by SE Jakes
Tom snorted a soft laugh—the warm huff of breath tickled Prophet’s neck. Prophet carded his hand through Tommy’s hair, keeping him close.
They stayed like that until the bedroom door opened, and even then, Tom didn’t push away from Prophet, just turned his attention to Kari with Prophet’s arm still around him. “How is she?”
“It wasn’t a heart attack,” Kari told them. “I think it was, at most, a gallbladder attack.”
“So like, really bad heartburn?” Prophet asked with relief, and she nodded.
“It’s not unusual. With the hurricane, a lot of people use it as an excuse to go off their usual diet and eat crap.”
“So she’s fine,” Tom breathed, and Prophet could feel the tension bleeding off him.
“I think she’ll outlive all of us,” Kari said. “Her pressure’s good, O2 sats are fine. She’s taking her meds regularly, and for the most part her diet’s good. I think she just had too much coffee. She was trying to stay awake in case something happened to the house.”
It was Prophet’s turn to half sigh, half curse. Tom squeezed his shoulder. “She’d stay up if she had the entire Navy at her door.”
Prophet nodded, then asked Kari, “Do you need a ride back to the hospital?”
“You know, that’d be great, but I’m not sure they’ll let you through. I can call for the ambulance and meet them back up the street.”
“I don’t really deal well with the word ‘let,’” he told her, and Tom snorted.
“I should’ve seen that coming,” she said. “All right, big shot, let’s get me back to the hospital.”
“How’re you going to stop the truck from flooding out?” Tom asked.
“I’ll drive on the sidewalks,” Prophet said.
“We’re better off just walking her back.”
“In this crap?”
“It’s not bad,” she and Tom said in unison.
“You people who live here are crazy,” he muttered, but he didn’t stop Kari from calling for the ambulance.
She told him, “I only did that because if you leave the house now, I know you’ll be roaming the streets, getting into trouble.”
“How do you know that?”
“You seem like that type,” she said with a smile. A half hour later, she was packed back into the ambulance with her gear. Prophet watched the ambulance drive slowly away.
“What time is it?” he asked.
“Just before six,” Tom said, stifling a yawn. “See, it’s almost gone.”
It was starting to get light out, even though the clouds still blocked any hope of sunrise. “It looks like the fucking apocalypse.” Prophet pointed to the flooding roads, the buckled sidewalks, the street signs and other debris that had blown along the street.
“We’re being a little dramatic, no?”
“No,” Prophet said firmly.
“Amateur,” Tom told him again, threaded his hand into Prophet’s. “What now?”
“Like I said, it’s my first hurricane. I’m hoping there aren’t aftershocks.”
“There are aftershocks, all right,” Tom muttered.
“You know I can hear you, right?”
“Counting on it,” Tom said. “Shit.”
He pointed to the porch where Roger was frantically waving. “Della’s okay,” he called. “But her friend . . .”
“It’s going to be like this all day, right?” Prophet asked Tom.
“Just think, you’ll be a hurricane pro once this is over.”
“Comforting. Really. Comforting.”
His aunt was on the porch now, her feet bare, more color in her cheeks. And she had a glass of wine in her hand that Tom promptly took from her.
“Kari said red wine’s good for my heart,” she argued as Tom dumped it over the side railing. Roger sighed as though someone were killing him at the sight of wine going to waste, but Tom had had enough surprises to last him a good long while.
“Kari said you needed to watch your diet,” Tom told her.
“Please just go to Betty’s,” Della said. “I invited her here, but she was too stubborn to leave her house.”
“Pot, meet kettle,” Prophet grumbled and ducked before Della could hit him on the back of the head.
“Aunt Della, please, go inside,” Tom implored.
“Go ahead, Della,” Prophet told her. “I’ll go check on your friend, and Tom will stay with you.”
“No, you should go together,” Della urged. “We’re fine here. You wired the house so we’re safer than Fort Knox.”
“Fort Knox actually isn’t all that safe,” Prophet informed her, and she smiled and patted his cheek, and Tom wondered how Prophet and his aunt had gotten thick as thieves in under two days.
“Please.” She looked between the men. “You know how nervous Betty gets. It’s probably just the wind, but she’s convinced that people are trying to loot her house.”
Tom looked at Prophet. “You up for this?”
“Are you?”
“Can’t sit by and do nothing. It’s two blocks down.” And there was no other way to get there but on foot, and they were both already armed. Prophet told Roger to take Della inside and keep her there.
“The SAT phone number’s on the kitchen table,” Prophet reminded them, then closed the door and followed Tom off the porch.
Tom stuck to Prophet’s back as they travelled through the flooded streets. In places, the water was up to the calves of their rubber boots, and the wind was still strong enough to make it too goddamned dangerous to be out here, and Tom hadn’t felt this alive in forever . . . not since . . .
Not since the last time he’d worked with Prophet and they’d both almost died.
Some men are born to do this shit . . . adrenaline runs through their veins instead of blood. That’s what Cope had told him. Before this, Tom would’ve thought he’d only been describing Prophet, but of course that description fit him too.
They walked over a driveway to cut through to the next block. Prophet shifted to walk behind him, watching his six, as Cope liked to say.
Tom liked the idea of Prophet watching his six. Almost turned and told him so when he saw the two young boys hanging onto a sign in the middle of the road as the water tugged at them.
“Son of a bitch,” Prophet muttered, pushed past Tom, who said, “The current’s stronger than you think.”
Prophet turned to him. “Really? You’re telling me about water?”
“I don’t know what they’re teaching in the Navy these days,” Tom said with a straight face.
“Wiseass.” Prophet took a rope out of his pocket—and duct tape, since the rope was stuck to the tape.
“You always travel with duct tape?”
Prophet looked at him like he was the idiot. “It’s all-purpose, man. You don’t carry it?”
“Ah, no.”
“You might want to start.”
“I’ll consider it,” he said, as Prophet tied a loop in the rope for a handhold and tied the other end to a fire hydrant.
“Hang on here in the middle to give me some leverage, okay? When I grab them, pull with me.”
“Got it.” Tom stood there, holding the rope, and watched Prophet walk through the flood, solid and steady, the water not pushing him at all. When he got to the boys, who were maybe ten, he told one to climb onto his back and hauled the other up under his arm. Tom kept a steady pressure on the rope as he pulled and Prophet walked the boys to safety.
He dumped them on the sidewalk. “Where the hell do you two live?”
They jumped at the command in his voice. Tom was glad they didn’t see him do the same, but he was pretty sure Prophet had.
“Right there.” One of the boys pointed.
“Go. Now.”
They ran. Prophet watched until they went inside the house and closed the door, then turned to Tom and smiled suggestively. “Later, we can play commander and good little soldier.”
Tom tried—and failed—to ignore how easily Prophet
could turn him the fuck on by shooting back, “I’m not a soldier.”
“Neither am I. That’s why it’s pretend, Tommy.”
“Bastard,” he muttered, and Prophet hooted as they got back in step and walked side by side until they got to Betty’s house. Betty was Della’s age, but she moved like she was ninety, and she cursed like the devil. Prophet told her he loved her, and she told him he was too old for her.
“Betty, give me a chance to prove myself to you.”
“Start with the shed,” Betty said. “Someone’s in there, I swear it. And I’m not making you any promises.”
“You smell smoke?” Prophet asked.
“Yeah. Maybe electrical,” Tom said. In the distance, he heard sirens, but whether they were coming this way or not, he couldn’t tell just yet.
“That way.” Prophet pointed as they walked into Betty’s semi-destroyed backyard. This neighborhood had taken some strong hits. The only way to get into the shed at this point was to climb over a downed tree and through a broken window. Tom handed Prophet his gun and his phone and shimmied up and over. Inside the dark shed, there were several cats who’d sought refuge, but no signs of anything malicious.
“It’s all good in here,” he called, more interested in checking where the smoke was coming from. He managed to step over everything that had fallen to get to the window on the other side, and saw a house on fire down the end of the next street. From his vantage point, he could also see that another tree had downed electrical wires on the corner, blocking entrance to the street because they were lying in water. He could get out through the window and walk along the stone wall of the house behind Betty’s until he was past the danger. It was the fastest way. “Definitely a fire on the next street, Proph—I’m going through,” he yelled.
“Tom, no, fucking wait for me. Come on, it’s too dangerous.”
It was—the wind had picked up again, and the rain was coming down hard—and diagonally. Tom watched the lights of fire engines flash as they rounded the corner.
Then his gaze darted to a house that was closer to Betty’s than the fire . . . Miles’s house.
Miles, who’d made his life harder than it already had been when he’d been a kid.
Miles, who’d hurt Etienne so badly.
The door to the house was open—wide open. And there was no sign of anyone at the door except . . .
He looked again and swore he saw something—someone—lying on the floor inside. For some reason, his mind flashed to Etienne, lying under the bleachers, Etienne, that night in the bayou, and even though he knew it wasn’t Etienne lying there, that it didn’t make sense for him to go, Tom found himself propelled forward anyway. He didn’t even call back to Prophet, just punched out the window, crawled through, and ran up the block, up the stairs, and into the opened door.
Before he could think, he was inside the house, kneeling next to . . .
“Miles,” he said urgently, and the man’s eyes, which were half-shuttered, struggled to focus. But then Miles grabbed for him, white foam bubbling from his lips. He was saying something, and Tom leaned in closer to try to hear even as he was reaching for a phone he didn’t have to call 911.
Shit.
His eyes swept over the mansion’s first floor, looking for something, anything, to help. It was a ghost house. What was once beautiful was now empty and broken down.
Miles wasn’t letting go. Prophet would be here any second. He yelled, “We need help in here!” hoping Proph would hear him and grab the firefighters.
Miles was still frantically holding him, clawing at him, even as he mouthed something. Finally, actual sounds came out of his mouth, and Tom listened hard until he caught something . . .
“Donny?” he asked, and Miles nodded. “Did Donny do this?”
Miles just stared at him, and then he let go. As Tom felt for a pulse, a man’s deep drawl said, “Son, I need you to step away and put your hands over your head.”
Tom didn’t have to turn toward the voice that made his stomach clench to know it was Chief of Police Lew Davis.
Son of a bitch.
He’d known Lew as both a kid dealing with a cop who hated him, and from when he’d been a deputy in the parish, and neither memory was any fucking good. He glanced briefly over his shoulder. “Lew, he needs an ambulance. He’s dying.”
It was only then Tom noticed the blood coming through Miles’s shirtsleeves—because it was on Tom’s arms now. Miles’s shirtsleeves were pulled down over his wrists and halfway over his hands. Which was . . . odd, at best. He pushed a bloodied sleeve up and saw the heavy, vertical cut and the seeping blood.
Ah, fuck, this wasn’t good.
“Stand up and step away from the body. Hands where I can see them, son.”
Something in Lew’s voice made Tom look over his shoulder again. The cop had his weapon drawn, was pointing it at Tom.
Fuck.
He stood slowly, bloody hands in the air, and moved away from Miles.
“On your knees,” Lew barked and, then, into his radio, “I need a bus, and I’ve got a murder suspect in here.” He strode over to Tom and pushed him facedown to the ground. As he yanked Tom’s arms hard behind his back and placed the cuffs tightly on his wrists, Tom said, “He’s dying.”
He looked over at Miles, who’d stopped moving.
Lew was patting him down, pulled the knife out of his pocket, and held it up to Tom’s face. “Is this your weapon?”
Tom didn’t say anything. He knew better. Knowing Lew as he did, anything he tried to offer would be willfully misinterpreted, so Lew pocketed the knife, pulled him up by his arms, and walked him out of the house. And Tom was doing just fine, following Lew’s directions . . . until Lew leaned in and whispered, “You pathetic piece of shit. Bad loque, just like your daddy always said you were. Just like your parish knows. Always figured I’d be marching you out in cuffs one day. Your daddy said he’d never been able to make a man out of you.”
Goddamned pussy . . . boy, you’d better toughen up.
Bon à rien. Bad loque.
The thin hold Tom had on his control dissipated in a haze of anger. He yanked viciously against the cuffs, against Lew’s hold . . . against his own goddamned past.
The cooperation was officially over.
After Tommy had refused to wait—the asshole—Prophet had followed the same path, through Betty’s shed and across the stone wall, and he’d been about to follow Tommy down the street and into the house he’d disappeared into, until he saw the cop come out from the small alleyway that led to the back of the house with the opened door.
When the cop raced up the steps, Prophet fought the urge to follow, especially when he heard Tom calling for help just as the cop entered the house, but something stopped him.
He was glad he’d waited, or else the two of them would be in jail, and that wouldn’t be in the least bit helpful.
As he watched from his place behind a car, Tommy’s phone began to ring.
Cope. The partner stealer.
God, he was losing his fucking mind. Had to be the hurricane.
He glanced up and saw Tom begin to fight the tight hold the cop had on him. “Not good,” he said under his breath and then, to piss Cope off, Prophet answered with, “Tom’s phone.”
“Who’s this?”
“Who’s this?” he shot back.
“Ah shit, Prophet—what the hell are you doing with Tom?”
“I’m not with Tom. I’m with his phone.”
“What the fuck? Where’s Tom?”
“Why’re you checking up on him?”
“I’m his partner,” Cope said, like he was speaking to a small, slow child. “That’s what partners do.”
“Glad you’re such a Boy Scout. Making Phil proud.”
“Yeah, I do. You, on the other hand . . .” Cope stopped.
After a few seconds of silence, Prophet goaded him, “Grow some balls and say it, Cope. Say it.”
“Nah, too easy a dig, man. You’re
already on the outs. Can’t kick a man while he’s down.”
“I’ll show you down, Cope,” he growled. “Your partner’s getting arrested.”
“What for? What’d he do?”
“Not sure.” Prophet saw blood on Tommy’s arms and hands as the cop led him away, and his heart jumped into his throat. Seconds later, he heard the sirens and an ambulance pulled up. The EMTs passed by Tommy and the sheriff and his men in favor of going inside the house.
Which meant the bleeding was happening inside the house. Prophet rubbed his forehead and just breathed.
“How can he be getting arrested if you don’t know what he did? ” Cope demanded. “Weren’t you with him?”
“No,” Prophet said through gritted teeth as Tom began resisting arrest again. Quite spectacularly too, but then, as suddenly as the struggle had started, it stopped. He thought he saw Tom glance in his direction, and he didn’t know which of them Tommy had stopped for. All that mattered was that he’d stopped.
But hell, that hold on his control was tenuous at best.
“What did you do, Prophet?” Cope demanded. “Where the fuck are you two? And why in the hell are you even with him—to get him into more trouble?”
Prophet pretended that wasn’t a punch to the gut. “I came to New Orleans to help his aunt, because he couldn’t.”
Cope blew out a breath into the phone. “I didn’t know if he’d make it. Should’ve known he’s as stubborn as you.”
“Yeah, well, I guess that’s why you two get along so well,” he said sarcastically.
“Just when I think you’re semi-human . . . forget it. So what’re you going to do?”
“Get him out of jail,” Prophet said simply, and then he hung up.
Cope was probably rushing to call Phil to report this. Then again, he’d been more than willing to cover for Tom. Tom had turned himself into Phil about coming to his aunt’s. And Prophet had no real beef with Cope. In reality, he was a good partner for Tom. Didn’t take a lot of risks, and Tom would be safe with him, if only because of the nature of the missions Phil tended to put Cope on.
But Tom’s choice still smarted, and Prophet wasn’t above admitting that. To himself.