by E M Lindsey
Cole couldn’t deny it. “Of course it isn’t. But I’m not a stranger to sacrificing what I want for what I need. This isn’t just about me, Ryan. And it’s not just about you.”
He heard a click, like Ryan had snapped his teeth together, and then he knew in that moment, he was alone. Ryan had walked out, and Cole wasn’t sure he would ever be coming back.
***
Cole shot up from the sofa, his hand on Kevin’s harness like if he let go again Kevin would disappear. But he recognized the uneven gait approaching the door. When he heard the knock, he raised his voice, “Come in!” and waited with tense anticipation as Wes let himself into the mess.
“Holy shit, you weren’t kidding,” Wes said.
Cole dragged a hand down his face. “No, I wasn’t.” He reached for the top of Kevin’s head and pushed his fingers into the soft fur.
He heard Wes sigh, heard him step into the room, and a little stumble over the fallen pieces of furniture. “Tell me you’re not staying here.”
Cole shook his head. “I’ve already spoken to Isabel about it. We’re being put up in a safehouse for now and they’re reviewing security footage. So far it looks like the footage and system were both tampered with—someone cut the feed for twenty minutes from a remote location. Right now, they’re trying to get a lock on it.”
“Wouldn’t you be good at figuring that out?” Wes said.
“Normally, yes,” Cole admitted, letting his frustration show in his tone, “but I’ve been having trouble getting my speech program and braille display to sync with the servers we work on. I haven’t been able to test my skills out well enough beyond some very basic hacking before it all just falls apart.”
“Hmm,” Wes said, and Cole could hear the frown in his voice. “So what do you need me to help you with?”
“I think some of my old documents are missing, but I can’t be certain, and I have some files on thumb drives which were hidden. There are four missing, but I can’t tell which ones. I had them marked with a couple symbols but they’re not tactile.” Cole took a step back, letting Kevin navigate him through the veritable minefield of furniture.
“I can do that,” Wes said quietly. “But…can I ask you why you didn’t have Ryan help out? You told me about it, and you must trust him more than me.”
Cole shook his head. “I…I do trust him, but he’s in danger now already. If whoever did this was able to hack into my system and get in and out that quickly, they know me. Which means they’ve seen him, and he doesn’t have the same training you do.” Cole passed a hand down his face. “Honestly, if the system weren’t offline right now, I wouldn’t have asked you here, and I trust you can protect yourself.”
“I do alright,” Wes said with a slight chuckle. “But you shouldn’t underestimate Ryan, either.”
“Well at this point it doesn’t matter,” Cole said miserably. “He’s not going to forgive me after this. He’s gone.”
Wes chuckled again and stepped right up to Cole’s elbow. “If you believe that, you haven’t been paying attention, man. But we can deal with that later. Show me to the files and let’s see what we’re working with.”
It didn’t take long for Wes to assess the remaining thumb drives. After a failed attempt at trying to explain the symbols, he just drew an approximation on Cole’s palm and Cole was able to determine that whoever it was got away with two family albums, some old documents he’d used for practice which had been written for him by Taber, and a few files which had recently been declassified. Everything important still remained. It either meant they were trying to throw him off, or they’d be back for more.
It was still curious why they’d taken those specific ones and not all of them. He couldn’t work out the pattern, and it was starting to drive him mad.
“Do you want me to go through all these papers?” Wes asked him. Cole heard him shuffling through them, and he shook his head.
“Honestly, I should take them to the office. I can have someone go through them there and see if anything integral is missing.” He walked up next to Wes, reaching for his shoulder, and gave it a squeeze when he found it. “I really appreciate this.”
Wes stood up straight, dislodging Cole’s grip on him, but he took his arm with a gentle grasp. “I get things are a shit-show right now, but you have to know that it doesn’t matter what you can’t tell us—we’re all here for you. You’re not a damn island, man. I know what the military can do to you. It provides you a family, and it provides you strength. But it can also isolate you from everything else outside of it, and when you get hurt, when you’re learning to live a new life…”
“It leaves you feeling like you’re drowning,” Cole said in a faint whisper.
“You aren’t,” Wes told him. He moved his arm up, gripping the back of Cole’s neck. “I know you have to do a lot on your own. I know they can’t know about us helping you, and that’s fine. But you’re not going to just disappear on us.”
“No,” Cole said, and for the first time felt resolved in his conviction. He wasn’t going to disappear. “I have to fix things with Ryan, but I can’t do that until I stop whoever’s after me.”
“Then let me help. At least let me drive you,” Wes told him.
Cole knew it was a bad idea, but he also knew Wes wasn’t wrong. He wasn’t an island, and he was going to take help like this wherever it was offered.
16.
Beating the hell out of a heavy bag was probably better than all the day-drinking Ryan wanted to do, and at the very least it made sure he was able to keep his job. He’d postponed all of his meetings, but then one of the defendants on his case had gotten a last-minute hearing and he’d been forced to head into court in his flustered state.
Luckily—or perhaps unluckily considering he hated the weird bastard—McCaig was right there along with him and did most of the talking. Normally Ryan would have been furious over it, but he was too beaten down to care much. It was saying something when McCaig offered to buy him a coffee, he actually took the guy up on it.
There was a little hipster coffee shop that did Coffee Science or whatever the hell it was called. It was some gravity brew with a bunch of test-tube looking things right out of a steam-punk novel, and he would have hated it except their masala chai was the best he’d ever tasted, and their scones made him want to cry. They took their drinks to the little patio which was a reformed alley, and he perched one leg up on the empty chair as he curled his hands around the warm cup.
“You know, there are moments that this place is so foreign I actually feel sick with missing home,” McCaig said as he picked at a few of the cranberries on his scone, “but places like this help me breathe a little easier.”
Ryan looked at him, a little surprised the man shared something that made him sound so…human. “It’s not bad. Pretentious but…”
“But I’ve spent loads of time in London, so trust me when I say I know pretention,” he said with a small wink. He took a sip of his espresso and sighed. “You seem miserable. Do you need an ear?”
“I need,” Ryan started, but he didn’t know how to finish that sentence. He needed a lot of things—like for his lover to be honest with him, like a chance to make this work, like a way to fast-forward through all the bullshit so he didn’t have to feel like this.
“Love, aye?”
Ryan blinked at him. “I don’t…”
“Your boyfriend,” McCaig said, then laughed when Ryan frowned. “I saw the look in your eyes, you cannae lie to me about your feelings. It was all over your face.”
Ryan rubbed at his left temple with his free hand. “It’s complicated.”
“Aye, I imagine it is. How long have you been together?”
Ryan let out a tiny sigh and sat back. Even a week ago, the thought of sharing a single personal detail with this man would have churned his stomach. But he started thinking about what Cole had said, about how it’s different when you weren’t distracted by a person’s looks, and something about this man
didn’t say danger. Even if he did look like he kept people in a pit in his basement.
“We’re not really together,” Ryan admitted. “We started a sort of friends with benefits thing, you know? But then…shit. It got complicated.”
“Caught yourself some feelings,” McCaig said with a half-smile. “I know the feeling well, trust me. My wife had me all arse over tit before I realized she was up to something and now we’ve been married twelve years.”
Ryan couldn’t help his look of surprise. “Oh. I didn’t realize you were married.”
McCaig shrugged. “My line of work it’s safer if no one knows I have something important in my life they can exploit.”
Ryan frowned. Strange thing to say from that man who was a glorified bitch of the CPS department—just like he was. They dealt with scum, but rarely ones he felt threatened by. “I suppose,” he said slowly.
McCaig shook his head. “Did you know him before?”
“Before what?” Ryan asked, wholly confused.
“I meant…was he always…”
Oh. “Blind,” Ryan offered, then shook his head. “He was in the Royal Marines—was injured in some sort of mission gone wrong. I don’t know a lot about it, he doesn’t really like to go into detail. But uh…no, I didn’t know him before that. We met at my friend’s boxing studio and we sort of hit it off.”
“That must be tough,” McCaig said quietly. “To lose your sight, to lose your career…”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Ryan muttered, then instantly regretted it. “I just mean, I mean he’s still got work. He does consult and he’s still amazing with computers. His life didn’t end just because he can’t see. He just has to do it differently.”
“So, he’s still able to get on with his profession?” McCaig pressed.
Ryan felt something uncomfortable stir in his gut. “You know, I don’t actually know, which is part of the problem. We don’t talk about things like…like ever. He threw me out today after some bullshit at his place and I don’t even know if it’s done.”
“From the expression on both your faces, I’d reckon you have a few lives left in you,” McCaig started.
Before he could say anything else, Ryan’s phone started to buzz, and he pulled it out of his pocket. He was startled to see Cole’s name on the screen, and he quickly answered in spite of his misgivings. “Cole, are you—”
“Ryan?” came a small voice.
He frowned. “Claire?”
“Can you come here? To my house. It’s messy and daddy’s not moving. Can you come?”
Ryan was on his feet before he was consciously aware of it, moving toward the street where he’d parked, leaving his partner behind at the table. “Where’s your daddy right now?”
“Right here but I need to…”
The line went dead, and Ryan broke into a run, his gut churning, fear racing up his spine. Something was wrong, he could feel it, and he felt like he was in one of those dreams where he had to get somewhere, and his legs were weighted down and unmoving. Eventually he made it to his car, jamming his thumb on the push-start, cursing when four cars blocked him from moving.
He was seconds away from screaming his way into madness.
Then the road cleared, and he peeled away. He was ten minutes from Cole’s house, but if he played his cards right, he’d be there in six. The universe was on his side, it seemed. He hit mostly green lights, and when he pulled onto Cole’s street, he felt the mad urge to just park the car and run the rest of the way there.
Instead, he forced himself to pull up and stare. His hand stayed glued to his phone, ready to call up the police if something was awry. Nothing looked any different than it had before—the shades were drawn, it looked empty, the door was closed. He hadn’t even realized Claire was coming back, and if she was there with Cole alone…
Which didn’t make sense.
He walked a few feet up the walkway and paused. If the place had been broken into and thrashed, why would Isabel leave Claire there alone? Unless Isabel and René were there too, and they were hurt. But Claire had only mentioned her dad.
Something was wrong, this wasn’t normal. Something was…
Pain struck him in the temple, then a stinging sensation in his arm. He managed to glimpse the edge of a boot as he hit the pavement, then his world went black.
***
The way Wes went quiet as they pulled up to his building made the back of Cole’s neck prickle. There was a stutter to his breathing, only for a moment, but long enough Cole was able to pick up on it.
“Are you sure this is the place?” Wes asked slowly.
Cole felt his brow dip. “What do you mean?”
“It’s just…” Wes pulled his truck to a stop and Cole heard him drum his fingers on the wheel. “There’s nothing here. This building isn’t occupied.”
Cole huffed. “I’ve been coming here for the better part of a year, so trust me, it’s occupied.”
“Is there any chance the GPS led us somewhere else?” Wes asked.
Cole let out a noise of frustration, his hand clasping the door handle so tight his knuckles ached. “I can’t tell you for sure because I can’t see it, but I can tell you this is the same route my driver takes every bloody day, so yes, I’m as sure as I can be.”
“Cole,” Wes said, and there was some sympathy in his voice, but also some worry, “this place is a hole. The walls are cracked, there’s peeling paint, almost all the windows on the second floor are busted in, and half the ones down here are boarded up. No one has been here in a fucking while. I mean, maybe it’s a cover, but this isn’t normal.”
Cole felt icy-cold fear wash over him, stealing his breath for a good, long moment. “That’s not possible.” For a terrifying second, he wondered if maybe he was going crazy. Maybe this was some sort of massive, year-long hallucination brought on by trauma and injury. Maybe his senses had deceived him the entire time and he had spent the last year in his bed dreaming of going to work, dreaming that someone had found value in his life still.
“Let’s go in,” Wes said suddenly.
Cole swallowed. “I’m not…”
“Look, just like you, I’ve learned to trust my gut, and something is telling me there’s more here than meets the eye. I know it’s dangerous for me to be here—for both your career and probably your safety, but I’m willing to tell them I forced you to bring me, okay? But we need to do this.”
Cole felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude for his friend, and some surprise because he didn’t truly know Wes all that well, and what he was offering. “Your family,” Cole said, his voice a little hoarse. “I can’t let you do that. Your wife is pregnant.”
“I have friends. Higher ups,” Wes told him. “They owe me. I can get myself out of this if I have to.”
Cole wanted to argue, but more than that, he wanted Wes to be his eyes and tell him if there really was something wrong. Cole had never been able to see the building. He’d never considered touching windows or walls, inspecting the paint or seeing if anything was boarded up. Hell, he had taken the plush carpet and the swinging doors and the handful of people he ran into every day as confirmation that all was well.
He climbed out of the truck and called Kevin to his side, gripping the harness tight in his right hand instead of his left, his dominant side aching from the fall he’d taken in the house. He heard Wes come up behind him, two shuffling feet and the clink of a cane. Taking a breath, he directed Kevin for the door and walked the familiar path inside.
It was the same. It was the exact same as it had ever been. The swinging door opened without hesitation, and the carpet under his feet had the same give. It smelled like stale coffee and old paint, and he couldn’t stop himself from reaching for the wall on his left.
His hand touched the plaster and he startled when some of it gave way under his grip. How? How the fuck had he never bothered to touch it? How had he not noticed?
“I’m going to assume it’s just as bad in here,
” Cole said.
“On the left,” Wes said with some curiosity. “It’s all beat to shit and old on the left, but on the right is a table filled with stacks of blank paper, and the walls are coated in fresh paint.
Cole did everything in his power to keep calm. It was obvious. Someone had tried to fool him. Taber? Andrew? The nameless voices who blended together every time he said good morning? But there was no one to greet him now apart from the echoing, cold silence.
“Let’s get to my office,” Cole said, then directed Kevin down the hall. His steps were more careful as he moved with Kevin on his right, but he managed to make it to the door and reach for the handle. He swung it forward and before he took a step in, Kevin whined and Wes grabbed him by the shoulder, sucking in a sharp breath.
“Fuck. There’s a man on the floor. He’s dead.”
Cole felt his words stick in his throat and he coughed to clear it. “Are you certain?”
“He’s missing half his skull. I’m certain,” Wes said. There was a definite tremble to his voice. “This your office?”
Cole licked his lips, trying not to give in to the overwhelming panic creeping up his spine. “Yes.”
“It’s trashed, just like your house. Computer’s beat to pieces, all your desk drawers are on the floor, shit everywhere. Equipment’s smashed.”
“And there’s a dead guy,” Cole said in a faint whisper. He almost asked what he looked like, but he realized it wouldn’t have mattered. “Does he have a badge on?”
“No,” Wes said.
Then a very distinct chime sounded in the room, somewhere near the floor where Cole knew a body was lying. A chime signaling the quarter past the hour. A chime which meant the man could only be one person. He staggered back into Wes and felt the man’s hand steady him.
“You know him,” Wes said, not a question.
Cole struggled to draw breath as he nodded. “My boss. Darren Taber. He’s…fuck. Fuck.”
Wes held Cole steady. “He’s been shot, probably from the front. Good part of his face is missing, but enough someone could probably make an ID. I can’t see any marks on him so I don’t know whether or not he tried to defend himself. I don’t see a weapon, either. Is this part of your thing?”