Force of Nature (48 page)

“You said he was shot,” she accused Jules, “not that he was shot
twice.
”

“Shot’s also the plural,” Jules defended himself.

“I’m okay,” Ric tried to reassure her. She, however, was in serious pain. “Oh, Annie,” he said. She was going to have one hell of a black eye. And her lip…

But she ignored it completely and kissed him.

And that was it for him. Game over. Ric just sat there on the deck with Annie in his arms.

Robin came out from the galley with some ice wrapped in a dish towel. But he put it down within Ric’s reach, and as Jules had done, he silently and quickly faded away.

It was funny, really.

Ric would’ve thought a couple of gay guys wouldn’t be so freaked out by the sight of a grown man crying like a baby.

“I’m so sorry,” Annie whispered through her own tears, “that I screamed. I knew you were listening and I tried not to—”

“I’m sorry,” Ric said, “that I couldn’t keep Foley from hurting you.”

“It’s okay now,” she murmured. “Everything’s okay.” But then she lifted her head, misery in her eyes. “Oh, God, everything’s not okay. Ric, Martell was…They killed him.”

“No,” Ric told her. “He’s all right.”

She didn’t believe him.

“He’s in the hospital,” he said, wiping his face in the crook of his arm. “He’s already out of surgery. Yashi told me. He made quite a scene in the ER, but…He’s going to be fine.”

“Oh, thank God,” she said, relief in her eyes.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “I’m doing a lot of that right now. Thanking God.” He touched her poor, bruised face, and yeah, there came the waterworks again.

“Jules told me…Did you really shoot yourself?”

Ric nodded, laughing now, too.

She was looking at him as if he’d gone mad. “You’re always telling me
that’s not funny
, but that’s
really
not funny.”

“Yeah,” he said. “It kind of was. See, I wanted Junior to think I’d killed myself, so there had to be blood. But I didn’t want to hit anything vital and…I also had to fall back and not move and…dead people generally don’t scream
shit, shit, shit
, because it hurts, you know? But, Christ, it really hurt.”

Now she was laughing, too, but more with horror than with humor. “God, Ric…”

He kissed her again. Gently. Careful of her battered mouth. “I wanted to live,” he told her. “It was an imperative.”

And that got
her
tears going again. Between the pair of them, they were just never going to stop. “God, I love you,” she told him. “I should have told you—”

“It’s okay.” He cut her off. “I know. I knew. I love hearing you say it, but…Annie, I knew.”

She kissed him.

And he knew that
she
knew that he loved her, too.

“That’s when Annie lit the fuse,” Robin told Jules as they stood on the deck of Junior’s yacht, waiting for the fleet of helicopters to arrive. “She was ready to die to save Ric. You, too, but really…Ric.”

Robin was leaning both elbows on the railing. Dressed only in his boxers, he was quite the sight, with all that smooth, tan skin and his tousled blond hair. Jules just stood there, next to him, drinking him in.

Jules still couldn’t believe that his cover had been blown thanks to cell phone video footage taken of him both in Robin’s room and last year, during that hostage goatfuck. Next time he went undercover, he’d have to change his hair and eye color—maybe even grow a beard.

“She loves him,” Robin continued. “And she’s lucky, because he loves her, too. Most people don’t find that. You know. That kind of…equal adoration.”

No kidding. Jules stood there, lost for a moment in Robin’s eyes. But then Robin looked away.

Something was definitely up. Robin was acting oddly. “I, um, saw Foley’s body,” Jules said. “Are you…okay?”

Robin nodded vigorously. “Yes, I am. My big regret is that I can’t kill him again and make it hurt even more this time.” He turned to look at Jules. “Are
you
okay?”

“Yeah,” Jules said, even though he couldn’t keep himself from shaking his head no. He was both the most okay and the furthest from okay that he’d ever been in his life. “I’m just…still really…” God help him, he needed…Robin. He needed to hold on to him for about a week, just to convince himself that this wasn’t some dream that he would wake up from, to find he really was dead and forever gone.

But Robin had turned away again, staring down into the water.

Enough was enough. “What aren’t you telling me?” Jules asked. “Did Foley…hurt you, or—”

“No,” Robin said. “Jesus, no.”

“Then, are you, like, breaking up with me?” Jules asked.

That got him eye contact, at least. And some of the despair was displaced by a glimmer of hope. “Are we together?”

“Damn straight,” Jules said. “Well, you know what I mean.”

And that got him a smile, although it faded much too fast.

Jules touched him, his shoulder, his arm. “Talk to me.”

Robin closed his eyes. “God, I want to kiss you.”

Jules looked at his watch. “In about three minutes, we’re going to be surrounded by helicopters, so, since I really want to kiss you, too—”

“See, here’s the thing,” Robin said. “If I kiss you, you’ll know that I had a drink—” He stopped himself. “Yeah, right.
A
drink? Try a bottle. I was starting to detox, Jules, and God, I was sick.” He was so upset, he was on the verge of tears. “I was pretending it was the flu, but Annie…She, like, wiped my face in the truth. She told me I was going through withdrawal. She said I need to detox in the hospital or I could die—because I’m…” He choked the words out. “…an alcoholic.”

Robin looked so miserable. He was so distressed, so ashamed.

Yet all Jules could think was…Alleluia.

“I’m so sorry,” Robin said. “I broke my promise to you.”

“Sweetie, God, come here.” Jules reached for him, and this time, instead of turning away, Robin grabbed hold of Jules so tightly, it took his breath away.

Dear Lord, what Robin and Annie must’ve gone through. Jules suspected the story that Robin had told him was the Cliff’s Notes version.

And then I went overboard, and after Foley thought I was dead, I just…climbed back aboard the boat.
It was obvious now that none of it had been quite as easy as Robin had made it sound.

“I’m just like my mother.” Robin’s voice was choked.

“No, you’re not,” Jules told him, his heart in his throat. “You’re nothing like her. She never admitted she had a problem. She never asked anyone for help.”

“I need help,” Robin said. “Will you help me?”

“Yes,” Jules said. “I’m here. I’m with you—whatever it takes.” He used Robin’s own words. “I’m yours.”

Robin smiled, but there was still massive unhappiness in his eyes. “Look, I totally suck. I violated your privacy. I read that e-mail you got from Sam. The one where he said a relationship with me would hurt your career…?”

“Robin.” Jules shook his head.

“I’m sorry. I know I’m a bad person…”

Jules laughed. “No, you’re not. It’s just…you should know better. Or at least know enough to realize that if you’re going to read someone’s e-mail, don’t just read half of it—read it all.”

“I did,” Robin said.

“You read what I wrote back to him?” Jules asked. He’d used the word
love
in that e-mail, way more than once.

Robin nodded. “And also what Alyssa wrote back to you.”

“Alyssa e-mailed me?” Jules asked. “From Spain?”

Robin nodded again.

“What did she say?”

As Jules watched him, he knew Robin was considering pretending that he didn’t remember. But he clearly didn’t want to lie to Jules, so he finally told him. “She said,
go for it.
”

Jules nodded. It was exactly what he’d expected Alyssa to say. “You know, I often take her advice.”

“So your whole career,” Robin clarified. “You’re just going to throw it away. For me.”

“Maybe,” Jules told him. “Maybe not. Maybe I can have it all.”

“What if you can’t?” Robin asked.

“Then I’ll be happy with what I’ve got,” he said quietly, “because I’ll have the most important part.” Jules touched his face. “I spent a large part of today believing you were dead,” he said, “and none of that other stuff mattered. All I knew was that I was never going to smile again. I was never going to be able to look into your eyes and…You always know what I’m thinking and what I’m feeling and…You know me. And you love me anyway. I thought I’d lost that forever. I thought I’d lost you.”

Robin had tears in his eyes again. “That’s what you wrote in that e-mail. That’s the way you told Sam that you love me.”

Jules stepped back from him. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s the way I love you. And that’s the way you love me, too. You know, not everyone finds that. Not everyone’s that lucky.”

Robin reached for him again.

But Jules shook his head as he took another step away. “Robin, the helicopters are here.”

Robin looked up into the sky as if he were surprised. Had he really not heard them coming? Apparently not. Most of the helos were equipped to land on the water, but one was smaller, and just circled endlessly overhead. A logo for Channel 7 was on its belly.

Jules followed Robin’s gaze up to it. “Yeah,” he said. “Smile for the camera. Yashi told me a news copter caught a whiff of the activity and followed everyone out here.” He smiled at Robin. “I’ll kiss you later. Count on it.”

But Robin caught him around the waist anyway, tugging him closer.

“Robin.” Jules resisted. “I can wait for three movies. For you to come out. I’m okay with that. I really am.” He was willing to wait forever if he had to.

But Robin kept pulling him. Closer and closer, into an embrace.

Jules was hypnotized by the feel of Robin’s body against his, by Robin’s mouth so tantalizingly close, by the love in Robin’s eyes. But even as he wrapped his arms around this man he wanted to spend the rest of his life with, he insisted, “I can wait.”

Robin just smiled. “Yeah, but I can’t,” he said, and he kissed him.

Right in front of the whole, wide world.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-SIX

“S
o he comes to, in ICU,” Annie told Robin, talking into the phone that sat next to Martell’s hospital bed. “He’s post-op, right? He’s hooked up to every machine in the world, but he tries to get out of bed. He’s, like, ripping the IV out of his hand—”

“For the record,” Martell shouted over her, “I don’t remember
any
of that.”

“—and insisting that they call Yashi, at the FBI,” Annie told Robin.

Martell was looking much better today—as was she. The swelling around her eye had finally gone down. Now it just featured the colors of the rainbow. Her mouth wasn’t quite so sore, either.

Still, she looked pretty battered, and with her wrist in a cast, people had looked at Ric askance the few times they’d left his condo. But then they saw that he, too, was bruised and limping, and they relaxed, probably imagining a car accident.

They had no idea.

“Can you put Martell on?” Robin asked her now. He had, after all, called Martell’s hospital room from the pay phone in the rehab center, where he’d been for nearly a week now. Jules had helped him find a facility in the D.C. area, near where he lived and worked. They’d probably hoped that having Robin in a program outside of Hollywood would reduce the paparazzi factor, but they were wrong.

Robin had stopped and given an impromptu interview to a crowd of reporters on his way to checking himself in. Even after all this time, his statement was still getting a lot of airplay. Annie had seen it at least half a dozen times on various TV news programs.

“I’m an alcoholic,” Robin had said right into the camera, putting his cards out on the table. “I learned to drink because it numbed what I was feeling—it took the edge off the fear. Fear of who I was, fear that someone would find out. Alcoholism has always been a huge problem in the gay community. It’s easier to drink than to be honest about who we really are—honest to others
and
to ourselves. But this weekend, I made the decision both to stop hiding and to stop drinking. To stop being afraid.” He turned away, but then turned back. “Oh, and for those of you—like my former agent—who think that a gay man can’t play an action hero in a movie? You really need to meet my partner. This past weekend, he helped save the world. Again.”

“I’ll put Martell on in a sec,” Annie told Robin now. “I just…wanted to tell you—”

“Please don’t,” he said. He sounded tired, but good. Apparently he was done with the detox part of the program, and was on to the learning-to-live-sober, one-day-at-a-time part.

“You and Jules left so soon, and I didn’t get to—”

“Yeah, yeah.” He brushed it all off. “I saved your life. Get over it.”

“I don’t
think
so.” Annie looked up to find Ric watching her from his seat over by the windows. He did that a lot these days. Just sat and watched her, as if, if he weren’t vigilant, she might vanish. “You’re a hero. You can pretend you’re not, that it was all Jules and Ric. But I wouldn’t be here right now if it weren’t for you. And when we were in the water? When you wouldn’t leave me…? I just wanted to say…ditto. You need me? Just call.”

Robin was silent for a moment. “You shouldn’t feel indebted,” he said.

“I don’t,” she countered. “That’s not—”

“Because really what happened out there is that
you
saved
my
life,” Robin told her quietly.

“I just told you the truth,” Annie said. “The way any friend would. You’re the one who chose to listen.”

“I’m glad I have friends like you,” Robin said, “and okay, pass the phone to Martell now. If this Hallmark Moment goes on much longer, I’m going to start sobbing, and since I’m out here in the common room—”

“I’m really proud of you, Robin,” she told him.

“Thanks,” he said. “Some friend. God
damn
it…”

“He wants to talk to you.” Laughing, Annie gave the handset to Martell.

“Dude!” Martell said into the phone. “All I do in here is watch TV, and all I see on the entertainment news is your incredibly gay face. Congrats on
Riptide
opening huge. Your agent come crawling back yet?”

Annie went to sit next to Ric. “You’ve got to stop doing that,” she told him quietly.

“Doing what?” He honestly didn’t know.

“Staring at me.” She lowered her voice even more. “Without thinking about sex.”

Ric laughed as he glanced over to make sure Martell was focused on his phone call. “How do you know—”

“I can tell,” she said. “This is different from your
I wonder if she would be into trying the Kama Sutra Flying Squirrel position
look.”

He took her hand. Kissed her palm. “Oh, really?”

“Very different.”

“Maybe it’s because I’m currently getting some whenever I want it.” He lifted his eyebrow at her, that familiar heat now simmering in his eyes.

“You’re thinking about sex now,” she said. “See how I can tell?”

“Flying squirrel,” he said. “I’m intrigued.”

“You have to stop worrying about me,” Annie said.

He shook his head. “I don’t want to drive you crazy, but…You’re going to have to give me time.”

The big irony here was that Annie had been kept in the hospital for observation for several extra days. One of the doctors’ concerns was that she’d been peeing blood. Foley had kicked her in the kidneys, and there’d been a little damage. But it was nothing that couldn’t heal itself over time. Kind of the way Ric’s kidneys had.

Her head injury had been superficial, too. Slight bruising, nothing more.

“I guess,” Annie said, “I’m a little worried that you’re going to start wrapping me in gauze.”

“Only if the gauze is part of the flying squirrel thing.” Ric stood up. “In which case, I think we have to go now.”

Laughing, she tugged him back down. “I’m being serious.”

“So am I.” But he sat. “So I talked to my mother this morning.”

Typical Ric. Changing the subject. She sighed and went with him. “How’s your dad?”

“He hates his new diet,” Ric told her as he played with her fingers. “That’s not a big surprise. Anyway, Mom’s willing to take Pierre.”

Annie stared at him. “Why do we want to give my dog to your mother?”

“While we’re in California. We can’t take Pierre to a job interview.” He snapped his fingers. “Come on. Keep up.”

“You seriously want to…” They hadn’t spoken about Sam Starrett’s attempt to recruit them for Troubleshooters Incorporated since…Before Foley.

“I had a chance to speak to Jules about the Troubleshooters,” Ric told her. “He thinks we’d like working for Sam—and for Tom Paoletti. He’s the commanding officer—most of them are former military, which’ll be weird, but interesting.”

“And you honestly want to go talk to them?” Annie asked.

“I do,” Ric said. He smiled. “See? No gauze.”

She would have kissed him, but he looked up—a woman was knocking on the open door.

“Whoa,” Ric said.

“I must be in the right place,” the woman said. “How are you, Alvarado?”

She was wearing a police badge and her hair was up in a tight bun atop her head. She was pretty in a scary kind of way. Clearly she wasn’t here to arrest anyone because she was carrying a stack of paperbacks.

Over in his hospital bed, Martell quickly ended his phone conversation. “Yeah, Rob, look, I gotta go, too. Right. Okay. Later, man.” Annie got up to help him hang up the phone as he greeted the woman. “Hey. Lieutenant. This is a…surprise.”

“I was in the neighborhood,” the woman said. She, too, was ill at ease. “I thought you might want something to read.”

“Thanks,” Martell said.

“I can’t stay.” The lieutenant handed the books to Annie, as if afraid to get too close. “I just wanted to…see how you were doing.”

“Better,” Martell told her.

“Good. Okay, then…” She vanished as quickly as she appeared, leaving Ric and Martell looking at each other, exchanging an entire encyclopedia of information with nary a spoken word.

“Hello,” Annie interrupted them. “Introductions much?”

“That was the lieutenant,” Ric said, shooting Martell another cryptic look.

“Yeah, I got that,” Annie said. She turned to Martell. “Is she your…
special
lieutenant?”

She was ready to go into full tease mode, but Martell shut her down.

“She’s married.”

Oops. “Sorry,” Annie said. “I didn’t mean to…”

“Don’t worry about it.” He cleared his throat. “So, rumor has it Junior cut a deal. What’s up with that?”

“It’s good news,” Ric said, apparently as eager as Martell to change the subject. “Burns Senior got a deal, too. Junior gave up the info the FBI needed to apprehend Yazid al-Hasan in exchange for life sentences for both Burnses. In regular maximum-security prison—not Gitmo—lucky for them. Junior claimed he didn’t know al-Hasan was al Qaeda. He thought he was helping to smuggle in a drug runner. Or so he says.”

Annie didn’t believe that for a second. Due to his father’s unwillingness to fund his porn schemes, Junior had been forced to look outside of the United States for potential investors. He’d found the money he’d needed through a pair of Saudi businessmen—provided he help them handle an “immigration” issue.

Yeah, Junior didn’t know. Right.

“Burns Senior being charged as an accessory?” Martell asked.

“In the death of Peggy Ryan,” Ric confirmed. “Jules got a warrant, and went into Burns Point. He’s got the yacht in dry dock, too, looking for more DNA evidence, although the message in blood on the window frame in Peggy’s former room was pretty damning.”

Annie had spoken to Jules about that, too. He desperately wanted to provide closure for Peggy’s family. He’d told Annie that if Junior had made a habit of steering the yacht through the water where he’d just made his victims vanish, there could be DNA in the propeller system or God knows where. If it was there, they’d find it.

Jules was amazing. On the day of the explosion, he’d gone with them to the hospital, had a cursory check, and then he’d gone back to work.

Over the course of the next forty-eight hours, Jules and his team successfully apprehended al-Hasan, and verified that the bomb Robin and Annie had seen on the fishing boat was
not
any kind of nuclear device but rather conventional explosives.

What really cheesed Annie off was the lack of attention given to al-Hasan’s capture. Sure,
The New York Times
and
USA Today
had run front-page stories, but only for a single day.

Unlike the ongoing feeding frenzy surrounding the outing of a certain movie star…

Ric broke the silence they’d all fallen into. “You look tired, man.”

“No,” Martell said. “I’m okay.”

But Ric was giving Annie a look that was…

“Well,
I
could use a nap,” she said, and Ric stood up.

“Let’s get you home, then,” he told her, trying to give her his concerned look. It wasn’t a bad effort, but flying squirrels were definitely leaking out around the edges.

“We’ll be back tonight,” Annie told their friend.

“With real food?” Martell asked hopefully.

“Take-out from Mediterraneo.” Annie kissed him goodbye. “We’ll call in a few hours to get your order.”

“You better,” Martell said. His voice followed them into the hall. “And if you guys think for one second that I don’t know you’re heading home to get your freak on, you’re completely deluded.”

Robin stood respectfully, about twenty feet back, as Jules approached Ben’s grave.

His marker was standard issue—white with a rounded top. Inscribed upon it were Ben’s name and rank. His birth date and the date he’d been killed. And the words
Semper fidelis.

That was Ben. Always faithful.

It had been Robin’s idea to come out here to Arlington while on his first six-hour pass from the rehab center.

The pass was part of the reintegration process. It gave the recovering substance abusers a chance to slowly reenter a world that was filled with bars and liquor stores. Six hours for the first pass. Nine for the next. Then Robin would be given a full overnight.

Jules was looking forward to that.

And okay, so here he was, standing at Ben’s grave, thinking about spending the night with Robin. That seemed wrong. But at the same time, Jules knew that Ben would’ve understood. It was a topic they’d discussed frequently via e-mail—the importance of physical attraction in a relationship. It was, to Ben, the most important part of a romantic pairing.

But attraction, Jules had argued, was also cerebral. He’d had friends who dated men who looked like Chippendale dancers, but who were dumb as stones. Jules had never understood that. Stupidity was, for him, a total turnoff.

I hear you
, Ben had written back,
but don’t you want the total package?

And it was then that Jules had known that, for Ben,
he
was that package. He should have had the courage right then to confront that unspoken message. He should have admitted that he just didn’t feel the same way about Ben.

Because for Jules, it wasn’t just about finding a guy who was both smart and cute.

It was about…connection.

He put the flowers that he and Robin had brought in the vase that sat next to Ben’s gravestone, and turned back to Robin.

Dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, with his hair growing in, dark roots showing beneath the still-blond ends like some intentionally crazy yet eye-catching dye job, he looked much younger than he was.

He looked like some piece of candy Jules had picked up for a pleasant afternoon of no-strings sex.

Except for his eyes. His eyes were anxious as he searched Jules’s face. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah.” Together they walked toward Jules’s car through the warmth of the early afternoon. “Thanks for suggesting we do this. I’ve been meaning to come out here for a while.”

“I know.” Robin took his hand. “I’m glad you waited. I wanted to come, too. Ben was…an inspiration. And not just the way you think, either.”

Jules laughed. “What way do I think?”

“You know. He was ready to give up everything for love. If he could do it, yada yada. I mean, sure, that was inspiring,” Robin told him. “But you know when I think of him most?” He didn’t wait for Jules to answer. “When it’s the middle of the night and I can’t sleep and no one else is awake. And I get scared because of what I’ve done. I can’t go back—I don’t want to go back, but it’s dark and I’m alone so I start to doubt myself. And you. I even start to doubt you, and…that’s when I think of Ben.”