Long Time Gone (Hell or High Water ) (11 page)

He took off upstairs to Della, and Kari picked up after eight rings. Prophet explained what was happening, and she said, “I’m riding in the ambulance now—I can get to the top of the street. How’s it looking past that?”

“Not great. I’ll meet you and get you here.”

“I’ll call when I’m close. Give me five minutes.”

Prophet hung up. Grabbed for the high rubber boots and a pullover that would do nothing, plus a baseball hat. Used the NVs to navigate quickly up the street. The water was spilling over the sidewalk, and there were wires whipping and sparking. He cursed the entire time.

Because he didn’t mind water, but there was water and there was water.

He was buffeted by the wind but put his head down, his adrenaline rocketing at the thought of something happening to Della. He reached the crosswalk and stood there for a minute, staring up at the sky as the swelling clouds loomed like they were waiting for an opportunity to swallow the earth. A minute or so later, an ambulance pulled up, and a woman waved from the back bay. He helped her out, shouldered the heavy bags, and then told her to climb onto his back.

“If you think I’m refusing, you’ve got another thing coming!” she called over the wind and got on. She held his shoulders, and he jogged down the street and got them back into the safety of the house.

“She’s upstairs,” Prophet told Kari, took her rain gear, and walked up behind her with her bags.

Della looked pale as hell. Tom was holding the portable O2 under her nose, and she was batting him away. Kari said, “Business as usual, right?”

“Tell him to stop babying me,” Della said to him.

Prophet looked at Kari with a smile. “Good luck.”

Finally, Prophet pried Tom from the room, because he was obviously making Della more agitated, rather than less. Tom had refused to leave even when Kari had explicitly asked him to so she could examine Della, and Prophet literally had to pull him out, reminding him quietly that he’d called Kari purposely for this. Della gave him a grateful nod as he closed the door behind them.

This role was, at least, familiar to him. In control, taking care of things—of everyone.

Tom stood at the door for a while, and then he began pace back and forth, so much so that Roger muttered something about getting dizzy. When Tom glared, Prophet motioned for Dave to take Roger downstairs.

“Thanks for the show,” Roger murmured as he walked by Prophet.

“You’re lucky it’s not your heart giving you problems after that,” Dave told him, and Prophet snorted. Tom didn’t stop pacing.

After several more minutes of that, Prophet caught him and yanked him against his body, Tom’s back to his chest. Tom struggled until he realized Prophet wouldn’t let him go.

“Strong fucker,” were Tom’s exact words and then finally, the man relaxed and leaned against him, the fight draining out of him. Prophet felt like he could actually breathe. He put his arm around Tom’s chest, his palm around Tom’s biceps. Rubbed the feathers of the dreamcatcher as if he could actually feel them.

“Your voodoo shit’s stronger when you’re here, isn’t it?” Prophet asked, his cheek against Tom’s neck.

“Always strong. You just fucking distract me too much when we’re together,” Tom shot back over his shoulder and then looked pained at what he’d said. “That’s not a bad thing.”

Prophet released his death grip, and Tom turned in his arms. He brushed Tom’s cheek with the back of his hand. “She’ll be okay.”

“Yeah, I know. But one day, she won’t be, and she’s the only one I have.”

“No, she’s not.”

Tom glanced at him. Sighed. “I want to believe that, Proph. I want to believe that you’re here for more than a sense of obligation . . . but what if there wasn’t a hurricane?”

“But there was, T.”

“I’d never take you for a believer subscribing to the
everything happens for a reason
theory.”

“I guess I have to remind you that you picked Cope?” Tom put a hand over his heart and rubbed. Prophet frowned. “More voodoo shit, or . . .?”

Tom glanced down at his hand and gave a small, surprised laugh. “In a way.” And then he looked back up at Prophet, hand still on his heart, like it was part pledge. “Are you going to keep running?”

He put his hand over Tom’s and said firmly, “I’m not running now, Tommy,” the way you only could when you meant it.

“But you were.”

Prophet sighed deeply and stared up at the ceiling, looking for something up there to come and save him from all this talking. Like an avalanche. “I know you think that, but you’re wrong.”

“Then what were you doing? Oh, right, you can’t tell me.”

“Dammit, not now, Tommy,” he growled, fisting his hand and hitting Tom’s lightly before moving away completely.

Instead of letting him go, Tom moved into him, rubbed his cheek against Prophet’s shoulder. “Of all people, I should fucking understand secrets, right?”

Prophet sighed and rubbed the back of Tom’s neck, wondering how he let the guy defuse him so easily. Or why. “Well, you’d think.”

Tom snorted a soft laugh—the warm huff of breath tickled Prophet’s neck. Prophet carded his hand through Tommy’s hair, keeping him close.

They stayed like that until the bedroom door opened, and even then, Tom didn’t push away from Prophet, just turned his attention to Kari with Prophet’s arm still around him. “How is she?”

“It wasn’t a heart attack,” Kari told them. “I think it was, at most, a gallbladder attack.”

“So like, really bad heartburn?” Prophet asked with relief, and she nodded.

“It’s not unusual. With the hurricane, a lot of people use it as an excuse to go off their usual diet and eat crap.”

“So she’s fine,” Tom breathed, and Prophet could feel the tension bleeding off him.

“I think she’ll outlive all of us,” Kari said. “Her pressure’s good, O2 sats are fine. She’s taking her meds regularly, and for the most part her diet’s good. I think she just had too much coffee. She was trying to stay awake in case something happened to the house.”

It was Prophet’s turn to half sigh, half curse. Tom squeezed his shoulder. “She’d stay up if she had the entire Navy at her door.”

Prophet nodded, then asked Kari, “Do you need a ride back to the hospital?”

“You know, that’d be great, but I’m not sure they’ll let you through. I can call for the ambulance and meet them back up the street.”

“I don’t really deal well with the word ‘let,’” he told her, and Tom snorted.

“I should’ve seen that coming,” she said. “All right, big shot, let’s get me back to the hospital.”

“How’re you going to stop the truck from flooding out?” Tom asked.

“I’ll drive on the sidewalks,” Prophet said.

“We’re better off just walking her back.”

“In this crap?”

“It’s not bad,” she and Tom said in unison.

“You people who live here are crazy,” he muttered, but he didn’t stop Kari from calling for the ambulance.

She told him, “I only did that because if you leave the house now, I know you’ll be roaming the streets, getting into trouble.”

“How do you know that?”

“You seem like that type,” she said with a smile. A half hour later, she was packed back into the ambulance with her gear. Prophet watched the ambulance drive slowly away.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“Just before six,” Tom said, stifling a yawn. “See, it’s almost gone.”

It was starting to get light out, even though the clouds still blocked any hope of sunrise. “It looks like the fucking apocalypse.” Prophet pointed to the flooding roads, the buckled sidewalks, the street signs and other debris that had blown along the street.

“We’re being a little dramatic, no?”

“No,” Prophet said firmly.

“Amateur,” Tom told him again, threaded his hand into Prophet’s. “What now?”

“Like I said, it’s my first hurricane. I’m hoping there aren’t aftershocks.”

“There are aftershocks, all right,” Tom muttered.

“You know I can hear you, right?”

“Counting on it,” Tom said. “Shit.”

He pointed to the porch where Roger was frantically waving. “Della’s okay,” he called. “But her friend . . .”

“It’s going to be like this all day, right?” Prophet asked Tom.

“Just think, you’ll be a hurricane pro once this is over.”

“Comforting. Really. Comforting.”

His aunt was on the porch now, her feet bare, more color in her cheeks. And she had a glass of wine in her hand that Tom promptly took from her.

“Kari said red wine’s good for my heart,” she argued as Tom dumped it over the side railing. Roger sighed as though someone were killing him at the sight of wine going to waste, but Tom had had enough surprises to last him a good long while.

“Kari said you needed to watch your diet,” Tom told her.

“Please just go to Betty’s,” Della said. “I invited her here, but she was too stubborn to leave her house.”

“Pot, meet kettle,” Prophet grumbled and ducked before Della could hit him on the back of the head.

“Aunt Della, please, go inside,” Tom implored.

“Go ahead, Della,” Prophet told her. “I’ll go check on your friend, and Tom will stay with you.”

“No, you should go together,” Della urged. “We’re fine here. You wired the house so we’re safer than Fort Knox.”

“Fort Knox actually isn’t all that safe,” Prophet informed her, and she smiled and patted his cheek, and Tom wondered how Prophet and his aunt had gotten thick as thieves in under two days.

“Please.” She looked between the men. “You know how nervous Betty gets. It’s probably just the wind, but she’s convinced that people are trying to loot her house.”

Tom looked at Prophet. “You up for this?”

“Are you?”

“Can’t sit by and do nothing. It’s two blocks down.” And there was no other way to get there but on foot, and they were both already armed. Prophet told Roger to take Della inside and keep her there.

“The SAT phone number’s on the kitchen table,” Prophet reminded them, then closed the door and followed Tom off the porch.

Tom stuck to Prophet’s back as they travelled through the flooded streets. In places, the water was up to the calves of their rubber boots, and the wind was still strong enough to make it too goddamned dangerous to be out here, and Tom hadn’t felt this alive in forever . . . not since . . .

Not since the last time he’d worked with Prophet and they’d both almost died.

Some men are born to do this shit . . . adrenaline runs through their veins instead of blood.
That’s what Cope had told him. Before this, Tom would’ve thought he’d only been describing Prophet, but of course that description fit him too.

They walked over a driveway to cut through to the next block. Prophet shifted to walk behind him,
watching his six
, as Cope liked to say.

Tom liked the idea of Prophet watching his six. Almost turned and told him so when he saw the two young boys hanging onto a sign in the middle of the road as the water tugged at them.

“Son of a bitch,” Prophet muttered, pushed past Tom, who said, “The current’s stronger than you think.”

Prophet turned to him. “Really? You’re telling me about water?”

“I don’t know what they’re teaching in the Navy these days,” Tom said with a straight face.

“Wiseass.” Prophet took a rope out of his pocket—and duct tape, since the rope was stuck to the tape.

“You always travel with duct tape?”

Prophet looked at him like he was the idiot. “It’s all-purpose, man. You don’t carry it?”

“Ah, no.”

“You might want to start.”

“I’ll consider it,” he said, as Prophet tied a loop in the rope for a handhold and tied the other end to a fire hydrant.

“Hang on here in the middle to give me some leverage, okay? When I grab them, pull with me.”

“Got it.” Tom stood there, holding the rope, and watched Prophet walk through the flood, solid and steady, the water not pushing him at all. When he got to the boys, who were maybe ten, he told one to climb onto his back and hauled the other up under his arm. Tom kept a steady pressure on the rope as he pulled and Prophet walked the boys to safety.

He dumped them on the sidewalk. “Where the hell do you two live?”

They jumped at the command in his voice. Tom was glad they didn’t see him do the same, but he was pretty sure Prophet had.