Long Time Gone (Hell or High Water ) (10 page)

Tom didn’t say anything, just put his hand over Prophet’s and waited.

Finally, Prophet said, “I told you I didn’t think he was dead. I’ve never told anyone outside of my old team that, except for you and Cillian.” Tom couldn’t help but roll his eyes at the mention of Cillian. Prophet acknowledged it with a small shake of his head, but continued, “Right after I was released from the CIA’s custody and the base’s infirmary, I went AWOL. I basically disappeared.”

“What did you find?”

“I became the man I am today because of that,” he told Tom cryptically. “Everything I learned in those two years . . . they were things I never wanted to know. Things that made me better at my job. Things that fucked with my conscience more than I’ll ever tell anyone. I helped a lot of people along the way. Mal said it was like my walkabout, but without the peyote.” He shrugged. “Well, most of the time.”

Tom crossed his arms and watched Prophet shift like a guilty teenager until he finally protested, “I was in pain. It was all natural.”

“It explains so much. About you and Mal.”

Prophet smirked at the sarcasm Tom had made fully evident in his tone. “You’re still jealous. It’s cute.”

“Cute?”

“
Decent sex
?” Prophet growled back and Tom grinned. “Glad you found it funny. Gonna wipe that smirk right off your face and have a great time doing it.”

“Now you’re worried about the decent sex comment?”

“Too horny when I first saw you. Don’t worry. You’ll pay.”

Tom leaned in and bit Prophet’s neck again. “Looking forward to it.”

An hour and several more spin cycles later, Prophet’s phone beeped as Tom was making coffee. He glanced over and saw Prophet texting, his fingers moving quickly.

Prophet’s back was to him, but it wasn’t like he was trying to hide his phone. Tom put the coffee down in front of him and looked over Prophet’s shoulder.

He tensed immediately when he saw Cillian’s name and a few joking lines between the men. Still, he managed to say calmly, “Tell that stupid fucking spook to stop flirting with you.”

Prophet didn’t turn around, but his voice was serious when he said, “Didn’t realize we were exclusive.”

“If we were, you wouldn’t flirt. Not like that.” Tom wasn’t able to take the tightness out of his voice.

To his credit, Prophet put the phone down mid-text and shoved it away. “Still can’t tell if you really want me, or if you just want to make sure no one else can have me.”

“It’s more complicated than that.”

“Not, it’s not.” Prophet finally turned to look at him. “Fuck, I thought it was. Thought it should be. But it’s simple as hell. Scares the fuck out of me.”

Tom reached out and ran a finger down Prophet’s shoulder—the one with the fresh scar. “Why’s that?”

“Lot of reasons. Some you don’t know.”

Tom gave up with the calm shit and threw his hands in the air. “More secrets? About Cillian?”

“Why don’t you trust him?”

“Why do you?” Tom shot back.

“Never said I did, T. You assumed that. Sometimes, I’ve got to play a game.”

“A flirting game? Because quite honestly, it didn’t all seem to be a game.”

“It wasn’t,” Prophet admitted. “Started before I met you. And shit, T, you and I . . .”

“I know.” Because there wasn’t supposed to be any Tom and Prophet. But here they were, four months later, unable to stop fucking each other. “Ten seconds in each other’s presence, we’re ripping each other’s clothes off.”

“To be fair, you ripped more,” Prophet sniffed.

“You loved it.”

Tom was joking, but Prophet obviously wasn’t when he said, “Yeah, I did.”

Before Tom could respond, Prophet held up a hand. “And we’ll deal with that after we survive this hurricane, remember?”

“Such an amateur. Besides, we already broke that rule,” Tom reminded him as his own phone began to buzz. He glanced at his phone and winced.

“Phil?”

“Yeah.” Tom sent the call to voice mail. “Cope said he’d cover for me, but I couldn’t let him keep doing that. I texted Phil and told him where I was when I hit the city limits.”

“Don’t fuck with a Marine, T. You’ll never win.”

“You really believe that?”

“I said you’ll never win. Never said anything about me.” Prophet grinned, then sat back in his chair like he was preparing to study Tom. “So how was Eritrea? You had a lot of downtime to write.”

“I made time,” he said pointedly, before sitting across from Prophet, grabbing up the coffee mug he’d given the man and taking a sip. “I learned a lot, but it was tough to go from partnering with you to training.”

Prophet smiled, like he knew. The bastard.

Tom had tried to make the best of it. Had been determined to do so. And he’d listened to Cope. Trained. Tried not to let himself get bored, because bored equaled mistakes. He listened to his gut. Cope respected that. They were good partners in that Tom got hot easily and Cope was so fucking laid-back that nothing bothered him. In theory it should be a perfect partnership.

But Cope was content to work in Eritrea. He’d had his time in the military, and he was up for the risks if and when they came along, but he wasn’t going to ask for them. He was Phil’s go-to guy for Eritrea and typically the one who broke in the new guys, but he had no desire to run things.

“And you weren’t content?”

“I was restless.” Tom shifted in his chair recalling just how restless he’d been. “I spent more than half the time monitoring comms and split the other half between training and guarding wealthy businessmen. A glorified bodyguard for rich assholes. I felt like I was being wasted.”

“Phil thought you were thrown into the fire too fast.” Prophet took the coffee back from him and took a sip of his own. And winced at the strong chicory flavor. “What the fuck is in this coffee?”

“You’ll get used to it. And Phil forgets I was with the FBI.”

“Out for five years. And this is a completely different kind of job. Get trained—there’s no harm in it.”

“It’s not my style.”

Prophet took another cautious sip of the coffee. Winced again. “So what, if you can’t go balls to the wall, why bother?”

“Isn’t that what you do?”

“We weren’t talking about me, but yes, I took intense jobs because I wanted to.”

Tom asked the question he’d been dreading. “Were you looking for Sadiq?”

“Just enough to make sure he wasn’t going to find me,” Prophet’s conceded. “He didn’t know where I was, but I never stopped carrying the phone Gary used to contact me.”

“Fuck, Proph—Sadiq called you?”

Prophet’s jaw clenched as he nodded.

“Threats?”

“Threats. Taunts.” Prophet reluctantly pulled another phone from his pocket, scanned through it, and showed Tom a picture of himself guarding a wealthy Brazilian businessman.

Tom grabbed it and stared. “You knew and you didn’t tell me?”

“Tom—”

“No, fuck that. You didn’t tell me—didn’t want me to protect myself?”

“You were protected.”

“By who? Cillian?”

“Definitely not. And Sadiq only caught your trail once, then he lost you. He’s more interested in you to see if I’m with you. The less we’re together, the less he’s going to think that hurting you will bring me into the open.”

“So I’m the one bringing the danger to you right now—the one making you vulnerable.”

Prophet grew quiet for a moment, his hands wrapping around the coffee cup. “If he can’t catch my scent on you, he’ll leave you alone—and that’s the way I want it.”

“The way
you
want it. So you’ll sacrifice me—us—for Sadiq? Haven’t you lost enough to him already?”

They had coffee. A flashlight. A SAT phone. Everything out on the table between them. Everything they needed to help them through the storm. But nothing to help them navigate this other shit.

Haven’t you lost enough to him already?

He didn’t want to think about the losses—past or future. He was done with talking, was more interested in finding out if too much sex could kill them. He was just about to recommend that, to try to distract Tommy, because Tommy was doing that thinking too much thing again and—

“Weren’t you worried about bringing Sadiq here?” Tom asked.

Too late. “Weren’t you?”

“Fuck. I wasn’t until you showed me that picture.” Tom ran his hands through his still damp hair. “I get what you’re saying about keeping separated. But I think we did pretty well when we were together. You know, after you blew me off and got yourself kidnapped, and I followed you.”

“And got
yourself
kidnapped,” Prophet reminded him. “We got out with Cillian’s help.”

“I would’ve thought of something,” Tom grumbled, and there was silence again.

“I believe that,” Prophet said, and Tom stared at him, almost unconsciously playing with the bracelet Prophet had tied around his wrist.

The storm had intensified. The meteorologists were predicting—with fucking glee—that the hurricane was bigger and stronger now, a Cat 3 and moving toward a Cat 4. And that goddamned bald guy from The Weather Channel was in New Orleans. Everyone knew that the guy only went to the place that was going to get hit the worst. Like a bald, douche-bag weather angel of death. Like he knew anything about survival. “How bad’s this going to get?” Prophet asked.

“You’ve really never been through a hurricane before?”

“You say that like it’s a character flaw.”

Tom shrugged. Like it was.

“I’ve been through a tornado. I think. Near a volcano,” Prophet ticked off.

Tom rolled his eyes, but Prophet could tell he was fighting a grin just the same. “You’re totally lying.”

“Why would I lie?” Prophet asked. “Sandstorm! Four of them. Maybe five. They tend to blend.”

“Inside or out?”

“I started outside, worked my way in. Sounds so dirty.”

Tom snorted.

“And thunderstorms.”

Tom shook his head. “Everyone goes through those.”

“Hail. Snow. Lots of snow.”

“In Texas?”

“I didn’t always live in Texas.”

Tom blinked, probably at the realization that he didn’t know where Prophet had grown up, but all he said was, “I guess the main EE office sees a lot of snow.”

“Yep.”

“Sore subject?”

“Been through worse.” But yeah, just hearing the company’s initials cut like a goddamned knife. He knew Phil had been calling, leaving him messages, but he refused to pick up. Deleted the voice mails before listening. Same with unread emails.

Tom was looking toward the window with an odd expression on his face, like he was waiting for something—and that put Prophet on high alert, since he recognized the signs of some of Tom’s impending voodoo shit. And sure enough, just then, the house shook with a particularly fierce gust of wind. The ground shook—hard—and it felt like the beginnings of an earthquake.

“I’ve been through an earthquake too,” Prophet snapped. “And that sounded like a water main.”

Tom nodded in agreement, and they both went to the front window and saw . . . nothing.

“I’m going to have to go out and see if we’re going to flood,” Tom said.

“No way. We’ll know if we’re going to soon enough.” He pulled a pair of night vision goggles from the box in the front hall. “Try these. It’ll take a few for your eyes to adjust.”

Tom pulled them on and after a minute he cursed. “There’s water running down the street. Blowing, actually, but it doesn’t seem to be going particularly high.”

He took the NVs off and handed them back, but he still seemed distracted, darting his gaze toward the stairs. Instead of diverting his attention with more questions, Prophet looked out the window for himself and muttered, “Glad I brought a shit ton of bottled water.”

As he took off the NVs and turned around, Tom touched his shoulder and said, “I didn’t thank you.”

“For the NVs?”

“For this. For all of this. You didn’t have to do this.”

Prophet swallowed. Was about to say,
Yes, I did
, when Roger came barreling down the stairs, yelling, “Prophet! It’s Della—she’s insisting I don’t tell you, but she’s got chest pains.”

“Go to her,” Prophet told him when he saw Tom’s
Goddammit, I knew it
expression. “I’ll call 911.” In fact, he was already dialing the SAT phone, but Tom shook his head and took the phone instead. He dialed as he told Prophet, “I’m calling Kari—she’s an old friend and a doctor. Tell her you’re calling for me and Della.”