Hush

by Tal Bauer

  But his words were all he had. As an attorney, as a judge, and now, bleeding in the dirt. Worthless words.

  “You’ll disappear. This recording will end up on a voicemail. An investigation will show that Mike Lucciano attacked you and then fled. He’ll be a wanted man for the next sixty years. No one will know he’s already gone.”

  Tom’s heart, already broken, shattered to dust. He gasped, closing his eyes, and let the tears fall. Mike… I wanted forever with you. I should have walked away from the trial. You’d still be alive. You’re more important than all of this.

  “I am sorry, Judge Brewer.” Barnes raised his weapon, aiming for Tom’s head. “I’ll make it quick.”

  Tom flinched. He whimpered, waiting for the end. Would he feel it? Or would there just be sudden blackness, never-ending darkness?

  A gunshot rang out. He held his breath.

  Barnes cursed and dropped to his knee. Tom heard it, heard him fall, hit the ground. He opened his eyes. Barnes was kneeling, looking back over his shoulder.

  This was his chance! He started to scoot away, crawl back on his elbows. His shot shoulder gave out, and he crumpled to the dirt. But still, he tried to scrabble away.

  Barnes fixed his gun back on him. “Come out!” he shouted. “Or I’ll kill him right now!”

  Tom followed Barnes’s line of sight back to the tree line. For a moment, he hoped. God, he hoped. Please, Mike, please. Please have survived!

  Villegas picked his way out of the trees, his weapon up and ready to fire. He had Barnes in his sights as he moved into the meadow. “Barnes.”

  “Inspector Villegas.” Barnes smiled. “Nice to see you.”

  Villegas was silent. His eyes flicked to Tom and then back to Barnes. “What’s going on here?”

  “Villegas… Rob.” Barnes kept smiling. “I know you. I’ve worked with you for a few years now. You’re tired of being an inspector. Being stuck in the courts. Don’t you want to get back in on the action?”

  Villegas blinked. “What are you offering?”

  “You want to be a part of the biggest action on the planet? Make a real difference, all around the globe? I can get you in.”

  “In where? What exactly are you saying, Barnes?”

  “Money, power, influence… It’s all yours for the taking.”

  “Russian money?”

  “Money is money.”

  “What makes an FBI agent like you turn on his country? It’s never just about the money. What is it? What made you turn?”

  “Villegas, you don’t have to do this. You don’t have to die today.”

  “But he does?” Villegas nodded to Tom.

  “He knows too much. But, if you help me, you can walk away from this. And I’ll reward you. My people will reward you.”

  Villegas’s eyes narrowed. He seemed to look beyond Barnes, a thousand-yard stare into the middle distance, as if weighing his options, the long path of his life. He nodded, slowly, sighing. Lowered his weapon. “I want double. And I want out of this Goddamn shithole.”

  Barnes grinned. Villegas came across the meadow and shook hands with Barnes. God, what was he witnessing? The end of morality? A man’s life—his life—bargained for with treasonous money? If this was the world, he didn’t want to live in it. Especially without Mike. He closed his eyes.

  Mike breathed hard, wheezing as he lay on his belly in the tree line next to Willy, overlooking the meadow. Willy’s men were spread out on either side of them, a line of hunters who’d appeared at an abandoned Shawnee cemetery deep in the forest, buried in the dark side of the mountain.

  Willy had spoken to the men alone, gesturing to Mike as he told them a fast story about Barnes and Tom and where they were headed. There were only so many routes through the forest on that side of the mountain, and all tracks led to the meadow. A natural flushing point.

  They’d ridden in in an ancient pickup truck, more rust than steel, with shotguns and rifles mounted on every spare inch. Flood lights bolted to the truck’s roof had guided their way through the thick forest, and in the truck’s bed, blood-stained tarps had been folded with care.

  Willy had given him a shotgun and a worried look, but they’d all piled into the truck, Mike in the back with the others.

  Mike’s vision had started going triple again. He’d spat blood every few minutes. Finally, after bouncing over a rough game trail, they appeared at the far side of the meadow he and Tom had explored the day before. They’d set up in a line, hidden in the trees.

  They hadn’t had to wait long.

  He’d watched Tom burst from the far side, the tree line of oak and sugar maple. He’d tried to run, desperate to get to Tom, rip him from the jaws of danger. Tear into Barnes with his own hands, kill him and then kill him again.

  Now, he tried to rise, but Willy grabbed him and pulled him down, shoving him back into the dark dirt. The rest of the guys sighted their rifles on Tom, peering through their scopes. Willy’s hand pushed on the center of Mike’s back when he tried to get up. Blood bloomed across his shirt, stained Willy’s hand. Mike cried out, digging his fingers into the dirt, loose and dark and collecting under his fingernails. A hot iron was stabbing into him, right where Willy’s hand was.

  “You’re bleeding out, marshal.”

  “Doesn’t matter.” He groaned through gritted teeth. “Have to save Tom.”

  “Just who is this Brewer boy to you?”

  Mike turned and stared into Willy’s eyes, begging him to understand. Begging him to keep helping him, even though everything he was—as a person, as a man, as a federal agent—was against everything that Willy believed in. Willy and his boys would be more likely to shoot him in the back of the head and leave him in the woods than help him, a gay United States deputy marshal who loved a U.S. federal judge. “He’s everything to me,” Mike whispered.

  Willy’s eyes narrowed.

  A gunshot snapped. The guys tensed, fingers half-squeezing their triggers. Tom went down, screaming, a shower of dirt rising where he landed.

  Mike screamed through gritted teeth. He tried to move, but Willy kept him pinned.

  “’is shoulder’s shot,” one of the men grunted. “From the tree line. Another one’s coming out.”

  “Watch him.” Willy pulled up his own rifle, scooting away from Mike. “He’s our lion.”

  Barnes slipped out of the trees and made his way to Tom. Mike watched, agony ripping through him, as Barnes held his gun to Tom’s head. “What are you waiting for?” he hissed. “Kill him!”

  “Just wait…” Willy had told them all to hold until he gave the order. “He ain’t the only fed in these woods. There was another trail.”

  Another gunshot. Villegas stepped out of the trees. Advanced on Barnes, talking to him.

  And then put his weapon away.

  Mike cursed, kicking the ground where he lay, furious and heartbroken and utterly betrayed. How many of his people were working against them?

  Should he just run out there? Be with Tom, at the end?

  No, stick to the plan.

  Fuck the plan. Only Tom mattered.

  He couldn’t think straight anymore.

  He spat blood, again, building a small puddle beside him.

  He was dying. Snake venom was murdering him, making him crazy. Making him bleed out from the inside, more than even Barnes’s stabbings. Closing his eyes, Mike bowed his head, trying to breathe slowly. Trying to come back to reality.

  When he looked up, Villegas was staring right at him. Their eyes met. Held.

  Mike stopped breathing. Willy cursed. “Ready…”

  “Wait! Wait. He’s—” Mike spat another mouthful of blood, coughing. “He’s trying to help. He’s distracting him. Distracting Barnes.”

  “You sure about that? Looks like he joined your fed friend there.”

  “He’s waiting for us. He’ll help, I swear to God he will.”

  “You know this fed real well? Enough to stake the Brewer boy’s life on it?”

&nb
sp; Shit, shit, shit. He stared at Villegas, still looking right at him. Villegas was just to the side of Tom, ninety degrees off Barnes. Barnes was talking to Tom, but getting ready to execute him.

  Villegas was in the classic bodyguard position, the ready-to-jump leap. Would he throw himself in front of Tom? Protect him from Barnes’s shots? Do what Mike couldn’t do?

  How well did he know Rob Villegas? Enough to fight with him, bicker every chance they spoke. Enough to curse his name, avoid him at the courthouse and in the hotel.

  Enough to trust him with Tom’s life?

  “He’s helping us,” he breathed, more a prayer than a certainty. “He’s helping.”

  “Focus your sights on the lion,” Willy growled. “Ready… Aim…”

  Tom closed his eyes and waited for the end.

  Shots rang out, too many to have come from Barnes’s handgun, and too far away. He opened his eyes, tried to turn, but something tackled him, pinned him to the ground. A man screamed in his ear, cursing as he held Tom down. Shouts rang out, voices from the trees. Running. More shots.

  Hands. The body on top of his was ripped away. Sunlight burned his eyes.

  A head appeared, dark shoulders and a shadowed faced. “Tom!”

  He knew that voice. “Mike? I thought you were—”

  Mike grabbed him, hauled him close. Pulled him into his arms, screaming, heaving drags of air as he shouted nonsense. His hands raced over Tom’s shot shoulder, his bloody arm, hanging limp and useless. Tom clung to him on his knees, squeezing hard. He felt Mike tremble, felt his body shaking.

  When he pulled back, his hands were covered in blood. “Mike—”

  Villegas sat up beside them, grimacing. He glared at Mike. “Fuck, man, you took forever.” Villegas held his arm, trying to stop blood oozing out of his elbow, wrecked with a bullet and hanging limp and askew. Another bullet hole leaked blood from just above his knee, staining his camo pants, from when he’d leaped in front of Tom when Barnes fired. “What the fuck happened to you?”

  Behind them, five ragged mountain men were standing over Barnes. Tom recognized Willy, by Barnes’s feet. Barnes shook as he lay in the meadow grasses, choking, struggling to breathe. Through the golden blades, Tom spotted blood burbling from between his lips. “Don’t shoot,” Barnes croaked. “I’m a federal agent—”

  “That’s why we’re gonna kill you, dumb ass.” Willy raised his rifle and fired, dead center into Barnes’s forehead. Barnes went limp, sagging into the dirt.

  All eyes turned to Mike, Villegas, and Tom.

  Fear sluiced down Tom’s spine. These men weren’t heroes. They weren’t knights riding in to save the day. Mike had brought Willy into the forest to rescue him, but who else had come along?

  Mike shifted, moving himself in front of Tom. He tugged Villegas behind him as well, squatting in front of them, protecting Tom and Villegas, two wounded, bleeding men huddling in the dirt. Mike was also hurt, badly. “Willy… please. Let us go.”

  “They’re fuckin’ feds,” one of the men behind Willy shouted. He spat, a messy glob of spit that misted in the air. “We should do ‘em right!”

  “Shut your mouth!” Willy raised his hand, as if he’d slap the man.

  Behind Mike’s back, Villegas slowly tried to draw his weapon. Tom watched him, and tried to shift to cover his movements.

  “Drop it!” One of Willy’s men had his rifle up in a flash. “Throw it over here!”

  Cursing, Villegas chucked his handgun. Another of Willy’s men picked it up, looked it over. Pointed it back at them. Mike held up his hands. He swayed. Blood soaked through his shirt, dripped from the hem. “We just want to get out of here.”

  Willy stalked toward them, his rifle held with the casual indifference of a man used to killing, used to the power that a weapon over another man held. He crouched low, staring into Mike’s eyes. For a moment, he looked at Tom, but his eyes, formerly warm and neighborly, were dark and closed off.

  “Now you listen here, boy,” Willy said, his voice a low growl. “You walk out of these woods, what guarantees do I have you won’t be back? ‘Cause this part of the world ain’t for you.”

  Mike swallowed hard. “We’ll never come back.”

  Behind Willy, the rest of his men were gathering around Barnes, pulling out knives. Each man spat on his corpse, hurling curses at his lifeless form.

  Villegas breathed hard, and he scooted next to Tom, inching one shoulder in front of Tom’s. As if he could do anything to protect him now, like this.

  Willy peered at Mike, his gaze sharp, as if he was staring into Mike’s soul. Tom rested his hand on Mike’s blood-drenched back. Mike was still trembling, swaying. What had happened to him? What had Barnes done? How was he still going? Adrenaline and pure grit? He leaned into Mike trying to help support him.

  “Let us go,” Mike whispered. “You’re ghosts. You’re ghosts to us. We’ll never come back. We were friends, weren’t we, Willy?”

  “I ain’t your friend, marshal. I ain’t your pal, or your ally, or your boyfriend, or whatever you city folk do. This is my land and my home, and my word is law in these parts. You feds are invaders, and I don’t take kindly to invaders on my land. You hear?”

  “We just want to live,” Mike breathed.

  “You helped me in the past, marshal. Now, I’m helping you. After this, we’re square. We’re done. And I don’t ever want to see you again.” Willy stood, staring down at Mike like he was trash that needed to be burned. “We’re moving out.”

  “What about them?” One of the men shoved his knife in their direction.

  Mike reached behind his back and squeezed Tom’s hand.

  “We’re dropping ‘em at the highway.”

  “What?”

  “I said we’re dropping ‘em at the highway! You deaf?”

  Willy’s men sulked, cursing under their breath as they shied away from the man, like a pack of hyenas falling away from their leader. One man turned to Barnes. “They don’t need ‘im, do they?”

  “We do.” Tom spoke up, helping Mike stand. Villegas put his shoulder under Mike’s other arm. “We need to bring him back with us. He’s a traitor.”

  “You don’t need all of him.” The same man spun his knife in his hands and dropped to one knee. He grabbed Barnes’s hand and pulled back his middle finger. Three hard saws were all it took, and Barnes’s finger was gone. He rose and pocketed the finger. “My eff you to the feds.”

  “Get moving!” Willy waved them all back to the trees. Tom and Villegas helped Mike limp along, even though they both were bleeding from their own bullet wounds. Mike, by far, was worse than both of them combined. His breath rattled in his chest with every inhale, and blood dripped out of the corner of his mouth, slipped down his chin. Tom stumbled more than walked, and braced Mike with a hand on his belly.

  Eventually, they made it back to Willy’s truck. Villegas helped Mike and Tom in, and then one of Willy’s men tossed Barnes’s body into the truck bed beside them. His corpse stared, eyes wide and sightless, up at the canopy.

  In the truck bed, Willy called someone on the radio, but his voice was muffled by the roaring engine and the bouncing of the tires as they rumbled over the dirt track. Tom huddled over Mike, holding him close, propped up between his legs, their hands laced together and folded across Mike’s rattling chest. Villegas sat beside him, shoulders pressed together, and he kept one hand on Mike’s arm, as though holding on to a lifeline.

  Eventually, Willy parked his truck on an uphill dirt slope, twenty feet inside the thick tree line off the state highway. Few cars traversed that section of road. Tom eyed the trees, the isolation, the soaring mountains surrounding the canyon they were deep within.

  Willy’s men hauled Barnes’s corpse out first, flinging it to the dirt and logrolling it up to the highway. Tom and Villegas helped Mike shuffle out of the truck bed. Mike’s eyes were barely open. Each breath was raspy, dangerously shallow. He leaned almost all his weight on Villegas and Tom.

>   Willy grabbed Mike’s face, holding his jaw in one hand. “Go get to living your life, marshal.” He nodded to Tom. “Get him to a hospital. He needs more antivenom. Goodbye, Brewers’ boy.”

  Willy’s men skirted them and climbed back into the truck. The engine roared, the tires kicked back dirt and the truck bed fishtailed. Willy’s men stared as they roared away, their dark eyes burning through the forest long after the truck disappeared.

  Stumbling, Villegas and Tom carried Mike up to the highway. No weapons, no cell phones, no gear. No cars, and likely not one for hours. They were all bleeding, and Mike was dying. He needed antivenom? The blood, it was snakebites? God, how many times had he been bitten? He was going to die in Tom’s arms.

  They collapsed at the side of the highway, exhaustion and blood loss and the loss of adrenaline pulling their legs from beneath them. Tom rolled Mike into his arms, dragged him up, until their cheeks were pressed together and he could wrap his arms around Mike from behind. Villegas slid in beside him, holding one arm over Mike as well.

  “Why are you here, Inspector Villegas?” Tom’s eyelids were heavy. He wanted to close them, but tried to blink them open.

  “Winters tasked me to follow you. I put a tracker in your bag, that night I took over from Mike.”

  “Why? Why follow me?”

  “That’s way above my paygrade. All I know is, Winters is working with Ballard.”

  Fear made Tom freeze. Ballard and Barnes were close. Colleagues and friends. Co-conspirators? Again, he felt that nausea-inducing sense of vertigo, of standing above the edge of a dark chasm, and wondering how far the drop to the bottom was. How deep did the betrayals go?

  “I hear something.” Villegas shifted and sat up. He frowned, as if he could force his ears to work harder. “Sirens. I hear sirens.”

  A few seconds later, Tom heard them too. Sirens screaming up the highway, the roar of tires, brakes squealing around the hairpin mountain turns. “Willy. He radioed it in.” Tom sagged over Mike, watching the ragged rise and fall of his chest. He smiled, and let his eyes slide closed as Villegas struggled to his feet and waved down the cavalry.