” he said, but his voice was just evasive enough to suggest that that had been precisely what he’d been thinking.

  Zachariah’s eyes narrowed. “You son of a bitch,” he snarled, almost growling the words out. “Are you saying you think I’m crazy?”

  “No, I just…” Ashton shook his head. “You’ve got to look at this from my perspective, okay? I walked in and found you filthy, covered in blood, beaten to within an inch of your life, and a dead guy nearby that you were insistent had been a wolf just moments before. If you had come up on something like that, what would you have thought?”

  “Well, I sure as hell wouldn’t accuse a man of being crazy!”

  Ashton rolled his eyes, an action that only served to infuriate Zachariah, and he clutched the edge of the mattress tighter. He didn’t have the energy to maintain that kind of anger, though, and it drained out of him just as quickly as it had appeared. “Look, I’m just concerned, that’s all,” Ashton assured him, and this time, Zachariah could see the genuine worry in the man’s blue eyes. “When we get back to Washington, they’re going to question you. Hell, considering the amount of torture you’ve been through, they might even interrogate you.”

  Zachariah’s stomach swooped at the word, just as it had when he’d heard Ashton use it while he’d eavesdropped on his conversation with Henry. “Why would they interrogate me?” he asked warily, trying desperately to suppress the sick feeling in his gut.

  “Because you were held captive for approximately three weeks,” Ashton explained, “during which you could have told them any number of things about the Agency and how it operates.”

  The ball in Zachariah’s stomach felt like it dropped into the pit that had just opened up in the bottom of his gut. He lightly pressed a hand flat against his abdomen and swallowed hard. Ashton was watching him; he didn’t have to tear his gaze away from the yawning abyss he stared into to feel the man’s ice-cold eyes locked onto him like lasers.

  “Zach,” Ashton said, his voice wary and laden with even more worry than his eyes. “Look at me, Zach.”

  It took every effort Zachariah had left in his body to look up and meet Ashton’s eyes. He was surprised by what he found there: worry, for him, as if he were actually concerned for his wellbeing rather than just over whatever he might have blabbed to his captors about. The sight of the look in the man’s eyes made Zachariah’s heart clench, and before he could stop himself, he burst out with, “They’re going to kill me, aren’t they?”

  Ashton’s shoulders sagged, and he looked away from Zachariah with a disappointed expression on his face. “Aw, hell, Zach,” he said sadly. “Why couldn’t you have said anything but that?”

  Zachariah swallowed hard again and squeezed his eyes shut. His head was threatening to ache, and if it weren’t for the painkillers he’d recently injected, it probably would have already started. He wanted to massage his temples, rub away the ache in his head, but he didn’t bother; at this point, he deserved every bit of pain and ache he could still feel past the pain medications. “I’m sorry, Ash,” he managed after a long moment of silence between them. “I tried to hold out. Honestly, I did. I just…I’m not as strong as I thought I was.”

  Zachariah had begun to shake as he spoke, his limbs trembling and his muscles tremoring as his nerves got the better of him. He felt the bed dip down beside him, and then a hand squeezed his shoulder.

  “Calm down,” Ashton instructed. “Breathe in deep, and steady yourself. There’s no sense in melting down into a panic over something that can’t be undone.”

  “Well, what do you suggest I do then?” he demanded. “I fucked up, Ash! Director Hartley is going to kill me! If there’s any perfect time to have a meltdown, I think now is it!”

  “Hartley isn’t going to kill you,” Ashton said.

  “And what makes you think that?”

  “Because…” Ashton leaned closer to him and dropped his voice. “Because what Director Hartley doesn’t know, he can’t kill you over.”

  Zachariah felt his heart flutter in his chest at the other man’s words. “What exactly are you proposing?” he asked. “Lying to him?”

  “Only by omission,” Ashton said. “For all he would know, the reason why you got tortured as badly as you did was because you wouldn’t tell them anything. He doesn’t have to know otherwise.”

  The flutter in Zachariah’s chest became more pronounced as Ashton’s words registered. “Do you really think that’s going to work?” he asked, struggling to keep his hopes from going up.

  “It has to,” Ashton said. “Because if it doesn’t, we’re going to be in deep shit.”

  Fifteen

  They were, in fact, in deep shit.

  The thought coasted through Ashton’s mind the minute the taxi pulled to a stop in front of the Agency headquarters building. Zachariah was tense beside him, but he couldn’t tell if it was because of their arrival or because he was hurting so damn much. The plane ride—the first one available that had been going to D.C.—had been a long and uncomfortable trip for him, taken without painkillers because he hadn’t wanted to risk being incapacitated once they’d arrived in Washington.

  “Maybe we should just run away,” Zachariah mumbled as Ashton passed cash to the taxi driver.

  “Not a good idea, Zach,” he contradicted before opening his door. “Then we’ll definitely be in the shit.” He slid out of the car and waited for Zachariah to join him as the driver retrieved his bag from the trunk. Zachariah didn’t have any bags—something that had made it difficult at their departure point, until Ashton had used the excuse that Zachariah was his stepbrother and had been attacked while vacationing in Arizona and had lost all of his belongings. A little finesse, a flash of a badge, and that had been enough to get the other man through the TSA; that and his beaten appearance had gotten them onto the plane.

  “What can we expect?” Zachariah asked as Ashton grasped the handle of his suitcase and rolled it onto the sidewalk.

  “In there?” he asked, bobbing his head toward the building. Zachariah nodded, and Ashton gave him a one-shouldered shrug. “Honestly, I don’t know. I’ve never been on this end of the trouble before.” He caught Zachariah’s arm and gave it a squeeze. “Things will be okay,” he tried to assure him.

  Those reassurances were tossed right out the window the moment they stepped into the air-conditioned lobby of the Agency’s headquarters building. Those reassurances were tossed right out the window the moment they stepped into the air-conditioned lobby of the Agency’s headquarters building. There were six security guards waiting for them, trained agents who’d retired from the field and were armed to the teeth.

  Their leader stepped forward. It was a dark-haired man that Ashton didn’t recognize. “Both of you, put your hands where I
can see them,” he instructed. “Agent Miller, step away from your bag.”

  Zachariah gave him a slightly panicked look, but Ashton nodded for him to obey, letting go of the bag’s handle and stepping away from it as instructed. He raised his hands, palms out, showing them that he was unarmed, before placing both hands against the back of his head. Zachariah followed suit, mimicking his motions, even as he looked like he was ready to throw up.

  Four of the guards approached them, two of them coming toward Ashton and the other two splitting off in Zachariah’s direction. They were each held at gunpoint by a guard as the two remaining ones searched them for weapons, pulling free whatever they found and tossing it away from them, sliding the weaponry across the floor to the other guards. They didn’t find anything on Zachariah—he’d lost everything in Bolivia—but they found Ashton’s three knives and the small .22-caliber pistol tucked in the waistband of his jeans. The weapons were gathered up by one of the men and dumped unceremoniously into a canvas bag, then a hand closed around Ashton’s wrist and dragged it back behind him; a cold metal ring clasped around his wrist, and then a second later, another one clicked around his other wrist, and then he found himself handcuffed and shoved toward the elevators.

  Zachariah looked like he was in a fair amount of pain as the guards hustled the two of them into the elevator and surrounded them before the doors closed, but Ashton wasn’t going to speak up on the other man’s behalf. The last thing he needed to do was making Zachariah look weak in front of these men. So instead, he kept his eyes locked forward, his hands curled into fists as he subconsciously strained against the steel cuffs.

  The elevator ascended to the fifth floor before grinding to a stop, and then Ashton and Zachariah were shoved into the white lobby that fronted the handlers’ offices and conference rooms. As they were goaded across the lobby and into the fifth floor complex, several agents who were busy at the workstations just through the doors rose from their seats to better see the show over their computer monitors. Clearly, Zachariah and Ashton had become a spectacle for those who didn’t see something quite like that every day.

  The conference room they were led to had already been set up ahead of time, probably while they’d been waiting for the two men to make their grand appearances, and it was obvious Zachariah and Ashton should have been expecting the Spanish Inquisition.

  There were five chairs on the other side of the long conference table, which had been positioned to face toward the conference room’s door. Director Hartley sat in the center chair, his suit immaculately pressed, the perfect amount of white shirt cuffs emerging from the ends of his navy blue jacket. The shine of his platinum cuff links was almost bright enough to hurt Ashton’s eyes. Both of his arms rested against the chair’s armrests, relaxed, his posture almost casual. He looked like a man who was completely unconcerned over the proceedings that were about to start.

  Ashton couldn’t say the same for Brandon or Henry. Henry sat to Director Hartley’s right, and his face was a picture of worry and stress. He looked like he’d aged a decade in the short amount of time since Ashton had last seen him, and despite his neat clothing and generally professional appearance, his blond hair was rumpled from where he’d clearly been running his hands through it, and the right lens of his glasses had a large smudge on it.

  Brandon was to Hartley’s left, and he just looked pissed, his neck above his shirt collar flushed with the tale-tell signs of irritation and anger. He had a stack of papers in front of him, resting on top of an opened file folder. Other than the scowl on his face, his emotions hadn’t altered his appearance, and he still looked the professional handler that he normally was.

  Filling out the last two chairs were two agents Ashton only knew by sight and name but didn’t know anything else about: Sonya Tucker and Charles Wilson. Both were dark haired and had similar skin tones, and they were close to the same age in their late thirties. They looked so much alike that they could have been mistaken as siblings, the only difference between the two Sonya’s green eyes and Charles’s brown. Both of them looked serious, as if realizing the gravity of the situation.

  There were no chairs for Zachariah and Ashton to sit in on this side of the table.

  This situation was going to require some careful management on Ashton’s part if they expected to walk out of here.

  “Guards, leave,” Director Hartley spoke, raising one hand long enough to flick it in their direction. Ashton didn’t turn around to look as the guards exited the conference room, instead keeping his eyes on the director that sat across from him. Once the conference room’s door had closed behind the guards, Hartley shifted in his chair before beginning the proceedings.

  “Today, we’re meeting to discuss two cases that have presented themselves to us,” Hartley began. Vanessa Ioannides, Henry’s secretary, who’d thus far remained hidden in the corner of the room, stepped forward and set two files and a legal pad and pen onto the table in front of the director before backing away to return to her unobtrusive chair. Hartley didn’t make a move to pick any of it up before continuing. “The first is a matter involving Agent Ashton Miller, level ten field agent. He’s charged with unauthorized abandonment of an assignment before its completion. We’ll address this problem first before moving on to the other one.” He turned his dark gaze onto Zachariah before adding, “Ms. Ioannides, would you be so kind as to get Agent Lawrence a chair? He looks like he’s about to melt down on the rug.” He looked at Ashton, his gaze level, and added, “Agent Miller. Please. Explain.”

  Ashton didn’t bother asking for clarification. He knew exactly what Director Hartley wanted him to talk about. “I did not intentionally leave my assignment before its completion,” he began, trying to keep his voice steady and choosing his words with the utmost care. “I became…distracted.” Even as the words came out of his mouth, Ashton realized just how weak an excuse that sounded.

  “Distracted,” Director Hartley repeated, and his tone sounded amused. “Dare I ask what you were distracted by?”

  Ashton stumbled a bit before recovering. “I had just heard about Zach—I mean, Agent Lawrence’s capture,” he said. “There were agents talking about it, and I overheard.”

  “And this concerned you enough to abandon your duties?” Hartley asked.

  “What does this have to do with anything?” Sonya interrupted. Her voice was low and husky and thinly veiled with irritation. Clearly, she didn’t want to be there. “He abandoned his assignment. There are clear rules about abandoning assignments. He should be punished for it.”

  “But everyone has a reason for abandoning an assignment,” Hartley argued. “Considering the consequences of doing so, nobody does it arbitrarily. If his reasons were sound…” He trailed off meaningfully and turned his attention back onto Ashton. “Agent Miller, please, tell us why word of Agent Lawrence’s capture concerned you so much that it would prompt you to walk off an assignment.”

  “Because…” Ashton hesitated, fighting the urge to glance at the man slumped in the chair Vanessa had brought him. Despite his resistance, he still found himself cutting his eyes toward him, checking to make sure he was okay. “Because he’s my friend,” he finally said. As he spoke the words, he had a flash of memory—a very vivid memory—involving skin and hands and Zachariah’s teeth biting into his shoulder, and he stomped it down before continuing. “And I don’t know about you, Director, but I don’t leave my friends to rot in Bolivian dirt cellars.”

  Director Hartley rocked back in his chair, staring at Ashton as if he could read everything in his mind. A faint flutter of nervousness stirred up in the back of his head, and he shook it loose. “Your friend,” Hartley repeated. “We don’t generally have friends in this business, Agent Miller.”

  “I’m well aware of that, Director, but the fact of the matter is that I made one,” Ashton said, stubbornly sticking to his guns. “And people help their friends, or at least they should. And I found your decision to not help him unacceptable. It was within my
abilities to do so, so I did.”

  “Would that we all had such loyal friends,” Hartley commented. He rocked back in his chair again, studying Ashton closely, still looking like he was trying to read him. Ashton stared right back at him, keeping his expression neutral but challenging at the same time. Hartley suddenly raised an eyebrow and asked, “So, how did you get the information about where he was and what he was doing? That sort of thing is usually confidential.”

  Henry spoke up then, raising his pen as if he were in school. “Ah, that might have been my fault,” he said, sounding chagrined. “He came to me after he heard the rumors, looking for confirmation. I might have given him the information he needed to track down Agent Lawrence.”

  “Might have?” Hartley repeated.

  Henry sighed. “Fine. I gave him the folder of information we used in the handlers’ meeting about Agent Lawrence,” he said. “You know, the same meeting we had where you decided going after Agent Lawrence wasn’t worth the risk to our other agents.”

  “And believe me, it wasn’t a decision I made lightly,” Director Hartley snapped, losing his composure, much to Ashton’s surprise. “But it’s also not a decision that you have the authority to overrule or go behind my back and authorize when you have no business authorizing it. But we will discuss that after this meeting.” He picked up his pen then, jotting something down on his legal pad before tossing the pen down on top of it in a manner that suggested disgust. “Would somebody get those damn handcuffs off these two?” he added. “It looks ridiculous.” Vanessa stood and stepped out of the room, presumably going to one of the guards that had brought Ashton and Zachariah into the conference room to get a key from them. After she came back and unlocked Ashton’s cuffs, the director added, “I assume that you’ll write this assignment up.”

  “It…it wasn’t an official assignment,” Ashton stammered.