by Amy Lane
“I don’t think that’s standard issue in a lawyer’s briefcase, Jai—besides, I don’t know what one looks like.”
“One looks like a battery or an electronic doodad of some sort. The irritating one who got kidnapped probably has three laptops all on his own. Even the cop—”
“Ex-cop—”
“He stinks like bacon. He probably has one because he is not stupid. Look for those—now shut up and let me point my penis at the hole.” He snickered then and started to aim the laser pointer, first at the mound of dirt and then away from it, paying close attention to the LED readout on the screen. Ernie left him to his stud finding and started his search, feeling a little sad as he pawed through Rivers’s and Cramer’s belongings.
Cramer had what Ernie had expected—garment bags, a neatly packed suitcase with a few adult goodies, and a briefcase with an easily pickable lock. Yup—there you go—the laptop! Ernie set it aside and prepared himself to dive through Rivers’s stuff.
Unlike Cramer’s things, there was a fine residue of the pain Rivers carried. Ernie wasn’t usually touch sensitive—he couldn’t read objects with just a brush of the fingers. But because he’d met Jackson—and because the man’s psyche was so strong and so wounded at the same time—he could definitely feel it now.
It made his hands ache, like arthritis, and he really hated that, once again, these two men were being invaded for their usefulness, their privacy and dignity sacrificed with barely a thought. And that’s when he found them. Rolled up in a pair of tattered underwear sat a couple of child’s action figures from a show Ernie didn’t recognize. The figures themselves were plastic, cheaply made, and most of the paint had been rubbed off from hard use.
The love, the simple joy these two toys carried with them soothed some of Ernie’s anguish for not being able to help Jackson.
Jackson had joy in him. He’d find it. Ernie had to have faith.
And, hey, while tucking the action figures back in their place, Ernie also found Jackson’s Doctor Who computer case and the laptop inside it.
Faith he had indeed!
While he was pulling Jackson’s laptop out and setting it on top of Cramer’s, his phone buzzed against his hip.
There are several active land mines on the path. Tell Jai to avoid at all costs—they apparently put the big meat-grinder ones there—not a lot of noise, but a lot of shrapnel.
Ernie stared at the text and grimaced. Oh dear. Will do, he texted.
Glad you’re safe.
Oh. Oh—there was guilt. Burton just hit him with a giant guilt burger, and Ernie wasn’t sure how to bite.
Do the ones on the outer perimeter make more noise? He was mostly asking to diffuse curiosity—but he had an idea too.
I have no idea—but they’re a different make.
Ernie gnawed on his lower lip. Will tell Jai. Then, on a burst of indignation, And you stay safe too! How’s Ace?
He and Cramer are fine. Bored and pissed and worried, but fine.
Good.
I’m so glad you’re not with them.
Guilt, guilt, guilt, guilt… oh fuck it—he couldn’t even answer that.
He tucked the phone back in his pocket and waited until Jai returned from stud-finding the next three mounds on the track.
“All land mines?” he asked, guessing from Jai’s expression.
“Fuckers.”
“Well, we’re going to have to set them off here, right?”
Jai scowled. “We have no choice. The other site was better—there was a building to hide behind. This is harder. The Toyota only goes straight for so long—we need to be hauling ass the other direction.”
Ernie grunted. “Well, I found your laptops—you set up the C-4, I’ll turn the SUV around—”
“Open the back,” Jai said judiciously. “I’ll jump in as you’re driving away.”
Ernie blinked. “That’s a little dramatic, isn’t it?”
“So is having your entrails found in a nearby tree.”
“Uh, yeah. Take the computers. Maybe, you know, think happy thoughts, right?”
Jai drilled holes into him from two obsidian eyes. “Yes. That will make us live. Happy thoughts.” He contorted his lips back to reveal white, even, ginormous teeth. “Everybody is fine.”
Oh yeah. Ernie was peachy-fucking-keen.
It took him a full five minutes to turn the damned Infiniti around because at this point he was so freaked out by the giant land mine on the track that he was terrified of every hillock and hump of grass off the track. The result was a six-billion-point turn that was probably the origin of the Spirograph and a cold sweat that soaked his underarms.
He finished and checked his rearview mirror to see Jai still sitting in his driver’s seat, tinkering with the laptops, and then, because he knew Rivers was probably losing his mind, he texted Wait for it, just to let him know they were working on the situation.
He was about to ask if Jai needed help when his phone went off, Kaleo’s “No Good” playing for Burton, although Burton had never called—until now.
“You’re here?” Burton hissed. “Here! What in the actual fuck are you doing here?”
“Hi, Lee!” Ernie said cheerfully. “Good to hear from you! Sort of busy!” In his rearview mirror, Jai was rigging the Toyota’s steering wheel with a bungee cord, and Ernie had a sudden thought. “Jai!” he hollered out the window. “Not over the mine, on the mine!”
Jai stared at him for a moment like he was trying to parse what Ernie was saying, and then his eyes got really big. “Motherfucker!” And he got back in the car to mess with the steering some more.
“Oh dear God, it’s like Abbot and fucking Costello!”
“Well, it’s not Burt and Ernie!” Ernie snapped into the phone. “Because if it was Burt and Ernie, you’d be here and I’d be with you!”
“You think maybe we could have worked this issue out some other time?” Burton asked, and to his credit he sounded legitimately worried.
“I’m sorry!” Ernie dropped his voice, because the hell of it was, he really was sorry. “They needed me, Burton. I don’t know what to tell you. Rivers showed up and he was in pain, and Sonny was there and he just assumed, you know? I was part of the team? And I wanted to be part of the team. I mean, you left me with a family, and we worried over Rivers and Cramer like our children—and they were all in danger. And I wanted to help!”
He heard Burton’s deep breath dragging at his lungs. “But, baby,” he said, voice cracking, “you’re… you’re the one person I count on being safe.”
Ernie gnawed on his lower lip and started to twitch. They were running about two minutes off the schedule Jackson had given him, and he knew their timing had to be close. “I’m a burden,” he said, hating himself for saying it right now, but apparently the last thing he might say to Burton had to be the truth. “You can’t make yourself break up with me, but you don’t want to keep me—”
“That’s not true!” Burton was whispering, his voice echoing in what sounded like a bathroom. Suddenly Ernie remembered that Burton texted him from the bathroom in an enemy camp and felt a little queasy. Their every interaction had put his life at risk, and Ernie hadn’t appreciated that until right now. “I needed time someplace not here. But I think about you every fucking minute of every fucking day, do you hear me? As soon as this shit’s done with, we can—”
“Burton? Who in the fuck are you talking to?”
“My person,” Burton said vaguely, and as much as Ernie didn’t want to be a dirty secret, he certainly didn’t want Burton to come out about them now. “H—it’s important.”
“Were you going to say he? Get out of the fuckin’ bathroom and tell me you weren’t gonna say he!”
“Dammit, Manetti, what’s it to you?”
“I’ll see you later,” Ernie muttered, heart in his mouth. Oh God. No wonder Burton thought he was a burden.
“No, dammit—”
“Ernie!” Jai called. “Ernie, step on the gas! Go,
dammit, go!”
Ernie looked in the rearview and saw Jai running hell-for-leather toward the back of the SUV while the Toyota took off at alarming speed. “Oh shit, that’s going fast!” He stomped on the gas and the back wheels dug in, spraying Jai with mud just as he leaped into the back of the car. Jai’s weight, combined with the traction, dug them in deeper, and Ernie swore.
“Goddammit!”
“Foot off gas!” Jai hollered, and Ernie felt the vehicle rock, hard, as Jai pushed it forward, then let it go back, then forward, then back, then forward. “Now!”
On the phone Burton was saying, “Manetti, why in the fuck do you give a shit who I’m on the phone with!” and then there was a sharp pop like a fist hitting a metal partition.
“Burton!” Ernie screamed, and Jai yelled, “Go go go go go!” as the Infiniti scrabbled for purchase and lurched out of the trench and onto the track, fishtailing as it went. Ernie dropped the phone by necessity and got hold of the wheel as Jai scrambled inside. Jai was reaching for the hatch, hauling it down to close the door, when the Toyota hit the land mine and the whole world went boom.
Boom Fish!
SHIT SHIT shit shit shit.
Burton knew better—he knew better than to contact anybody by phone. It was, like, black ops 101, right after Don’t Shoot Your Dick Off and Wear Dark Clothing During Night Work—Don’t Call Your Motherfucking Boyfriend from the Bathroom When You’re Undercover.
But he had to.
First he’d seen Cramer and Ace, and Ace had read him the riot act about how, maybe, if he’d been able to calm Ernie down, Ernie would have been able to calm Sonny down, and, well, this entire shitstorm might not be about to come down on his head.
Great. Ace Atchison, a guy who had retired at master sergeant and who knew shit about black ops, could apparently manage Burton’s love life better than Burton.
It stung because it was true.
And Rivers… oh God. Fucking Rivers.
Cramer had been everything Burton was expecting. Slim, disdainful, dry. Cool under fire. But Rivers… the man had been all business, focused entirely on getting Ellery and Ace out alive. But he’d also been sharp, cocky, and smart as fuck.
And boiling sex on two legs.
Burton had been acutely uncomfortable at the same time he’d been scared to fucking death.
“Eight minutes?” Burton asked soberly, keeping his voice too low to echo. “That’s not a lot of time.”
“Less than you think. Did you know they were gassing a plane for wherever in South America? We’ve got to get them out of here.”
Burton scowled. “Oh, for fuck’s sake. There’s people at the hangar?”
Rivers shrugged, and in spite of the fact that his whole life was on the line, he made it look like this was easy. “Sonny’s got a surprise going. I got no idea when it’s going to pop, but we’ve got—” He checked his phone again. “—six minutes until chaos ensues.”
“Sonny? Where’s Ernie?”
Jackson grimaced. “Dumping a Toyota full of C-4 in a minefield?”
Oh no. Oh hell no. Everything in Burton’s chest, his bowels, his lungs, all of it, froze. “I’m doing you a solid and this is how you repay me?”
“Hey—you let that kid know he’s got you when he’s got you and I don’t think he’ll be so eager to prove himself. But Jai’s with him—I think that guy would rather blow himself up than let Ernie get hurt, so he’s safe.”
Burton scrubbed at his eyes with one hand while he pounded a tattoo on the sink with his other palm. Ernie. Jesus Christ. Ernie was here. “Goddammit—you couldn’t have stayed in Sacramento for a couple more days?”
“While these assholes listened to us have sex? God no—”
“I listened to you having sex, and I’ve got one word for you. Soundproofing.”
Burton barely managed to let Rivers go without throwing himself on the guy’s mercy and begging him to call it off. He couldn’t—he knew he couldn’t. Rivers had said Hamblin’s men were gassing the plane—Ace’s and Ellery’s lives really did depend on getting them out now. And even if their lives weren’t on the line, Lacey was trying to get away. All the fucking illegal shit he’d been doing, and he was going to be felled by a traffic accident. If a woman hadn’t died, it would almost be funny, but Burton wasn’t laughing. Lacey was going down, and Burton had to get out of here with the jackets of the other nightmares Karl Lacey and his “training techniques” had loosed upon the world.
Which meant that he had to trust Ernie and Jai and the car full of C-4.
Right?
He managed to make it to coms, sweep a look inside, and then wheel around. He was back in the bathroom, in the stall, before he even knew what he was doing. Ernie’s voice over the phone was both the best and worst thing he’d ever heard in his life—right up until the part where Ernie started shouting about going on the mine and not over the mine.
God help him, that was the man he loved out there with a load of C-4 in a minefield, and Burton hadn’t once told Ernie Caulfield how he felt.
And then Patrick Manetti barged in and Burton didn’t have a chance.
Manetti swung at him and missed, hitting the stall door and yelping, until Burton caught his other fist in his hand and bent his arm around his back before shoving Manetti’s face up against the wall.
“What’s it to you?” Burton hissed. “Who I’m seeing? You don’t even know for sure, do you?”
“Lacey hates you,” Manetti told him. “He wants you dead so bad he’s been offering guys cash out of pocket to take you on. I wasn’t gonna, but knowing you’re a faggot just makes it—”
The blast hit, throwing Burton against Manetti’s back, his arm bent at that impossible angle. The concussion of the blast and Burton’s grip forced Manetti’s shoulder out of its socket, and he howled, his bladder voiding before the room stopped shaking.
Burton let go of his wrist, and Manetti fell to the ground, moaning—so Burton kicked him in the ribs. “Call me names one more time, asshole,” he snarled. “See where it fucking gets you.”
“What in the hell was that?” Manetti whined. “We’re under attack!”
“God, I hope so.” Burton kicked him again. “You got a brain in your fucking head and you will stay there, you hear me?”
“I need a medic!” Manetti wept, and Burton took off from the bathroom at a run.
First he hit the coms room, not surprised in the least to see Hamblin’s entire assembly fleeing, whatever equipment they could carry in their arms. Hamblin had run drills on this sort of thing—and the coms had been his people. Burton went to his unit in the corner, hissing when he realized someone else had grabbed the main drive. Well, shit. The good news was, he’d sent a backup of all his research to Jason’s and his own account, both of them on encrypted servers. Good luck to anyone trying to figure out who Calvin Oscar really was, but still.
Burton would have wanted his goddamned unit back just on general principle. Since it wasn’t going to happen, he pulled his weapon out and held it at ready, taking off at a trot toward Lacey’s office.
He was halfway there when Hamblin stopped him, hand to shoulder.
“Everyone’s meeting out front,” he said. “The explosion came from the west corner—it looks like someone was trying to sneak around the back and got caught up in the minefield. Their vehicle was completely destroyed. Coms is evacuating, and my people are going down to South America—there’s room on the plane if you want to come with me.”
Ernie.
But Burton had to go on faith, right? Ernie had faith in Burton; it was time for Burton to hope a little.
Otherwise he might as well go out hard, gun in Hamblin’s mouth first, Lacey’s mouth second, his own mouth third.
Only faith stilled his hand.
Burton swallowed, trying to decide if now was a good time to expose his cover or not. “Won’t Lacey want in?” he asked, unfeigned disdain dripping from each syllable.
Hamblin’s nose wrinkled in d
isgust. “Lacey? Lacey sent his pets up north to find Rivers’s family—Manetti’s surveillance said he stashed a witness of some sort with his brother near Nevada.”
Burton gaped. “Now? We’re under attack and he sends out a hunting party now?”
Hamblin shrugged. “He was a bad bet, Oscar. The worst of my career. But I still have enough to start again. Will you start with me?”
God. He could. Right here and now he could make the call to go undercover with Hamblin. To find more bad guys. To keep the chain going.
To be away from Ernie for another year or more. Please let him be alive.
To not know if his boy would be there waiting when he got back. I’ll do anything if he’s still breathing.
“I’ll think about it,” Burton lied. He didn’t want to quit his job, not yet. But a year undercover was someone else’s gig. “If you and Lacey are making the split, I want Lacey out—now.”
Hamblin shrugged. “It would be… of benefit,” he admitted, “to not have that man dogging my shadow.”
Burton saw that for what it was—an offer to let Burton take out the guy who’d orchestrated this madness, put the hit out on Ernie, sent psychopaths out into the world under the guise of training.
Do the job the US military was going to ask him to do for free.
“What’ll it get me?” he asked, playing for time.
“Anything you want,” Hamblin said, meeting his gaze. “For one thing, I won’t have my men take you out for being black ops.”
Burton gasped. “I am no—”
Hamblin held out a hand. “Don’t bother lying. You’re too good for Lacey and too good for me. You’re well trained, smart, and you obviously have your own agenda. I need Lacey dead. Your government will want the same. Tell me what you need.”
Burton’s finger trembled on the trigger, but dammit. This guy knew too much they needed. “I need complete jackets on the pet snakes Lacey turned loose,” he said. He had research—but Hamblin would have it all. “And I need that fucking flag off of US fucking soil.” The tattered scrap of corduroy that Lacey had flown since Burton arrived there. The thought of it flying where good troops had once served made Burton’s fingers slippery with rage.