Line in the Shadow

by Clancy Nacht

  “I’ll add you as a contact.” He poised his fingertips on the keypad and looked at Rex expectantly.

  Rex stole a kiss and then Ike’s phone, typed in his email address, and to Ike’s surprise, an actual number. Then Rex put the phone on the nightstand, all before Ike could protest. After a long moment, Rex smiled, but that same sadness as before filled his sharp eyes.

  “Is it awkward if I ask to hold you a little longer?” Rex sounded casual, but Ike saw the tension in his shoulders and the set of his jaw. “If it is, I’ll get out of your hair.”

  Ike tilted his head, confused. It had been quite a while since he’d had sex in his own bed, but he was pretty sure some cuddling was traditional. He curled around Rex tightly and kissed a thick, dark eyebrow. “It would be awkward if you left. Besides, you should probably make sure my stitches held.”

  “A salient point, Mr. Graves.” Rex’s smile warmed Ike. Like that, he looked like someone’s husband, someone’s dad, instead of a spook.

  Still smiling, Rex settled close against Ike’s body, seeming happy there in the circle of Ike’s arms. Ike had seen Rex in action. He knew how deadly he was. But there was a fragility to him as he lay naked and unarmed in Ike’s bed, stroking Ike’s stomach, up one arm, and then along Ike’s jaw. His fingertips were gentle, his touch almost loving.

  Maybe it was wishful thinking, or maybe Ike was taking good care of Rex too.

  Chapter 6

  Around four a.m., Rex woke with a start. Though he was no stranger to waking in unfamiliar places, he’d slept so well it took a moment to realize he was cradled in Ike’s arms. Rex couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept a full eight hours. The five he’d just had seemed excessive.

  Being with Ike had stilled the whirling thoughts trying desperately to make links, but now Ike was asleep and Rex’s brain was recharged, leaving him to mentally pace though the past few weeks.

  Masters had wasted no time recovering, identifying, and disappearing the body of the man Rex killed. The man had been CIA—Turner Barnes, a rookie recruit with no real family. He’d been working the Middle East, recently recalled for a face-to-face with his unit chief, Isaac Hawthorne.

  Hawthorne had reported to Masters the next day. As a courtesy, or perhaps to give Hawthorne some heads-up as to who shot his agent, Masters let Rex sit in. It had been a while ago, but Rex was still processing the details. Here in Ike’s bed, relaxed and sober, the memory spun orderly and clear through his mind.

  Hawthorne had sworn he didn’t know why Barnes wanted to kill Ike, and if Rex hadn’t trusted his look of confusion, he’d at least been relieved there wasn’t a file on Ike. The United States government didn’t want the musician dead, and as far as Hawthorne knew, Ike wasn’t an asset and didn’t require surveillance.

  At the meeting, Hawthorne put it down to Barnes’s sloppy tradecraft. Why had Hawthorne recruited the young man in the first place if he were sloppy? But Rex hadn’t been able to ask that because the moment their eyes had met, Hawthrorne asked, “What is this Ike Graves to you?”

  What could Rex say? Sure he was policing poor tradecraft, but he hadn’t been on Barnes’s case in particular. His interest had been purely personal, and Hawthorne seemed to realize it.

  Masters had folded his arms. “He’s not Carver’s asset. Whatever else he wants to do on his personal time doesn’t concern me until someone has to use lethal force to stop an attack. Does your insinuation have any relevance to this situation, or do you want to launch a federal investigation into where Carver sticks his dick?”

  The bluntness of Masters’s statement shocked Rex as much as it did Hawthorne.

  “Barnes was a little sloppy, and he knew he’d be up for review. Maybe he thought he’d scare Carver or throw him off his game. I can’t tell you what was going on in his head. I’d recalled him like I did everyone in the unit, but as far as I knew, he was still in the wind until I got your message.” Hawthorne nodded to Masters. “Maybe he thought there was more to the relationship than there was. Maybe he thought to drive Carver out of the shadows and kill him, too. It is hard to say what someone young and desperate might do.”

  Masters looked at the skyline looming large from his portrait windows, eyes squinted like he was mulling over the legitimacy of the claim. “For fuck’s sake, what do you people think we’re doing here? We catch you with your skirts up, and we pull ‘em down to cover your asses. Carver’ll make you feel like a moron if you’re being one, but he’s not going to try you for treason.”

  Hawthorne shot Rex a poisonous look. “No, Carver doesn’t believe in trials. Shoot to kill.”

  Rex raised a brow. He knew his reputation as hatchet man preceded him, but he only followed orders. “I use deadly force when necessary. Barnes didn’t leave me any choice. He attacked a civilian. If he had holes in his security protocols, I could’ve helped.”

  “The agency would’ve thrown him under the bus for this mess. You know that.” Hawthorne’s face twisted in disgust.

  Rex shrugged. “I make my report. What’s done with it is not my call.” Whatever breech this Barnes was hiding must’ve been huge. Who got that desperate? Hawthorne’s overzealous defense suggested Barnes’s blunder originated higher up the chain of command.

  Hawthorne looked at Masters’s door, refusing eye contact. “I’ve told you all I know.”

  Masters remained motionless at his desk, staring at the back of Hawthorne’s head. After a few minutes, punctuated only by the sound of breathing and the air conditioner clicking on and off, Hawthorne finally turned back to face Masters.

  “Hawthorne, you may go.”

  Since then, Rex had received access to all of Barnes’s files, but either Hawthorne’s team wiped them of the integral information or it never existed except in Barnes’s own head. Or, maybe, he’d stashed the information in his bolt hole before he returned to the States. It was what Rex would have done at that age.

  Lebanon was too hot for Rex to enter as CIA, so he traveled under his Spanish identity, Miguel Gaudi, a faithful Muslim with a thorough legend. Going to Lebanon was still an incredible risk, one only the stupid or suicidal would take. He’d endured hours of tedious interrogation and surveillance so obvious Rex was almost insulted.

  Miguel, at least, didn’t notice or care. It was easier being Miguel. Rex was full of contradictions and doubts. Miguel believed in the power of Allah, in the value of hard work, and in the innate rightness of his purpose…even when his purpose was a business trip Miguel would conduct between Rex’s espionage and surveillance.

  After two days, it became obvious any direct contact with the embassy would be tantamount to guilt in Hezbollah’s eyes, and in Lebanon, they were always watching. Their paramilitary wing, Jihad Council, could mobilize at a moment’s notice and come down hard on a lone agent in their country. If Rex retraced Barnes’s steps himself, he might as well torch the Gaudi legend.

  He preferred to do reconnaissance personally, but in this case, he had no choice but to virtually contact an asset, a Haigazian University student with US sympathies who had access to the Embassy. The brave young man wore a camera in his glasses, went to Barnes’s office, and rifled Barnes’s desk for Rex.

  Since Barnes had yet to be revealed as CIA, everything was as he’d left it. Unfortunately for Rex, Barnes was neat enough to keep anything CIA related out of the office. Rex didn’t argue when the student insisted there was nothing else to find. He let the kid dash back to class with a thank you from the US government for his assistance and reached out to the professionals in the area.

  Even a thorough search of Barnes’s apartment by a locally based operative whom Rex trusted yielded no hints as to what assets Barnes might be protecting. This guy had better tradecraft than his boss gave him credit for—either he’d hidden his secrets at an elite level or he’d cleared out every bit of information when he received his recall.

  Either way, there was no reason for Rex to remain in the frying pan. Most of what he’d accomplished he could
’ve done remotely without this level of risk.

  However, pitting his wits against Hezbollah had given him an adrenaline rush. Even as Gaudi, they were suspicious of him once he communicated with that operative. His tail remained with him all the way back to Spain, so Rex remained another few days, going to Miguel’s job making outbound sales calls with a CIA-friendly company. The tail quickly lost interest, and after remaining a few more days for good measure, Rex left with his legend intact but with a deep dissatisfaction with his progress.

  No way an agent crazy enough to attack a civilian in public could be this competent on the job.

  Masters had agreed with Hawthorne that Barnes probably came home on uppers and panicked when he realized Rex was going to investigate him. As much as Rex’s ego liked the idea that his name alone invoked fatal panic, it was hard to believe.

  As Ike stirred, Rex rolled onto his back and gazed at Ike’s perfect, drowsy face. Ike rose on one elbow and peeked over Rex to check the clock, blond hair streaming around him turned silver in the moonlight.

  Before Ike could drop back to sleep, Rex said, “I should probably sneak out before Kaylee wakes up.”

  Ike grunted and pulled Rex close enough to feel his erection.

  Rex grabbed a condom instead.

  Rex imagined his limp was almost as pronounced as Ike’s, but the twinge of pain felt good. It reminded him that someone wanted him. He could feel the bellhop’s eyes on him as he headed toward the elevator of his four-star Manhattan hotel. Unlike the other nattily attired men in the lobby at six a.m., Rex was heading to his room instead of out into the waking city. With his love-bitten neck and thoroughly mussed hair, Rex knew what he had to look like, but he didn’t mind. Still, he was glad he had the elevator to himself; until he showered, the musky scent of sweat and sex would be a bit much for anyone else to handle.

  It had been years since Rex had done anything so—

  Domestic?

  That thought sobered him. The last time he’d spent the night in someone’s bed, it had been his wife’s.

  Ex-wife’s.

  With limbs feeling leaden and distant, Rex made his way into his room and began the basic checks for security. Things where he’d left them, random objects still at their specific angles, their precise rotations and placements preserved. The old-fashioned methods still worked best sometimes, if only to give him the peace of mind he needed to take a shower without hearing a horror movie soundtrack in his head.

  The paranoia had almost vanished while he lay in Ike’s arms. It had been gone entirely when Ike was inside him. Now, as Rex stripped and stepped into a bracingly hot shower, he felt its crushing weight return.

  He sniffed the single-serving shampoo as he twisted off the cap, as if someone might have poisoned it. He examined the showerhead as if it might be fitted with a camera or microphone. As far as Rex knew, the only person who’d be interested in watching him shower was in another borough grabbing some sleep before getting a preteen ready for school.

  Rex soaped a washcloth and scrubbed the sweat and stickiness from his skin, coaching himself as he did. It doesn’t need to be a big deal. Ike doesn’t have to be a thing: He likes the sex, he’s nobody’s asset, and he doesn’t need to die. I can keep this simple. I’ve done more impossible things.

  But it did seem impossible to keep it simple. Rex could still feel Ike inside him, a throbbing ache of remembered fullness. None of the other relationships he’d had in his life had prepared him for feeling that connected to another person. Rex had learned young to put distance between himself and the world, but when he’d decided to surrender to Ike in the coffee house men’s room, he’d let him in completely, and that was terrifying.

  After Rex’s parents died, he’d been recruited into a life as an invisible man with no connections or loved ones. Without anyone to care if he was alive, he’d understood the power of quiet desperation. Rex saw in others the empty places, the loneliness, the sense of injustice that he held within himself, and he exploited those things for his government. In that mistrustful new world, Rex had mastered the art of intimate distance.

  If the CIA needed an asset romanced, courted, or persuaded, Rex could be the perfect lover, friend, or ally without ever feeling more than a twinge of longing. He’d learned the value of fluidity, of being whomever it took to get the job done, learned that he could find anyone attractive if he rearranged his thoughts just so. He could be sincere, supportive, influential. And he could do it all without being himself, without exposing his heart to anyone.

  Maybe the music had done for Rex. It had drugged him more than any of the pills Rex popped. It had been a siren song, and Rex had shipwrecked against that rock-hard body. Now just the thought of that body made Rex’s knees go weak.

  Just keep it in check, Carver. Anything, in moderation.

  Rex rinsed the fragrant soap from his skin, decided against shaving, and toweled off standing on the impersonal little rug that a faceless hotel employee had left in front of the sink. When he emerged into the bedroom, he shot a glance at the clock: Almost seven. He’d lost time somewhere.

  Masters can wait.

  Sighing at his weakness, Rex pulled on some clothes and climbed under the blanket for a nap.

  Chapter 7

  It wasn’t like Rex to show up late to the office, but he couldn’t argue with his need to sleep off the exertions both physical and psychological of his night with Ike. His life was usually well ordered for what it was—chaos constrained by appointments, office hours hemming its unraveled edges. Ike’s existence threw it into disarray. There was no room for personal attachment in Rex’s world.

  And yet, as Rex performed his mental gymnastics on his way up to his cubicle, Ike filled his thoughts. The small, quiet corner of his mind reserved for Rex Carver swelled to contain the tumult of confused desire even as he catalogued every face he passed on the way to his desk. The rest of his brain continued to work, followed the well-worn tracks of its standard trajectory, everything compartmentalized and slotting together like gears. That was what let Rex assume other personalities without losing his purpose. Now it felt like his skull might explode from the pressure within.

  Boring but necessary tasks had piled up while Rex was away. They were waiting for him when he reached his chair and perched gingerly on its edge. The Barnes inquiry had been necessary, but it wasn’t technically priority. Considering how little Rex had to show for the time and resources invested in it, and how much he now needed to catch up on, it had perhaps been a mistake. Any minute now, Masters would call him into his office and rip him a new one.

  Then again, after sleeping with Ike, maybe a new one was in order.

  Minutes ticked by as Rex read the emails, files, and memos sent to him while he was incommunicado. Neural pathways that needed to fire up stayed dormant. He read and reread the same sentence four times and felt no more enlightened than before. What he did feel was sore, his muscles tired and aching from the unaccustomed contortions of the night before.

  Frustrated, Rex rifled through the desk for his stash of Ritalin, took enough to rouse the dead, and went to get a cup of coffee while it kicked in. The doctor who’d prescribed the pills had told him to lay off the caffeine while he was taking them, but that doctor didn’t know about any of the other things Rex scarfed down either. He was pouring creamer and sugar into a large steel mug when Masters joined him.

  Masters poured coffee into a sleek ceramic cup as black as his coffee. He didn’t say a word and barely looked at Rex, but Rex recognized the non-verbal summons. He followed Masters to his office.

  “Shut the door.” Masters assumed the place behind his desk and was settled in by the time Rex secured the latch.

  Rex took his seat across from Masters and related the details of his time in Lebanon and why he’d had to delay in Spain. Master’s eyes glazed over while Rex spoke—he must already have known the details, likely from reading Rex’s status reports and intuiting anything that wasn’t spelled out. Masters was go
od at that.

  “I should take all that out of your vacation time, Carver. Horribly self-indulgent to go after an agent that way after we’d already established the cause of his lapse in judgment.” Masters blew on his coffee, then took a sip. “God knows he’s not the first agent to go ‘round the bend.”

  Rex hated that Masters was so glib about the attempted murder of a civilian, but in the grand scheme of things, one civilian casualty was just a drop in the ocean of blood on Masters’s hands.

  Masters set aside the cup and glared at it. “Fucking amateur coffee makers. No wonder you put so much shit in it.”

  “Cream and sugar constitute the majority of my daily caloric intake when I’m not on a stake out.” Rex sipped his drink and studied Masters, wondering when the other shoe would drop. Unwilling to leave it be, he poked back. “Don’t I usually work on my ‘vacation’ days anyway? Do what you have to. I only regret that Barnes wasn’t as dumb as I’d hoped.”

  “Good news for his assets, I guess.” Masters peered at something past Rex. “Not that we’ll ever know who they are unless they come looking for us. Sounds like he wouldn’t have had anything to worry about. Hasty of him to try and kill your one-night stand. Must’ve thought that man meant something to you. Little did he know what a heartless bastard you are.”

  It sounded like bait, and Rex refused to rise to it. Expression impassive, he replied, “Barnes’s poor judgment has been established. It hardly needs that augmentation.”

  “No, I suppose it doesn’t.” Wearing a sly smile, Masters eyed Rex. “In any case, that was an extreme waste of resources and time. We have bigger fish to fry. I’ve unlocked the files on the other Operations Officers in the region and their statuses. They’ve made notes of their missing assets—those who are reporting in to give us those—and at the top of the list in red are the officers we haven’t heard back from.”

  Masters waved Rex off, but before he’d made it to the door, Masters cleared his throat. “There are also files marked in blue that will be of interest. We’ve set up a special secure connection for you to work remotely. Can’t have you in and out, being eyeballed by other nervous agents. The laptop’s on your desk.”