by SE Jakes
He’d protected the team—and John at one point—but he was always suspicious, waiting for John to fuck them over. And while Mal never said anything to Prophet outright, Mal was protective as hell over Prophet.
The reverse was also true.
Now, back in his own apartment, he sank onto the couch, closed his eyes and found himself picturing the night before the Hal mission, the night he and John had the worst fight they’d ever had—and they’d had some bad ones. But before that, he recalled hanging out with Mal, who’d been sitting on the trunk of the Hummer, staring up at the stars, rifle around his neck without the safety engaged. Mal was big on the whole “my finger is the safety” argument.
Mal had never come with a safety.
He was also deeply unhappy with the idea of Prophet and John riding in the front car, since Prophet was point and therefore needed his team protecting him. But the mission specified that provision . . .
“All set?” Mal asked, Boston accent rough and strong. Prophet could listen to Mal tell stories for hours, mainly because of the voice.
But tonight, neither was in the mood for a chat. When Prophet didn’t answer, Mal simply said, “Yeah, me neither.”
Prophet’s discontent had grown all day with a vengeance, one he couldn’t afford to ignore. It was uncomfortable, a nudge he couldn’t shake. He’d avoided Hal but doing so for much longer was putting off the inevitable.
He’d avoided John for longer.
Mal seemed content with Prophet’s inability to face what he had to do, simply lay back on the hood with Prophet and watched the sky. Simple, quiet moments, the kind Prophet would reflect back on and miss desperately.
He wanted to tell Mal his fears, but being point meant brave face and no fear and don’t fuck with your teams’ psyche.
But of course, Mal knew. Prophet never asked him and Mal never said but Prophet knew.
They both knew their beast was marching toward Bethlehem.
Inevitable.
Indestructible.
Prophet finally got up and walked back toward his tent, looking over his shoulder only once.
Mal was still there, silent, immovable force that he was. In that moment, Prophet realized that Mal would always be there and it gave him the most comfort of anything he’d ever had in his life. He silently promised Mal he’d give the man the same thing.
Hal was in his own tent, now guarded by Ren and King. Prophet was up next on guard duty, but he had to talk with John before that.
John was lying on one of the cots in their tent, eyes closed but not asleep. He didn’t open his eyes, not until Prophet told him, “I think we need to change the route.”
“Why? Because Mal wants to?” John sneered.
Prophet stared at him calmly. John had been fucking with him the entire trip, prodding him, pissed that Prophet was going to Mal more and more. “It’s a gut feeling. You used to trust my gut.”
“‘Used to’ being the key words. What? Do you call Mal every time you need to take a piss to make sure it’s okay?” John continued. “Mal’s not running point and you and I have our mission. It can’t change. We need to make sure we get from point A to point B. If he doesn’t understand that—”
“I understand everything. It’s not Mal who’s questioning it, John. It’s me.”
John was up, on his feet, in Prophet’s face. Prophet slammed against his chest to move him away, and that’s when the fight started in earnest.
Later, Prophet will recall this conversation when Lansing threatens him, accusing him of changing the route in order to sell Hal to the highest bidder and killing John in the process. Now, all he could do was take the brunt of John’s brutal punch—a mean right hook. But he didn’t go down, just wiped his lip with the back of his hand and stared down at the blood on his knuckle.
He spat blood at John’s feet, the too-familiar metallic taste stoking his anger. “I’ll take you off the mission.”
“Yeah, you try that.”
If Prophet followed through, they’d be a man short, and for this mission wrapped in a mission—with implications Mal and the others didn’t know about—that wouldn’t be the way to go. LT would be pissed. Either way, John was going to compromise everything.
“Stop being an asshole,” Prophet told him. “Or I’ll tell LT you were set to sabotage the entire mission.”
“Like he’ll listen to you over me? Hell, his own brother got fucked up on a mission and LT retired him quick.”
As if Prophet needed reminding. Thinking of Dean now, recovering in a hospital bed in some private hospital—the best LT’s money could buy—made him sick to his stomach. Because Dean was now blind, and since Prophet knew that was his fate as well, the coincidence was eerie. Chilling.
Fuck. He should just scrap this entire mission, cite intuition, which had never been wrong, but this was a military op and a CIA one as well, and neither institution wanted to be told what to do. Neither paid him for his decision-making skills, just his ability to follow orders and follow them well.
And it was the nature of those orders—their rigidity—that was why Prophet was starting to bristle. “Not another word,” he told John.
John nodded as if acquiescing, and then he came at Prophet, fast and furious, slamming his body into Prophet’s, knocking them both to the ground. Then his hand was between Prophet’s legs, the other on Prophet’s throat. Prophet didn’t resist, mainly because he didn’t want the others coming in and seeing this—it would ruin what was left of team camaraderie, and the night before one of their most important missions wasn’t the time for that to erode completely. So he let John unzip his BDUs and told himself this wasn’t anything they hadn’t done a hundred times before this.
“I was always there for you. Always,” John told him, his hand pumping Prophet’s dick and no, he didn’t want to come but John knew him intimately. His voice had softened and he bit down lightly on Prophet’s shoulder.
It wasn’t sexual—it was power, pure and simple, and in that moment John had all of it. Prophet was left to wonder if he’d given it away so easily on purpose, or if he’d needed John to think he was compliant.
Should’ve canceled the mission right then and there.
He was numb. “It’s over. Really fucking over.” It was a surreal moment, one he’d never forget thanks to what happened hours later.
“It’s been over for a long time, so fuck you, Prophet. Just get the fuck out of my face,” John spat and started walking away, although for some reason he was still speaking. “Just get up. Come on, Proph, you need to wake up . . .”
“Proph, come on.” It was Tom’s voice, in the middle of his fucked-up flashback. He opened his eyes and saw Tom, not John, and relief washed over him.
Tom watched him carefully, unmoving. Smart man, because Prophet could kill him in a second if he thought he was fighting John, and fuck, Prophet hated these flashbacks, hated that there was no way to fix him.
They were untouchable.
Untouchable.
When he and John were young, as young boys did, they’d decided that being important—untouchable—was the way to go through life.
As they got older, they watched men who they’d thought untouchable get touched by so many factors in life that it became unbearable.
Prophet reasoned that maybe you could only be untouchable in certain situations . . . or for certain periods of your life.
But John? He never let go of the idea of being untouchable. The one thing Prophet was sure of? The men who John surrounded himself with knew John was important. Untouchable. And John never believed Prophet would be able to change that.
But Prophet had more faith in himself than John ever had, and even more in the man standing in front of him now. His eyes blurred for a second, maybe more from exhaustion and anger than anything, but these days, the blurring came around more and more often.
So he closed his eyes again, heard the hoarseness in his voice when he told Tom, “It’s okay. I’m okay.”
&nb
sp; He felt the weight of Tom sink next to him on the couch. “Yeah, you are okay.” Tom’s arm went around his shoulders and Prophet sank his head against Tom’s chest. “What else can I do?”
Prophet didn’t hesitate. “Bring Remy home.”
Less than twenty-four hours after finding the envelope, Remy came home . . . and Remy’s Crazy Uncle Mal came along with him, and they all pretended everything was normal when they all knew it was far from it. Remy had been with them as soon as they’d gotten back from killing Sadiq. After initially finding the envelope from John, Prophet had made sure that Remy got safely to Doc’s straight from school instead of coming back to them.
Tom had complied with Prophet’s request because they both needed to see Remy, to be around him and reassured while planning their own personal version of hell.
It was late by that point, and Remy settled into his room quickly, like he was imprinting himself back onto the apartment before anyone could stop him. Prophet wanted to tell him not to worry, that he’d already imprinted on them, probably from first meet, but Prophet knew Remy would still worry.
Prophet knew two things in particular were bothering Remy, but the first was the most important. Remy knew what they did for a living, and the travel (read: danger) involved. That kind of family life he could deal with. It was another instability that most worried him. So Prophet went into the bedroom where Remy was drawing, lying on his belly on the bed, legs up and crossed, shirt off, headphones on and music pounding out of them, which meant the iPod was turned up to deafening levels.
Mal would come in and sleep next to him in a bit, but for the moment, Prophet welcomed the quiet time. And when he sat next to Remy on the double bed, Remy pulled off the headphones and turned off the music, but not before Prophet recognized the blare of classic rock—AC/DC’s “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap.”
He wanted to look up at the ceiling to ask if that was a joke or a sign but decided it was a little of both. He looked back at Remy and noted the small tattoo, low on his inner calf, a nautical star, not unlike Tom’s.
Remy jerked his head toward it. “Cool, right?”
“Did Etienne give you that?”
“He was there but no—I did it.”
“You did that?” Prophet leaned in to study it. “It’s really good, Rem.”
Remy beamed. “Tom said we could open up a shop.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard that’s the eventual plan.”
“What about you?”
“I don’t tattoo,” Prophet said seriously. “Want to tell me what’s bothering you?”
Remy narrowed his eyes. “How do you do that?”
“It’s a gift. Spill.”
Remy sighed and leaned up on one elbow. Prophet’s eyes shifted momentarily to the scar on Remy’s chest, the one made by the man who’d also killed his father. The scar was pink now, much less angry looking, and still a constant reminder of how close they’d come to losing him. As if Remy knew what he was thinking, his fingers brushed over it as he asked, “Is everything settled? With my mom.”
“It will be, because I’ve got some information.”
“About the drugs?”
“Yes.” Prophet paused, wishing Remy didn’t have to know any of it. “How long have you known about it?”
“A long time,” Remy admitted. “So does that come out in court?”
“The only other thing I can have her do is keep it out and have her sign temporary guardianship until you’re seventeen. That’s probably the easiest option, lets her save face and it doesn’t put either of you through a trial.”
“And then what?”
“You emancipate.”
“What about . . . adoption?”
That surprised Prophet, but not in a bad way. He hadn’t wanted to broach that, not this close to Etienne’s death. “I don’t know if we both can.”
“One of you can though, right?”
“We can do that, Rem, if that’s what you want. I can adopt you after you emancipate.”
He frowned, obviously trying to take it all in. “You can do that after I emancipate? It wouldn’t matter then.”
“It would to me.”
Remy blinked fast. Nodded. “It’s important.”
“Then consider it done.”
“You really don’t have any tattoos?”
“No. Tom draws them, but I don’t think he wants to settle on any one thing.”
“Well, you can’t do names.”
“I know that superstition.” Prophet paused. “What about the initials of kids I adopt?”
“I’m not a kid,” he said seriously. “Besides, are you planning on roaming the countryside looking for fucked-up kids to adopt?”
“No. And you’re not fucked up, Rem. Not even a little bit.”
His soft smile looked a lot like Etienne’s. “But my mom is.”
“Yeah, well . . . sometimes that happens. People can’t always help their addictions. Doesn’t mean she doesn’t love you.”
Remy seemed to take a moment to absorb that before hitting Prophet with, “What about your mom?”
“What’s with all the hard questions tonight?”
Remy shrugged. “Remember this the next time you ask me all the questions.”
“Smart-ass.” Prophet sat back against the headboard and wondered if this kid was some kind of truth serum in the form of a teenage boy. “My mom’s bipolar. Do you know what that is?”
“Sort of.”
“It’s a mental disorder. It’s not uncommon and a lot of times, it’s really treatable. Her case is tougher than most. She needs medicine to regulate her moods, but a lot of the meds she’s tried don’t always work on her. And, even when they do, she doesn’t always take them because the disorder makes her confused.” Prophet said it that way as a reminder to himself, because she’d been addicted to drugs while he’d been younger. Because she hadn’t been diagnosed, she was always attempting to self-regulate, and twenty-twenty hindsight was a definite bitch. He’d hated her when she was using—and yet he’d always made sure she could get her fix and that she stayed safe. Knowing that she couldn’t have helped herself made him feel guiltier. “When I was younger, she didn’t know about the disorder, so she did a lot of drugs to make herself feel better.”
Remy processed that. “But that’s not why my mom does them.”
“People do drugs for all kinds of reasons, Rem. I’m not an expert on it—I just know why my mom got addicted. I didn’t back then.”
“Where is she now?”
“She lives in a place where they help her remember to take her meds and they keep her safe.”
“Did you make her go there?”
“No. She put herself in there. She didn’t want me to have to worry about her.” Not one hundred percent truth but relatively speaking, it was close enough.
“So she’s fine now?”
Prophet sighed. “Depends on the day, kid.”
“Does that run in your family?”
“My mom says no, but it can be inherited.”
“Because you’re always moody.”
“Bipolar and blind? What the hell are you trying to do to me?” Prophet joked.
Remy laughed, then got serious. “Where’s your dad?”
“Third fucking degree,” Prophet muttered, wondered if Tom was standing by the door gathering all this information. It was what he’d do if the roles were reversed, and hell, it would take care of him ever having to talk about it out loud again. “He died when I was around your age.”
“Was he nice?”
“No, he wasn’t. He wasn’t anything like your dad,” Prophet told him honestly, then realized that, at some point, Mal had entered the room and was sacked out in the corner chair, looking at an iPad. Later, Prophet knew he’d lie on the floor at Remy’s bedside. He’d put a cage around Remy and sleep on top of it if he thought Remy would let him . . . but Mal also knew the importance of not living like you were in prison.
“Sorry, Proph.”
&nb
sp; “’S’all right, Rem. I’ve got a lot of chosen family around me.” He glanced up at Mal, whose only indication that he was listening was a small quirk of his mouth, like he was trying to hide a smile. “Why don’t you try to get some shut-eye?”
Remy complied without complaining, but only after he seemed to realize that Prophet would hang until he fell asleep. He put his head down and closed his eyes and after a few restless minutes where he complained that he would never be able to sleep, his breathing went deep and even.
It’d been a long day for all of them.
Ain’t family grand, Mal signed, the sarcasm heavy in his fingers.
This one’s not bad, Prophet signed back so as not to wake Remy and Mal gave a sharp nod.
Nope, not bad at all. But lying this close to a teenager made Prophet feel like he was back in his old bedroom, in his old skin, in a life that seemed so far away that it felt like it belonged to someone else at times . . .
Joe Drews had talked a good game, and from that Prophet learned the importance of talk. Didn’t mean he didn’t take something from every encounter.
Judie Drews wanted people to believe she was fine. She was a horrible liar, and from that Prophet learned to be a really good one. He also learned the importance of pretending to wholeheartedly believe someone’s lies, whether it was because they desperately wanted him to or because his life depended on it.
The former happened a lot to him before the age of sixteen, the latter almost exclusively after that. And while his father was always all too fucking predictable, he never knew which Mom he was going to get on any given day. The cycles were unpredictable, the manic phases easier than the depressive ones, but truthfully, they all sucked.
But the move to Texas from New York made things worse. Joe Drews had an opportunity, which really meant his scams had gotten them run out of another town.
So now, they were stuck here. But John made it marginally easier at first, and then much more so after Prophet began spending most of his time at John’s house.