Daylight Again (Hell or High Water, #3)

by SE Jakes

  “Why, Proph? Why take those on? Because you were young and untouchable?”

  Prophet shifted uncomfortably, like he wanted to tell Tom something important. But all he said was, “Maybe that was part of it. Another was wanting to do a job that most other people couldn’t do. I had choices to make, Tom, and I made them the best way I knew how. And now they’re all coming back to fuck me over.”

  Tom nodded.

  “I know you believe in signs,” Prophet continued. “It’s like this is taking me back to the very beginning, where it all started. A conversation with LT and Dean changed my life—the whole direction. Changed John’s too.”

  Tom traced Prophet’s forearm—muscled, with a soft dusting of light, crisp hairs. No sign at all of the trauma he’d endured, the inherent weakness he lived with. “Why are you really going after John?”

  “A lot of reasons, T. But it all comes down to the fact that we don’t leave any man behind. For better or worse. And I left him behind. I’m responsible.”

  Tom nodded. “I’d do the same.”

  “I know.”

  “And you know I would never betray you like that.”

  Prophet nodded, but his eyes were faraway.

  Tom took Prophet by the shoulders. “Never,” he repeated firmly. “I know you thought John would never, but . . . ah, shit, Proph.”

  Prophet blew out a stiff breath. “Yeah.”

  So now he finally had a clear picture of what Prophet’s team had been doing over the years. While they were tracking John, they were also making sure John couldn’t get the help he needed through the specialists the CIA had hidden. Because if someone from the CIA was working with John and letting him use the specialists, well, fuck that and their idea of collateral damage. And if the CIA wasn’t handing over specialists, Prophet knew his team could give them a better shot at hiding successfully than anyone. Hook watched over the specialists while Ren and King rescued and moved them as necessary. In between, they tried to gain as much intel on new terror threats.

  “Eleven years, Proph. What the fuck’s he been doing?”

  Prophet reached into the bookcase where the photo albums of his childhood were shelved. He pulled out a folder from inside of one of them. “This.”

  It was thick with clippings. That made sense. He’d never put it into a computer because this would surely incriminate Prophet as being in league with John. And it was buttressed by pictures of Prophet’s family, mainly from when Prophet was a preteen.

  “Can I look through this?” he asked.

  “Knock yourself out.”

  He paged through the file, watching the puzzle pieces add up, the final product a frightening a web of terror that stretched across Europe and the Middle East, a plan years in the making, and so carefully mapped out it made Tom’s hairs stand on end. Because he knew that these men had been collecting the bits and pieces of chatter regarding Sadiq—who they rightly assumed would ultimately tie to John. And Prophet and his team had turned them over and over until they came up with the bigger picture.

  It was exactly what Lansing told him.

  Prophet’s spent his life surviving by any means possible. His missions of mercy conveniently line up with terrorist attacks around the globe.

  Lansing never stopped to consider that Prophet had just been following John’s suspected trail of terror.

  And from what Tom could understand, based on articles and maps and fuzzy black-and-white surveillance photos that were in chronological order, he was seeing the remnants of practice rounds—small acts of terror where no one had come forward to take credit. But then the last portion pointed to two key cities in the US, one on each coast . . . and the threats that Homeland Security had picked up on chatter. And those were eerily similar to the patterns that Sadiq and John had used on a smaller scale over the years. And Prophet had it all here, mapped out. “Jesus, Prophet. This is . . .”

  “Incriminating to me?” Prophet said tiredly. “I flew into those places after those incidents happened—sometimes within twelve hours, sometimes forty-eight, but hell, it’s not like anyone had my itinerary. It could look like I was covering my tracks instead of hunting down John. And trying to make sure there weren’t any specialists or families of specialists who needed help in the aftermath.”

  “Well, you’ve said that Lansing wants you loose so he can track John through you, all while you took the brunt of Lansing’s punishment.”

  “I don’t think I took the brunt of it. I was allowed to stay in the States. To work. The team lives like exiled refugees.”

  “Again, purposely, to ensure they could make contact with John more easily than if they were in the States, right?” Tom asked.

  “Maybe. Or maybe because Lansing’s a generally power-hungry asshole.”

  “Hal was his recruit?”

  “Yes. And he wanted someone with more experience than me to guard him.”

  “So why did you end up on that mission?”

  Prophet shook his head a little. “LT’s rec.”

  Tom cursed inwardly. “You did your job. John was point—it was up to him to get you and Hal where you were going safely.” Tom stared at him. “Ever think that Lansing set you all up?”

  “All the goddamned time. But . . .”

  “What?” Tom pressed.

  “There was a lot of fury in that rape. That kind of anger . . . it can’t be faked. I’d know.” Prophet looked over at the clippings, his expression hard but his voice raw from emotion and lack of sleep. “Lansing definitely believes I’m a traitor.”

  He squeezed Prophet’s hand. “You need sleep.”

  “I . . .”

  “I’ll wake you if you have one,” Tom promised.

  Prophet swallowed hard.

  “You need sleep. Because I need you.”

  Prophet tightened his grip on Tom’s hand and fell asleep with his head on Tom’s thigh, and Tom paged through the clippings (again) that made up the last eleven years of Prophet’s life.

  Two nights and several flashbacks later, Tom approached Prophet somewhat hesitantly about his broken sleep, his constant irritability. Although Tom had been there, watching over him while he slept, stopping most of the flashbacks from becoming too terrible, Prophet knew that it couldn’t go on like this.

  Granted, he wasn’t sure exactly how to stop them. Or if he should. If they really were his version of an early-warning system, he had to make sure he paid attention to them.

  “Proph, you need to try to sleep again.”

  “Fuck.” He ran his hands through his hair. “I’m okay. I’m better.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “I don’t want to talk about this. About any of this.”

  “Come on then, because I’m not asking you to talk.” Tom took his hand, led him to the bed. Stripped him down, made him lie on his belly on the bed, and massaged his shoulders. But every time he closed his eyes . . .

  “Fuck,” he muttered.

  “Okay, you’re way too tense,” Tom muttered. “Let me take care of this.”

  Prophet knew he was talking about sex, because that was how they took care of each other. It was more complicated than that, of course, but at the core, for them, sex was a way to work through their shit. And so far, it’d been pretty damned successful. “I don’t want to have any more flashbacks,” he blurted out.

  “Is that why you don’t want to close your eyes?”

  Part of it, but Prophet nodded, because now wasn’t the time to expand on it. He was too raw already. He wanted to feel better, not rehash his shit and feel worse.

  “Let me help you. You trust me, Proph?”

  “With my life.”

  Tom ran a hand down his back. “In New Orleans, in Etienne’s studio . . .”

  “Yeah,” Prophet murmured. He’d tied Tom down, worked him through his anger. This was slightly different, but the reasoning behind what Tom was suggesting was the same.

  At its core, it was about trust. And he did trust Tom.

  H
e just didn’t trust himself. But he’d try.

  Tom spread his arms and legs and tied him, comfortably. And then he slid the blindfold over Prophet’s eyes.

  Prophet stiffened. Told himself that he wouldn’t freak out.

  Because it was Tommy.

  Because this was pretty close to the way it would be, all touch and feel and sensation.

  No different than closing your eyes.

  And really, having Tommy help him with this, unwittingly, was maybe the best kind of therapy. And that worked for a bit to calm him. Tom’s tongue helped too, ran from his neck to his spine, and that was great. But he’d known that would be. It was never about not being able to track Tom’s movements or worrying that Tom would hurt him.

  No, it was that this was how it was going to be, and if that was true, then he didn’t want this to be the way he was going to be now. Not now, when he could still see.

  There was no more wasting time.

  Tom was half on top of Prophet, trying to keep him from hurting his wrists, but it was like trying to ride a bucking bronco. He pleaded, “Proph, calm down. Let me . . . fuck, you’re going to hurt yourself.”

  And take apart the fucking bed, but Tom couldn’t care less about that—he only wanted Prophet to stop himself from hurting his own wrists.

  Prophet had pulled the knots tight in his struggle.

  “I’ll cut them, dammit, but you have to stay fucking still.” He managed to grab the blindfold and jerk it off. “Proph, look at me.”

  Prophet did, but his eyes looked unfocused. Panicked. Jesus, he’d been trying to give Prophet a good night, and he’d given him a PTSD flashback instead. He tried everything, but in the end, it took his hand on Prophet’s, threading their fingers together, and his weight fully on Prophet’s back, to calm him down. They were spread-eagled together when Prophet finally stopped struggling, allowing Tom to safely cut the ropes.

  When he freed one of Prophet’s wrists, Prophet immediately grabbed the knife and did the other wrist himself. Tom rolled off him at that point, and Prophet let the ropes fall away as he moved from the bed and headed to the bathroom.

  Tom followed him.

  Prophet was hanging onto the edge of the sink, running the water, but he wasn’t bending down to splash water on his face. It was like he was afraid to let go.

  “Come on, Proph. Sit and I’ll get you a cool cloth.”

  Finally, Prophet sat on the closed toilet seat and let Tom towel off his face and neck. He moved the cloth to Prophet’s shoulders, rubbed and massaged for a while.

  “Can a guy get any privacy?” Prophet’s voice sounded so goddamned . . . empty. Defeated.

  And it chilled Tom as much as it upset him. “No way—not after that shit.”

  Prophet swallowed hard, but didn’t meet Tom’s eyes. Tom didn’t push. Just massaged and rubbed until Prophet had some color back in his cheeks.

  “I fucking hate sharing my pain with you.”

  “Yeah, well, ditto,” Tom said.

  “It’s different.”

  “Right. Forgot, you’ve got the market cornered on that.”

  Prophet sighed. Looked resigned, so much so that Tom almost let him off the hook. He didn’t want Prophet to say anything more, not if it was going to fuck things up between them. But Tom didn’t say any of that. Because he wouldn’t let it. Wouldn’t let anything.

  Prophet left the bathroom, went into the bedroom, and pulled on sweats and a T-shirt. Tom dressed too, and found Proph in the kitchen, at the table, staring out the window.

  “Every time I sit here, I expect to see Blue pop up,” Prophet said. Tom couldn’t help but smile. The men were close, and Tom wondered if what Prophet needed to tell him was something Blue already knew. Or something everyone but Tom knew.

  He was about to leave Prophet alone so his own anger of being the last to know—true or not—wouldn’t take over. It wasn’t the time for that now. But he was hit with that goddamned voodoo feeling, the same one he’d gotten when he’d told Prophet to have his eyes checked.

  And Prophet was watching him, like he fucking knew. And Tom truly understood, for maybe the first time, how much it sucked to have Prophet know him so damned well. Love and hate, like Prophet said.

  And you said you’d take those odds. And he would but . . . “Prophet . . . your eyes?” was all he could say.

  “I was thinking it,” Prophet said ruefully. “Guess that works.”

  “Proph . . . really?”

  Prophet took a breath, then chickened out and stared at the glass in front of him. Finally, he looked up and Tom said, “You’re going blind,” at the same time the word blind came into Tom’s consciousness.

  Jesus, Tom had known—it had been vague, yes, and he hadn’t dug into it. Because it was like delving into someone’s privacy and he didn’t do that with Prophet.

  He gripped the chair in front of him until his knuckles were white, then realized he was acting just the way Prophet must be afraid of him acting. “Prophet . . .”

  Prophet gave him a crooked, boyish smile, and for a second, he was that young SEAL from the photos. He was still young, but there was never a time now when his expression wasn’t haunted. But Tom had seen the proof in some of the old photos in the bookcases that, at one point, if even for just a brief time, he’d been carefree.

  “It’s true, Tom. I never had the freak-out people have when they learn about this, because I’ve always known it was my sentence. But I’m telling you that it’s okay to freak.”

  “I’m not . . . Jesus.” All he could think to do was tug the man to his feet and hug him. And so he did, and Prophet let him. And Prophet’s freak-out in the bedroom made sense now. “The blindfold.”

  “I wear one sometimes. To train myself. You can’t cheat with a blindfold on.”

  Prophet’s voice was muffled against his shirt. Tom’s hands were on his back, rubbing, holding. When he pulled back, he couldn’t help but trace Prophet’s cheekbones with his thumbs and stare into those beautiful eyes. “Tell me everything.”

  “Really? Because half the time, I don’t even want to know everything.”

  “Well, then, that’ll be my job.” Which was the wrong thing to say. “I just meant . . .”

  “I know, T. I know how it starts. Trust me on that.” His voice was tight.

  “You’re not my fucking job, any more than I’m yours.” Tom desperately needed Proph to understand that.

  Prophet couldn’t say it. As much as he could say in his mind what was going to happen to his sight—I’m going blind—he couldn’t say it out loud.

  Tom’s hard swallow was audible. “You’ve known. When I told you to see the doctor—”

  “I’d been seeing him for ten years already. I went the morning we got back from Amsterdam.”

  “Is it progressing?”

  Prophet turned to him. “It’s in the intermediate stage now. I’m starting to get some blurriness. There’s no way to know how much I’ll lose. Some people stay like I am forever. Some move to losing central vision. Some lose everything, but most lose at least central vision, and with the genetic version I have, that’s pretty much a given.”

  There, it was all out, in one big blurt. He added, “I see the doctor once a month.”

  There was a pause as Tom took it in, and then said exactly what Prophet didn’t want him to say. “So you’ll still have vision.”

  It’s not his fault, Proph. He tamped down his temper but wasn’t able to keep the edge out of his voice when he said, “Don’t give me the glass-half-full bullshit, T. Just don’t.”

  “Who else in your family has this?”

  “My father. My grandfather. My great-grandfather. The Drews curse. See, you don’t have the market on curses.” Prophet knew the next question was coming and steeled for it.

  “How bad were they?” Tom asked.

  “I don’t know. They never stuck around to find out.”

  He met Tom’s eyes. Tom tilted his head and stared at him for a long mome
nt before realization dawned in his eyes. He took in a shuddered breath and muttered, “Fuck,” and then, “Don’t you fucking think about that, Prophet.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  Tom was striding toward him, and Prophet’s fragile grip on his temper began to fray. He walked out of the bedroom, knowing Tom would follow him. But he needed to put something between them, some large piece of furniture, because he didn’t want to fight with him.

  He ended up in the living room when Tom said, “Prophet, come on. You can’t hide from me.”

  “Not trying to. Ever stop to think that I’ve dealt with this for years—my whole life—that I don’t want to deal with it with you? I’ve been through all of this. All the stages of grief. And maybe I’ll go through them all again when it happens or maybe I won’t, but for now, I’m living exactly the way I always have. One hour at a time and that’s always worked for me. Maybe you could figure it out on your own. Keep it to yourself. Talk your feelings out with a therapist. But I don’t fucking want to hear it.”

  His voice was calm and controlled, but he wasn’t that way inside. No, he was spiraling, the way he’d been from the Lansing flashback, right before LT had called.

  It was obvious that Tom didn’t know what to say, and no matter what he did say, it would be wrong. Prophet knew that, knew there was no good answer, nothing to fix.

  Prophet just had to hope that he’d maintain enough field of vision—enough peripheral—so that he could at least remain independent.

  It was all he had.

  “Maybe you’re not actively trying to kill yourself, but the jobs you take are a slow form of suicide,” Tom said, not letting that go.

  “And some of them are necessary.” Prophet hated resenting that Tom knew him as well as Doc did. He supposed it was transparent enough, but still . . . “We’re not going to talk about this anymore.”