Long Time Gone (Hell or High Water )

by SE Jakes

  “—a truck?”

  Prophet shrugged. “Little bit. Sure there’s no ice around here?”

  “Nothing but a bottle of whiskey.”

  “That’ll do.”

  “This place fucks you up,” Prophet told him, several hours into the heat of the day as they sweltered together in the old shack.

  Tom had taken more drugs and Prophet had finished half of the bottle of Jack Daniels Green Label and he wasn’t so much drunk as he was . . . loose. More Prophet-like, if anything.

  And somehow, Tom knew the guy could still fuck up an army.

  “No shit.” Tom held up the half-empty bottle of Jack Green. “Should I just forgive and forget?”

  “No,” Prophet said flatly.

  “Never come back then, right? If I’d just let you handle everything . . .”

  Prophet turned back to him, his granite eyes darkening. “I wanted you to go. I wanted to handle it for you, but I was wrong. I know better than anyone that anytime you have to run from something, you’re headed down a dangerous path.”

  “I guess ghosts are inevitable.”

  Prophet nodded. “It’s how we deal with them that makes the difference.”

  “Speaking from experience?”

  “Yes.”

  “You should write that down and make it a book. You can call it Shit Prophet Says.”

  Prophet gave him a drunken smile. “You have to get rid of this curse mentality, T. It’s going to eat you up. Part of it already has. Whenever you believe the shit someone says about you, for better or worse, you become it. It gives them power. Forgive, forget, stay away—they’re all parts of the same coin. Stop believing that curse shit and you won’t have to do any of that stuff.”

  “Easy to say.”

  “No, not so easy. Hard as hell to do, too. I’m still working on it.”

  That admission—more than anything else Prophet could’ve said—broke the spell for Tom, broke the hold this damned place had on him. Because Prophet was the strongest man he knew, and for him to say that he still had to work on things— “Wait? You think you’re cursed too?”

  “Sometimes, T, I think we all are,” Prophet said seriously.

  He leaned in and kissed Prophet, then murmured, “Taste like whiskey,” against the man’s mouth. “I like whiskey.”

  “Good,” Prophet told him. “I hope old man Jensen likes it too. Remy said to return the truck with a bottle in the front seat and run like hell.”

  Tom gave a short laugh and kept his forehead pressed to Prophet’s. “I feel terrible for Remy . . .”

  Prophet sighed and pulled back. “What about his mom? Sounds like there’s some tension between her and Etienne.”

  “That’s an understatement. They both wanted a kid so badly . . . Etienne was willing to do anything.”

  “Apparently, anything worked long enough to conceive the kid.”

  “Yeah, but the open marriage didn’t. She’s bitter. Figured Etienne would come around.”

  “Really?”

  Tom shrugged. “Sometimes people only see what they want to.”

  “I hated sending Remy home to her,” Prophet said. “But it’s probably safest.”

  “Physically, maybe,” Tom muttered.

  “The faster we find Etienne, the faster he can fight his custody battle.”

  “Okay, yes.” Tom pushed everything else out of his mind in order to do what would ultimately be the best thing for Etienne’s son. “I’m tired of regrets. That’s why I’ve been trying to work on things that won’t let me have any.”

  “How’s that working for you?” Prophet asked.

  “Fine, until I came here.” Tom held the bottle up like he was making a toast. “What now?”

  “We wait until we figure out the smart thing to do.”

  “I think we can agree that we bypassed smart the second we kissed.”

  Prophet stared at him. “I think it’s the smartest thing you ever did.”

  “I swear to God, just when I think I’ve got you pegged . . .” He ran a hand over Prophet’s bruised cheek lightly. “Let’s concentrate on how we’re going to get out of this place.”

  Prophet held up his phone. “I called in an extraction team.”

  Ah, so that’s what Prophet had been doing with his phone while Tom was busy making sure he wasn’t like, dying or anything. “A little dramatic, no?”

  “No,” Prophet said calmly.

  “Okay, so extraction team or . . . Cillian?”

  “Dude, calm down. No. Not him.”

  “Can’t be someone from EE because you’re not there anymore.”

  Prophet stared at him. “Out of curiosity, when did you first hear about that?”

  “Word traveled fast—so like, day one of Eritrea. Everyone was surprised.”

  “That it took Phil so long?”

  “What the hell, Proph? No, that he’d do that to you. Lot of people like you, and they’re pissed on your behalf.”

  Prophet muttered, “Kiss asses,” but he was obviously pleased.

  “Don’t know why they like you,” Tom told him, but he was smiling.

  “Me neither,” Prophet agreed heartily. He stretched. “These sleeping bags aren’t bad. If it wasn’t hot as hell, this place would be perfect.”

  “Guess I could turn the air on.”

  “There’s been air in this thing the whole time?”

  “You deserved a little torture.”

  “Maybe I even like it,” Prophet said. He rolled over onto Tom and bit his earlobe while twisting one of the barbell piercings in his nipples.

  Through the shudder, he forced himself to ask, “So, where were you the past four months?” before Prophet distracted him thoroughly.

  “Liberating Croatia,” Prophet told him seriously.

  “How the hell am I ever supposed to win an argument with you?”

  “You’re not. Get used to it. But that was a nice try, when I’m obviously drugged and drunk with a concussion.”

  He threw his hands in the air. “You’re buzzed.”

  “Can we just focus on clearing your name? Because while I’m pretty clear, you’re the very definition of screwed.” But Prophet was smiling as he said it. “Speaking of, aren’t you gonna call Phil? You know, since you didn’t check in with Cope after your arrest.”

  Tom shook his head. “You should call Phil.”

  “He doesn’t want to hear from me. Trust me on that.”

  “What’d you do?”

  “Why automatically assume it’s me?” Prophet asked, and Tom stared at him. “Okay, a lot of the time it is me, but trust me . . . ah, hell, maybe neither of us should check in with your current employer.”

  “Better that way,” Tom agreed.

  “Right. So we’re just fugitives with zero backup, although your aunt wields a pretty big shotgun,” Prophet offered, and Tom gave a short laugh. “If my first plan falls through, we need a backup plan.”

  “I plan on letting you fuck me,” he told Prophet. “How’s that for a plan?”

  “I like it. Never fucked in a cemetery,” Prophet mused. “Well, there was that one time . . .”

  Tom shut him up with a kiss, which was basically the way he’d wanted it. Prophet grabbed at Tommy as heat of an entirely different kind flooded his body. Then again, Tommy had always gone straight to his dick.

  “For the love of all that’s good and holy, do you think you two can keep it in your fucking pants long enough to be rescued?”

  Tom jumped away from Prophet, who merely glanced lazily up at the big, dark-haired man framed by the doorway. “Why you gotta ruin my game, man?”

  Mick looked between Prophet and Tom.

  “Hey, Mick,” Tom said. “I’m Tom.”

  “Kinda figured that one out for myself,” Mick said as he walked inside.

  A shorter, younger guy followed and punched Mick in the arm. “Hey, Proph! Hey, Tom, I’m Blue. Got a boat to get you out of here.”

  “A boat?” Prophet asked
.

  “Like one of those touring the bayou things with the big motor and the high seats,” Blue said.

  “What the hell kind of extraction plan’s this shit?”

  “One that involves a drunken asshole and his partner,” Mick deadpanned.

  “And why the fuck are you two dressed like hillbillies?” Prophet continued.

  “We’re blending,” Mick said.

  “They think we’re shrimpers,” Blue added, then motioned to Mick as if the man wasn’t watching him. “I certainly didn’t want to dress this way, but I think he’s enjoying it.”

  “You know I can hear you, yes? He knows I can hear him, right?” Mick directed the last part at Tom, who ignored him to advise Blue, “Lose the flannel.”

  “Told you,” Blue said, shrugging his shirt off. They all stared at the tattoos running down his arms. “Right.” He pulled the shirt back up, grumbling about sweating to death, and Mick rolled his eyes and muttered something about never being given any goddamned credit.

  “Can we just get the fuck out of here?” Prophet growled.

  “Give him more to drink,” Mick told Tom, and he was serious. Tom handed Prophet the bottle. He took it, slung an arm over Tom’s shoulder, and Blue opened the door.

  “We’re not going to get far,” Mick said as they started to walk through the cemetery toward the swamp. “There are roadblocks everywhere and police boats up and down the bayou. We can get you to a new spot, but not out of the bayou.”

  “Will there be running water?” Prophet asked as he stumbled against Blue.

  “God, I hope so,” Blue muttered. “You’re kind of a princess, aren’t you?”

  “Remember what I told you last week at my apartment? Beat. You,” Prophet reminded Blue in a low voice.

  Tom had to give them credit. The airboat Mick used had a tented area where he and Prophet remained hidden while they motored slowly through the bayou. At one point, he even heard Blue talking to some of the other fishermen, introducing themselves.

  “We came up from the Everglades. We’re looking for work . . .”

  “What the hell’s he doing?” Prophet asked.

  “A pretty good job of getting noticed for the right reasons,” Tom whispered back. “These people can spot a stranger from ten miles out. Better not give them any reason to alert the sheriff.”

  Prophet grunted and took another drink. “Why can’t we move faster?”

  It went on like that for an hour, until the sun went down, the boat pulled into a slip, and Mick opened the tent, motioning for them to come out. Together, they moved quickly into a house on stilts hidden behind a mass of cypress trees and moss.

  “Where’s this?” Prophet asked.

  “Two parishes over. More of a vacation spot,” Tom told him.

  Prophet shook his head, looked around in disbelief. “Who the fuck would want to vacation here? People keep trying to kill people.”

  “Don’t let him drink anymore,” Mick told Tom.

  “There was nothing else to do,” Prophet defended himself as he walked through the front door, then fell onto the couch. “Going to sleep this off.”

  “You do that,” Mick said, then stared at Tom. “You all right?”

  “Better than yesterday, yeah.”

  “Blue and I are going to head back to your parish to try to figure this shit out. Call if you get into trouble.”

  “Will do.”

  Blue dropped a large bag in front of Tom. “Supplies.”

  “Thanks.”

  Mick put a hand on his shoulder. “And Tom? Even drunk, Prophet can do more damage than anyone can imagine. Just keep that in mind.”

  Tom would add it to the stack of things to keep, because everything was on his mind, so much so that, once Mick and Blue left, he had no idea what to do with himself and his nervous energy. He checked Prophet’s phones and his own—no calls from Della or Etienne. Or Remy.

  Jesus, E, where the fuck are you?

  He and Prophet had avoided talking a lot about Etienne being missing, because they both knew what it meant. Based on what had happened to Miles and Donny . . . fuck, the chances of Etienne being found alive were slim.

  The past was never really dead—Tom was living proof—but there was a difference between being haunted by it and facing judgment for it. And because he couldn’t stop his mind from racing, he at least tried to stop his body, because he was about to collapse from exhaustion.

  He ended up squashing himself into the corner of the couch, hoping that being close to Prophet physically would calm him.

  It didn’t. Too overtired to sleep, he squirmed and shifted so much he woke the guy. He looked down as Prophet maneuvered himself so his head was in Tom’s lap, and he was staring up at Tom.

  “Are they gone?” Prophet asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I know they said they were going, but are they really gone?”

  Tom slid his hand gingerly through Prophet’s hair. The knot on the side of his head had gone down a little, but he could tell by the way Prophet moved that he was in pain. “I heard the boat.”

  “So we’re like, stuck here?”

  “Looks that way.”

  Prophet sighed. “I can’t believe you came back here to work.”

  “Figured I could make a difference.”

  Prophet’s hand came up to stroke his cheek. “Did you?”

  He’d come back to stop the sheriff’s son from continuing to run that same survival shit he’d barely lived through—and to stop him from torturing any young kids who were different. And he’d succeeded in the former, but the latter . . . that had been an everyday challenge, and not just with the sheriff. The community at large hadn’t changed much. Maybe it had always been a losing battle, but at least Tom could look back with pride on some of the kids he’d mentored here, kids he’d made sure to help get out of the bayou and off to college—or at least to a city where they could meet like-minded people. “Yeah,” he said now. “I did. But I wanted to do more. The sheriff who tortured me . . . his son Rob and I worked as deputies under a different sheriff. When he decided to retire, I didn’t want to think about what would happen if Rob took office.”

  “And that’s why you ran against him?”

  “Three years running, after I saw that I couldn’t change anything being his right-hand man.”

  Prophet raised a brow. “Robin to his Batman.”

  Tom snorted. “He wishes. He hated me as much as his old man had.”

  “How the hell did you keep your job?”

  Ah, don’t go there, Proph. “I did what I had to do in order to help the kids around here.”

  “Five years, T,” Prophet said gently. “You stayed here five years and lived with this shit. Like you were punishing yourself.”

  When he didn’t answer that, Prophet stared at him quizzically, and then sighed. “Shit, T, I didn’t mean . . .”

  But Prophet had hit the bull’s-eye with his original question, because what had happened in the bayou was exactly the reason—the only reason—Tom had been allowed into the sheriff’s department in the first place. “Look, the old sheriff made me keep a secret. The guy’s son knew it—the only other person who did. It was like we were blackmailing each other. He knew I couldn’t say anything, no matter how miserable he tried to make me. But he also knew he couldn’t ever fire me. I figured my happiness shouldn’t matter, as long as I was able to make a difference in some kid’s life.”

  “I can’t fault you for that.” Prophet ran a hand through his hair, his expression tight. He didn’t say anything else for a long time.

  “Did you make a difference?” Tom asked.

  Prophet must have known exactly what he was asking, because he said, “I hope so. Hard to tell when you can’t fix everything.”

  “Maybe we should stop that shit.”

  “Yeah, you first, Voodoo.”

  “I like that better than Cajun.”

  “I’ll note that for when I order the T-shirts.” Prophet�
�s smile was small, but it was there, and fuck, the man was beautiful when he smiled. “Did Phil send you to the shrink?”

  “You know you wouldn’t call Sarah that to her face, right?” Prophet shrugged, a half grin on his face and Tom conceded, “Yeah, I saw her a few times a week for a couple of weeks before I left for Eritrea. She’s pretty cool. You ever see her screensaver?”

  “Two guys in leather? I sent it to her,” Prophet said.

  “Fucking figures.”

  Prophet narrowed his eyes. “So, you’re into leather?” Tom cursed, and Prophet continued, “Did Sarah tell you what you needed to hear?”

  “I guess so. You and EE make me feel like I can do anything.” Prophet gave him a slightly drunken grin, but the blush told Tom everything. He decided to push his luck a little. “The jobs you took . . .”

  “Yeah?” Prophet changed from smiling to wary at warp speed.

  “More dangerous than EE?”

  “Ah, Jesus, T. Compliment me and then use it to get stuff out of me? That’s . . . a good technique.” He shook his head. “Okay, fine. Regarding the danger—I’m used to flying without a net.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Means I took black-ops jobs in between EE jobs all the time,” Prophet told him. “Some Phil found out about and some he didn’t.”

  “You need to be spanked.”

  Prophet paused to consider this, asked, “Will you be wearing leather while you do it?” and then his stomach growled. Loudly.

  “Way to break the mood. Wait here.”

  “I wasn’t going to get up and cook,” Prophet called after him. “Check for leather in the bag.”

  Tom shook his head as he rifled through the supplies Blue brought . . . and dammit all to hell if he didn’t find a pair of leather cuffs in there. He pocketed them, pulled out a couple of sodas and sandwiches, and brought them back to the couch. Prophet sat up next to him, started eating.

  “Are you going back to EE?” Tom asked.

  “No,” Prophet said sharply.

  “I know Phil regrets letting you leave.”

  “Yeah? Did he tell you that or put it in the company newsletter?”

  “EE has a newsletter?”

  Prophet glanced at him sideways. “Just a Christmas one. Make sure to get him the picture of you in your Santa boxers.”