Long Time Gone (Hell or High Water )

by SE Jakes

  He closed Etienne’s eyes and moved over to help Remy.

  “Remy, can you stay with us?” Prophet asked and Tom was amazed when he heard, “Tryin’. Hurts.”

  “I know, Remy, I know,” Prophet muttered as he used his own T-shirt to try to staunch the flow of blood. “This is gonna hurt, but I have to put pressure on it, okay?”

  Tom heard Remy’s soft “okay” as he dialed in an emergency with Charlie’s phone and stayed on the line until he heard the sirens in the distance.

  “Ten minutes out,” he said softly.

  Prophet’s mouth twisted, because that could be too long. In the darkness, Tom mourned his friend as Prophet held Remy practically in his lap, murmuring something only Remy could hear, because Remy was murmuring back. Prophet kept pressure against Remy’s chest in what seemed like a futile attempt to stop the bleeding. Tom could smell the metallic tang, and he was surprised it hadn’t brought out any predators.

  He turned slowly, saw several pair of eyes glittering in the dark behind them. They weren’t moving closer, but Tom pulled his weapon in case they advanced.

  “Do not even tell me there are alligators stalking us,” Prophet said quietly.

  “Okay, I won’t.”

  “Tommy’s an alligator whisperer,” Prophet told Remy. “We’ll be okay.”

  Remy made a sound between a laugh and a cough, and Tom caught the gurgle. The sirens were closer, and Tom could make out lights along the far end of the swamp.

  “My . . . dad . . .?” Remy asked softly.

  Prophet waited a beat. Then confirmed, “Yeah.”

  Tom’s chest squeezed.

  “Charlie . . . tried to kill me. Dad . . . stepped in front. I tried . . . to help him. But Charlie . . . he said . . . I didn’t deserve . . .”

  “You’re going to make it, Remy,” Prophet told him firmly over the sirens. “You hear me? You fucking deserve to live.”

  Tom swore he heard another gurgle from Remy, but then everything was drowned out by the fast-approaching sirens. Tom shined the light toward them so they didn’t get missed, or run over. Prophet stood with Remy and he started walking toward the sounds, while Tom walked backwards, watching the glittering eyes fade behind them.

  Eight hours later, Tom was sitting in the waiting area outside the ICU, forcing Prophet to eat something. Remy’d had surgery, but he hadn’t woken up yet. Remy’s mom had banned them from the room, but she couldn’t force them to leave the hallway, and Prophet refused to do so.

  When Remy’s mother had kicked them out of the room, Tom had gotten in her face until Prophet had pulled him away.

  “What the fuck, T?” Prophet had asked, and Tom stared over his shoulder at her until the door closed completely. When Tom turned back to him, he’d said, “So Etienne was right to try for custody.”

  “Yeah.” Her mother lioness act made him sick—she was covering her own ass, rather than being truly concerned about Remy.

  Unlike Prophet, who seemed beside himself with worry for Remy. So Tom did what Prophet usually did for others—he mothered the man. Blue and Mick had done the same, until they’d gotten a call from EE and had needed to leave. Tom hoped Phil hadn’t gotten word of what had gone on around here, but, as Prophet pointed out, Phil always seemed to know everything.

  The state police had Charlie in custody, and they’d taken statements from both Tom and Prophet. And they were waiting to take one from Remy too. They’d talked to the sheriff—the only other one who knew the story besides Tom—and he’d talked about what happened all those years ago, while simultaneously smoothing things over. Tom figured the truth was finally out, so he had nothing to hide. And he couldn’t be certain, but he was pretty sure the cops who talked to him had some sympathy in their eyes instead of the usual suspicion.

  He’d still need a lawyer though, because even though sympathetic, the police told Tom not to leave town.

  Two hours later, Tom put down his coffee, because he just knew Remy was awake. Finally. He stood and Prophet raised his head to stare at him. Seconds later, there were shouts coming from Remy’s ICU room. Several nurses and a doctor ran past them into the room and both men advanced toward the glass doors to get a better view.

  Remy looked to be thrashing wildly, his legs slamming the mattress, and Jesus, it looked like a seizure.

  But then Remy calmed down a bit, and a nurse came out and motioned to them.

  They didn’t stop to question anything, just rushed into the room. Remy’s mother glared angrily, but the second Remy saw them, he stopped writhing.

  “He’s all right?” Tom asked the nurse.

  “He’s lost a lot of blood, but he’s been slowly stabilizing. Woke up on his own, so I always take that as the best sign.”

  Tom watched Remy grab for Prophet’s hand, and Prophet took it and held it, half-kneeling against the bed, talking to him in a low, soothing voice.

  A minute later, Prophet turned to face the room. “He wants the rest of you out for right now.”

  “I’m not leaving him alone with you two,” Remy’s mother snapped, but Remy managed, “Leave, Mom. I need to you go.”

  “Ma’am, we do need to get him calm, so if that helps,” the doctor told her.

  She pressed her lips together firmly before saying, “I’ll give them five minutes.”

  The nurse and doctors weren’t leaving though. As they worked to check Remy’s vitals, Tom moved closer to the bed. Remy was hooked up to monitors that beeped every second. He looked pale and young . . . so fucking fragile.

  “What do I tell the police?” Remy asked him now, and Tom swore his heart broke in two.

  “No more secrets, Remy. You tell them everything you know.”

  “But won’t that . . .?”

  “Don’t you worry about me,” Tom told him. “Prophet’ll make sure we’re both okay.”

  Remy seemed satisfied with that answer, even as Prophet shot Tom a sideways glance.

  And then Remy said, “I told him to stop. That it’d happened when my dad was fourteen and that he’d never killed anyone. I told him my dad was sorry about it and that he’d suffered too. I told him my father was a good man.” His voice broke a little, but he pushed on. “Charlie told me that his dad had been a good man too, and that it was time to ruin my dad’s life, the way my dad had ruined his.” Prophet hadn’t let go of Remy’s hand at all, or maybe it was the other way around. “Will you guys stay when I talk to the police?”

  “Of course,” Prophet assured Remy, and then continued to hold his hand while he drifted back to sleep.

  “You okay?” Tom asked him.

  Prophet shook his head. “I don’t get it, Tommy. Why did Charlie have to hurt this kid.”

  It wasn’t a question, and he was grateful for that, because he didn’t have an answer, beyond his own guilt. He could see the pain in Prophet’s eyes too, and he put a hand on the man’s shoulder. “I talked to Charlie every week for years. I had no fucking clue.”

  “Sometimes, our mind blocks us from shit it’s not sure we can handle. Besides, you were the one who said that your voodoo shit didn’t work like that.” Prophet paused. “It was Charlie who put me in that marsh, right?”

  “Yes. He had my father’s sheath in his car.” He paused. “I called home. Hung up when I heard his voice.”

  “Well, at least your father didn’t try to kill me.”

  “You really know how to lighten a situation up.”

  Prophet smiled a little. “I try, T. ’S’all I can do.” And then he glanced back at Remy.

  “He’s going to be okay.”

  “Damned straight he is.” Prophet touched his hand to Tommy’s. “Stop the guilt shit, okay? None of this is your fault. I need you to believe that.”

  Tom wanted to, desperately, and so, at that moment, he did.

  They dragged themselves back to Della’s twenty-four hours later, after Remy’s condition had been upgraded to good—she welcomed them with hugs, and then she yelled at them for scaring the cra
p out of her.

  “And I’m making us a big dinner tonight—no arguments,” she said after asking about Remy.

  “None,” Tom told her.

  “Good. Roger and Dave are helping me. You two, go . . . shower.” She crinkled her nose. “How long were you in the swamp?”

  “Too fucking long,” Prophet called over his shoulder, already halfway up the stairs. Tom followed him into his old room at the far end of the hall.

  Prophet’s bags had already been here, and someone had brought Tom’s up here too and placed them next to each other. Prophet just grunted and headed to the bathroom, stripping as he walked.

  Tom grabbed clean clothes from both their bags, threw them on the bed, and went to join Prophet. Neither of them was up for anything more than getting clean. Tom couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so sore.

  “You think your wrists are okay?” he asked as he soaped Prophet’s back and neck.

  “I don’t know,” Prophet said honestly. He stared down at them like they could give him the answer. Made fists and then stretched them out. Tom was going to offer to massage them for him when a knock at the door pulled his focus.

  “I’ll get it.” Tom grabbed a towel and went to open the door. Dave was there with a tray.

  “Della figured you guys would need something to tide you over before dinner,” he said.

  “Thanks, Dave.”

  “Good to have you guys back here safely,” Dave told him, then mouthed, “I like him,” as he pointed toward the bed where Prophet had now deposited himself with his iPad.

  “Me too,” Tom told him.

  Dave shut the door behind him, and Tom slid the tray onto the bed.

  “Smells good,” Prophet said as he made some kind of hand signal.

  Tom was about to ask what the hell he was doing, but when he sat next to Prophet, he saw exactly what was happening.

  Prophet was Skyping with Mal.

  Mal the psycho. Mal, who he guessed was better than Cillian, except that was like saying a gator was safer than a rattler. He and Prophet were both signing quickly—looking intense and serious—although he knew Mal could hear. The wicked looking scar across his throat had taken away his ability to speak, probably severely damaged his vocal cords. His survival was no doubt something of a miracle, or a testament to the fact that psychos were harder to kill than most. So either Prophet was just comfortable signing with the guy, or he didn’t want Tom to know what they were talking about.

  Mal glanced in his direction then made a hand motion to Prophet that certainly didn’t seem like it came from any ASL dictionary.

  “What’s that mean?” Tom asked Prophet.

  “Just saying hi.”

  “Yeah, because he’s the friendly, pop-in-for-a-chat kind of guy,” Tom muttered, fighting the urge to give the screen the finger, then giving in and doing just that.

  Mal smirked and cut the screen off in reply.

  Prophet smiled. “Everyone has that urge with Mal.”

  “What does Phil see in him?” Tom asked and immediately felt guilty, because the guy had saved Prophet’s life when he couldn’t. “Forget it. Sorry.”

  Prophet cleared his throat. “Mal doesn’t exactly work for EE or Phil.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Prophet shrugged and actually succeeded in looking innocent. But Tom wasn’t buying it, especially when Prophet came back with, “Mal’s like, you know, extra help.”

  “Like for an after-school project?”

  “If it involved C4 and a machete, yes.”

  Tom opened his mouth and closed it. Shook his head like that might be able to stop the crazy, and still had to ask, “Phil has no idea you call him?”

  “I’m, uh, kind of forbidden to call Mal.”

  “But you still do it.”

  “Well, yeah.” Prophet looked at him like he was the crazy one. “Figured what Phil doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

  Tom tried to digest that, thought about the fact that Prophet had called Mal instead of Phil when he’d been shot. Which meant Doc was complicit in this whole Mal thing too. “I thought Phil knew everything.”

  Prophet considered that. “He hasn’t killed me over it yet.”

  “He might be biding his time.”

  “Maybe. But look, he’d kill Mal first, and that would give me time to run.”

  Suddenly the iPad screen came to life, and Mal shot Prophet the finger.

  “I knew you were still listening, you asshole!” Prophet shouted.

  Mal signed something back to him.

  “You hurt yourself using that word?” Prophet asked.

  Mal signed something again, pointed at Tom, and Prophet just shook his head.

  “What did he say about me?” Tom demanded.

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “You’re right.”

  “Told you,” Prophet said, looking quite pleased with himself. “Don’t say I never tell you anything.”

  He signed to Mal, and Mal cut the screen again. This time, so did Prophet. He pushed the iPad onto the nightstand and pulled the food toward him.

  Della had prepared some fried shrimp and other seafood. She was probably making gumbo and had bought too much, as always. They ate directly from the tray, not bothering to scoop anything into bowls. Tom asked, “Will you finally tell me what you were doing for the past four months?”

  “Can’t say.” Prophet said around a mouthful of shrimp. “Can’t remember if I’m allergic to this or not.”

  “You’re kidding me, right? Yeah, you are. You’re trying to distract me rather than tell me anything.”

  “I tell you what I can.”

  Tom put his hands out toward Prophet as if to say, I rest my case. “I can’t fucking protect you if you don’t tell me shit. If I don’t know who—what—I’m protecting you from.”

  Prophet stared, and Tom waited for the joke, the snort, the wiseass comment, because he was well aware that was he repeating Prophet’s earlier words to him, but was also aware of how stupid it was to try to protect a man who was a weapon.

  But Prophet didn’t say anything. Instead, he reached out and grabbed the front of Tom’s shirt and pulled him close. Gave him a kiss that tasted like cocktail sauce, and then pulled away, grinning.

  “That’s not getting you out of my questions.”

  “We almost died in that godforsaken bayou. That should get me out of any kind of interrogation for at least a week, if not more.”

  “You owe me.”

  “I owe you?” Prophet asked incredulously. “I saved your ass like three times. Three and a half.”

  “You can’t save someone’s life by halves,” Tom told him. “And I helped save us. And I saved you from the alligator.”

  “I could’ve just shot it the first time.” Prophet sighed. “You really want to do this now?”

  “What I don’t want is to not be able to get in touch with you until the next natural disaster.”

  “And that wasn’t all my fault, Tommy. But fine.” Prophet pushed the tray away, propped his head on the pillows, and crossed his long legs. “What do you want to know?”

  “Start anywhere.”

  “I was born in a small town—”

  “Why’d you go to work for the CIA?”

  “I had no intentions of working for the CIA, but the Agency had other plans for me.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “They saved me from a court martial.”

  “And beat the hell out of you,” Tom muttered, and then realized what he’d said. “It was the goddamned CIA in that video.” The video he’d gotten before he’d ever met Prophet had documented an interrogation Prophet had endured after he and John had been captured by Sadiq’s brother, Azar. In that video, Prophet had pinned his interrogator under the table, nearly breaking his neck in the process. But something about what Tom had watched on screen had never seemed right to him.

  “I figured you had to realize it wasn’t Azar in the video at some point,” Prophet said. />
  “It felt like CIA,” Tom admitted. “Where’s the agent from under the table now?”

  Prophet gave a small grin. “Still hating me.”

  “At least you let him go.”

  “It wasn’t an easy decision. Bastard kept me tied down for four days. Wouldn’t let a doc come see me. Wouldn’t feed me. So you treat me like an animal, don’t be surprised when I bite.”

  He spoke the words calmly, but there was tension in his neck.

  “They run through guys like toilet paper,” Tom said, and Prophet glanced at him strangely. “Sorry, just an expression Ollie—my mentor at the Bureau—used to say.”

  An odd expression crossed Prophet’s face for just a second, so briefly that Tom could easily talk himself into believing he’d imagined it. So he did. And then Prophet told him, “Well, you’re not there anymore. And he’s right.”

  “How do you know Mal?” he asked, and Prophet sighed. Shifted a little. “And if you tell me to ask him . . .”

  “He was on my team.”

  “Mal was a SEAL?”

  Prophet nodded. “We came up through BUD/S together. Training for SEALs,” he added.

  “I know that.” Tom crossed his arms.

  “What? I answered your question.”

  “Minimally,” Tom pointed out, and Prophet rolled his eyes. Rubbed his wrists.

  “I’m not giving you Mal’s history.”

  “Was Mal on your team when all this happened with John?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where are the others?”

  “You know . . . around.” Prophet waved in the air like the men would magically appear. Tom even looked over his shoulder, a slight chill running through him, but he shook it off.

  “So, still in the Navy?”

  “Nope.”

  “CIA?”

  Prophet snorted. “Definitely not. They’re a little bit . . . wanted. Well, I guess it depends on what country they’re in and what names they’re using,” he added, almost helpfully, like that made things better.

  “And that doesn’t bother any of them?”

  “We were trained for that shit. Picked for it because we’re good at it. Because we loved it. That doesn’t stop. It’s like, when we got too good, no one liked that. Well, tough shit.”