by SE Jakes
Styx said what they were all thinking. “Only guys I know who can do that are spooks.”
Law sighed, looked at Styx. “You think someone’s after you?”
“It’s been too damn long. What the fuck would anyone want with me?” Styx asked.
“Yeah, because you’re so innocent.”
“It’s too big of a coincidence,” Paolo told them both. “The guy who was out there was looking for Cole. There’s only two ways this can end, and I only like one of them.”
Chapter Fifteen
The next morning, Marcus and Cole learned about the man on Styx’s property.
“They think it’s our guy,” Marcus confirmed.
“Dammit.” Cole punched the table with his fist, enjoying the sting of pain. “What the fuck, Marcus? What’s he going to do? He’s gone from zero to sixty in like five minutes.”
“I think we’ve got to believe Paolo’s theory—this guy’s been following you for a hell of a lot longer than you’ve realized. You said yourself that you weren’t dating…weren’t having sex. Maybe that kept him at bay. Maybe he figured you were being faithful to him,” Marcus explained.
It made sense. But the thought that some random psychopath had been following him for months…fuck. Had he looked through Cole’s windows? Watched him at the diner?
“This can’t go on,” he muttered.
“It won’t. We’re searching for that Marine,” Marcus soothed. “Don’t worry. We’ll get him.”
“By hiding?” In Cole’s estimation, it seemed the only way to draw his stalker out was to keep doing what he’d been doing to get the stalker’s attention in the first place. Before Marcus and the bomb. “You need to let me back out there. At least during the day—draw him out, get him comfortable. Maybe I can get him to approach me if you and Styx and Law and Paolo stay out of the picture. Make it seem like I’m on my own again and lonely.”
Marcus glowered and shook his head. “Fucking. Forget. It.”
“Look, Mr. Large and In Charge, that’s only going to work in the bedroom.”
Marcus’s smile was a handsomely predatory one, and it made Cole’s stomach flip. In the good way.
Even so, he put up a hand. “That wasn’t an invitation.”
“Sounds like one.” Marcus advanced. Cole’s dick homed in on that and told Cole what—who—it wanted.
Still, he backed up. Marcus kept moving forward, and Cole’s back hit the living room wall.
Marcus put his hands on either side of the wall above Cole’s head. Locking him in place without touching him at all. Yet.
And that’s all Cole wanted him to do. They’d come so far in a short period of time, but that had happened easily because they were locked away in paradise together. What would happen once they were spit back unceremoniously into the real world? Hell, at this rate, it seemed like it would never happen.
The reality was, Cole was broke. Or he would be soon, because he wasn’t working and he had no safe place to live. The longer he hid from the world, the worse it would get. Once they were back out in the real world…well, Marcus hadn’t made any promises. To be fair, Cole hadn’t asked for any, but…
“You’re thinking too hard,” Marcus informed him. “It’s my job to stop that.”
“Really? I’m going to need to take a look at your Phoenix, Inc. instruction manual to see if that’s really part of your job,” Cole murmured later, his face buried in Marcus’s chest. Marcus laughed, the sound that had been so unfamiliar just a couple of short weeks ago coming far more easily now.
He’d only had the nightmare twice. A record for him. Cole had seen them both, but he hadn’t asked about them, only sought to soothe Marcus back to sleep. Marcus was grateful he hadn’t pressed…but until he talked to Cole about it, Cole wouldn’t understand why making statements about putting himself in danger would freak Marcus out so thoroughly.
He forced himself back to that day, that technically successful mission that still felt like a failure…a mission so full of contradiction that he couldn’t get past it, spilling it all out for Cole to hear. Cole, who simply listened to the story in its entirety, without asking questions. Without judging.
With Cole’s hand on his heart, Marcus told him everything.
Goatfuck missions happened nearly every day… Sometimes, even when the mission went well, it wasn’t all good. Like his last one in the CIA. The joint task force he’d been a part of had gotten out the kidnapped ambassadors, but the people they’d had to leave behind in that small village…
“Aid is coming,” the FOB had said repeatedly in his ear, and the men he was working with were just as torn as he was. Because aid was not coming before the rebel soldiers, who’d been going town by town, pillaging and killing.
He beat himself up over it—logically, he knew there was no way to get a hundred people on this small helo, no way to lead them to the jungle while fending off an army of soldiers with his five-man team. This wasn’t goddamn Tears of the Sun. And when you looked at a hundred people out of the thousands being killed…
“It would’ve been something,” he’d told the shrink fiercely.
“And you feel that saving the ambassadors was nothing?” she’d asked.
“Not what I said.”
“What else could you have done?”
“They all died. We saw it happen from the helo. Those women… They knew. And they fucking comforted us before we left.” His voice had broken a little. “We made the pilot hang and watch until it was all over. Our penance. The least we could do.”
“And you beat yourself up about it every day since.”
“Yes.”
“What you think will make it go away?”
“Nothing. And I couldn’t stay in a job to keep helping when I felt like all I was doing was pretending.”
It was the last thing he’d said to her on his very last visit, because hell, going over and over it wasn’t helping, and nothing she said could convince him to feel differently.
The only thing that could possibly help was doing more good than harm with his new job. At least now, working with Styx and Law and Paolo, he could save one person at a time. It was much easier to handle one person at a time.
And Cole was looking at him like he understood everything. Jesus, Cole might actually be able to, too…because Cole might’ve sold his body, but at times Marcus felt like he’d sold his soul…his humanity. And he wasn’t sure he’d ever get it back.
But Cole had helped him get it back. He might be street smart and nowhere near innocent, but he’d still somehow retained enough joy…a joy he gave freely to Marcus. Cole touched a part of him that he thought he’d wound up and wrapped so tightly nothing would ever touch it again. And he’d hated that at first because it scared the shit out of him.
And he told Cole all of this, and Cole teared up.
“You’re too good for me,” Marcus managed.
“You’re not getting rid of me, all right?” Cole wrapped his legs around him.
“That’s not what I’m trying to do.”
“You can be a dick, sure,” Cole said wryly. “Both when you’re being protective of yourself and the men in your life who you trust…”
“Like Styx and Law and Paolo.”
“Yes,” Cole agreed. “You guys are going to be a part of each other’s lives forever. I like that kind of loyalty.”
“You’ve got that same loyalty from me—you know that, right?” Marcus asked, and Cole nodded. “And no one’s taking you from me. Understand? I’ll do anything I have to in order to keep you safe.”
“I don’t want anything to stay on your conscience.”
“Let me tell you something—this guy threatening you? My conscience will be clean, whatever I need to do to stop him.”
“You’re going to kill him?”
“Cole, it’s you or him.”
Cole looked sick. “I know.”
“The nightmares I have aren’t because I saved someone. They’re because I didn’t sa
ve enough someones.” Marcus paused. “I know you saw a couple.”
“You have them every night, Marcus,” Cole told him quietly.
“Shit. Sorry. I didn’t realize—”
“It’s okay.” Cole’s hand closed around his forearm. “I don’t want to embarrass you or make you talk about something you don’t want to talk about. God knows you’ve been patient with me. But I don’t want to lie to you…or make you think you’re not having them.”
“I’ll sleep somewhere else if they bother you.”
“I don’t want you to sleep somewhere else. They only bother me because you look like you’re in pain.”
“How can I be in pain? I don’t even remember them,” Marcus said, trying to blow the whole conversation off, and to his credit, Cole let him. Until later that evening, when Marcus woke up screaming and Cole wrapped his arms around him and murmured that everything was going to be okay.
“There was a time when it wasn’t,” Marcus told him. “It wasn’t that long ago, and I wasn’t sure things were ever going to be all right again.”
“And now?”
Marcus found Cole’s hand in the dark, looked into his eyes. “I think maybe it could be. But I’m not there yet.”
Cole simply tightened his arms around Marcus until the he let himself fall back to sleep against Cole’s chest.
Chapter Sixteen
For the next few days, things were nearly perfect. Perfect, if Marcus could forget that they were hiding out because a crazed stalker was trying to kill them both. Which he did manage to do some of the time. He cooked for Cole, and they worked out, sparring and boxing, learning each other’s moves. At night, or sometimes all day, they learned each other’s bodies. It was an incredibly intimate arrangement, maybe a first for both of them, and since they couldn’t exactly back away, they just barreled forward into each other.
They didn’t talk about families or jobs, beyond Cole’s work at the garage and Marcus’s work at Phoenix. It was as if they’d both been reborn when they started those jobs, or as if they both wanted to be.
And it was good. Really good. Between the movies and the books Cole borrowed from his shelf, and the music Cole blasted, Marcus couldn’t remember a time when he’d smiled more. There were no new leads, but then again there were no new sightings of the psycho either. And so it was far too easy to pretend that they were safe.
Marcus thought he knew better than to fall into that trap. But spending time with Cole was easy. Despite the age difference—and Marcus began to realize that Cole had lived a lot more than his age would have it seem—they had a lot in common. Sharing what happened on that fateful mission had brought that out.
At night when dusk fell, Cole and Marcus would walk along the beach, Marcus always with his weapon. They passed families and dogs, and Cole would get his pants wet every single time because he liked to walk in the cold water barefoot.
And then, slowly, Cole began opening up about his family. The first time was when they were having dinner, and Cole made a comment that beef stew had been his father’s favorite dish. He hadn’t seemed upset about it, and he ate the stew easily so Marcus had to assume it was a good thing. A couple of days later, they were watching a movie, Gone in Sixty Seconds, and Cole pointed out the Shelby Mustang and said, “That was the first car my dad and I worked on together.”
“Your dad was a mechanic?”
“Yeah. He had his own garage for a while, until he got sick. And my mom, she died a couple years before that so we were alone. I don’t think either of them had much family—at least I’d never met them. Still haven’t.”
Cole’s story was similar to the ones that he’d heard in boot camp and beyond, because most of the military men he knew, especially the ones in Special Forces, seemed to have the shadiest backgrounds imaginable, as if that somehow catapulted them to become some kind of heroic being. It made a lot of sense, actually. Abused kids had to have a lot of situational awareness—they had to learn to read people early and quickly to avoid danger. They had to learn self-defense techniques. They had to learn to be invisible. They’d grown up with warfare, so the warfare of the military was not new to them. It was simply a different kind of war.
A couple of days later, Cole told him, “My dad was an alcoholic. I would just tell everybody he was sick, and I guess being an alcoholic is like being sick. The times he wasn’t hitting me or passed out drunk, we’d fix cars together. Until he lost his business and there were no more cars to fix.”
“Is that why you don’t drink?” Marcus had assumed there was some kind of issue since Cole steadfastly refused any kind of alcohol, although he didn’t seem to have a problem when Marcus had a beer.
“It never does anything for me. I’ve tried it, but I figure I have the gene of addiction, so why tempt fate?” Cole shrugged. “Relax, I’m not one of those reformers.”
“I’d stop drinking around you if you want me to. It’s not a big deal to me.”
“Thanks,” Cole said softly, and Marcus took that as a yes and so he put away the beer, because he only had them occasionally, and they drank iced tea or soda or coffee.
One night, Cole told him, “Sometimes it’s the smell of the alcohol, you know? It’s like one whiff of bourbon could take me right back to being six or seven or ten or twelve, and knowing when his hand was going to come down across my face.”
And that’s how it was when Cole opened up—a slow-blooming plant, each leaf bared to him a gift. Marcus didn’t take them lightly.
Cole thought about all of those days, and he wasn’t sure how he survived. It had been a really long haul for him. But losing everything at sixteen and then spending the next year barely treading water had taught him many things. And it wasn’t like the years before that had been so great.
Now he turned to Marcus and said, “I pretty much watched my dad drink himself to death. He lost everything. I tried to help with the garage, but it had started to go downhill when I was too young to really get a handle on all of it. At least my dad taught me everything he knew about cars before things started to go wrong. I remember being like three and going underneath the chassis with him. He used to quiz me and I didn’t care because I just loved spending time with him.”
“What happened to make him start drinking?” Marcus asked.
“Part of it was returning from the military—at least that’s what I heard. I was only six when he came back and he seemed fine to me. I guess military men know how to put on a good act.” He looked at Marcus, who shrugged and nodded. “And then when my mom died, things got really bad. I know my dad felt horrible about the drinking, about not taking care of me the right way. Toward the end, he stopped hitting me and yelling at me. He just got really quiet and he slept a lot. I should’ve known.”
“No, you shouldn’t have. You were a kid. I’m so sorry, Cole.” Marcus’s hand was steady on his shoulder.
“Yeah well, I’m sure growing up for you was pretty different.”
“Money doesn’t solve problems. Sometimes it creates more.”
“True. Money couldn’t have helped my dad. He would’ve just thrown it all away with the booze and the gambling. And hell, I wouldn’t have been able to manage it. Today, maybe.”
“Is that what you want to do? Open your own garage?”
“It’s way too early to think about that. First, I’ve got to try to get my job back.”
“I know Styx talked to your boss. He said he’d try to keep it open as long as he could, and that he’d keep what was happening to you under wraps. I guess he told the rest of the guys that you had a family emergency.”
“It’s not like I’m allowed out of the house for anyone to know differently.” Cole shrugged.
“It’s not forever.”
For some reason, that hit Cole a lot harder than it should. Of course he didn’t want to be in hiding from the stalker forever, but it only served to remind him that his time with Marcus, at least like this, was limited. “I know that. And I’m grateful for what y
ou guys are doing.”
Marcus looked at him funny, but the expression passed quickly and Cole told himself that it was nothing.
Chapter Seventeen
Late the next afternoon, Marcus ran downstairs to the now-beeping perimeter monitor in time to see a flower delivery truck leaving the driveway. He clicked a picture, getting the license plate and the company’s name, and he quickly called them.
“Hey, did you guys just drop off something at my house?” He gave them the address and they confirmed that, yes, indeed they did.
“The card says that it’s from your brother,” the owner of the flower shop told Marcus. “Was the card not included? I’m so sorry.”
“Not a big deal,” Marcus said smoothly. “He has messy handwriting anyway.”
The owner laughed. “Oh they all do. But he called it in, so I was the one to write the note.”
“Thanks again.” Marcus hung up and tentatively opened the door. Just because the flowers were legitimate didn’t mean that the deliveryman had been. It was a simple floral arrangement, wrapped in clear plastic, tied with a ribbon, a slightly more masculine vase filled with dark-red flowers and lots of greens.
Cole was at the door next to him. “Who the hell sent a dozen long-stemmed red roses?”
Almost as soon as he said it, his expression went taut. Marcus told him, “Cole, you need to move back, okay?”
Cole did as Marcus asked, and Marcus caught the quick look of fear in his eyes before he retreated. Marcus didn’t waste time, bending down to listen. He looked in the clear vase, but he saw no signs of a bomb or any other kind of tampering. Gingerly he pulled the card out—the one the stalker obviously put in to replace the original—and saw the message, written in neat bubble-like script.
I’m so close to saving you. Don’t worry—no one can hide you from me for long.
“The good news is it’s not a bomb. The bad news is this guy’s tracked us here. This house isn’t safe.”
Cole took it better than he expected, asking, “Where do we go now?”
“I can only think of one good option,” Marcus told him. And he hoped the men he was about to invade felt the same way.