by Josh Lanyon
He rolled my attacker off me.
“Were you hit? I had to take the shot. I was afraid he’d break your neck.” He was talking to me, but his voice sounded odd and his face was the face of a stranger as he knelt and checked the man he’d shot.
Checked to see if he was still alive. If he could be saved. Because that’s what Stephen did. Healed people. Saved lives.
Until tonight.
I tried to push up, and the pain nearly blacked me out again. He laid the rifle down, turning to me. “Don’t try to move. Just tell me where you’re hurt.”
I shook my head, reaching for him—needing to see, verify by touch, that he was really all right, really unhurt. I’d been so sure he was dead. That I’d caused his death.
He was shaking as he took me into his arms but his hands were gentle and professional as he felt me over, checking for injuries.
I croaked, “I’m all right. Are you sure you’re not…?” I saw his face then. Saw beyond the quiet control. Saw the shock and the horror. Saw the depth of heartsickness in his eyes and understood a little of what this blooding had cost him. What I had cost him. And finally, too late, I grasped how deluded I’d been, convincing myself that coming back was the way to make everything right, was the best thing for all concerned. Arrogant and stupid and selfish from start to finish. What the hell was there left to say? Sorry? Forgive me? Requiring still more from him, this time his absolution for my own sins.
“What is it?” he said, alarmed. “Mark?”
I managed to get my battered vocal cords to cooperate. “Thank you…for…”
For my life.
His face twisted. “I’d never let anyone hurt you, you know that,” he said.
I lost it. Suddenly I was sobbing. I couldn’t stop.
Quite calmly, he gathered me to him, and astonishingly what he said was, “That’s right. Let go. Let it out. That’s just what you need.”
It was the last thing on earth I needed. I shook my head but the tears wouldn’t stop.
And Stephen held me through it all, as though this were perfectly normal behavior, nothing to be ashamed of. In my whole life no one ever gave me permission to fall apart, to let go. He was the only person in the world who thought I needed taking care of, protecting.
“Is any of this blood yours?” he asked, his hand still moving carefully over my gore-soaked shirt.
I pulled back a little. Wiped my face with my hand, then my sleeve. My eyes were still leaking, but the worst was over. “Literally or metaphorically?” I got out.
“What kind of talk is that?” he muttered, pulling me against him, and he kissed my wet eyes.
It was…something inside me melted away, and I leaned against him. I said helplessly, “I thought you were dead. That I’d killed you. I shouldn’t have come back. I knew it but I —”
“Stop it.” His vehemence stopped me. “Don’t say that again.”
I nodded, wiped my face in his shirt. It was embarrassing to have fallen apart with him like that, and yet…it was liberating. Cleansing.
“Can you stand?”
I nodded tiredly, sat up. Remembered something, clutching at him with my good hand. “Buck! He’s not dead. At least he wasn’t fifteen minutes ago.”
“Okay. Let’s get you on your feet. Hold your right arm against your chest.”
I obeyed. He hooked an arm around my waist and lifted me to my feet, and I managed not to throw up or black out. He walked me over the dead terrorist, and then got me up the stairs. As we reached the kitchen I heard the sound of sirens in the distance.
That reminded me that I had phone calls to make as well. My brain just didn’t seem to be working. I wiped a hand across my wet lashes.
“Go get Buck,” I said, pulling away. “I can handle this.”
* * * * *
The mattress dipped. I came to groggily, lifting my head. In the dawn’s early light, I could see Stephen climbing into bed beside me.
“It’s just me,” he said.
Which somehow seemed like the understatement of the year. We had only finished talking with law enforcement an hour or so earlier. Stephen had finished patching up the wounded—me—and the bodies had been carted away.
“How’s Buck?” I asked. My voice was still raspy from the bruising on my throat.
I had crashed not long after the vet had arrived. Stephen said, “I think he’s going to be all right. John’s hopeful that because of his age and his general condition, he’ll pull through.”
“That’s good.”
“How are you?” He stretched out beside me, and I moved awkwardly into his arms. He hugged me, careful of my shoulder—and ribs—and leg.
“I’m all right.” And I realized I was. I studied his drawn face. “How are you?”
He met my eyes. “I’ll be all right.”
I swallowed over the blockage in my throat. “I’m sorry, Stephen. I can’t tell you how sorry.”
“I know. And you’ve got plenty to be sorry for.” His smile was faint. “But not that. You’re lying here next to me, alive, and that makes all the difference in the world.”
My eyes prickled again, and I closed them. I couldn’t remember crying since I was a little kid, but apparently I was making up for lost time.
He said gently, “If those tears are for me, they’re not necessary.”
I nodded. Took a deep breath and managed to get control. I opened my eyes again. “What changed?” I asked. “Last night you sounded pretty sure it was over.”
“Then you’re the one person I managed to convince.” He nuzzled my face, finding my mouth with his—about the only part of my body that didn’t hurt. I put my good arm around him, ignoring the pain of my ribs. He kissed me softly, mouth, nose, eyes.
He said, “I guess I finally faced the fact that by sending you away I was just hurrying up the thing I was afraid of all along.”
“I know what I want now. And I won’t leave you ever again.”
He smiled, not entirely convinced. It didn’t matter because I knew I was telling the truth, and convincing him in the days to come would be its own reward.
He asked at last, “Can you tell me now what happened to you?”
I lay quietly, watching his face. “I’ve told you most of it.” Dawn cast an uncertain watery light, like the tints in Dulac’s illustrations of the Rubaiyat. Stephen’s eyes looked gray and unreadable. I said, “I was in Kandahar with another agent.”
“Barry,” he said.
“Barry Shelton, yes.” I closed my eyes. It was easier like that. “Taliban resistance is very strong in that part of the country. Ostensibly we were there on a fact-finding mission, but we were actually there to shore up wavering support from local tribes for the US and UK efforts.”
He brushed the knuckles of his hand against the lower part of my jaw—where the skin was paler from the beard I had worn for months. “Go on.”
I opened my eyes. I found I wanted to watch his face, after all. “We were sold out. Betrayed. I don’t know by whom. Or why. It doesn’t matter. It’s nothing new. Nothing that hasn’t happened before. Nothing that won’t happen again. To someone else.”
“What happened?”
“We went to meet with a local warlord, and we were taken prisoner.” I swallowed, seeing it all again, feeling the fists, the boots, seeing the naked hate in the faces that had smiled a few minutes before. Reliving the sick helplessness, the brutal buzz of fear, knowing what was ahead for us. “They were transporting us across the border. Our allies attacked. Created enough of a diversion that we were able to get free. I managed to escape. Barry was killed. Shot.”
“And you decided you’d finally had enough.”
It was important that he understand this. I said, “I’d decided I’d had enough before I ever went. The last time we talked…when you said it was over—I decided then that if, when, I got home—I was packing it in. That if you’d still have me, I’d try and make it up to you. I know you don’t believe that.”
&n
bsp; He interrupted. “I was angry and disappointed. I thought for my own sake, I needed to move on. We’d lost two years together, and I didn’t know if you’d ever see your way to settling down. I thought you’d changed your mind—and I didn’t blame you because, frankly, about the most excitement we see around here is when Buck corners a possum.”
“I suppose it depends on your definition of excitement. Personally…”
He said, “I’m not saying it doesn’t have its moments.”
He tried to be careful with me, but as much as I craved his tenderness, I needed something more, needed to reassure myself that he was really mine, that it wasn’t just kindness or self-sacrifice. He took it with bemused, heavy-lidded calm, kissing my face, my bruised throat as I clutched him, nuzzled his hair and thrust awkwardly into his taut, aroused body.
“Easy, easy. You’re going to break something,” he murmured, his mouth finding my lips. He rubbed his cheek against mine, his beard rasping teasingly against my sensitized skin.
“Sorry.” I tried to slow myself down, catching my breath in pained little gulps. “Am I hurting you?” It felt so good sheathed deep inside his body, the dark velvet grip that owned me even as I tried to possess him. I stilled my movements with an effort.
“Not me.” His hands slid down my sides, trying to ease my position. “You.” His hands settled on my arse, stroking with feathering fingertips.
And I chuckled, surprising him, because broken bones notwithstanding, for the first time in my life I felt completely whole.
* * * * *
“Now what in the world is that?” remarked Lena, staring out the window over the sink as we had breakfast in the kitchen alcove the following day. “As if we haven’t had enough trouble around here.”
“Well, what do you know,” Stephen said grimly. “I think the mountain has decided it would be faster to visit Mohammed.”
I looked up sharply from my blueberry French toast in time to watch a helicopter rocking slowly down behind the trees to settle by the lake.
The geese, who had finally returned after the excitement of thirty-six hours earlier, took flight once more. The reeds around the lake whipped in the wind from the helicopter blades.
“Goddamn it,” I said, and Lena made a disapproving noise.
As we stared, the door to the helicopter opened and a young man hopped out. He turned to help a tall and familiar figure disembark. Even from where we sat I recognized the shock of white hair and stooped shoulders. “It’s the Old Man himself,” I said in disbelief.
Stephen swore quietly.
I rose and went out onto the porch. Stephen followed me down the hill, past the yellow crime scene tape marking off the gun battle of two nights earlier.
The old man, impeccably tailored as always, strode toward us, moving with that characteristic decisiveness and dispatch. He held an official-looking manila envelop.
“Well, Mr. Hardwicke,” he said as he reached us, his eyes taking in Stephen standing calmly at my shoulder. “It’s nice to see you looking so well. I was led to believe your health was in a far more precarious state.”
“Just seeing you again is a tonic, sir,” I said gravely.
The wind whipped his long white hair over his forehead and he raked it back impatiently, glaring at us with his pale blue eyes. Then his shoulders slumped and he sighed. “I shall miss you, Mark. I had you earmarked for bigger and better things. However, ours is an organization that does not thrive in the limelight, and events of the past few days have brought undue and unwelcome attention your way—and thus our way.”
He handed me the envelope.
Stephen snorted. “You’re giving him his pink slip?”
The Old Man said haughtily, “I think Mr. Hardwicke will agree the terms are quite generous—provided he agrees to all our terms.”
“Terms?” Stephen inquired warily, looking from me to my employer. “What are we talking about here? A no compete?”
I felt my mouth twitching into an inappropriate smile, but catching the Old Man’s glare, I bit it back. “I have to agree to keep my mouth shut.” As Stephen’s eyes narrowed, I added, “I hope I can find work teaching because I won’t be able to write that bestselling roman à clef after all.”
“You won’t starve,” the Old Man said.
“Thank you, sir,” I said, and I meant it. I didn’t care about my pension. He was letting me go without a fuss, and that was all that mattered to me now.
The Old Man nodded curtly, and started to turn away. I realized that I would probably never see him again.
I said, “Sir, would you care for some breakfast before you head back?” Stephen threw me a look of disbelief.
The Old Man fastened that pale gaze on me. “No, thank you, Mr. Hardwicke. I must be away. I merely happened to be in the neighborhood.”
“Ah.”
He turned, then paused. “There is one final thing. You may hear on the news tonight that several high ranking Taliban were killed in a missile attack in Kandahar yesterday. One of the dead has been confirmed as Mullah Arsullah.”
I stared at him. It seemed too much to hope for, but I couldn’t see any point in his lying about it.
“There’s no mistake?”
“There’s no mistake.” Just for an instant there was something I had rarely seen in his eyes—something I’d used to crave—an emotion dangerously akin to affection. “Let us hope, Mr. Hardwicke, that you don’t grow bored with what seems destined to be a very long and uneventful retirement.”
“Not much chance of that, sir.”
In silence we watched as he made his way swiftly down the hill, climbed back into the helicopter. The blades picked up speed, the helicopter lifted and whirled away. In a few moments it was a tiny speck in the distance.
Stephen’s hand rested warmly on my shoulder, and I turned to him.
“Welcome home,” he said.
I Spy Something Wicked
Josh Lanyon
Chapter One
The Glock was taped beneath my seat. I freed it, reached for the magazine in the glove compartment, and palmed it into the frame. I scanned the empty car park, the black windows of the house in front of me.
I spy with my little eye…
Nothing moved. The bronze autumn moon shone brightly through the barren branches crosshatching the bell-cast rooftops.
I turned off the radio in the dashboard console, cutting off Jack White midnote. “Dead leaves and dirty ground” was about right. I unlocked the door of the Range Rover, got out, and crossed the deserted lot, boots crunching on gravel, breath hanging in the chilly October night. There was a hint of wood smoke in the air; the nearest house was roughly eight kilometers away. A full five miles to the nearest living soul.
I walked past a large banner sign lying facedown in the frosty grass and studied the building’s facade. Two stories of battered white stone. Broken finials and dentils. Arched windows—broken on the top level, mostly boarded on the bottom. The narrow, arched front door was also boarded up. Once upon a time, this had been some founding family’s mansion; in the early part of the last century, it had operated as a funhouse. Now it looked like a haunted house. That was appropriate since I was there to meet a ghost.
I went around to the side of the long building, found a window where the boarding had been ripped away. I hoisted myself up and scrambled over the sill.
Inside, moonlight highlighted a checkerboard floor and what appeared to be broken sections of an enormous wooden slide.
According to Stephen, it was a long time, decades, since the place had operated officially, but it was still a popular place for teens to romance—and vandalize. Especially around Halloween. That was two nights away. I didn’t anticipate any interruptions.
I proceeded, soft-footed, along an accordion strip of mirrors, some broken, some not, my reflection flashing past: a man of medium height, thin, dark, nondescript. The pistol gleamed in my hand like a star.
Down a short flight of stairs, a twist and
a turn, another short flight down. I froze. At the bottom of the steps, a woman sat hunched over. She wore tattered French knickers and a blonde wig. It took a couple of seconds to realize she was covered in cobwebs. One of those mechanical mannequins. I glanced at her in passing and saw that someone had bashed her face in.
A floorboard squeaked. I spun, bringing the pistol up. Jesus. He’d arrived before me. I was getting sloppy in my old age.
The shadow raised its arms high. Hands empty.
“Christ on a crutch, Hardwicke. I don’t think much of your taste in meeting places.”
I lowered my pistol. “Malik.”
He was still bitching. “Really, old boy. Don’t see why we couldn’t have done this in more comfortable surroundings. Some place civilized where we might have a drink and a chat.”
Why? Because I thought I might have to kill him. But I wasn’t so socially inept as to say that—for all Stephen thinks, I’m lacking in the social graces. Instead, I replied, “I like my privacy.”
“So I gathered. May I put my hands down?”
“Yes. But keep them where I can see them.”
He suddenly laughed. “Christ on a crutch! You think I’m here to twep you!”
“Good luck with that.”
He was still chuckling; I didn’t find it nearly as amusing. “You think the Old Man ordered an executive action against you?”
“How should I know?”
“Just the opposite, mate. He needs your help.”
I relaxed a fraction. “Sorry. I’m no longer in the help business.”
“Private citizen, eh? How’s that going for you? I should think you’d be climbing the walls with boredom by now.”
“You don’t know me.”
“Course I do. You’re just like me. Like all of us in The Section.”
“I’m not in The Section. I’m retired. Happily retired.”
“So we heard. Decided to get married and grow roses. Think I’d prefer Oppenheim Memorial Park. You know, the lads have a bit of a wager going on how long you’ll last in the private sector. Granted, you’ve lasted four months longer than I thought you would. Tigers don’t change their spots.”