by Sarah Black
John turned into him, wrapped his arms around Gabriel’s waist. “Yeah, I’ll go with you. Anytime.” He looked at the little helicopter. It was an MD-500, and looked like a plastic toy next to the Apache attack helo Gabriel had always flown.
Gabriel smiled then, and Kim said, “Hey, Uncle John! Look at me for a mo, okay?” When John looked at him, Kim took the photo, then smiled at them over the top of his camera. “Yeah, I got it. I am so frigging good, it’s scary. Hey, Juan, come to Ho Ho’s with me? I’ll drive real fast, and we can leave these two old guys in the dust.”
Gabriel kept his arms around John’s shoulders. John looked up at him. “You want to go? Fire that pony up.”
“Don’t tempt me. I might just keep going. We’d be like the gay, retired army version of Thelma and Louise, in a helicopter.” His face was a mix of sorrow and mad that John had never seen before. “That little shit said he didn’t want to fly with me!”
The phone rang in John’s pocket. The caller ID said Cody Dial.
Chapter 14
FATHER and son Dial agreed to meet at Ho Ho’s. “I heard some interesting things today, General. I thought I might pass them on to you. Then I’m going to pack up my boy and take him home.”
“Did you see Brian Walker?”
“See, that’s one of those interesting things. Seems he’s disappeared. Had a leave of absence approved by the president without the dean’s knowledge, and he’s taking a little mental health break in some unknown locale.”
“I see.” John felt the mad creeping up his neck. “I’ll speak to you soon.”
Gabriel was staring at him, eyes narrowed. “Uh, oh. What’s happened? The general looks like he’s doing some calculations.”
“Wainright bought our boy a ticket out of town before Fox got a chance to fire him. Prentiss Walker must own a big chunk of his ass.”
Ho Ho’s looked even more seedy and depressed than usual, the windows and serving counters smudged and greasy. The women behind the glass counter were having some dispute in Vietnamese whenever they passed each other, their faces stiff. Kim was uncharacteristically silent, head down over his wok, and young Juan was wiping down tables and not looking at anyone. He was wearing a sticker on his apron that said volunteer.
Cody Dial looked slowly around the restaurant, and then he pulled up a chair. “What the hell kind of name is Ho Ho’s? You think it’s somebody’s idea of a joke?”
John shook his head. “Sometimes ideas don’t translate well.” Kim brought a large teapot and a pile of little cups. John took them from his hands, passed them around.
Billy looked even smaller today, his face darkening to the color of an ugly thunderstorm. He seemed on the verge of weeping. Cody kept a hand on the back of his chair.
“So the professor has split town, destination unknown. I was in George Fox’s office today. Wainright was there, and they got into a screaming fight half the university must have heard. Fox resigned, threw his resignation letter in Wainright’s face, and Wainright said something like ‘that son of a bitch Mitchel, I am going to screw that little army prick into the ground.’ I got the feeling he was talking about you, General.” Cody was showing his teeth in a ferocious little grin. John felt himself doing the same.
Gabriel pulled out a memo pad and started making notes. “John, we need to move quickly. You two decide right now, media or no?”
John and Cody looked at each other, and then at Billy. He was staring down at the table, his bottom lip caught between his teeth. They both shook their heads no.
“Then we need to go to Santa Fe in the morning.”
“Dad, we can’t go home yet. Please, just until me and Kim have our art show, okay?” It was Billy, speaking up for the first time.
“What is this art show?”
“We’re doing a special art show here at Ho Ho’s. Please, it’s really important. Dad, it’s important to me. It’s only a week. We can stay that long, can’t we? Then I’ll go home with you.”
For the first time, Cody Dial seemed a little unsure. He looked at John and Gabriel, but Billy tugged on his sleeve. “Dad, this is how me and Kim want to handle things. Why don’t you listen to us? This has something to do with us, you know? And we feel like we know how to make things right. I think all of you ought to give us a chance.”
“Okay, son. A week, then home before your mother has a conniption fit.”
Gabriel was shaking his head, and John reached out, put his hand on Gabriel’s arm. “Let’s go home. We’ve got some work to do.” He stood up, offered Cody Dial his hand. “I’ll call on you if I may.”
“Yes, sir. Anytime.”
Juan stared at them from across the restaurant, and Gabriel walked over to talk to him, but Juan turned away, started wiping down tables he’d already cleaned. Gabriel’s jaw was tight when he walked out of the restaurant. He shook his head. “What in the hell is going on with that kid?” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “We got no time for that now. We need to be in touch with Lathrop tonight. Have you talked to him?”
“I emailed him a copy of the report a week ago. My guess is he’s asked Wainright for an explanation, a what the fuck is going on sort of explanation.”
“Good. So what’s Lathrop been doing in the last week?”
“I got the feeling he was looking for ammunition to give to the governor, so she can put a burr under Prentiss Walker’s ass. They want to use this to get him off the board of supervisors, that’s fine with me. But he’s not going to go easy. It would be helpful if we could figure out what his comeback is going to be. Other than hiding his son. There’s some power struggle going on between the governor’s office and the board. They’re going to use this issue as a weapon in some larger war.”
“That’s for the politicos in Santa Fe. We’ve got to stick with the single issue that concerns us, then get the hell out.”
“Agreed.”
“Where do you think Brian Walker’s hiding?”
“Not far enough away from Cody Dial. I have the feeling that man will hunt him down until the end of his days, if that’s what it takes. So that means we can concentrate on Prentiss Walker. And when we’re done with him, we can concentrate on me and you.”
Gabriel looked at him in surprise. “Me and you?”
“Me and you. Kids and ex-wife. Our wonderful life. The life we should have had together, and the one we’re going to live from here on out. You think Martie would like lavender walls in her room? And maybe little unicorns?”
GABRIEL started researching properties owned by Prentiss Walker, thinking there was a little cabin somewhere and Brian Walker was holed up like some idiot outlaw. John went for a long walk. He always did his best thinking while he was walking, and he needed to think through what the opposition was doing. Charlie Lathrop, up in Santa Fe, had received a copy of the report a week ago, sent John a quick email saying he would be in touch. Prentiss Walker had had a copy about the same length of time, from Wainright. What would Walker Senior’s major concern be? Maybe not protecting his son’s reputation any longer, but trying to figure out what the hell was wrong with him and was he about to go to jail. Pressure on Brian Walker was escalating since John had called him out in Effex, and that snowball was rolling down the hill. Daddy Walker had probably come to Albuquerque to see him, or sent someone, and after that, young Billy had been attacked.
The kids at Effex had seen the banner, had taken pics of it with their little cell phones, had talked about what was happening on Twitter and Facebook. Billy had gone to Urgent Care, and like it or not, reporting agencies had gotten involved. Pictures had been taken and the police had been called. At that point, Prentiss Walker’s motives must have changed. Now he was in retreat, and he needed to get his son out of the reach of the law. But that’s not all he would have done. A good general always had a flanking movement to distract the enemy. A nasty little mosquito to make the enemy look away when he needed to concentrate. What would Prentiss Walker do to distract him? He needed to go see the
man, take his measure. Then maybe he could outthink him and stop an attack before it occurred.
He would go for Kim, or Gabriel. Who knew what Kim had been up to? If there was a person on the planet less likely to be blackmailed, John couldn’t imagine who that might be. Kim would love to get blackmailed. He would splash his indiscretions across the smudged front window of Ho Ho’s. Gabriel? Gabriel had a very angry soon-to-be ex-wife and a son who was acting up, and his daughter had just announced her new Double Dads on her Facebook wall. Was Martha planning something and Juan knew about it? Maybe his recent behavior was because he was being torn between loyalty to his mom and his dad. But what could she do? And what did it have to do with Prentiss Walker? Martha was smart, too smart to be manipulated easily. But she was so angry. Sometimes anger like that could blind you.
Walker was about fifteen years older than John. His generation, they didn’t like to be embarrassed in public. They weren’t part of the digital age, where every detail of your current status was updated routinely for the world to see. Maybe what he was planning to do was publicly out the general and the Horse-Lord. And he was going to use Martha to do it.
John looked into the office. Gabriel was studying the computer screen, wearing a pair of reading glasses that made him look incredibly sexy. Everything made him look sexy. John shook his head. So what was new? Gabriel was just….
“I’m going out for an hour or so. Pulling on a thread.”
“You have an idea?”
John shook his head. “Not sure yet. Let me see what I can come up with.”
Gabriel sat back, pulled off his glasses. “Do I get a kiss before you go?”
John pushed him back in the chair, kissed his neck, up his throat, along the angle of his jaw until he made his slow way to a warm and smiling mouth, the softest mouth, always open, always smiling.
He grabbed his briefcase and walked out to the driveway before he called Martha to say he was coming over. “We need to speak privately.”
“Is Gabriel coming?”
“No. Just me.”
SHE was watching for him, and came out to the driveway when he pulled in. She opened the passenger door and got in the front seat of his car. “We can talk out here.” She was wearing sweats, her dark hair pulled back in a ponytail at the nape of her neck.
He turned off the car, and they listened to the silence and the tick of the engine cooling. She still looked tired, but defiant too. “Martha, I need to explain to you about the current situation.”
“Like I don’t know the current situation?”
“I’m not talking about our personal business. I’m talking about Professor Brian Walker being physically abusive to his students. Including Kim.” She looked up at that, startled, and he handed her a copy of the folder that held all the information he’d gathered. He watched her go through the pages carefully. At the back, John had put in a copy of a photo Kim had taken of his face with the black eye and swollen, cut lip. He’d drawn big arrows with a magic marker, pointing to the purple swelling under his eye, and written along the bottom “Help! I’m turning into a blueberry!” She smiled at this picture, let her fingers reach out to touch his face. She’d known Kim since he was a baby too.
“Why are you showing me these?”
“I need to know if Brian Walker’s father, Prentiss Walker, is going to try and use you to derail me. I’m trying to get this man off the faculty. His father is a member of the board of supervisors and is protecting his son. Protecting him to the point that he is letting him continue the abusive behavior. He knows I’m working on this. Have you been approached by anyone in the past week, two weeks? Someone from the media?”
“If I have been, it wasn’t anything to do with this.”
John let silence fill the car. “You have talked to a reporter about our private family situation?”
“Excuse me, General, situation? It was my family, not yours. It’s not a private family situation. It’s adultery. It’s you and Gabriel, lying to me, cheating on me, for the entire length of our marriage. You can pretend it’s just a little family matter, but the UCMJ would have said something different. If you had told the truth, if anyone had found out what you two were doing, you would have been kicked out of the army. You could have been court-martialed for adultery. And the Uniform Code of Military Justice still applies to you. They can still court-martial you for things you did while you were on active duty. They can still throw you into Leavenworth. They can strip your rank and your retirement benefits.”
John felt the chill fill his belly. “Martha, what have you done? Who told you all this?”
“It wasn’t a reporter. It was a lawyer. He took a deposition about what I know about your relationship with my husband. He said he was going to forward a copy to the inspector general.”
“And the purpose of this deposition?”
“I don’t know. I hope he uses it to burn your life to the ground. Like you’ve burned mine.”
John looked at her for a long time. He remembered the fortune cookie he’d opened at Ho Ho’s. And where the offence is, let the great axe fall. He’d assumed at the time Hamlet was talking about someone else. “Martha, I’m sorry for what’s happened. I’m sorry you’ve been hurt, and the kids. I’ve loved him all my life. Nothing you could have done would have changed that. Nothing you do now is going to change what’s between us. He’s like the air I breathe, you understand? But I am sorry for hurting you, more than you could know.”
She got out of the car, handed the folder back in to him. “And I’m sorry about what happened to Kim and the other boys. That doesn’t have anything to do with me. If your man is behind the lawyer approaching mine about the deposition, then I would say it’s just too damn bad you left so much ammunition lying around for an enemy to use against you.”
GABRIEL was out in the yard when he got home. John saw the bottle of tequila and the pitcher of orange juice on the counter, along with Gabriel’s phone. John fixed himself a glass and joined him in the yard. He was looking down into the cold frame.
“Early days yet, isn’t it? For seeds to come up?”
“Yes, it is. I’m thinking about getting a little thermometer, though, so we can monitor the temperature.” He stood up, took a big slug of his drink. “She called me as soon as you left. You didn’t tell me you were going to talk to her.”
“It was just a hunch. And I wanted to make sure things were okay between us. In case she had some things to say to me privately.”
“So what do you think now?”
“Things are not okay between us.” They walked to the back porch, pulled a couple of chairs over, and sat down in the dark. John could feel the chill air rising from the ground. “Gabriel, would they do it? Would they lay charges and proceed with a court martial?”
He shook his head, then hesitated. “Not about homosexuality. Not since DADT has been abolished. It would be… no. Impossible. But they’ve always looked with a hard eye at adultery. That’s how they used to go after men when they wanted them gone but didn’t want to publicly name them as gay, or embezzlers, or criminals of other flavors.”
John flinched a little, to hear “gay” set in the same sentence with “embezzler.” He remembered, though, and it felt familiar to him, familiar from living under that fear for most of his life. And now he was mad and scared, mad at the army and Martha and the fools who filled up the world, lived their lives without ever thinking about the consequences. “Fucking hell. What about the security clearance? Being homosexual was always considered a security risk, because people would become susceptible to blackmail. The work I did in the last tour, for the JCS. Is that going to come into question?”
Gabriel was shaking his head again, but John felt the ice still sitting in his gut, some slight tremor in his chest. They could take it all from him, everything. And the thing that meant the most to him, the work he had given his life for, his reputation. Maybe the inspector general wouldn’t want to do anything in public, but his colleagues? A life
time’s work could be called into question because he had kept it hidden, and that had made him a blackmail risk. He’d never have received the security clearance to do the work he’d done if anyone knew. And now there would always be a question.
He drained the glass, thought about throwing it against something, but he didn’t want to have broken glass in the yard. “What did you and Kim plant?”
“Basil. We’re going to have lots of pesto this summer.”
In the dark, Gabriel reached out to him and took his hand.
Chapter 15
“I NEVER want you to regret loving me.” Gabriel’s hands were gentle, moving down his chest.
“How could I? That would be like regretting the way my heart beats.” John felt a warm mouth tasting the skin of his neck, smelled the spicy, woodsy scent of Gabriel’s hair, the sweat just under his hairline. “You’ve been the greatest joy in my life.”
“And your life is getting really complicated since I moved my tools into your shed.”
“Gabriel, don’t talk. I’ve had enough talking for today, and we’re not going to resolve anything. Let’s just screw around.”
That surprised a laugh out of him. “Yeah, okay. When all else fails, right?”
“Saved by the dick.”
So many years, and the smell of his hair could still fill John’s chest with heat, with need and longing that flowed down his spine like water. The ice that had sat in his belly since Martha told him what she’d done warmed, melted away under Gabriel’s touch.
Gabriel had pushed the sheets to the end of the bed, settled himself on top of John, a hip over a hip, one long thigh nestled heavy and warm into John’s groin, an arm thrown over his chest; his hand moving into the chest hair that was turning grayer by the day, and his head on John’s shoulder, mouth an inch from the tender skin of his neck. John thought lying in his bed with Gabriel draped over him was as close to perfect as he was ever going to feel in this lifetime. And all Gabriel had to do was nudge him a little, move that long thigh against him.