John looked over the delivery manifest one last time, matching it against what the prison was expecting. Powdered soup. Powdered eggs. Powdered.... butter? Okay. Powdered mashed potatoes. Canned peas. Canned green beans. Uck. Poor Nick. Canned chili, generic, one gallon tins, two pallets of the stuff.
A small team of FBI specialists would open tins of chili and insert plastic packets of powder of their own. They would load the illicit cargo, then Theo would pick up the legitimate delivery at a warehouse on the outskirts of the city.
John swung out the door of the semi and down to the ground, giving Theo one last warning look. "Be careful. No dark alleys alone until this is over."
While John was crossing the vast and decrepit lot to where a car and probie driver were parked to drive him back to the office, his phone buzzed.
"My guys at the prison just got a tip from Nick's buddy Lyndon Green," said Fisher.
John stopped in his tracks, the gravel kicking up dust under his feet. "And?"
"One in custody - well, he was already in custody, but ours, now. Wasn't brilliant of us to enlist the one prison gang known for non-violence, because nobody's beating down their cell doors to ask 'em to hit Aster. But it worked out. A real peach named Iggy came to Green for help, being as he'd been blackmailed to murder Aster and didn't want to."
"Didn't want to?" asked John.
"Yeah. Iggy's a lifer in for triple murder, and the blackmail lever is a fourth skeleton in his basement. But I guess when he had a debt he couldn't pay, he mentioned it to Aster and the next day there was a few hundred dollars extra in his commissary account. He's considered himself one of Aster's protectors ever since."
"Should've known it'd be something touching like that," said John, stopping in front of a gleaming black 70's Chevy Caprice. An agent inside was doing a probie-level imitation of a cigar-chewing pimp, which looked more adorable than menacing. John sank into the burgundy velvet plush bench seat and closed the door.
Fisher chuckled. "You ever had a guy look at you all earnest-like and ask if you'd like him to off his blackmailer?"
"This lead back to Starr's boys?"
"One," said Fisher. "We have the guy blackmailing Iggy, and thanks to his 'cooperation' we have a suspect under surveillance. We're hoping it's the right guy, and that he leads us to the other man in the car with Starr."
While the probie drove him back to Fisher's office, John occupied himself worrying about the other men Starr had presumably enlisted to kill his friend. Finally he called and jumped through hoops until he reached Lyndon Green, and asked for advice.
Lyndon checked everything obvious. They controlled access to Nick's food, medication, and water. Nobody was allowed to loiter outside Nick's cell. Before he was let out of the cell, every door and every wicket would be checked and locked. He would wear a helmet and bulletproof vest. The FBI was watching the cameras at all times. The exercise yard would be searched before Nick was brought to it, and the cell guarded while he was gone and searched before he was allowed to re-enter it.
Lyndon sighed. "I say you got it covered, man. Just remember this, everything starts with a diversion. Anything happens, you make a beeline for Nick's cell. I don't care if an inmate sets himself on fire, a CO has a seizure, or someone tells you your house just got blown up. You go to Nick and stay put like his life depends on it."
"Anything else?" asked John, sensing Lyndon was holding something back.
Another heavy sigh. "You're not gonna want to hear."
"Try me," said John.
"Before you write me off as a bitter inmate, remember who did Nick, okay?" said Lyndon. "Watch the COs. Inmates don't have an exclusive patent on violence."
JOHN
Fisher's van was almost identical to Art Crimes’, and Wash and Kelly had to stop themselves from taking their places at the monitors.
"Don't have to be here," John reminded them. "You're going to be up all night at the prison."
Kelly gave him The Look. "You're not the only one who cares about Aster. We want to be here."
Fisher and two of his agents watched cameras hidden around the square, and adjusted audio. They'd nursed Vineil through several bouts of fear, self-pity, and hate, but she had her game face and her wireless transmitter on.
The thin fall sun was getting low in the sky, casting long shadows as the temperature dropped enough to make Vineil's breath visible. If Vineil's nerves betrayed her and her hands shook, Starr would mistake it for cold.
Starr approached as she read High Times on a park bench. He presented a half-dozen roses, bowing to hide his glance around for observers. "Here, have a cover story."
She grinned, teeth flashing like a wolf, and pressed a palm to her chest. "Ohhhh, mister, I'm smitten. And, fuck you."
Starr sat beside her. "Anything for me?"
Vineil smirked. "An outstanding little shit who runs drugs into Sing Sing. He knows a guy named something-or-some-black-name-or-another Green, who'll take care of the hit for us if we pay for the next load of pretty white fun-powder."
Starr rolled his eyes. "Criminals. I want to meet this little shit of yours."
"He won't, though you're free to try. He'll call us any minute."
"What's his name? I'm running him and this Green guy, make sure they're legit," said Starr with a nervous glance around. He tucked his hands in his jacket pocket.
"Elias Fouku. Alias, but he's got photo recognition with my snitches. They said he's got like twenty identities."
"I want the photo," said Starr.
Vineil dug it out of her pocket, and John and Fisher grinned at each other. Evidence to find on Starr when they arrested him and searched his place. Vineil's phone rang. Theo.
"Elias, meet our mutual friend," answered Vineil, putting the phone on speaker.
"Hello, friend," said Theo. "Calls are to be under sixty seconds. I have a murderer in Sing Sing who doesn't mind an encore. He's in charge of recreational substances out there, and the cost of my next delivery is forty thousand. If he doesn't have to pay for it, Nick Aster will die within a week. Yes or no."
Starr shifted and looked around frantically for a trap, thrown by Theo taking charge and speaking so bluntly. "Uh-"
"Forty-five seconds," warned Theo.
"Yes."
"I take payment in unmarked twenty dollar bills, in Southside Storage unit 116 by tonight. The delivery takes place tomorrow morning."
"I'll be checking into you. If I'm satisfied with what I find, the money will be there."
Theo hung up to the sound of dishes shattering, an embellishment that caused John and Wash to glance at each other with raised eyebrows.
Driven by an acute case of "missing Nick Aster annoying him every second of the day", John glanced at his watch and called Neil Kasdan at the prison. "How's my pain in the ass partner doing?"
"Sleeping, mostly," said Kasdan.
"The rest of the time?" John's chest tightened, thinking about the hell he'd left his wounded partner in. If he wasn't okay, if he was scared, or in pain and suffering through it alone....
"I think he was.... really sad at first. But we've all been stopping outside the door and talking to him every time he wakes up, and he's starting to smile and be goofy and all that good stuff. Think he finally believes we're right here and worried about him."
"Good job," said John. "Don't let that message waver. Say hi to him for me, tell him we turned Vineil, and I'll be out there to check on him soon."
Kasdan called back a half hour later. "He loved that you called about him. But he says go to the hotel and get some sleep, he'll be fine and he'll see you in the morning."
"He mean it?" asked John. He was starting to feel sick from too much coffee and too little rest. "The guy's incredibly convincing when he plays tough, if there was the slightest hint-"
"He meant it. His eyes softened when we talked about you. He's fine, and he wants you to take care of yourself."
John sighed. The idea of going straight to the hotel and bed was
alluring beyond belief. But he'd throw himself off a bridge if that was what it would take to reassure Nick he wasn't being abandoned in that horrible little cell.
"Tell him I'm there with one call. In the middle of the night, whenever, it doesn't matter. I'm only one call away, even if he just wants to mock my choice in dog sweaters. And I'll be there bright and early to relieve Wash and Kelly."
"He's looking forward to seeing them," said Kasdan. "Don't worry, he's hanging in there."
NICK
"John wants me to tell you he's only one call away," said Wash. "He means it, even if it's in the middle of the night."
Nick's stomach dropped. Clearly a secret, insecure part of him wanted John to come after all. This cell was cold and hard and hadn't changed all day. He missed John a lot. Especially the new soft, sensitive, wonderful version that one apparently had to get beaten half to death to access.
Clenching his fists, Nick smiled at Wash through the thick, scratched polycarbonate. He and Kelly were staying up all night to work in the grimmest section of a maximum security prison just to protect and support him. Being sulky because John wasn't there was beyond pathetic.
"Thank you. And thanks for taking care of me."
Wash glanced at his boots. "Doin' okay?"
Nick shrugged, too tired for that sort of lie.
"Anything I can do?" asked Wash.
"You and Kelly being here means a lot. Don't need anything else."
Wash gave him an intense look. "You hang in there, partner."
Nick's feelings crumbled. Sometimes, with the most reserved people, the smallest of words meant so much. "I will."
He crawled back into his little cave of prison blankets, stinging a little inside from the fact that John hadn't returned all day.
I will not abandon you.
Nick believed that, but it took a conscious act of faith to do so.
You are good.
Steel and cement and locks said otherwise. He tucked the blankets around his shoulders and his open eyes looked the few feet across the cell to a blank, hard wall. The interminable helplessness made him want to whimper. There was no give to any of this, except the stiff but immensely comforting bedding.
You are good.
There had to be some reason John kept forgiving him and fighting for him. Some reason there was an entire team of FBI agents outside the doors of this cell protecting him.
You are redeemable.
That was better. A little less glowing than John's version, but easier to believe. The cell door stared back at him. Steel with no handle on the inside, the more terrifying for its lack of anything to grasp at. This was where people who, in the words of one CO, "failed at life so hard you managed to fail fucking prison" were sent. People not responsible enough to manage a door handle.
Redeemable?
Nick stood, almost relishing the distraction of the pain it sent down his legs and back. He took one and a half steps to the door and clawed at the edge, his heart thudding. He was trapped. He was tempted to scream, tension building at the base of his skull. There wasn't a proviso for "I can't handle it, just let me out for five minutes, please," in here.
Even the window....
His first time in here, he'd been startled by how civilized it was. It wasn't some dark, damp hole with zero human contact. But by the time they let him out a mere three days later, something inside him had been scarred. It felt utterly heartless. People would look in the window at him to see if he was still alive, but leave him locked in a kennel that made being trapped in an elevator seem like a luxury.
That window was its own form of torture, with a view of a wall. Like that was all that was left of the world. Walls upon walls, just layered and folding in on him until he struggled to breathe. Light that never changed, shadows that never shifted. He gasped, and cracked his forehead sharply against the window so the pain would jar him out of his fledgling panic attack.
His vision blurred, and he cried out quietly, trying to suck air out from between the walls crushing him. He wasn't redeemable, he was insane. He was brain damaged.The system was right. Society was better off with him in here. John, Mari, Alice, Theo, all of them would be better off if they'd never let him out.
"Nick Aster." Wash's voice was resigned, and sympathetic. "Are you trying to have a panic attack in there?"
"No, just malingering," Nick managed to reply, putting a hand to his forehead and wincing. Really, Aster? Beating your head against the wall?
"Nick." Kelly sounded sincerely worried, even loving. "Go lie down. Close your eyes and try to sleep. Pretend you're at home, or in the office hiding from paperwork. You're not really captive, remember that, okay?"
It was the deep concern in Wash and Kelly's voices that broke through. Irredeemable, broken people didn't have successful professional FBI agents who reassured them with affection and respect while protecting their lives.
"Okay," said Nick, his voice coming out quiet and small.
Cut it out.
His last panicked spiral downward had led him to conclude John was sick of him and was heartlessly abandoning him in prison.
Don't listen to the beaten man hiding in a cell with his heart broken.
Believe John.
If John Langley, cynical, suspicious and judgmental John Langley, said he was a good man and didn't deserve to be here, it was true.
This box was a shitty place to be and got worse hour after endless, slow, buzzing, time-standing-still hour. But Nick had learned the one and only escape during his previous confinement, when he'd been here after breaking out.
He'd scraped at the door, screamed, cried, begged, curled up in the fetal position on the floor and hoped to die. Some connection to reality snapped, and he found what ended up keeping him sane: His body was trapped, his imagination wasn't.
He could lie down, close his eyes, and film a movie where things were better.
So that was what he did now. Closed his eyes, pulled the blankets around his shoulders, and remembered lying in bed at the Langley's. Everything was soft and dark and quiet. He was pressed against John. His harsh FBI handler was transformed into utter safety. Holding him, warm and soft and solid, caring and trusting him with his wife and his home and his heart.
Mari, the same only even softer, snuggled tenderly against his bruised body, calling him sweetheart, sharing her beloved husband and her home.
Here, he was dangerous enough, bad enough, to be handled with chains through steel doors. But in that other place, he was loved and trusted deeply.
He wondered if that could make a person be good or bad. Being treated with such tenderness made him want to bend everything to a shape where he could be worthy of that. Maybe not at the extremes. Some of his neighbors would cut the throats of the trusting. Lyndon Green was proof that putting a fiercely good man in cuffs and cells wasn't enough alone to turn him bad.
But when one was balanced on the edge, the way Nick was.... either was enough to knock him from one axis to the other.
Maybe. Or maybe it was choice. Choosing to be the man who deserved trust and love, no matter how much he was he was pounded on and told otherwise. He put himself there, where he wanted to be. Snuggled in between them, his beloved cat burglar tucked above his head with a soft paw under his chin.
His head was on John's chest, and John's arm was around his back, hugging him. He could hear the agent's steady breathing and feel his warmth. John kissed him on the top of the head, and rubbed the arm stretched across his chest. Nothing hurt, and he felt utterly safe. "You're not going back to prison," John reassured him. "Ever. I promise."
If only real John could promise that, or even real Nick.
"Are you keeping me?" asked Nick, his heart crawling up his throat, scared even in fantasy.
"If you want a family, you have one," said John. "We love you. We want you."
Well, that's it. I guess I want the whole domestic family thing.
Huh.
"I want," Nick whispered in return.
>
"I'm keeping you," John reassured him, his arm tightening around Nick's back. "I'm keeping you. No matter what."
"Goodnight, sweetheart," said Mari. "We love you."
"Good night," Nick whispered out loud, his eyes closed, loving them so intensely they had to feel it through walls and across miles. "I love you both."
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Saber-Toothed Kittens
Broken Blue Lines: Love. Hate. Criminal Justice.: An FBI Crime Drama / LGBT+ Love Story Page 43