by SE Jakes
Tom didn’t say anything, just put his hand over Prophet’s and waited.
Finally, Prophet said, “I told you I didn’t think he was dead. I’ve never told anyone outside of my old team that, except for you and Cillian.” Tom couldn’t help but roll his eyes at the mention of Cillian. Prophet acknowledged it with a small shake of his head, but continued, “Right after I was released from the CIA’s custody and the base’s infirmary, I went AWOL. I basically disappeared.”
“What did you find?”
“I became the man I am today because of that,” he told Tom cryptically. “Everything I learned in those two years . . . they were things I never wanted to know. Things that made me better at my job. Things that fucked with my conscience more than I’ll ever tell anyone. I helped a lot of people along the way. Mal said it was like my walkabout, but without the peyote.” He shrugged. “Well, most of the time.”
Tom crossed his arms and watched Prophet shift like a guilty teenager until he finally protested, “I was in pain. It was all natural.”
“It explains so much. About you and Mal.”
Prophet smirked at the sarcasm Tom had made fully evident in his tone. “You’re still jealous. It’s cute.”
“Cute?”
“Decent sex?” Prophet growled back and Tom grinned. “Glad you found it funny. Gonna wipe that smirk right off your face and have a great time doing it.”
“Now you’re worried about the decent sex comment?”
“Too horny when I first saw you. Don’t worry. You’ll pay.”
Tom leaned in and bit Prophet’s neck again. “Looking forward to it.”
An hour and several more spin cycles later, Prophet’s phone beeped as Tom was making coffee. He glanced over and saw Prophet texting, his fingers moving quickly.
Prophet’s back was to him, but it wasn’t like he was trying to hide his phone. Tom put the coffee down in front of him and looked over Prophet’s shoulder.
He tensed immediately when he saw Cillian’s name and a few joking lines between the men. Still, he managed to say calmly, “Tell that stupid fucking spook to stop flirting with you.”
Prophet didn’t turn around, but his voice was serious when he said, “Didn’t realize we were exclusive.”
“If we were, you wouldn’t flirt. Not like that.” Tom wasn’t able to take the tightness out of his voice.
To his credit, Prophet put the phone down mid-text and shoved it away. “Still can’t tell if you really want me, or if you just want to make sure no one else can have me.”
“It’s more complicated than that.”
“Not, it’s not.” Prophet finally turned to look at him. “Fuck, I thought it was. Thought it should be. But it’s simple as hell. Scares the fuck out of me.”
Tom reached out and ran a finger down Prophet’s shoulder—the one with the fresh scar. “Why’s that?”
“Lot of reasons. Some you don’t know.”
Tom gave up with the calm shit and threw his hands in the air. “More secrets? About Cillian?”
“Why don’t you trust him?”
“Why do you?” Tom shot back.
“Never said I did, T. You assumed that. Sometimes, I’ve got to play a game.”
“A flirting game? Because quite honestly, it didn’t all seem to be a game.”
“It wasn’t,” Prophet admitted. “Started before I met you. And shit, T, you and I . . .”
“I know.” Because there wasn’t supposed to be any Tom and Prophet. But here they were, four months later, unable to stop fucking each other. “Ten seconds in each other’s presence, we’re ripping each other’s clothes off.”
“To be fair, you ripped more,” Prophet sniffed.
“You loved it.”
Tom was joking, but Prophet obviously wasn’t when he said, “Yeah, I did.”
Before Tom could respond, Prophet held up a hand. “And we’ll deal with that after we survive this hurricane, remember?”
“Such an amateur. Besides, we already broke that rule,” Tom reminded him as his own phone began to buzz. He glanced at his phone and winced.
“Phil?”
“Yeah.” Tom sent the call to voice mail. “Cope said he’d cover for me, but I couldn’t let him keep doing that. I texted Phil and told him where I was when I hit the city limits.”
“Don’t fuck with a Marine, T. You’ll never win.”
“You really believe that?”
“I said you’ll never win. Never said anything about me.” Prophet grinned, then sat back in his chair like he was preparing to study Tom. “So how was Eritrea? You had a lot of downtime to write.”
“I made time,” he said pointedly, before sitting across from Prophet, grabbing up the coffee mug he’d given the man and taking a sip. “I learned a lot, but it was tough to go from partnering with you to training.”
Prophet smiled, like he knew. The bastard.
Tom had tried to make the best of it. Had been determined to do so. And he’d listened to Cope. Trained. Tried not to let himself get bored, because bored equaled mistakes. He listened to his gut. Cope respected that. They were good partners in that Tom got hot easily and Cope was so fucking laid-back that nothing bothered him. In theory it should be a perfect partnership.
But Cope was content to work in Eritrea. He’d had his time in the military, and he was up for the risks if and when they came along, but he wasn’t going to ask for them. He was Phil’s go-to guy for Eritrea and typically the one who broke in the new guys, but he had no desire to run things.
“And you weren’t content?”
“I was restless.” Tom shifted in his chair recalling just how restless he’d been. “I spent more than half the time monitoring comms and split the other half between training and guarding wealthy businessmen. A glorified bodyguard for rich assholes. I felt like I was being wasted.”
“Phil thought you were thrown into the fire too fast.” Prophet took the coffee back from him and took a sip of his own. And winced at the strong chicory flavor. “What the fuck is in this coffee?”
“You’ll get used to it. And Phil forgets I was with the FBI.”
“Out for five years. And this is a completely different kind of job. Get trained—there’s no harm in it.”
“It’s not my style.”
Prophet took another cautious sip of the coffee. Winced again. “So what, if you can’t go balls to the wall, why bother?”
“Isn’t that what you do?”
“We weren’t talking about me, but yes, I took intense jobs because I wanted to.”
Tom asked the question he’d been dreading. “Were you looking for Sadiq?”
“Just enough to make sure he wasn’t going to find me,” Prophet’s conceded. “He didn’t know where I was, but I never stopped carrying the phone Gary used to contact me.”
“Fuck, Proph—Sadiq called you?”
Prophet’s jaw clenched as he nodded.
“Threats?”
“Threats. Taunts.” Prophet reluctantly pulled another phone from his pocket, scanned through it, and showed Tom a picture of himself guarding a wealthy Brazilian businessman.
Tom grabbed it and stared. “You knew and you didn’t tell me?”
“Tom—”
“No, fuck that. You didn’t tell me—didn’t want me to protect myself?”
“You were protected.”
“By who? Cillian?”
“Definitely not. And Sadiq only caught your trail once, then he lost you. He’s more interested in you to see if I’m with you. The less we’re together, the less he’s going to think that hurting you will bring me into the open.”
“So I’m the one bringing the danger to you right now—the one making you vulnerable.”
Prophet grew quiet for a moment, his hands wrapping around the coffee cup. “If he can’t catch my scent on you, he’ll leave you alone—and that’s the way I want it.”
“The way you want it. So you’ll sacrifice me—us—for Sadiq? Haven’t you lost
enough to him already?”
They had coffee. A flashlight. A SAT phone. Everything out on the table between them. Everything they needed to help them through the storm. But nothing to help them navigate this other shit.
Haven’t you lost enough to him already?
He didn’t want to think about the losses—past or future. He was done with talking, was more interested in finding out if too much sex could kill them. He was just about to recommend that, to try to distract Tommy, because Tommy was doing that thinking too much thing again and—
“Weren’t you worried about bringing Sadiq here?” Tom asked.
Too late. “Weren’t you?”
“Fuck. I wasn’t until you showed me that picture.” Tom ran his hands through his still damp hair. “I get what you’re saying about keeping separated. But I think we did pretty well when we were together. You know, after you blew me off and got yourself kidnapped, and I followed you.”
“And got yourself kidnapped,” Prophet reminded him. “We got out with Cillian’s help.”
“I would’ve thought of something,” Tom grumbled, and there was silence again.
“I believe that,” Prophet said, and Tom stared at him, almost unconsciously playing with the bracelet Prophet had tied around his wrist.
The storm had intensified. The meteorologists were predicting—with fucking glee—that the hurricane was bigger and stronger now, a Cat 3 and moving toward a Cat 4. And that goddamned bald guy from The Weather Channel was in New Orleans. Everyone knew that the guy only went to the place that was going to get hit the worst. Like a bald, douche-bag weather angel of death. Like he knew anything about survival. “How bad’s this going to get?” Prophet asked.
“You’ve really never been through a hurricane before?”
“You say that like it’s a character flaw.”
Tom shrugged. Like it was.
“I’ve been through a tornado. I think. Near a volcano,” Prophet ticked off.
Tom rolled his eyes, but Prophet could tell he was fighting a grin just the same. “You’re totally lying.”
“Why would I lie?” Prophet asked. “Sandstorm! Four of them. Maybe five. They tend to blend.”
“Inside or out?”
“I started outside, worked my way in. Sounds so dirty.”
Tom snorted.
“And thunderstorms.”
Tom shook his head. “Everyone goes through those.”
“Hail. Snow. Lots of snow.”
“In Texas?”
“I didn’t always live in Texas.”
Tom blinked, probably at the realization that he didn’t know where Prophet had grown up, but all he said was, “I guess the main EE office sees a lot of snow.”
“Yep.”
“Sore subject?”
“Been through worse.” But yeah, just hearing the company’s initials cut like a goddamned knife. He knew Phil had been calling, leaving him messages, but he refused to pick up. Deleted the voice mails before listening. Same with unread emails.
Tom was looking toward the window with an odd expression on his face, like he was waiting for something—and that put Prophet on high alert, since he recognized the signs of some of Tom’s impending voodoo shit. And sure enough, just then, the house shook with a particularly fierce gust of wind. The ground shook—hard—and it felt like the beginnings of an earthquake.
“I’ve been through an earthquake too,” Prophet snapped. “And that sounded like a water main.”
Tom nodded in agreement, and they both went to the front window and saw . . . nothing.
“I’m going to have to go out and see if we’re going to flood,” Tom said.
“No way. We’ll know if we’re going to soon enough.” He pulled a pair of night vision goggles from the box in the front hall. “Try these. It’ll take a few for your eyes to adjust.”
Tom pulled them on and after a minute he cursed. “There’s water running down the street. Blowing, actually, but it doesn’t seem to be going particularly high.”
He took the NVs off and handed them back, but he still seemed distracted, darting his gaze toward the stairs. Instead of diverting his attention with more questions, Prophet looked out the window for himself and muttered, “Glad I brought a shit ton of bottled water.”
As he took off the NVs and turned around, Tom touched his shoulder and said, “I didn’t thank you.”
“For the NVs?”
“For this. For all of this. You didn’t have to do this.”
Prophet swallowed. Was about to say, Yes, I did, when Roger came barreling down the stairs, yelling, “Prophet! It’s Della—she’s insisting I don’t tell you, but she’s got chest pains.”
“Go to her,” Prophet told him when he saw Tom’s Goddammit, I knew it expression. “I’ll call 911.” In fact, he was already dialing the SAT phone, but Tom shook his head and took the phone instead. He dialed as he told Prophet, “I’m calling Kari—she’s an old friend and a doctor. Tell her you’re calling for me and Della.”
He took off upstairs to Della, and Kari picked up after eight rings. Prophet explained what was happening, and she said, “I’m riding in the ambulance now—I can get to the top of the street. How’s it looking past that?”
“Not great. I’ll meet you and get you here.”
“I’ll call when I’m close. Give me five minutes.”
Prophet hung up. Grabbed for the high rubber boots and a pullover that would do nothing, plus a baseball hat. Used the NVs to navigate quickly up the street. The water was spilling over the sidewalk, and there were wires whipping and sparking. He cursed the entire time.
Because he didn’t mind water, but there was water and there was water.
He was buffeted by the wind but put his head down, his adrenaline rocketing at the thought of something happening to Della. He reached the crosswalk and stood there for a minute, staring up at the sky as the swelling clouds loomed like they were waiting for an opportunity to swallow the earth. A minute or so later, an ambulance pulled up, and a woman waved from the back bay. He helped her out, shouldered the heavy bags, and then told her to climb onto his back.
“If you think I’m refusing, you’ve got another thing coming!” she called over the wind and got on. She held his shoulders, and he jogged down the street and got them back into the safety of the house.
“She’s upstairs,” Prophet told Kari, took her rain gear, and walked up behind her with her bags.
Della looked pale as hell. Tom was holding the portable O2 under her nose, and she was batting him away. Kari said, “Business as usual, right?”
“Tell him to stop babying me,” Della said to him.
Prophet looked at Kari with a smile. “Good luck.”
Finally, Prophet pried Tom from the room, because he was obviously making Della more agitated, rather than less. Tom had refused to leave even when Kari had explicitly asked him to so she could examine Della, and Prophet literally had to pull him out, reminding him quietly that he’d called Kari purposely for this. Della gave him a grateful nod as he closed the door behind them.
This role was, at least, familiar to him. In control, taking care of things—of everyone.
Tom stood at the door for a while, and then he began pace back and forth, so much so that Roger muttered something about getting dizzy. When Tom glared, Prophet motioned for Dave to take Roger downstairs.
“Thanks for the show,” Roger murmured as he walked by Prophet.
“You’re lucky it’s not your heart giving you problems after that,” Dave told him, and Prophet snorted. Tom didn’t stop pacing.
After several more minutes of that, Prophet caught him and yanked him against his body, Tom’s back to his chest. Tom struggled until he realized Prophet wouldn’t let him go.
“Strong fucker,” were Tom’s exact words and then finally, the man relaxed and leaned against him, the fight draining out of him. Prophet felt like he could actually breathe. He put his arm around Tom’s chest, his palm around Tom’s biceps.
Rubbed the feathers of the dreamcatcher as if he could actually feel them.
“Your voodoo shit’s stronger when you’re here, isn’t it?” Prophet asked, his cheek against Tom’s neck.
“Always strong. You just fucking distract me too much when we’re together,” Tom shot back over his shoulder and then looked pained at what he’d said. “That’s not a bad thing.”
Prophet released his death grip, and Tom turned in his arms. He brushed Tom’s cheek with the back of his hand. “She’ll be okay.”
“Yeah, I know. But one day, she won’t be, and she’s the only one I have.”
“No, she’s not.”
Tom glanced at him. Sighed. “I want to believe that, Proph. I want to believe that you’re here for more than a sense of obligation . . . but what if there wasn’t a hurricane?”
“But there was, T.”
“I’d never take you for a believer subscribing to the everything happens for a reason theory.”
“I guess I have to remind you that you picked Cope?” Tom put a hand over his heart and rubbed. Prophet frowned. “More voodoo shit, or . . .?”
Tom glanced down at his hand and gave a small, surprised laugh. “In a way.” And then he looked back up at Prophet, hand still on his heart, like it was part pledge. “Are you going to keep running?”
He put his hand over Tom’s and said firmly, “I’m not running now, Tommy,” the way you only could when you meant it.
“But you were.”
Prophet sighed deeply and stared up at the ceiling, looking for something up there to come and save him from all this talking. Like an avalanche. “I know you think that, but you’re wrong.”
“Then what were you doing? Oh, right, you can’t tell me.”
“Dammit, not now, Tommy,” he growled, fisting his hand and hitting Tom’s lightly before moving away completely.
Instead of letting him go, Tom moved into him, rubbed his cheek against Prophet’s shoulder. “Of all people, I should fucking understand secrets, right?”
Prophet sighed and rubbed the back of Tom’s neck, wondering how he let the guy defuse him so easily. Or why. “Well, you’d think.”