Hush by Tal Bauer (1)

HUSH

Tal Bauer

A Tal Bauer Publication

www.talbauerwrites.com

This is a work of fiction. All characters, places, and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, Tal Bauer.

Copyright © 2017 Tal Bauer

Cover Art by Rocking Book Covers © Copyright 2017

Edited by Rita Roberts

Published in 2017 by Tal Bauer in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Dedication

To my husband, the love of my life.

To Rita. You hung with me through every page, period, and comma. Thank you for all that you do, within the pages and without.

As always, to my readers. You make this all worthwhile.

I am for truth,

no matter who tells it.

I am for justice,

no matter who it’s for or against.

                        ~ Malcolm X

Prologue

Assassinations were, when it came right down to it, easy.

No matter how tight the security, how rehearsed the preparations, life always came with weaknesses. American Secret Service agents stood beside their president on a handshake line, but in the crush and swarming mass of bodies, they couldn’t get eyes on every single person. Hordes of people, rushing for a handshake, a look, a smile. Everyone wanting to be acknowledged by the most powerful man on the planet. It was easy to slide into the crowd, to hide between the smiles and the waving hands.

All it took was one concealed weapon, one fast draw.

President Kennedy had been killed, and his brother after that. President Reagan had been shot. Presidents were never invulnerable. The office, the title, was not bullet proof. Neither were the Secret Service agents, the president’s white knights.

Assassinations didn’t have to be carried out with a gun. Assassination weapons came in every size and shape, thirty-one flavors of destruction.

Boston had taught Americans that they weren’t invulnerable to IEDs. They weren’t just a news clip or a sound bite online anymore. Bombs were always an option. Always the preferred choice for making a big statement, and scattering as many bodies as possible.

But a sniper was still the best choice. The quietest choice. Both the least and the most intimate. A great sniper could squeeze their trigger from a mile away, dispatch their target, and disappear before anyone could even dream of finding them. In those last moments, the moments watching a target moving through the reticular scope, the last moments of the target’s life reduced down to a series of circles and dashed lines, a sniper could feel as close as a whisper away.

Watching someone when they thought they were alone. Watching them mumble to themselves. Pick their nose. Let down their guard, their mask to the world, and let all their raw nerves and frustrated hopes sag. As they let their dreams run flat and they stared at the life they had stumbled into. A sniper was privy to all of that, to the flash in a person’s eyes as they stopped pretending that they were truly happy in any way at all.

Death, then, should be a release. He almost envied the people he killed. One minute alive, wishing for a different life, and then—

A bullet to the cerebellum and a mist of red, a puff bursting as they collapsed like their life was escaping into the air. Or a round into a person’s center mass, where it bounced and spun and shredded so many, many organs.

He picked up the bolt, pulled free from his Dragunov sniper rifle, and rubbed the dark steel, cleaning the metal until it shone. A dot of oil, a tiny smear, and he set it aside.

The Dragunov lay in pieces, hardened steel and wooden stock laid out in precise order, perfect pieces to a jigsaw puzzle he could assemble in moments.

Remnants from a line of cocaine lay off to the side, next to a razor blade and a rolled-up 100-Euro note.

He waited for a phone call. For a voice on the other end of the line that gave him his next assignment, his instructions. He was a gun for hire, a man providing a service for the right price. He was a hard man to find, but for the dedicated individuals who managed to track him down, he was willing to entertain their offers.

Like many others in his line of work, he’d done time in the Russian military, worked his way through the ranks, rising from the dog-shit life of a basic enlistee to a marginally better-off non-commissioned officer. At least as an NCO he could pad his wallet a little bit. And when he’d left the service, he’d taken his Dragunov with him.

His time in the military had beaten out any sliver of nationalistic pride he’d ever had. Russia—the whole fucking country—could go to hell.

So when the call came in with this assignment. Well, he’d been intrigued.

Call him… patriotic.

His phone rang.

“Da?”

The voice spoke, the man who’d hired him, giving him his next instructions.

He was on his way to America.

Chapter 1

May 5^th

Bang. Bang. Bang.

Deputy U.S. Marshal Mike Lucciano slammed the side of his fist against the rotten, water-warped door of Stan Coffey’s Fairfax apartment. The cheap wood rattled against the deadbolt, gaping wide at the base. He saw stained carpet, vomit-brown and frayed, mottled with cigarette burns. Dogs barked in nearby apartments, deep growls mixing with the loud drone and tinny laughter of daytime TV. Owners shouted, hollering at the dogs to quit their yapping or they’d smack ‘em.

Mike gave Deputy U.S. Marshal Jim Gordon a long stare. Gordon nodded and went back to watching the apartments, welding himself into the corner of the middle landing, bracing his back against the rusted metal staircase. Flecks of paint fluttered loose and fell to the broken asphalt below. Gordon was one of the two deputy marshals Mike had brought with him for this little chitchat with Stan Coffey. Gordon was young, still in his training year at headquarters in Arlington. He monitored the run-down apartments and surrounding tenement buildings like he was still in the academy, his eyeballs painting a perfect circuit around the clock face, darting from hour to hour like a bobble-head doll. Jeff Silver, the other deputy marshal, watched over both Mike and Gordon, waiting to back up either, or both, if needed.

He shouldn’t have to. This was just going to be a simple chit-chat, an easy call out to remind Stan Coffey that threats against the federal judiciary were taken seriously. He’d rattle his chains a bit, throw his weight and his badge around. Mike would give Stan the opportunity to apologize, recant, and make his mea culpas. They’d all be back at the office in an hour.

Inside the apartment, Mike heard shouting, the loud hacking cough of a lifetime smoker, and then an ambling shuffle heading for the door. Behind the thin wood, he heard a man grumble under his breath, cough, and curse the still-barking dogs. The steady, rumbling barking had alerted the neighbors, and curtains were being pulled back.

Mike could feel eyeballs peering down on them all.

A chain rattled and the deadbolt slid. The door cracked open. Stan Coffey—thirty-nine-years-old, rail thin, with the body of a meth addict and a face to match—leaned against the doorjamb. A cigarette hung from his wrinkled-paper lips. His face looked like his missus had hit him one too many times with a frying pan, and he’d never healed right. His greasy hair stuck up at odd angles, next to the bald patch spreading out from the center of his crown. “What you want?” Stan’s eyes narrowed as they swept over Mike.

Mike shoved his star-shaped badge into Stan’s face. “U.S. Marshals, Mr. Stan Coffey. We’re here to talk to you about—”

Stan took off, tearing back into his apartment.

“Shit.” Mike drew his weapon and followed, shouldering open the door and clearing the hallway corners quickly.

Shouting, from the backroom in the dark apartment. Women shrieking. Glass breaking.

He jumped out to the landing and found Silver and Gordon ready to move. “Backside. He’s making a run for the alley.”

Gordon took off. A rickety fire escape, more rust than metal, clung to the moldy walls of the tenement in the stinking alley. When they’d driven in, they’d eyed the metal ladders with wary eyes. Anyone thinking of making a run using that would have to be desperate. It looked like it was just shrugging up to the building and the slightest bit of weight would make the old bolts shear off from the brick siding and send the entire rusted structure to the ground in a puff of orange dust.

Silver radioed for the Fairfax police escorts waiting around the building to move in. They were there as a courtesy, “in case shit”, in the wisdom of the marshals. Well, “shit” had happened.

Mike ran back into the apartment, down the hallway, and burst into the living room. Three women were sitting on a sagging sofa, each wearing a tube top four sizes too small. Mismatched sheets were tacked over the windows, darkening the room like a cave. Daytime soap operas blared from the TV perched on an empty milk crate. In front of the women, stained crack pipes littered a broken coffee table, next to scraps of aluminum foil. Sticky burns covered the bottom of the crack pipes, and the stench of singed hair and melted plastic clung to the dank apartment.

The women screamed, each leaping back on the couch and trying to climb each other, trying to get away from Mike.

“Hands up!” he shouted. “Hands up! Up!” If one of their hands went under a couch cushion, or behind a pillow covered in burn marks, they could come out with a gun. He pointed his pistol at the women and shouted again, “Hands up!”

Cowering, they all raised their hands and turned their faces away, hiding against each other.

“Where did he go? Where is Stan?”

One of the women pointed to the back hallway, her finger shaking.

A narrow door was ajar, and a beam of sunlight pierced the dank living room. Chipped blue tile caught his eye. Stan had escaped into the bathroom.

He heard grunting, and then cursing. Glass breaking. Crashing, things falling to the floor, smashing against tile.

Mike ran for the bathroom, shouldering open the door and throwing his back against the wall. A filthy tub with a ratty shower curtain hanging by only a few hooks sat on the right, and on the left, Stan Coffey hung halfway out of the thin window above the toilet. The window was only a foot tall. Mike wouldn’t be able to get his shoulders through the damn thing, but Stan was doing his best to wriggle his meth-wracked body through the pitiful opening.

“Get the fuck down from there, Stan!”

“Fuck you!” Stan kept wriggling, his scrawny ass shimmying against the windowsill. There was no way his hips were getting through that window, no matter how skinny he was.

Sirens wailed outside. Tires screeched. Mike heard shouts from the street below and feet running into the alleyway. Fairfax police yelled up at Stan. Stan cursed back, a string of nonsense and spit as his legs kicked and thrashed. His foot knocked a toothbrush off the side of the sink. It flew across the bathroom and into the tub.

“Get the fuck down, or I’m going to haul your ass out of there.”

“Don’t you fucking touch me!”

He could grab his feet, but he’d have touch Stan’s nasty sweats, stained with God-knew-what. He could grab him and yank, twist him and slam him into the ground. Stan would get the wind knocked out of him, and that would help with getting him cuffed. “Stan, last warning. Get the fuck down from the window!”

“You touch me, I’ll fucking kill you!”

Bingo. Threatening a federal officer. Add that to his first threat. Stan was looking at a real bad day when this was all over. And probably some serious bruises, too.

Mike heard Silver and a police officer in the living room, ordering the women to stay seated. They were all whimpering, lost in some meth high and probably riding the shiny lights emanating from the TV screen or staring at the glint of Silver’s badge. “Silver! Help me pull this jackass down!”

Silver stomped into the bathroom and chuckled at Stan’s flailing legs and his grunting curses. He took up position next to Mike, but made no move to help. “I’ll cover you.”

“Thanks.” Mike slammed his pistol back in his holster. Silver smirked. Mike started for Stan, edging his way around the bathroom and avoiding Stan’s wild kicks. He’d have to grab Stan as close to the hips as possible, get his rail-thin thighs together, and then fling him down. It’d be like wrestling a cat.

Awesome.

Mike waited for the right moment, in-between Stan’s kicks and right when he started up another screeching curse at the police below. Lunging, he wrapped his arms around Stan’s waist and yanked, pulling Stan’s legs down as he ripped him free from the window. Flopping forward, Stan’s forehead clipped the window’s metal rail, and he roared, cursing Mike as he started to fight.

Spinning, Mike hefted Stan over his shoulder and slammed him face first onto the tile floor. Stan’s breath whooshed out of him, like a bag full of air slapped too hard and bursting. He went limp, his arms and legs starfishing out, and his mouth gaped, a fish out of water.

Mike kneeled on his back, digging his knee into Stan’s kidney as he cuffed him. “Stan Coffey, you are under arrest.”

Stan’s breath was starting to come back to him. “Fuck you, you motherfucker.” He spat, but only managed to spray his own cheek.

“Yeah, right back at you.” He grabbed Stan’s handcuffs and hauled him up. “Get up. You’ve just turned this into a very long day.”

Stan sat in the back seat of one of the Fairfax police cruisers, glaring at the headrest. Once, he’d started kicking at the door with his bare feet until the officer hollered at him and threatened to taze him if he didn’t quit that shit.

Police crawled over Stan’s apartment. The three women, his three girlfriends, were huddling on the curb in handcuffs, still high on their meth hit. So far, they’d found enough meth to put Stan away for a very long time, a handful of unregistered handguns in the kitchen cupboards, and, of all places, the fridge.

Neighbors stared down at the scene, hanging out of open windows and glaring, crossing their arms as they watched the police and the marshals like their beady eyes were weapons, lasers that would banish them from the block.

Silver leaned against the hood of his SUV, crossing his arms as Mike read off the list of what the police found. He whistled. “Not his day, is it?”

“Nope. Serves him right. What the hell did he think was going to happen, shooting his mouth off online about wanting to kill Judge Brewer and then running when we came knocking?”

Judge Tom Brewer, the newest judge to the Washington DC Federal District Court, had just handed down a stiff sentence to the owner of a web hosting server on the dark web, and a ringleader of the dark web community. Clownface, his online moniker, was responsible for curating the massive online black-market trading boards and facilitating transactions of everything from child pornography to illegal weapons to drugs. The trial had been awful, filled with gut-churning testimony about the truly horrific and obscene happenings deep in the twisted bowels of the dark web.

When Clownface was sentenced to life in prison—the maximum sentence Judge Brewer could impose, though few thought that a baby federal judge would go to such lengths—online outcry reached a fever pitch. The usual gamut of crazies, trolls, and civil rights extremists stormed the internet, but they were joined by hordes from the Sovereign Rights movement. White supremacists, tax protestors, secessionists, and others who rejected the federal government and screamed about the overreach and abuse of federal authority.

Mike had had enough of dealing with Sovereign Rights groups for five lifetimes.

A large portion of the Sovereign Rights groups’ infrastructure and funding had come from the dark web, with significant transactions running through the very site Clownface had managed.

And Stan Coffey, Sovereign Rights nobody, wannabe white supremacist, professional methhead and troublemaker extraordinaire, had run his mouth off on an internet forum, saying that Judge Brewer should be dragged out of the courthouse and shot on the steps. In the ensuing back-and-forth with his fellow nutjobs, they all decided a wood chipper would be a better means of dispatching Judge Brewer, again, on the steps of the courthouse.

A subpoena later, the marshals had the IP addresses and emails of the users making the postings, their physical addresses, phone numbers, and all billing information for those accounts and any other connected social media accounts, cell phones, and laptops.

Whether the online postings were a “true threat”, pursuant to Chapter 18 of the U.S. Code, was up to an investigation and the United States Attorney. Mike, deputy marshal and deputy judicial security inspector assigned to the E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. Courthouse, the DC federal courthouse, and to Judge Brewer’s court security, only planned on banging on Stan’s door to talk him down from his threats. Most of the time, that’s how the bluster ended up shaking out. An apology and urgent insistence that someone was just blowing their mouth off, followed by a quick search of their apartment to confirm they didn’t have any weapons.

Mike would have been out of there in half an hour.

Now, one of the Assistant United States Attorneys, AUSA Cassandra Solórzano, would have to bring charges. Stan had threatened a federal judge, and he had the means to carry it out—a stack of unregistered firearms. He’d threatened Mike, a marshal. It was five years for each threat against a federal official, so Stan was starting at ten years minimum. And that was before the drugs and the guns.

Stan Coffey was having a shitty day, and it was only going to get shittier.

“Let’s get him booked. Fairfax PD can finish processing this scene.” Mike called the officer guarding Stan over and told him they were headed for the jail. The officer seemed relieved to be leaving. To get out of the heat—late DC spring was turning into summer with a vengeance—or to get away from the slit-eyed glares of the neighbors and the hostile tension choking the humid air.

The ride to the jail was easy as they followed behind the patrol car. Silver drove and quizzed Gordon on the afternoon, on what went down, and the arrest. Gordon answered with a sheen to his eyes, the come-down of an adrenaline-soaked arrest.

Stan was sullen and silent through the booking, glaring at the camera for his mugshots and sneering and cursing through the body search. Mike and the others waited until the paperwork was processed, and then watched Stan parade past them into the lockup, decked out in Virginia’s finest shade of neon orange.

It was almost four PM. Mike scrunched up his face. Gordon and Silver were close to their office in Arlington—U.S. Marshals Service headquarters—but he was at least an hour and a half away from his in the Prettyman Courthouse, right in the heart of DC. Maybe two hours, what with rush hour traffic.

It wasn’t worth fighting back to the office this late in the day. Time to head home. “Thanks, guys.” Mike shook Gordon and Silver’s hands. “I’ll call you both again anytime I need backup.”

They smiled, thanked him, and left together, heading out to Silver’s SUV. They were marshals assigned to fugitive tracking and criminal investigations. The glitzy, glamorized duties that all the TV shows were about. They were what Mike had been, once. He’d been a member of a fugitive task force, a deputy marshal scouring his district for escaped prisoners, for wanted felons, for dangerous men and women evading the reach of the law.

Not anymore. He was still a deputy marshal, but he’d moved into the judicial security division, the part of the marshals exclusively dedicated to protecting federal judges, the U.S. Attorney’s Office and all prosecutors, all juries, and the courthouses. Threats against judges and prosecutors, not to mention juries, had skyrocketed over the past fifty years. Congress had charged the marshals with the job of protecting the entire judiciary.

They were given the job with allocations for 110 judicial security inspectors, JSIs, and told to put “one to three” in each of the 94 federal judicial districts in the United States. With an average of eighteen judges and fifteen prosecutors—and thousands of jurors each year—in each district, “one to three” inspectors had their work cut out for them.

Investigating and responding to threats, providing security for the judges and the prosecutors inside and outside the courthouse, devising security strategies for high-risk trials, and even, sometimes, providing personal protection for judges under high-threat risk. It was enough to keep him and his fellow JSIs busy for three hundred hours a week. He couldn’t imagine what working alone would be like. He and the other two JSIs in DC didn’t see eye to eye all the time—or ever—but at least they were there, and they had each other’s backs. Like New York and Los Angeles, DC had three JSIs for the entire federal judicial district. Chicago had two. The rest of the ninety federal districts had one.

Mike got a ride from a Fairfax patrol officer to the Metro and squeezed his way onto the orange train heading into DC. He bumped and rocked for forty-five minutes and then hopped off at McPherson Square. He turned up 15^th and walked to Logan Circle, heading home.

He hadn’t been home this early in a long, long time. Silvio should be happy.

He and Silvio constantly argued about his work hours. It seemed every other conversation they had was an argument now. Yes, he worked a lot. But he had a big job. A huge job. He didn’t have the kind of job where he could take a few days off because he felt like it. His schedule was dictated by the court, by the judges he protected, and by their trial dates. And if he wasn’t running security for a high-risk trial, then he was chasing down threats or following up on intelligence passed over from the prisons or the task force. If he managed to find a few days where each judge he protected didn’t have a trial going, and if he managed to get Villegas, his fellow deputy JSI, to agree to cover for him, then he could take a few days off.

That wasn’t ever enough for Silvio, though. Silvio wanted him to jet around the world, fly off for a long weekend on one of his international trips. Spend a weekend in Paris before coming in late on Monday. As a flight attendant, Silvio had a different understanding of time than Mike did. The workweek was whatever Silvio wanted it to be, and he seemed to resent Mike’s rigid hours, his lashing to the federal courts.

Coming home early would be good for them. Hopefully he’d get to see that giant smile of Silvio’s, the one that lit up his face. The one he’d been captivated by from the first night they met, dancing and grinding at the Going Down club. Was it a year now? In about six weeks, yeah. Damn, he should start making noise at the courthouse about getting time off. He needed at least a day with Silvio for their one-year anniversary.

Mike thundered up the steps to his building, an older block of townhomes squished together on the edge of Logan Circle. He wasn’t wealthy enough to own one of the fancy townhouses on the Circle itself, but he liked being close to the neighborhood. His home was quiet, DC charm in a teaspoon-sized place. He’d moved Silvio in four months into their relationship, eagerly hauling boxes and boxes of Silvio’s stuff from his studio north of DC, on the Maryland side, into his townhome.

There was a strange car parked on the street. He knew his neighbors, generally knew what time they came and went. An out-of-place vehicle on the street before anyone was due to be home stood out. Mike eyed it, making note of the license plate as he shoved open his building’s door.

He jogged the steps to the third-floor apartment he owned and reached for the door handle. There were noises inside, someone obviously happy. Silvio. Maybe he was on the phone.

Smiling, Mike unlocked the door and strode in, expecting to see Silvio in the kitchen, glass of white wine in one hand, phone in the other, chatting with his friends about the latest high-fashion crime. Silvio loved fashion, loved dressing to the nines. His closets were near to bursting with Silvio’s decadent wardrobe, shoes and shirts and skinny pants for days. He loved peeling those pants off Silvio and finding his jock strap. He always wore a jock, and always a sexy one. Silvio was a tiger in bed, a sex kitten with the wildness of a jaguar. Sinking into Silvio made each of their fights fade away, made each of their arguments soften and disappear from his mind. They’d work it out. They’d made it this far.

Mike stopped short, his boot scuffing against the scraped hardwood he’d laid by hand. The rubber of his sole made a sad little whine, like a balloon letting loose air by surprise.

Silvio was in the kitchen, but he wasn’t alone.

And he wasn’t wearing any of his cute clothes.

Someone tall, dark, and swarthy moved behind Silvio, his cock obviously buried deep in Silvio’s ass. Hands gripped Silvio’s shoulders, pulling him down on Tall & Swarthy’s cock over and over. Silvio had that look on his face, that scrunched-up, mouth-open look he got when he was getting a good dicking, when he was loving Mike’s cock buried in his ass. When he was close to coming.

Neither of them had noticed Mike, even though they were facing him. Tall & Swarthy was watching himself disappear into Silvio’s ass. A captivating sight, Mike knew.

He should feel something. Something should register. But all he did was blink, watching this stranger plow into his boyfriend, over and over.

Well. His ex-boyfriend.

Mike let the door go, letting it fall back against the doorjamb with a loud clang. It wasn’t balanced right and would always slam if not shut carefully.

The door banged and Silvio’s eyes opened, shock bursting across his delicate features. Tall & Swarthy’s thrusts faltered.

“Hi honey.” One corner of Mike’s lip curled up. “I’m home.”

Silvio cursed, a breeze of Spanish as he backed up, pulled off Tall & Swarthy’s cock—and, look at that, they were going bareback—and grabbed a dishtowel, as if he could somehow preserve any sense of modesty in front of Mike. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I live here.” Mike held out his hands, spreading them wide. “This is my home.”

“You’re never here this early.” Silvio’s eyes flashed.

Jesus, was Silvio angry? At him? Something bubbled in Mike’s chest, indignation rising like a wave, a slowly-building tsunami that kept growing and growing before it crashed against the shore. “I wanted to surprise you.” He turned to Tall & Swarthy, who wasn’t doing a thing to cover himself. “Who the hell is this?”

Tall & Swarthy had the good sense not to say anything. His eyes slid sideways to Silvio.

“He’s not your concern.” Silvio’s voice snapped, cutting like broken glass.

“Not. My. Concern.” Mike snorted, shaking his head. The wave in his heart kept building, rising higher than a skyscraper, a wall of rage and hurt that threatened to crash down on his world. He never thought this would happen to them. To him. Didn’t Silvio know how he felt? What happened to the good times, when they cuddled on the couch and watched TV, that then turned into kissing and making out and then slow, sweet loving into the cushions? Waking up slowly on the weekends and drinking coffee in bed? Holding hands and walking through the city, talking for hours, listening to Silvio tell stories about the flights he went on, the cities he visited. Planning to visit them together.

Though… those moments, his favorite moments of their relationship—of any relationship—had been few and far between.

“What do you expect? You’re never home. You never give me any attention anymore.” A curl of hurt wrapped around Silvio’s words, his voice trembling at the very end. “You think I’m just going to sit here and wait for you all day?”

“I’m working! I have a job! I’m trying to support you! Us! And, I expect someone who loves me not to do this.” Mike threw his hand out, toward Tall & Swarthy and his kitchen. Jesus, there was a shine on his counter, right where they’d been. He’d have to bleach the entire place. He’d have to remodel. Rip out all the granite and the cupboards down to studs. Maybe he should just burn the whole place down.

“You’re such a selfish bastard!” Silvio snapped, stamping his foot. “If you loved me, you wouldn’t have made me do this!”

The wave crashed, descending through his soul and drowning out his entire world. Red flared in front of his eyes, a bolero waving a crimson flag in the path of a bull. Reality seemed disconnected, as if he were living in a soap bubble with edges that shimmered. Silvio’s face warped, first sneering, then twisting as if he were about to cry.

Silvio’s words bounced around his skull, the petulant tone of a child not getting his way. What he’d done, fucking another man in Mike’s home, was Mike’s fault?

No. Never in a million years.

Dealing with prisoners, with criminals, and with the scum of the earth had inured him over the years to emotional manipulations, empty platitudes and frantic reaches from desperate men and women struggling to save themselves from the inevitable. He blinked and saw Silvio suddenly in a new light. The bubble around him burst, vanishing with a pop.

Silvio was teetering on the edge of a full Mariah Carey meltdown. He could see it in the quiver of his chin, the flatness of his lips. The angle of his jaw, set just at that fuck-you angle, the one that begged for a no-holds-barred fight.

Part of him, still rocking and rolling on the waves of rage and indignation, still sloshing in the turgid waters of hurt and disbelief, wanted to dive right in, scream and shout and bellow about the whys and the wherefores. He wanted to tear into Silvio, hurt him with his words, shred him with every terrible thought he could dredge up, every frustration, every sideways, unkind thing he’d ever thought.

But, why fight about this? What would the end be? Would fighting change what had happened?

Or… what he had already decided?

Mike pulled open the front door. He swept his hand out toward the hallway, an ironic gesture of chivalry. “Buh-bye.”

“What?” Silvio’s jaw dropped. The fire in his eyes turned to lava spewing from a volcano, erupting with enough force to reach the moon. “What the fuck do you mean ‘bye’?”

“I mean get out, Silvio. Get out right now.”

“You can’t kick me out of our home!”

“It’s my home, you don’t pay for a Goddamn thing, and I absolutely am throwing you out.”

“All of my stuff is here!”

“It will be waiting for you in the morning.”

“Don’t you dare—” Silvio hissed.

Mike gave Tall & Swarthy a long look, sighing. “Will you control your boy, please? And get the fuck out of here?”

Silvio’s breathless gasp could have broken glass. He might have sprained a lung. His eyes boggled, practically leaping from his face, and his jaw nearly unhinged. “His boy?” he shrieked. “I am not his boy!”

“Well, sweetheart, you’re not my boy either.” Again, Mike swept his hand to the door, dramatically inviting Silvio to get the fuck out of his life. “Buh-bye.”

“Mike—”

“Leave, Silvio. Get out. Before I call the cops.”

“Mike!”

“Go. Come back in the morning for your stuff.”

“Michael!”

Finally, Tall & Swarthy moved. He grabbed a dish towel and covered himself—a little fucking late—and then scooped up his clothes, left in a trail on the way to the kitchen from the front door. Designer jeans with ridiculous bling on the ass, a bromo t-shirt with too much design on the front, swirls that looked like stupid tribal designs and sleeves purposely cut too small to cling to the biceps. Ugly underwear. “Come on, Siv,” he grunted. “Let’s go back to my place.’

Siv. What a stupid nickname. He never called Silvio dumb nicknames like that.

Silvio sashayed across the living room, plucking his clothes off the floor one by one, as if flaunting the savagery of their undressing, the stripping that had sent socks and jeans and Silvio’s button-down halfway across the room. His ass twitched with every step, hips swaying. A line of lube smeared across one cheek. He held Mike’s gaze, staring him down as he stalked toward the door. “Don’t fucking touch my things,” he hissed, passing Mike by. He tossed his head, lifted his chin, and strutted into the hall, naked, glistening ass shaking like a flustered peacock.

Mike choked back his laughter, the shouts he wanted to holler at the haughty ridiculousness of Silvio, his petty tyranny making him seem like a toddler with a broken tiara, stamping her foot as she wailed at the indignity of the world.

Tall & Swarthy had the good sense to at least appear embarrassed about their ejection from Mike’s home. He shuffled to the door quickly, his clothes held in front of him.

He offered Mike the dishtowel he’d used to cover his cock.

Mike didn’t take it.

And then, they both were in the hallway, naked, clutching their clothes, Silvio glaring at Mike like his eyes would truly murder him if he just wished it hard enough.

Mike let the door slam shut, cutting Silvio off from him. Hopefully forever.

A minute later, a car started up on the street. Probably that car he’d noticed, the out-of-place one. He’d known something was up the moment he saw it.

And then, his cell phone buzzed. And buzzed again. And again.

He looked down, swiping the screen on.

A barrage of texts from Silvio paraded down his phone, exhortations and eviscerations, the fight he hadn’t let Silvio start apparently now happening over text. Blistering tirades, Silvio shredding him right and left, ripping into their relationship, his job, and even their sex life.

He had to call a locksmith and get his locks changed tonight. Start pulling out all of Silvio’s things and making giant piles of his crap. Silvio could pick them up on the curb tomorrow. Maybe neighborhood vultures would tear through it, pull out what they wanted and leave Silvio with the dregs. He had to post signs in the building, tell his neighbors not to let the cheating bastard in if he claimed he’d lost his key. He had to bleach—or fucking destroy—his kitchen.

His phone buzzed, over and over and over again.

It was going to be a long fucking night.

Chapter 2

Nine AM, and Tom’s courtroom was packed.

The first day of trial for Wayne Lincoln was due to begin that very moment. Wayne Lincoln was a mid-level gang member, responsible for running drugs through his depressed neighborhood of Brentwood, and had upped his game to murder. The prosecution was charging him with four drug-related murders and slapping distribution charges on top of that. They were trying to send a signal to gangs and drug runners in DC: gang violence and drug distribution weren’t going to be tolerated.

He was still a baby judge, only a year into hearing his new title: Judge Tom Brewer, the newest judge on the DC federal bench. And, even though he was new, he’d tried to work with Lincoln’s attorney to persuade Lincoln to offer up evidence and testimony in chambers that would help with the federal investigation into the growing gang and drug violence, in lieu of going to trial. He wanted the best for everyone, if possible. He’d lessen the sentence if Lincoln cooperated with the investigation. But, Lincoln had clammed up, and the case went to trial. If the jury found Lincoln guilty, he’d have to be harsh with sentencing.

It was a high-risk trial—all gang cases were—and Tom had been briefed by the JSI assigned to him, Deputy U.S. Marshal Mike Lucciano, about the security procedures Mike had hand-crafted.

Point number one on the security plan was that Mike himself would escort Tom from his chambers to the courtroom every day and provide personal security, standing watch during the trial when Lincoln and the public were present, and then escort him back to his chambers after trial was over.

Nine AM, time for Tom to stride into the courtroom and call the proceedings to order.

But Mike wasn’t there.

Tom, already wearing his voluminous black robes, frowned at the clock. In the history of time, since he’d started as a federal judge at the DC federal court, Mike had never been so much as a second late, not for anything. He was as punctual as he was friendly, as professional as he was warm and kind.  All of Tom’s fellow judges, others who worked with Mike, had nothing but the best words of praise for the man. Dedicated, diligent, unflappable. Considerate. Professional.

Fifteen different reasons for Mike’s tardiness flew through Tom’s mind, each more terrible than the last. Should he call the police first, or the hospitals? Did his coworker, Deputy Marshal Villegas, or his boss, Marshal Winters, know Mike was late? Did they have any information?

The bailiff assigned to Tom poked his head into Tom’s chambers, knocking as he opened the door. “Your Honor, the court is assembled and everyone is ready for you.”

Tom swallowed. Did he blow Mike’s tardiness off? Ignore the security procedures, built by Mike by hand after studying this trial and the potential risks?

He gave his bailiff a small smile and stayed sitting at his desk. “Thanks. There’s been a delay. Please let both parties know to expect a… ten-minute delay.”

Ten minutes. Was that enough time to produce a missing man from the ether, a man who was as reliable as gravity? Tom didn’t know Mike all that well, but he’d worked with him for a year, and—before today—would have set his watch by the sound of Mike’s footfalls down the secured hallway, just outside his chambers.

He reached for his desk phone, chewing on his bottom lip. He had the speed dial programmed for Mike’s office, but he didn’t have Marshal Winters’s, Mike’s boss. There was phone chart on his laptop, somewhere—

Bang. A door slammed at the end of the fourth-floor secured hallway, the corridor behind all the courtrooms that connected their private areas—a handful of judge’s chambers, their law clerks’ offices, a tiny law library and small break room, and Mike’s personal office, the size of a closet—away from the public. The weighted doors securing the corridor were as heavy as a small car. Bulletproof, blast proof, people proof. More than one unsuspecting law clerk had been mowed down by those doors, and most of the other judges, significantly older, significantly grayer, used the slow-as-drying-paint private elevator to the private lobby, instead of the main center stairs.

But Mike always took the stairs. So did Tom, and he’d run into Mike most days, each of them balancing their shoulder-slung briefcases and their cellphones and their coffees. Mike would chide him for being on the public staircase, shaking his head and laughing at him. Tom always quipped back that it was good he ran into Mike most mornings, a judicial knight in dark-suited armor.

Was that Mike, now?

Tom crossed his chambers in three quick strides. Baby judge that he was, he’d been given the smallest chambers. His robes, billowing like bat wings behind him, nearly touched both walls as he hurried to the door.

Leaning into the hallway, Tom spotted Mike rushing toward him. Hair disheveled, standing straight up, suit wrinkled, and what looked like stains on his jacket and spraying over one side of his shirt. Coffee, maybe. But he didn’t have a coffee cup in his hand.

He didn’t know whether to be relieved or even more concerned. Mike never, but never, looked less than professionally perfect. It was disgusting, in a way. He had that effortless masculine chic that Tom had always envied. Sandy hair combed into a pompadour and styled like he’d stepped from a magazine, cockeyed grin like he knew the punchline to every joke ever told. A body made for suits, filling out the shoulders to perfection, and a trim stomach and narrow hips that some fashion designer, decades and decades ago, must have dreamed about when first creating the enduring fashion craze of a man in a perfectly tailored business suit.

Rumpled, stained with coffee, and late? Had to be something terrible. A car accident? Something worse?

Mike spotted Tom, waiting in the doorway in his robes, and Tom saw his face—scrunched up like he was trying to control himself, hold back some kind of twisted anger or frustration—fall. He jogged the rest of the long way to Tom’s chambers, shaking his head. As he came near, Tom saw Mike’s cell phone clenched in one fist, squeezing so hard his knuckles were white.

Mike closed his eyes, exhaling. The stench of coffee wafted off him. “Judge Brewer, I am so sorry. There’s no excuse for me being late.”

Up close, Tom could see dark bags beneath Mike’s eyes, purple stains that marred his tanned skin. The corners of his eyes were pinched, tiny crows’ feet that were just starting to form, looking deeper than they had yesterday. His lawyer’s brain started stacking up the evidence, putting together pieces of the puzzle that was Mike and this morning. “It’s all right. Something crazy must have happened. Car accident?”

Swallowing, Mike looked down, glaring at the polished tile floor. Tom kept watching him. A muddy stain, dried coffee with cream, marred one toe of Mike’s otherwise perfectly polished black wingtips.

“Not exactly.”

Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.

Wincing, Mike’s whole body clenched, and the hand holding his cell phone, his arm, all the way up to his neck, started to shake.

New evidence. Tom’s eyes narrowed, turning the frame on its side. There wasn’t a giant patch of coffee on Mike, like he’d expect if Mike had spilled it on himself. It was more of a splatter, almost like—

“Come in. Sit down.”

Mike’s cell phone kept buzzing, a constant drone and whine. Each vibration, each mechanical trill, made Mike flinch. Made his jaw clench and his eyes squeeze closed.

Tom leaned back against his desk, standing in front of Mike. Mike held his phone in both hands, suspended in front of him as he slumped in Tom’s leather chair.

The bailiff poked his head into Tom’s office again. “Your Honor, it’s been ten minutes.” His gaze flitted to Mike, and the bailiff’s eyebrows shot straight up.

“Thank you. Give us another ten minutes, and give the court my deepest apologies.”

Nodding, the bailiff shut the door. Mike groaned, pinching his nose with one hand. “Shit,” he cursed. “Judge Brewer, I’m—”

Tom waved him off. “Don’t even bother with apologizing, Mike.”

Mike sat up straight like a cord had been yanked along his spine, rocketing to professional in a half-second. He stared straight ahead, jaw clenched.

Tom softened his tone. “You don’t have to apologize. This isn’t you. You’ve been absolutely perfect for every single day I’ve been here. I was starting to think you were actually a robot, some state-of-the-art android being tested by the marshals.”

Mike chuckled. His shoulders relaxed, fractionally.

“You’re allowed to be human.” Tom winked. “Once.”

Mike sat back, going boneless as he sighed. His phone kept buzzing constantly, like a beehive lived in his hand.

“Something you need to take care of?” Tom nodded to the phone. Was there a family situation? Something Mike needed to be focusing on, instead of being at the office?

“No.” Mike shook his head, his voice hard. “I’ve already taken care of it. This is just…” He swallowed. “This is someone wanting it to hurt.”

Oh. Tom’s gaze swept over Mike again. The clenched shoulders, the tight eyes, the bags. The flinch with every buzz—every incoming text, if he had to guess—and the coffee stains. “Bad breakup?”

Mike smiled, his gaze fixed on the edge of Tom’s desk, just to the right of Tom’s hip. He nodded, slowly. “The worst.”

“That coffee isn’t yours, huh?”

Groaning, Mike smoothed his hand down his spattered shirt and jacket. “No. I haven’t even had any this morning.” He took a deep breath. “Morning came way too quickly, in fact.”

Tom nodded. He dragged his phone close and paged his secretary. “Peggy, could you get me a cup of coffee, please?” He turned back to Mike. “How do you take yours?”

Mike’s jaw dropped. “Heavy on the cream, no sugar. Uh, Your Honor.” He tacked the honorific on at the end quickly.

Peggy chirped that she’d be right there. She was always bubbly, no matter the hour. Morning people were amazing.

Tom turned back to Mike. “I’m willing to bet that you have a spare suit in your office.”

Mike flushed, but nodded. “Spare suit, gym clothes, and tactical uniform.”

“Knew it.” Tom smiled. “Go change. Take a deep breath. And then come get your coffee.”

Rising, Mike bobbled for a moment, seemingly not sure whether he should scramble out of Tom’s chambers or stay and self-flagellate himself, apologize and apologize some more. His phone kept buzzing in his palm.

“Want me to take that off your hands?” Tom held out his hand. Mike hadn’t once read the incoming texts, but he hadn’t let go of his death grip on the phone either.

Tom knew, God he knew, the fastest way to get away from something was to pretend it never existed.

Mike swallowed, his Adam’s apple rising and falling. Stubble darkened his face and neck, like he hadn’t had time to shave that morning. He took a deep breath, held it, and then passed his phone over.

Tom dumped it in his top desk drawer. “See you in a few minutes.”

Mike was back in record time, impeccably dressed in another dark suit, a bold lime-green tie cutting a striking path down his starched white shirt. He’d run wet fingers through his hair, smoothing windblown strands and finger-combing them into a perfectly suave style. In minutes, he’d gone from frazzled to fantastic.

Tom was jealous of that ability. It was practically a superpower.

He held back from taking Mike in from head to toe and forced himself not to linger over his broad shoulders, his strong hands. Instead, he passed him a mug of coffee, perfectly made by Peggy, and waited while Mike chugged half of it.

He checked the clock. Nine-eighteen AM. “Are you ready, Inspector Lucciano?” Once, during his first week, he’d stumbled with how to address Mike, fumbling through the bewildering double titles of deputy marshal and judicial security inspector. Mike saved him, telling him “Inspector” was the proper, official term, but he could just call him Mike.

Mike smiled, finally, a real, honest smile, and nodded. “I am, Judge Brewer.”

“Well then.” Tom winked. “The time for justice is at hand.”

Mike laughed as he held the door for Tom and escorted him down the private hallway to the courtroom. The bailiff spotted their approach and ducked into the courtroom a minute before they arrived. Tom and Mike waited, and then entered when they heard the booming call of the bailiff. “All rise!”

Tom gave Mike one last smile before climbing up to the bench and settling in.

The trial started smoothly. Tom spent the first few minutes apologizing to the court, and to the jurors in particular, for the delay. He took the blame, spinning a story about his terrible choice of dinner the night before and his urgent detour before the start of opening arguments. He made more than one juror laugh and the AUSA, Solórzano, shake her head, so he counted that as a win.

Mike stood silently by the bench, watching him. He could practically feel the gratitude pouring from the man.

He won more points from the jury with his opening instructions. Tom had a friendly, informal style, which rankled Chief Judge Fink to no end. Chief Judge Clarence T. Fink, judicial leader of the DC federal courthouse, papa bear to all the judges, and one of the oldest serving federal judges in the entire judiciary. He’d lived through history Tom had read about in school books as a child. He was a legend on the bench.

Chief Judge Fink preferred a statelier approach, with the judge keeping his distance from the proceedings and only interacting with the courtroom when absolutely required. His poker face was the best in DC. More than one attorney had argued before him in sidebar, utterly convinced that they were making a pitch-perfect argument to their point and one that Judge Fink would most certainly agree to, only to be shredded a moment later.

Tom, many decades younger than Judge Fink, had a different style.

He came down from the bench and instructed the jury from the courtroom floor, facing the juror box. He was, he said, their partner in the trial. The trial could only be successful with all partners doing their very best. He was responsible for keeping the law correct. Keep the attorneys on track, and everything above board. Prevent any trick shots and keep the proceedings fair for all parties. The jury, in contrast, was responsible for judging the evidence. There to listen to the facts presented to them by both sides, and to then judge those facts against the law. Theirs was a solemn duty, with no small amount of significance. This trial, or any trial, couldn’t happen without them and their dedication to the proceedings.

He got about three or four jurors to smile at him, nodding along, another two to sit up straighter in their seats, and—always—another one or two to roll their eyes. Tom wished them well and climbed back up to the bench.

As he passed Mike, Mike sent him a warm smile and a shake of his head. Tom shrugged and grinned back.

Opening arguments were as expected, Solórzano delivering the government’s position and the charges against Lincoln with brisk efficiency. She detailed the evidence to be presented like the opening of a thesis, lining up the paint-by-numbers canvas for the jurors to follow. Lincoln’s defense counsel, a younger attorney from the public defender’s office and still wet behind the ears, struggled to throw doubt like black paint against the prosecution’s picture. Lincoln had been caught dealing drugs to an undercover officer, and forensic evidence put his specific weapon—which witnesses said he treated better than his own child and never let anyone borrow—as the weapon used to murder several individuals over the past two years in DC’s ongoing drug and gang wars ravaging the poorest neighborhoods.

They broke for lunch promptly at twelve-thirty. Tom could have pushed back twenty minutes, making up for the delay in the morning, but there was no faster way to piss off a jury than to delay lunch. They were already glassy-eyed, and several looked like they needed a hit from their cell phones, stat, before they expired from lack of social media infusion. He called for a lunch recess and climbed down from the bench.

Mike, of course, was waiting for him, and held open the door to the private corridor. “Should be a quick trial.”

“Should be.” Tom rolled his neck. Pops sounded.

“I was keeping an eye on the back row. Looks like Lincoln’s buddies have shown up.”

“Do we need to make arrangements for the witness testimony?”

“We’re checking them out. Lincoln’s gang hasn’t ever threatened a witness or tried to hurt anyone who went to trial. It’s been a lot of bluster in the past.” Mike held open the door to Tom’s chambers. “We’re still looking at them all individually. But I doubt that the gang will risk the federal government coming down on them to take out a witness against Wayne Lincoln.”

In the grand scheme of things, Lincoln was a small fish in the very large, very violent sea of DC’s gangland. Tom shrugged out of his robe and hung it on the hook behind his door.

Mike stood in the center of Tom’s office, fidgeting. His eyes darted to Tom’s top desk drawer.

“Do you have plans for lunch?” Tom grabbed his suit jacket.

“Ahh, no, Judge Brewer.” Mike straightened. “Are you eating with the law clerks again?”

At least once a week, he sat down with the law clerks, all recent grads from law school, and talked them through their first year in the profession. To a person, the law clerks started with the fire-eyed optimism and passion of a graduate, dedicated to changing the world through profound and world-shaking legal work. By the end of the year, they were worn down by the system. They traded bets on settlements and deals likely to be made before going to trial and had their ears open for cushy corporate jobs that would pull them away from the grind and toil of public law.

“Not today. They’re having a special lunch with Chief Judge Fink.” Tom winked as Mike’s eyebrows shot to his hairline. It was late spring, the time for most of the law clerks to start handing in resignation letters and start fancying their wardrobes for their future corporate gigs. Chief Judge Fink liked to give them all one last pep talk, extolling the virtues of public service.

Tom eyed Mike, still standing in the center of his office like he was out of place, like a coat rack in the middle of the rug. He fidgeted, and kept looking at Tom’s desk.

He didn’t know Mike well enough to ask him about what had happened. He really didn’t know him well enough to offer to take his phone, either, and it seemed like Mike’s phone was burning inside his desk, an infrared beacon blazing in the office. He should give it back. He should tell Mike he hoped everything was all right and focus on his own work. He shouldn’t get involved.

But that’s not at all what he did.

His mouth seemed to have a mind of its own. “I am in the mood for some BBQ. Want to join me? There’s a great place up on Seventh.”

He’d lost count of how many times he’d stunned Mike that morning, how many times he’d seen Mike’s jaw drop, just slightly. It did again, Mike’s mouth hanging open for a moment before he snapped it shut, his teeth audibly clacking.

I don’t know what I’m doing either. Tom shrugged and smiled, already letting Mike off the hook, feigning a casualness that was so very far removed from what he really felt. He felt like ants were racing in his veins, like his heart was an engine struggling to start.

But then, Mike smiled. “Sure. The weather’s great. Want to walk, or should I bring my car around?”

“Let’s walk.”

They fell into step together, heading for the staircase in the center of the Prettyman Courthouse Annex. The E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. Courthouse proper housed the main judiciary and the DC Court of Appeals, and, tucked away in its dark recesses, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the FISA court of wiretapping fame. In the Bryant Annex, the triple-football-field-length marble hall attached to the main courthouse, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, the DC federal court, made its home. Courtrooms were on the second and fourth floors, and in the center of the Annex, a spiral staircase enclosed in bright maple wood paneling curved upward through all levels. White marble steps gleamed underfoot as they padded down the four floors side by side.

The courthouse, as always, was bustling, and Mike kept one shoulder just in front of Tom, his marshal’s duty to protect. Tom smiled at the side of his head and kept close. He was making sure he wouldn’t lose Mike in the crowd. Or so he told himself.

The sun was warm as they pushed out of the Annex and turned onto C Street. Across from them, DC’s Metropolitan Police headquarters gleamed, and behind them, the U.S. Capitol rose over the Prettyman Courthouse. A cloudless sky, blue like tropical waves lapping against a postcard shoreline, wrapped over DC.

“How did your questioning go yesterday? You were following up on the online threats, right? You thought it was just them shooting their mouths off?” He probably should have waited for Mike to officially brief him on the situation, since it was an official threat made against him. But, work, at least, was something for them to talk about. He was scraping the bottom of the barrel for conversation topics that weren’t about the weather, sports, or something completely lame.

Mike laughed. “Okay, you’re not going to believe what happened…”

Mike was back beside the bench for the afternoon, stuffed full of ribs and coleslaw. He groaned the whole walk back, complaining that he’d fall asleep for sure during the afternoon session. Tom promised him that he’d charge him with contempt of court and sentence him to perform a song and dance routine on the bench if he heard one single snore.

Mike’s flush stained his cheeks a deep rose, and he couldn’t look at Tom as they climbed the stairs back to the fourth floor.

He did bring his laptop into the courtroom, and Tom spotted him running background checks on each of the people behind Lincoln, sitting on the side of the defense in the courtroom.

No snores, though, and they wrapped up at four, recessing until nine the following day.  Tom promised the court he’d be on time.

Half of the court laughed.

Mike again escorted him back to his chambers and then took up position in the center of Tom’s office, his briefcase slung over one shoulder. He waited while Tom took off his robe and hung it behind his door.

He was different than this morning, that was for sure. He was back to his relaxed self, and had a small smile, the same tiny grin he always seemed to wear, curving up his lips. His eyes were back to their laughing glint, the blue in his gaze just a touch lighter than the sky had been at lunch.

A day away from his phone, and whoever had been trying to hurt him, had done him a world of good. Still, Tom reached for his desk drawer and tugged it open. Mike’s phone glared up at him, the flashing light pulsing as if accusing Tom of holding it hostage. He half expected it to buzz again.

But the phone was silent.

“Here you go.” He passed it across the desk to Mike. “I hope everything is going to be okay. I know it’s not my place to ask…” He trailed off. He shouldn’t ask. He shouldn’t have gotten involved. He wasn’t Mike’s friend. And he wasn’t Mike’s dad, either.

God, that thought. He just barely stopped himself from cringing.

Shrugging, he shoved his hands in his suit pants pockets. He had to salvage this, somehow. “If you need to grab a beer and vent, I’m always happy to listen.”

Mike nodded and stared at his phone, not even listening to Tom. He seemed to hesitate, his thumb hovering over the dark screen. He swiped it on, and then whistled. “Two hundred and seventy-two texts.”

“Wow.”

“I think that qualifies as bat-crap crazy.”

Tom barked out a quick laugh. “Well, in my official judicial opinion, I’d say you’re correct.”

Mike scrolled through his phone, breezing past the messages, lines and lines and lines of text that Tom couldn’t make out. There were some pictures, but Mike angled the phone away, holding it closer to his chest, and frowned. “Well… it’s definitely over.”

Tom didn’t know what to say. Anything that came to mind sounded trite. He tried to smile, hoping it came out sympathetic. He probably looked like he had gas.

Mike swiped to a new screen and pulled up a picture. He looked at Tom, as if weighing whether or not to show him. He took a deep breath. “This was my boyfriend,” he said, turning the phone to Tom.

Tom froze.

Only his years of being a lawyer kept him from falling to the floor, from stumbling and tripping over nothing, from looking like a gobsmacked clownfish gulping air and floundering. He kept his jaw closed through force of will alone. If he wasn’t so controlled, his chin would be scraping the carpet.

Mike liked men?

He blinked and forced his gaze to the picture on the phone. Mike and his now-ex.

The picture was sweet, Mike beaming with his cheek pressed against the face of a tanned man—younger, in his early twenties, if he had to guess—in sunglasses and a pastel polo with a popped collar. Mike had beard scruff and a backwards ball cap on. His ex-boyfriend had perfectly manicured eyebrows and a hint of lip gloss. The ex-boyfriend’s smile wasn’t as wide as Mike’s, and seemed, to Tom, to have an edge to it.

What the hell was he supposed to say? Mike had just come out to him. Granted, those kinds of things weren’t such a big deal anymore—for most people—and the revelation of a boyfriend instead of a girlfriend should be as nonchalant as talking about the weather or the Nationals game the night before.

But, a big part of him was still stuck in 1991, still reliving the moment when—

 “Looks like a loser.” God, he hoped that was the right thing to say.

Mike laughed. Relief swept through Tom, enough to make his knees practically wilt.

“He’s an asshole, that’s for sure.” Mike flinched and apologized in the next breath. “Sorry, Your Honor. I didn’t mean to curse.”

“Please. He made it to ‘bat-crap crazy’. I think you’re allowed to call him an asshole.”

Mike ducked his head, smiling, and turned back to his phone. He scrolled through the photo reel, picture after picture of him and the ex, moments in time, kisses shared and hands being held. “No reason to keep any of this.” A swipe of his finger and the pictures vanished. Deleted.

“You deleted all your photos?”

“If I could, I’d delete him from my memories.”

Tom whistled. “That bad?”

“I came home and found him with another man in my house. I put all his stuff on the curb, and this morning, he went thermonuclear. I think he shot into orbit for a minute there. Threw his coffee at me, started screeching his head off. And then blew up my phone, telling me everything he ever thought about me. Oh, and sent pictures of him and his new boyfriend having sex.” Mike shrugged. “Yeah, I’m deleting all his photos.”

“I… don’t blame you. I’m…” God, what should he say? He was an idiot, fumbling for words. He was a lawyer, a judge, for Christ’s sake. Words were his tradecraft. Speech was his profession. “I’m sorry it ended that way.”

“Honestly? I’m glad it’s over. It was bad for a while, but I kept deluding myself. I’m good at that.”

And then, Mike sobered, going still as he tucked his phone into his pants pocket and schooled his expression back to the stern seriousness Tom always saw in court. “Thank you, Judge Brewer, for what you did today. This morning. And, with the phone. I really am sorry about being late. And for having this personal drama interfere with the court.”

“It’s fine, Mike. I understand. You don’t have to apologize. Some days are just really shitty.”

Mike nodded, and his smile crept back. “Thank you.”

“I’d say anytime, but…” Tom tried to smile. “Your next guy better treat you right.” He hissed after he spoke, drawing a breath reflexively, as if he’d been stabbed and was sucking against the pain. Hopefully Mike wouldn’t notice.

He didn’t seem to. “I don’t think there will be a next guy for a while.” Mike straightened, gripped his briefcase, and took a step back. “I’ve got some stuff to take care of in my office. If you need anything, Your Honor, I’ll be down the hall.”

“I’m good. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“On time. I promise.” Mike headed for the door and disappeared out into the hallway.

As the door shut behind him, Tom slumped sideways against his desk, resting his hip on the dark cherry wood as he curled forward and let out a whoosh of air, breath he’d held since Mike’s last smile.

He closed his eyes, and wished, for a moment, that he could erase Mike from his own memories.

Chapter 3

Tom set down his glass of wine on his kitchen counter, obsessively twisting the stem until it was in the perfect meridian on his slate-gray granite, exactly between the two edges of his expansive kitchen island. He was surrounded by French provincial décor, cream and ivory cabinets and deep gray granite, and fragile blown glass bucket lights that hovered over his island. They were the only lights on in his house, three little pools of light that barely stretched to the counter’s edge. His wine glass sat on the outside of the circles of light, untouched. Unexposed. Unilluminated. He’d come home and grabbed a glass of wine and sat, and hadn’t moved.

In the living room, a clock ticked, the soft tocks as loud as a shotgun blasting through his silent home.

His silent, empty home.

Perfect, in a catalog decorator’s way. He’d poured his time and money into his house over the years, giving his weekends and his evenings into fashioning the perfect home for himself.

And, for Etta Mae. Etta Mae, his six-year-old Basset Hound, snored softly on his sofa, spread-eagled and flat on her back. It was her post-dinner nap time.

But other than Etta Mae and him, his home was as warm as a haunted house. And as lived in as a Hollywood set, a cardboard cutout of a surface-level life. His life was practically scripted in its routine and repetition, but who would want to see something so boring? Laundry for one, done every Sunday, socks and undershirts and boxer-briefs that he collected in a little plastic basket in his closet and that Etta Mae liked to ransack. His dry cleaning, picked up every Wednesday like clockwork. Cooking for one every night, except Tuesdays, when he ate out before teaching his adjunct law class at Georgetown.

A single chicken breast. A lonely salad. A glass of wine, occasionally a second. Tonight, he’d had at least three. But a bottle could last him a week, sometimes.

He was utterly, completely, alone.

He rolled his wine stem again, watching the burgundy cabernet shiver in his glass. He’d chosen this. He’d chosen to be alone. It had been his plan.

Ever since 1991.

1991. The Moral Majority had successfully united the Christian far right with the Republican party the decade before, and their firebrand religious purity defined the national attitude toward gays. Freddie Mercury died that year. He died of AIDS, of “Gay-Related Immune Disease”, of “gay cancer”, according to the press, and society, and every terrible headline that screamed the news. The Reverend Jerry Falwell called it a “gay plague” sent to cleanse the world. The World Health Organization had only stopped listing homosexuality as a disease the year before. In Washington DC, Congress had disallowed the District from repealing the sodomy law. The U.S. Congress had forced DC to keep the sodomy laws on the books, criminalizing homosexuality.

Criminalizing him.

ACT-UP protested across the nation. AIDS ravaged the community. Fear clung like cloying perfume, choking everyone, an oppressive humidity made from millions and millions of fallen tears, the cries and wails of gay men dying all alone, dying in fear, dying in rage. Dying for no reason at all.

There were only two gay members of Congress then. The Democrats had only added support for gay rights to their platform in 1980.  Terry Sweeney defined gay men on Saturday Night Live, and was widely regarded as a national laughingstock. Gay men and women on TV were relegated to the tragic roles—dying of AIDS, dying of violence, dying of drugs, dying because that’s what gay people did; they just died—or to the comedic roles, where they were slapstick sidekicks, or inconsequential buffoons, never to be taken seriously. A whole swath of people, written off as a momentary tragedy or as inconsequential frippery.

Was it any wonder that society followed?

1991. He was a brash and brazen twenty-one-year-old, with one semester left before he graduated college. His grades were rock solid, and there were four years of stellar pre-law under his belt. He had acceptance letters for all his top choice law schools: NYU, Cornell, Columbia, Harvard.

His last semester, and he had time to burn. He was young, dumb, and full of come. He was invulnerable and fearful at the same time, rebellious and cautious, needing to live, to love, and to be loved.

He wanted the world to be the color of his dreams, wanted to paint in primary colors. He wanted to stride away from fear, and build the world that rang out in the protest marches, in the calls to action. He wanted the future, and wanted it in his hands.

He went looking for life in all the wrong places.

Long nights dancing, partying. Running from the cops when their bars were raided. Meeting Peter, and falling head over heels for him. Wild days and nights and days again of seemingly never-ending sex, smoking cigarettes out of the window over Peter’s bed, refusing to detangle long enough to pull on shorts and head outside. Alcohol-fueled adventures, and living life so fast, so raw that he felt like his nerves were exposed to the sky.

And, one day, his professor’s voice, still as blaring, still as distinct, still as stunning as a crash of cymbals in the center of his chest, even twenty-five years later: “I didn’t know you’d chosen the homosexual lifestyle. This will seriously hurt your career. Are you hoping to work for the gays and their organizations as some sort of legal counsel? There’s no money in the work, but… you won’t work anywhere else.”

He didn’t know what to say.

His entire life, his entire plan for his whole existence, struck down in a handful of sentences.

He’d stumbled, fumbled. “What are you talking about?” he’d finally muttered. “I want to be a prosecutor—”

“Not with that lifestyle choice, you won’t.” His professor had handed back his legal brief, a giant D written on the front. His first. “Your law schools have already been notified.”

“What?”

“You’re not going to be a serious attorney, Tom. You might not even live long enough to graduate law school, what with your lifestyle. Why waste the slot on you?”

1991. He’d spent the rest of his final undergraduate year in a daze. Days and nights blended together, a smear of shame and self-flagellation. He blinked, and a month passed. Peter disappeared.

He built a wall around himself, removing every part and piece of him from the public eye. He sent letters to Cornell and Columbia, Harvard and NYU, declining his admission to their law schools. His professor seemed smug, radiated smugness, seemed to live in a swirling maelstrom of it, secure in his knowledge that he was right about Tom. He was oh-so-right.

1992 came and went. He worked as a paralegal in DC, working 80-hour weeks and living in the basement sublease of an older couple with three yippy dogs. They growled at him every time they saw him.

He had no time for a life. No time for fun.

And he built his wall higher.

His plan restarted then. He’d always had a plan, and he’d always followed it. He was going to be top of his class in high school. He was going to get into a prestigious undergraduate school. Graduate top of his class, and earn acceptance to the top law schools in the nation.

He never planned to be outed by his professor, painted with stripes of shame like he was a criminal, like he should walk around with a scarlet letter on his clothes. A pink H, perhaps? Or go all the way back and bring out the old pink triangles.

He was labeled a homosexual and his future was ripped from him.

So he relabeled his life. Refashioned his identity.

If he couldn’t have the life he planned and be gay, then he couldn’t be gay.

A year later, he was accepted into Georgetown Law, and a prim, proper, and perfunctory Tom Brewer strode up the steps. He planned to graduate top of his class. Planned to work as a prosecutor after clerking in the DC federal courthouse.

Nineteen years as an AUSA for the DC federal district. He had the life he’d planned.

His nomination to the federal bench caught him by surprise.

That was unexpected.

He’d leapfrogged over Dylan Ballard, the United States Attorney, the lead prosecutor appointed by the previous president for the DC federal district. He’d never seen eye to eye with Ballard, but his appointment—over Ballard, instead of Ballard—had chilled their relationship to near-arctic temperatures. They still hadn’t spoken, a full year later.

After five rounds of vetting, more paperwork than he’d ever seen, and a background investigation by the FBI that kept him awake for a solid six weeks, he got the call that the Senate had confirmed him and twelve others as brand new baby federal judges across the U.S.

And not a word was spoken of his deepest, darkest secret.

Who knew anymore, though? His old professor, a bitter, nasty man, had died. He’d hung onto life for ninety-eight miserable years and refused to die just to keep raining spite on the world. He taught until the month before he died, full of vinegar and malice to the end.

And Peter, his one boyfriend, his one lover ever, had disappeared. None of the men he danced with ever bothered to learn even his first name. And, thank God he was young and dumb before the advent of cell phones and social media immortality.

He was, to the world, exactly what he’d remade himself as: Tom Brewer—now Judge Tom Brewer—dedicated to a life of civil service. A valiant defender of the law, pursuer of justice. He foreswore relationships due to the fiery purity of his convictions, his steadfast dedication to the pursuit of truth, justice, and the American way. Defending justice left no time for love. He was a warrior of the law.

He was a terrified gay man, hiding in plain sight, locked in the closet of his own fears. Velvet rage thundered through his veins, and he watched the generations of gay men who grew up after him live open lives, seize their futures, be proud of themselves and their partners. How many openly gay attorneys had he served beside in the years after 1991?

Things were different, these days.

Mike was, obviously, openly gay. Secure enough to show his judge a picture of him and his boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend.

He’d never heard a rumor. Never heard a hushed whisper or a sideways comment. Not even a squeak.

Sighing, he folded over his counter, bracing his elbows on the cool granite. His house was a shrine to a life half-lived, hours he’d spent perfecting his DC townhome—in the poshest zip code—as an abattoir of empty dreams. He’d never planned to share his home with anyone, but he’d built everything for two. Two barstools. A kitchen nook for two, cozy and loving. A leather chair large enough to cuddle in, beside a quaint fireplace. Everything in twos, two by two by two, like he was mocking himself every day with the thought, the hope, the dream he could never have.

He spent his nights in a bed big enough for him and another. There was practically dust on the unused side of the bed, though. Empty space for a man who would never exist.

He was living half a life, with space carved out for a dream he’d killed in 1991.

Flowers in a vase in the center of his kitchen island caught his eye. They were wilting, petals starting to fall. He’d have to buy more on Saturday. He always bought from the farmers’ market, from the one stand with the brightest blooms. Rollicking freesias and laughing daisies, sassy roses and smart sunflowers. He liked the old man who sold the flowers, an immigrant with a thick accent and a megawatt smile. Short and stocky, and bald as Mr. Clean, with hair sprouting from his ears and curling up his forehead from his eyebrows. He picked the best bouquets for Tom each week, clucking over the flowers, wrapping them in butcher paper, making sure the package didn’t drip. He had a cookie for Etta Mae, too. Over Christmas, Tom had brought him a gift, a basket for his family.

Was that the sum total of his social life? He’d never had close friends, not even in the prosecutors’ office, and now that he was a judge… He was the crypt keeper of his social life, watching cobwebs settle in the corners of his existence.

What would it be like to go to the farmers’ market with someone he loved? Would his partner pick out flowers for him? Would they laugh and tease each other? Would his partner tickle his nose with a tulip, or a sprig of baby’s breath? What if his partner surprised him with flowers, walked in the door with a giant smile, a kiss and a bouquet?

Groaning, Tom slumped and stretched across the counter. His forehead hit the surface, and his breath fogged the dark stone. He’d made his choices. The life he’d lived—had chosen to live—didn’t allow for a partner. Didn’t allow him to even dream of loving another man.

But… things were different these days.

Hope was a cancer. Dreams were a parasite. He’d banished his subconscious yearnings to the dark recesses of his gilded closet years ago.

And yet…

God, he was lonely.

Why couldn’t he have half his life back? What if he wanted to smoosh his face against someone and take a ridiculous selfie with them, perhaps cheat and snag a kiss right before the picture snapped? Because who wouldn’t want to kiss their beloved as much as possible? What if he wanted that, wanted to be happy?

He didn’t want the wash of terror that yearning triggered. The spine-shivering, bone-puckering flinch of his soul. The fear that being open, being out of his padlocked closet, would be the end of everything.

Would it, though? He was a federal judge now, and barring him suddenly leaping headfirst into a wanton criminal spree or accepting bribes to rule in defendants’ favor, he was on the bench for life. He could step down, be impeached if he was a criminal, or die holding his gavel. He’d probably be buried with it still in his hand. That kind of job security didn’t exist anymore.

What if he did find someone? What if he—somehow—found a man who wanted a middle-aged, completely boring, practically re-virginized, servant to a Basset Hound?

If he cracked open the closet door, would he be yanked out all the way? Would his old, awful professor rise from the grave and tell him he was worthless, he was a dirty homo, and he was nothing but a fraud? Would the Senate find some obscure law that would un-approve a federal judge, a congressional ‘oops, our bad, we didn’t know you were like that’?

God, it wasn’t like he would be the only gay judge. There were ten openly gay judges. He’d tracked the nominations of each, tallying them up in his brain like he was collecting proof of the world changing, something to weigh against the inevitable hatred and disdain he always felt reaching for him, witches’ claws in the mist or an anvil hovering above him. He was a cartoon character in his own life, plodding along, waiting for the hammer to fall on his head and the laugh track to play. For the world to roar at him, mock him, scorn him.

But what number would be enough for him to join the ranks? What number of “enough gays” was enough for him to feel safe?

It would always be one less than he needed.

Etta Mae snorted and rolled, kicking the air before flopping to her side. She sighed, huffing, and stretched.

He needed to walk her. She needed her nightly walk before bedtime, the capstone to a long day of naps. In his next life, he was going to be a Basset Hound.

He’d probably be gay then, too. Maybe he could find a stately boy Basset at the dog park to drool with.

Christ, he was pathetic.

He pulled himself up, dragging his wine glass closer. He downed the cabernet in three huge swallows, like he was downing beer—or going down on a man—and ignored the burn at the roof of his mouth, the tightening of his nostrils. Cabernet wasn’t meant to be inhaled, and he coughed as his throat seemed to fill with sand. But, for the moment, he just wanted to drown it all out. Go back to 1991 and drink until he didn’t care if he woke up afterward or not.

Why today? Why was today the day he remembered everything? Why were his dusty dreams rattling the old bones of the skeletons in his closet now?

Because of Mike. Because he’d thought Mike, suave, sophisticated, Mike, ridiculously sexy Mike, professional, perfect Mike, was straight. He’d thought there was a girlfriend, or maybe girlfriends, or even a wife and two point five kids at home with a dog and a perfect picket fence. Mike was the pinnacle of what he’d always admired in a man: kind, confident, funny, strong. Deliciously competent in his job, too.

And he’d never, ever, thought Mike was gay. His gaydar, after all these years, was downright rickety. Less reliable than a leaking submarine. Though, he’d purposely unlearned the signs, had stopped looking for when men would check him out. Stopped making eye contact with strangers, stopped letting his gaze linger on other men long enough to see if they’d make the first move. He’d made his world small.

There was no way. No way at all. He shouldn’t, couldn’t think it. Him and Mike? Laughable. Utterly laughable. He’d never be young and sophisticated like Mike’s ex. He’d never be as perfectly put together. Would never catch Mike’s eye in any way other than as a stodgy old judge. Putting on the robe aged him twenty years, it seemed. He’d become a geezer in his mid-forties.

And he could never be as proud as Mike. There was maybe ten years’ difference in their ages? But going to college in 1991 versus 2001 made all the difference in the world. Mike had recent history on his side, protest movements and legislation and pride marches, gay-straight alliances, passionate speeches about equality and affirmation that people actually listened to. Ellen had come out, and found acceptance. Anti-discrimination laws had been passed. Hate crime laws that protected his people actually existed now. He vividly remembered the days when gay men were murdered—and their killers got off—just because they were gay.

Ten years had sped up centuries of progress.

But he’d shuttered the peephole on his closet door and barricaded its gilded frame.

“Come on, Etta Mae.” He called her name, and she popped up, her long ears dragging over the couch cushions, floppy jowls flapping as she shook and shimmied to wake up. She trotted over, her sagging skin swaying back and forth, and wagged her tail as she stretched at his feet. She nipped at his shoes, as if to tell him to hurry up.

“I’m moving, I’m moving. Your daddy is just being maudlin tonight.”

She didn’t care. She flopped to her back and rolled, wriggling as he grabbed her harness and leash. She sprang back up, trotting over so he could slip her harness on and buckle her in.

In moments, they were trotting down the steps of his townhome in Foggy Bottom and meandering down the street. Etta Mae sniffed every crack and crevice, investigating the remnants of each dog that had passed by during the day. It was a slow loop around the block, and she did her business on seven different plots of flowers and at the base of a large maple tree. Leaving messages for her friends, no doubt, one long dog conversation told in piddles and droplets.

“Etta Mae, you have a better social life than I do.”

She shook, rattling her collar and flinging a three-inch-long missile of drool through the air. Tom ducked, and it narrowly missed his shoulder.

“Thanks, Etta Mae. I appreciate your help.”

Her tongue lolled out, and she trotted off, her tail held high, floppy butt sashaying back and forth, strutting down the sidewalk like she had not a care in the world.

His next life, he was definitely coming back as a Basset Hound.

Once or twice through the years, he’d had a longing for more, but a few weeks of perusing his top secret stash of gay porn and nightly dates with his hands usually cured him of that longing. He sexed himself out, or bored himself with the repetitiveness of his porn, the same old, same old that could never replace another warm body sinking into him, spreading out over him, the weight of a man pressing him into the mattress.

The night before, he’d been too depressed, too maudlin, too morose to even consider fooling around with himself. He hadn’t been as uninterested in himself in years.

Friday morning was one of his swim days, and he was up early, feeding Etta Mae her princess-certified breakfast of wet dog food sprinkled with shredded cheese and pieces of tortilla, microwaved until the cheese was just melted and the dog food warm enough to waft through his townhome. Always a delight.

Etta Mae ate and did her business and took up position on the couch, flopping down for her morning nap. He kissed her head and headed out, gym duffel and briefcase over his shoulder and garment bag in one hand.

The DC morning was already warm, practically midday hot with a cloudless sky stretching overhead. He left just early enough to miss the crush of commuter traffic and ducked into the Foggy Bottom Metro station. A transfer at Metro Center, and then he got off at Judicial Station.

The plaza gym at the courthouse complex was exclusively for the judiciary, federal employees, and DC Metro police, and he used the swimming pool there three days a week.

Did Mike ever work out there?

Oh, for Christ’s sake.

He forced himself not to think of Mike, or of anyone, any male body, any male body part. Any fantasy man he’d concocted over the years, any perfect assortment of smiles and laughs and soft eyes gazing at him. He just swam, lap after lap, water rushing by his head, sluicing over his body.

He took too long in the shower, leaning into the hot spray with the water running down the back of his neck. He’d gotten older, somehow. His legs were wiry. His hips were narrow, but not sexily so, not anymore. He just looked thin. His shoulders had always been wide, swimmer’s shoulders that tapered to a V, and his arms nicely toned. But his chest had a smattering of gray hairs poking out, traitors hidden in the sparse strands of brown. He hadn’t bothered sprucing himself up, manscaping as they called it these days, for two decades. What was the point?

If he found someone, he’d have to start paying attention to himself again.

But that wasn’t going to happen.

Putting the thought firmly out of his head, he shut off the shower and toweled off. Got dressed, and managed to dry and fluff his brunet-with-a-little-bit-of-salt hair into the DC sideswept style that was all the rage for mid-forties guys like him. He looked like every other middle-aged man in DC. Maybe a little thinner. He’d never let himself get overweight. But he was boring. As boring as… well, a judge.

There was a coffee shop in the lobby, a requirement for all federal buildings to keep the wheels of bureaucracy turning. Every morning, he bought his first cup there, one of his only indulgences. A sugary, whipped cream monstrosity, ridiculous, but delicious.

“And… a medium drip, heavy on the cream, please.” Tom passed over a ten with a weak smile to the barista.

What was he doing? Buying Mike’s coffee? Mike got his own coffee every morning just fine. This was stupid. He was stupid.

Still, he took both cups—his sugar meltdown, Mike’s refined brew—and headed for the Annex.

Maybe he’d run into Mike on the stairs, and he could pass it off as a mistake, an oops of the baristas. If Mike never saw his own order, maybe that would fly.

Yeah, right.

No Mike on the stairs. He could dump the coffee in the trash, forget his lapse in good judgment. He could banish all evidence of his foolishness.

He badged his way into the private corridor, the long bright hallway that led to his chambers. Past the line of courtrooms, four in a row, and the chambers of his fellow judges on the fourth floor, Judge Tonya King and Judge Dana Juarez. Past the smaller offices for the law clerks and their secretaries.

And, at the end of the hall, Mike’s tiny office.

Mike’s door was open. He was early.

Well, go figure, after yesterday. Mike had been mortified. His ex sounded like a nightmare. Good riddance.

He couldn’t think like that.

Tom closed his eyes, hovering in front of his own office door. He could still ditch the coffee.

“Hey, Judge Brewer!”

Uh-oh. Mike’s cheery voice slammed into him, and footsteps paraded down the hall. “Good morning,” Mike called. “Happy Friday.”

“Morning.” Tom opened his eyes and turned to Mike.

Mike was a devastatingly handsome man. He hit all of Tom’s buttons, poked at every one of his deeply buried yearnings. He wanted to rake his fingers through Mike’s hair, lying like waves of perfect, sunbaked sand that ran for miles. He’d look gorgeous in a tiny bathing suit, stretched out on a towel on some empty beach, laughing and smiling as the sun brought little drops of sweat to his skin, beading into rivulets he’d lick off. Mike would taste like the sea, like happiness and sunshine and freedom. Like the joy the perfect blue of his eyes promised.

Mike had a folder in his hands, and he flipped through the pages, reading off names and sentences for minor drug charges and weapons possessions. Tom’s brain caught up seconds too late. “…looks like Lincoln’s gang, for the most part, isn’t knocking on the doors of the big leagues. Lincoln must be a connector between his people and the bigger fish. His guys are just the leg breakers.”

Tom blinked. “Too bad we couldn’t get him to flip.”

“You tried your best.” Mike reached for Tom’s keys, dangling off his pinkie as he clutched his sugary coffee. “Let me get your door, Your Honor.”

“Thanks.” He could stare while Mike’s back was turned. No one would know. He could stare at Mike’s shoulders, his back, the muscles moving beneath his white button-down. Mike had ditched his suit jacket in his office and he wore his shoulder holster, his weapon clipped beneath his armpit. His shoulder blades rolled beneath the straps, his back muscles flexed—

Mike stepped back and held open the door. “Here you go.”

Tom’s gaze snapped up. He fixed a smile to his face, a stretch of his lips he hoped wasn’t too ridiculous, and headed into his office.

“Double coffee today?” Mike hung back in the doorway.

“Actually…” Here goes nothing. “This is for you.”

Mike’s jaw dropped.

“Just in case. I need my inspector fully caffeinated.”

Slowly, Mike smiled and took the offered cup. He shook his head, chuckling to himself, and a flush darkened his neck. “You’re too kind about what happened, Judge Brewer.”

“I’ve got a reputation as the oddball of the court to uphold.”

“Chief Judge Fink would have brought me up on contempt of court charges.”

“He probably would.” Tom grinned. “But I have always been more lenient with first-time offenders.”

Mike was quiet. He stared at his coffee, spinning the paper cup in his hand. “I’m beginning to understand why that ends up working so well for you.” His eyes lifted, met Tom’s gaze.

Tom’s grin grew, turning into a smile. “‘I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.’”

Mike’s head tipped, cocked to one side. He frowned, as if searching his memories. “Abraham Lincoln?”

Tom nodded.

“Thank you for the coffee, Judge Brewer.” Mike spoke softly and saluted him with the cup before he backed out of the office. He kept smiling the whole time, and Tom’s stomach fluttered as he watched him go.

There wasn’t a chance in hell that he and Mike could ever be together, no matter how attracted he was to the man. Mike’s tastes didn’t run to boring mid-forty-year-olds, as evidenced by exhibit number one, the photo of his ex. But, maybe there was a chance at a friendship. God knew he could use a friend. His life was empty, purposely empty, achingly empty.

He wasn’t a greedy man. He’d take whatever he could get, whatever friendship might one day be offered or extended.

Baby steps. He had to unbarricade his closet door, crawl his way out of solitude. Twenty-five years was a long time. His forged persona fit him like a tailored suit, a mask he’d hand-made to perfection.

He already felt exposed, allowing feelings he’d ruthlessly squashed for decades to bubble up, attractions he never allowed himself to acknowledge given free rein this morning. Panic clawed at the base of his spine, scratched up his neck. What if everybody knew? What if everybody saw, that morning, what he’d hidden for forever? Eyeballs on him, hundreds of eyeballs, thousands, millions when it hit the news. When the papers screamed “gay judge” and the news shows talked about his outing, dissected his life, and his creepy old professor rose from the grave, his bones rattling as he pointed a skeletal finger at Tom and shrieked, “I knew it!”

Tom took a slow breath and closed his eyes. He could forget all of this. Shut his office door, not listen for Mike’s voice, or look up when Mike walked down the hall, passing by. Not catch his glances, his smiles. Not dream, or hope, ever again. He could go home to Etta Mae and his empty house and lock all his doors, barricade his closet higher, build a Great Wall to repeal invaders wielding flags of hope, rainbow banners held by shirtless men who smiled, who laughed, who were proud of who they were, and wanted him to rappel from his prison tower down to them.

But his tower was in a lake, an ocean, an ocean made of tears, tears of all the men in all the years, decades, centuries before him, who had their dreams crushed, their lives destroyed, when someone found out their Secret.

History was a cruel mistress, a harsh teacher.

He thumbed at his coffee cup, playing with the plastic lid. The sounds of the courthouse coming alive began to fill the hallway. Peggy coming in, unlocking her office. His law clerk, Danny, skateboarding down the hall. He could only get away with that if he came in before Chief Judge Fink. Judge Dana Juarez, down the hall, calling good morning to Peggy.

Mike’s voice, saying hello, striding past his office. He was heading for Judge Juarez, probably chatting with her about her high-risk trial coming up next week.

Mike glanced into his chambers, smiling. He still had Tom’s coffee in his hand. He raised it, saluting Tom again.

Tom nodded back.

He left his office door open.

In his mind, he imagined himself slowly taking bricks down, one by one, and peering through the crack.

Chapter 4

May 9^th

Simultaneous knocking—banging, like an invading horde was at his door—and a ceaseless rattle of his doorknob broke over his radio belting out Britney Spears on Saturday morning.

Mike threw open the door with a glare, leaning against the heavy wood.

Kris Caldera, his best friend, stood in the entrance, his perfect face curved into a pout, lips pushed out, long eyelashes batting slowly. He held up a key like it was an indictment. “My key doesn’t work.”

Mike held up another key. “I changed my locks. Here’s your new one.”

Kris snatched it out of his hand as he strutted into Mike’s townhome. He was dressed for Paris, for Milan, an haute couture fashion model gracing his apartment with color and style. Shining boots, polished to a high gloss, pointed at the toe and with a heel that was just on the wrong side of scandalous. Tight twill pants, a sunny button-down. A skinny tie, shades of blue competing for dominance. A long Gucci trench coat, and Gucci sunglasses perched on his perfectly spiked hair. Mike swore Kris accented the harsh angles of his face with makeup, dusted his cheekbones with bronzer until they looked like they could cut diamonds. He knew Kris wore eyeliner and mascara. Kris was two years older than Mike, a year away from forty, but he’d cut Mike if he ever said that aloud.

Kris was a walking stereotype. He knew every Tony-winning musical by heart and could belt out Bette Midler, Celine Dion, and Idina Menzel. He was sass on heels, deadly with his tongue, and went through men like a ravenous black widow. Mike had met him his first week in DC, after he’d transferred out of the hellhole he’d been working in before. They’d spent the whole evening at a bar trading barbs, verbal repartee that tried to draw blood. Mike wanted to take him home, wanted to unwrap him and devour him, wanted all that sass to shred him to pieces. He’d practically begged. Kris had refused. “You’re too young for me, sweetie.”

They were best friends from that moment on.

Kris stopped in Mike’s foyer, staring at his living room as his perfectly sculpted eyebrows slowly rose. He flicked a hand out to Mike, pushing one slim hip out. “Did you forget to tell me you’re moving?”

Everything from Mike’s kitchen was in the living room, stacked in boxes and bags and piled in haphazard stacks. Half his shelves in the living room were bare, emptied of Silvio’s crap. His hall closet looked like it had been ransacked, jackets and clothes heaped on the floor and spilling onto the hardwood.

“I moved Silvio out.”

Kris pulled his head back, just slightly. His lips pursed. He was being good, so far. Holding his tongue. Waiting.

Mike sighed. Kris would let him have it eventually. “I came home and found him banging some other dude in the kitchen.”

Kris’s manicured hand flew to his neck, his long fingers spread over his throat and across his collarbone. His eyes flared, Spanish fire blazing bright. He blinked, ridiculously long lashes fluttering over his creamy cheeks. “I never liked that bitch,” he snapped. “I told you he was no good.”

“I know.”

“I told you he was a fuckboy.”

“I know.”

“I told you you have the shittiest taste in men.”

Mike grinned. “I know.” He reached for a sledgehammer, leaning against the wall of his entranceway.

Kris gave him a flat glare. “What’s that for? Did you keep one of his shitty polyester shirts? Going to whack it to broken threads? I might actually help you with that. Let me grind it beneath my heel.”

Laughing, Mike headed for the kitchen. It was just empty cupboards and bare granite now. His eyes lingered on the spot Silvio had leaned against, his elbows braced on the stone, getting drilled by Tall & Swarthy. “It’s time for a remodel.”

“Oh, honey, you know I don’t do manual labor. You called the wrong friend.”

“You’re keeping me company. And your seat is over there.” He pointed to his barstool and a mixing bowl filled with ice he’d set up beside it, perched on his end table. A bottle of vodka rested in the ice and a Martini glass sat beside the bowl.

“Lovely, darling.” Kris sashayed his way across the living room, picking through piles of crap and tossing his jacket over a stack of boxes. He poured a straight vodka Martini as Mike spun slowly in his kitchen, one last survey. It was all coming out. Every last scrap.

“You could at least take your shirt off while you’re being super masc.”

Mike laughed and peeled his t-shirt off. He flung it at Kris, who batted the sweaty, dusty fabric down, grimacing and glaring like Mike had spilled paint on his clothes. He brushed his pants, flicking imaginary dust away.

“Ready?” Mike heaved the sledgehammer over his shoulder.

“Mmm hmmm.” Kris lifted his glass and winked at Mike. “Let’s see it, big boy.”

The kitchen was rubble in under an hour.

Granite cracked and smashed, turning to dust. The cupboards splintered, breaking apart into shards. Wreckage built around his feet. Only his sink and his fridge remained, stainless steel islands in a sea of dust and ruin.

Kris clapped slowly as Mike stood in the center, breathing hard. “Great job, Fred Flintstone. What are you going to do with the mess you made?”

Kris deigned to help him with the rubble, picking through the wreckage and plucking all the medium-sized pieces into bags and boxes that Mike hauled out to the dumpster. He went back to his Martini as Mike swept and vacuumed, and then made Mike wipe down his boots. Only when he was satisfied with Mike’s cleaning was Mike allowed to collapse onto his couch.

“Did that feel good?” Kris poured another drink and brought it over to Mike. He perched on the armrest.

“Yeah, that did feel good.” Getting over Silvio was easy when Silvio acted like the biggest bitch inside DC. Anger had a way of speeding up the breakup process. Silvio was just a mistake. Another one. Another in a long line of mistaken boyfriends and bad decisions.

“I assume we’re going out tonight? You’re going to fuck your way through DC again, until you fall head over heels for another fuckboy?”

Mike scrubbed his face, stalling. Why was it always the same? Why did he always end up like this? Alone, pissed off for one reason or another, and left to wonder why he seemed like the only guy to want something real. Mike took another drink. “I… think I need to change how I date.”

Kris nearly fell off the arm of the couch. He pressed his hand to his chest, feigning a heart attack as he blinked fast. “I hear the cries and wails of fuckboys from Virginia to Pennsylvania. Lamentations. Bottoms going unfilled.”

“Jesus, Kris. Am I that bad?”

“After a breakup? Honey, you put Madonna and Coco Chanel to shame. I think there’s a mass fuckboy alert when you go out. Some bottom booty call, making them all a’tizzy. They come flocking, holes already lubed. They’re hoping to catch you in their nectar—”

“Okay, okay. Look, I’m not doing that anymore.”

“Really?” Kris couldn’t fit another ounce of disbelief into that single word, he really couldn’t.

“It hasn’t fucking worked, has it? Here I am again… alone. The last thing that I want to be is alone.”

Kris sat back and crossed his legs, one foot bouncing delicately. Silence strained the living room. “You are a hot mess.”

He looked down.

Kris took pity on him. “You want the gay fairy tale, Mike. You want Prince Charming and happy ever after. But, Prince Charming is not going to come wrapped up in the boys you’ve been fooling with.”

Mike sagged into his couch cushions with a sigh.

“You’re a good guy. A really good guy. Why do you keep wasting time with twenty-four-year-old flight attendants and wannabe models? They’re not good enough for you, honey.” Kris smoothed his hair, tucking wayward strands off his forehead. “You need someone who thinks you are their Prince Charming. Not the pretty face and attached dick that comes with a credit card.”

He stayed quiet, twirling the glass back and forth, making ripples in the vodka. “I don’t know if that guy exists, Kris. I’ve been looking for him. Where is he?”

“He’s for damn sure not a fuckboy!” Kris sat back. “I cannot believe these words are passing my perfect lips, but…” He sighed. “Why don’t you take a break from the scene? Focus on yourself for a while. I mean, do you have any idea what your Prince Charming is like? What you really want? ‘Cause you’re not happy with what you’ve had.”

“I do know what I want.” Mike could picture it, could imagine life with the man of his dreams. He wanted a partner, a real partner, an honest-to-God relationship. He wanted to find The One, the man he’d marry. He wanted someone to love.

Faces blurred together, his exes and his hookups, a haze of haughty smirks and sneers, flashing eyes and slit-eyed glares. Sarcasm, biting tongues, ferocity when provoked. He loved Kris like a brother, but Kris wasn’t the kind of man he dreamt about night after night.

“He’s kind,” he finally said. “I want someone kind. Gentle. Loving.” Memories kept rushing by, a harsh counterpoint to his actual desires. Nights spent alone, or watching his partner texting all night long. Distance, when all he wanted was closeness. He could count the good times with Silvio, the moments where they seemed to be really close and not trying to shred each other with sass and sarcasm that flayed too close to the bone. “Affectionate. He wants me. Really wants me.”

Days he wanted to talk about his work, the cases he saw. The law, politics, and the world they lived in. Being laughed off, or ignored, or talked over. Being told he was boring. “He’s smart. We talk about things. Maybe we’ll stay up all night talking sometimes.”

The truth was, he wanted someone so out of his league that his mystery man might as well be a satellite orbiting the earth. And Mike was an ant. He wanted someone intelligent, grounded, and with a heart of gold. Someone who wanted to hold his hand and cuddle with him, watch movies on Friday nights, and sleep in on Sundays. Someone gentle with his heart, with his dreams. Someone who wanted him to be their whole world, the way he would be Mike’s.

“Does that sound like a fuckboy?” Kris’s voice was gentle.

Mike shook his head.

“You’re looking in all the wrong, places. You want Prince Charming, but you’re looking in a swamp. Get away from the bars and the apps. I know God isn’t your thing, but there are gay men’s groups at some of the churches, and the center has volunteer gigs you can join. There’s a lot for gay men to do, Mike, other than troll for a hookup or look for The One at the club.”

“I know.” He squeezed his eyes shut, rubbing them with his fingers. “We already are doing that, though. I mean, we’re in the league. And we volunteer. That’s how we met Billy and Aaron.”

“Do more. This is our culture. It’s not just bars and clubs and hookup apps. If you want to find someone special, go look for him where you think he’s hiding.” Kris tilted his head. “And, be the kind of guy you want to attract. You’re a good guy. Stop settling for less. Quality attracts quality.”

“That’s not true and you know it.”

“The flakes will stop hassling you when you stop feeding them your dick.” Kris stood, brushing off his pants. “Doctor Caldera prescribes a cleanse, Deputy Marshal Lucciano. A cleanse of the scourge of fuckboys.” He pointed at Mike, tapping the tip of Mike’s nose with every word. “No more fuckboys.”

“Yes, doctor.” Mike smiled.

“C’mon.” Kris snapped. “We’ve got to get you a new kitchen. And tonight, you’re taking me to the Kennedy Center. Madame Butterfly is playing. I’ll culture you, even if it kills me.”

“Yes, my queen.” He winked as he stood, and Kris tsked at him as he grabbed his trench coat.

Mike sighed, blowing air out of his hollowed cheeks. “We need to stop by the clinic, too.”

Kris whipped around, his eyebrows disappearing beneath his spiky fringe. True concern poured from his gaze.

“Silvio was banging the guy bare. I don’t know how long he was cheating, but if he was going bare, then I need to get checked.”

Kris turned away and shoved his arms through his coat sleeves, bunching the fabric and viciously tugging on the lapels. He took a long time straightening it, smoothing his shirt front, facing away from Mike. When he turned back, his expression was back to his haughty indifference, but Spanish fire still smoldered in his gaze. “I never liked that bitch.”

“I will listen to you from this day forward about any man.” Mike pressed his hands together and bowed, as if bowing to a master.

“You’re damn right you will. Now go shower and change. We’ve got a busy day.”

How did someone enter the gay scene these days?

When he was in college, he just showed up at one of their bars. He drank, grinded on the dance floor, and wiled away his nights in a music-fueled haze.

If he, Judge Tom Brewer, U.S. Federal Judge, walked into a gay club and started to grind against someone, he’d be plastered across the tabloids before morning.

He needed something a little subtler. Something a little more… anonymous.

Cruising was out. He didn’t want to just fuck. Didn’t want to just pick up a random man at a park or a truck stop and trade a quick hand job or blow job. He wanted to meet someone. Make friends. Eventually… maybe find something deeper.

How did anyone go about that, though? The chances that anyone he happened to meet in the world happened to be gay, happened to be single, and happened to find him attractive and desirable were… God, probably practically zero. And how would he even approach anyone? There was no calculus to determine if a man at the coffee shop was gay or straight, or open to his tentative smile.

What if he joined a gay organization, a sports league or a volunteer group? That would be firmly planting his flag on gay ground. Was he ready for that?

…Maybe not, since he was hesitating.

Twenty-five years, though, brought a lot of technical changes. Smartphones, websites, and apps. There were two, in particular, that stood out.

GrindMe, an app whose name made his jaw drop, but promised a world of secure and protected interactions with gay men all around him. He could meet other gay men. Chat with them. Trade pictures, eventually. Maybe meet up. As a tool for a small, dispersed community—one that still had more than a fair amount of fear ingrained deep in their culture—it was practically a perfect solution.

It was too perfect. There had to be a catch.

He downloaded the app, though, watching the progress bar building in chunks across his phone, and then install and plaster an innocuous looking mask icon on his home screen. 

Tentatively, he clicked it.

Setup was relatively simple. He didn’t know what to choose as a display name. Something relatively obscure. He settled on Justice95, 95 for the year he graduated law school.

He cringed when it asked for his age. No hiding that, though.

Clan? What the hell was a clan? Oh.

Well, he wasn’t a bear. He wasn’t an otter. He could hardly be described as rugged. He’d long ago left behind any possibility of being called a twink. Clean-cut fit. Did they have a “boring” clan? He’d belong in that one.

He also chose “discreet.”

Height, weight, and body type were depressing. Five foot eleven, one-eighty, brown eyes, salt-and-pepper hair. They tricked that up a bit, and he smiled when he checked the box for “silver fox.”

Looking for. He bit his lip. Chat, dates, friends, networking—people networked on this app?—a relationship, or… right now. Well. Not to put too fine a point on that.

He chose chat, dates, and friends. He wasn’t ready for anything else.

Relationship status. He snorted. Single. Perpetually single. Eternally single.

He had no social networks. He’d learned long ago not to get involved in social media online. It was a tool for defense attorneys and vicious, vengeful criminals to try and find and use against you.

It wanted a picture.

He couldn’t put a picture of his face on the app. He just couldn’t, no matter how anonymous it promised to be. He’d seen scandals born in Washington DC from anonymous encounters, promises of secrets being kept. He didn’t want to end up as another headline, another DC has-been.

He picked a cute picture of Etta Mae and put it up instead. Everyone liked dogs, right?

And then… he was online.

Holy God.

A stream of images, men’s torsos, men’s asses, men eating popsicles and bananas, men bare-chested, men pouting. Close-ups of biceps and pecs. Pictures of bulges, what looked like tube socks shoved down suit pants.

Men tied up in leather.

His jaw dropped.

It was all—relatively—clean. Nothing pornographic, nothing hardcore right on the front page. But, holy hell, the line was seriously pushed and blurred.

He didn’t know where to look first. His eyes bounced around the screen, flicking from one younger guy to the next. Everyone seemed gorgeous, and perpetually in their late twenties to early thirties.

He was a dinosaur in comparison.

Where were men nearer his age?

He found the search settings and skewed the toggles up to only show ages from the mid-thirties to… just under fifty. He wasn’t ready for that number yet.

More beautiful people. More torsos. But more faces, too. Smiling, confident men.

One profile caught his eye. Someone a little younger, well-built. He had a tank top on, a backwards ball cap, and a ridiculous smile. He looked like he’d been caught laughing by the camera. The edges of his hair were sandy blond, almost honeyed. His eyes weren’t blue, but they were still nice. He clicked on the guy’s picture tile.

A larger photo appeared, and a chat icon at the bottom of the image.

Online Now blinked at him.

He hesitated.

What was he doing? What on earth was he going to say to this guy? Maybe if he was younger and they met in person somewhere, he’d offer to buy him a drink.

Yeah, right. He’d never go up to a strange man in public. He was beginning to see the allure of apps like this. That ever-present fear—is he or isn’t he? Interested in men, friendly, nonviolent, homophobic, offended by his very existence?

But he still didn’t know what to say.

Start small. What would he say if he saw him at the coffee shop?

Tom clicked on the chat button and typed Hi.

He waited.

[No] came back.

No? What did that mean? He frowned.

I’m sorry?

[NO. No to you. No face pic. A dog, really? Nice metaphor, bitch. Just no.]

Tom sat back, stunned.

A new chat popped up. He clicked over to it.

[Are you so ugly that you have to put a dog pic up for your profile?]

He couldn’t breathe.

She’s my Basset Hound.

[You could at least post a picture of your body. Something that would make it worthwhile. I mean, I can close my eyes if your face is ugly, but if you got nothing else going for you, then…]

He clicked out of that chat.

He scrolled back through the main screen, looking at the tiles of men. He found a guy about his age, smiling into the camera, looking friendly. He wore a sweater that Tom knew he had hanging in his own closet. He clicked on his profile, and then on the chat button.

I’m new to this. Is everyone on here so… forward? Rude?

[Sorry]

He smiled. Finally. He could just talk to someone. Take an ice pick to his wall and chip out a small hole. He just wanted to talk to someone, anyone, and not feel so lonely for a half hour.

[I’m only into twinks. Not into old guys.]

Tom closed his eyes. He bowed his head, his chin touching his chest.

A new message notification sounded, a short drumbeat. He almost didn’t want to click it.

[Looking for men for PnP orgy. BB, breeding, and lots of  ]

He frowned. What was an eggplant emoji—

Oh.

[Daddies wanted for hot, eager twinks.]

Well, maybe that other guy could link up with this orgy. He clicked out of the chat and logged off the app.

Etta Mae snored at the end of his bed. She ran in her sleep, her short legs and stubby paws scuffling against his comforter. Soft, sleepy barks rumbled out of her, her dreams too good to stay contained in her mind.

He tossed his phone on the bed next to him and slid down, lying on his back against the pillows. Okay. GrindMe wasn’t a good option. Almost perfect did come with a catch. The guys there were forward—shockingly forward—and… very into sex. Which wasn’t a bad thing. God, how confident was a man to plainly state that he was “only into twinks”? How much sex was a man his age getting? Going by the smile on his face, he was pretty damn fulfilled.

All these men, living their lives fearlessly. And him, alone and pathetic and cut off from seemingly the whole world. He was an alien to their culture, an outsider with his face pressed to the window as they lived and loved.

He rolled over, bunching his pillow under his head. What was Mike doing? What did he do on the weekends? How much fun did he have, with friends who loved him, supported him? He was probably the center of the party somewhere, laughing, having a great time. Finding another lover. Surrounded by life. Surrounded by happiness.

He stayed awake, watching headlights shiver over his walls, crisscross his ceiling, until he fell asleep hours before dawn.

Chapter 5

Washington DC was despicable in the heat.

Ever since he’d gotten the call, and had gotten on the plane to come to DC, he’d been miserable. Americans were insufferable, taking up too much room in the world, in their cities, and on the streets. Too loud by half, too fat by whole. The whole nation disgusted him.

He slammed the brakes on his rented sedan and barely squealed to a stop before plowing into the back of a minivan. Traffic on I-395 was a nightmare, as always. DC traffic was the worst, even worse than Moscow’s Garden Ring.

He just wanted to get out to the country, get out to the plot of land he’d been given access to. He could shoot out there, put together his Dragunov and sling hot lead down the homemade range. Shred a few paper targets. Maybe something else as well.

He had a place inside DC, a hole-in-the-wall above a pizza shop that always smelled like garlic. He kept a sleeping bag in the corner and a cooler full of water, and of course, his rifle. He could steal three different neighbors’ Wi-Fi.

The voice had also given him access to this piece of property far outside of DC. If he didn’t get out of the city, he’d let loose early, blow five people’s heads off before he even laid eyes on his target.

He hated these times most of all. The waiting. The living on another person’s timetable. Shadowing a target successfully took time, though, and especially a target of this caliber. He couldn’t just appear out of the blue. He had to establish himself in DC, put in the time to lessen the suspicion around him when the inevitable happened. He had to be just another neighbor, just another man people saw buying bananas and deodorant and milk.

He still charged quadruple his rates, for this idle time. Wasted time.

He was a hostage to time, chained to its slowness, the march of days and hours that moved for other people.

Soon, the voice tried to assuage him. Soon, it will be time. Just a little while longer.

Chapter 6

May 19^th

Lincoln’s case ended, not with a bang, but a whimper, as the poem said. The jury convicted him on all counts. Tom, like always, visited the jurors privately after the verdict was read and the trial concluded. They didn’t have any questions for him, just a general expression of sadness mixed with anger that gangs and drugs were taking so many lives away.

Federal judges heard the full gamut of cases, but he had another drug case lined up after Lincoln’s, this time a smuggler caught flying cocaine in through Dulles airport. She was a permanent resident, laid off from her job and desperate for money. She’d swallowed thirty little balloons, but was caught after landing at Dulles.

Her first offense, and she was only a green card holder. He sentenced her to the minimum time he could, and looked down when she started crying after she was told she would be deported at the end of her sentence.

A two-defendant, eight-count financial crimes case was up next. White-collar crime, conspiracy, and embezzlement. His eyeballs bled every night as he read over the five-inch-thick Federal Rules of Evidence and fell asleep with the massive tome across his lap, his reading glasses sliding down his nose. He started dreaming in evidentiary rules, dream jurors, shirtless men watching a parade of evidence and testimony delivered by other mostly-naked men who made him stutter, made him stumble. One dream attorney gave an imaginary lap dance in the center of the courtroom while the proceedings droned on and on. Mike would appear, wearing just his lime-green tie and a pair of itty-bitty briefs, and he’d rescue Tom from the circus in his courtroom, pull him into his chambers, push him back across his desk—

He needed double sugar meltdown coffees to get through each morning.

By day, both the AUSA and the defense attorney practically shouted over each other, objections right and left. He had to rule on their outbursts every twenty minutes. 

Mike waved hello to him each morning and poked his head in to say goodbye each evening. Tom had started growing a stack of law books on his desk, flagged with sticky notes and crammed with notepapers, at the start of the case. Every day he added more books, more research, and the stack grew higher and higher until he could barely see over it.  

One day he heard Mike’s footsteps, but when he looked up, law books were all he saw.

He spent his lunch hour moving every book to new stacks against the wall and ended up sprawled on his carpet while he read case precedent and reviewed legal opinions. He sat cross-legged through the late afternoon with his back against his desk, chewing on a pencil.

Knocking broke his focus, his deep dive into a decision upheld by the second circuit in the last decade regarding evidence admissibility for embezzlement cases, testimony brought up in a former trial that ended with an acquittal. Words swam on the page, tiny font on onion-skin paper, flimsy like an old Bible. He blinked and looked up.

Mike stood in the doorway, grinning.

He spat his pencil out and smiled back. “Hey.”

“Hello yourself, Your Honor.” Mike’s eyes sparkled. “I have to say, I’ve never seen a judge sitting on his floor before.”

Tom straightened his tie, trying to collect his dignity. He set the book he was reading to one side. Rules of evidence could wait. “I realized I was building a fort on top of my desk. I figured you were about to tell me it was a safety hazard. That if you couldn’t see me from the doorway, then you’d have no idea if I was truly alive or dead behind all those books.”

Mike laughed. He held out his hand. “I’m not worried you’re going to drop dead on me. You’re too young for that.”

Warmth flooded Tom’s chest, and his shoulders straightened, drew back. He took Mike’s hand and clambered up. Mike’s grip was firm, his hold gentle. He thought Mike’s hands would be rough, but they were smooth, practically soft. Callused just a bit on his thumb and his finger. He took care of himself.

Mike let go first, and Tom turned to his desk, tossing his pencil on his blotter as he exhaled. “You think I’m young, huh?”

“You’re no Chief Judge Fink.”

Tom whistled and shook his head. “He is ninety-six-years-old. Incredible.”

“If I live to be ninety-six, I won’t still be working.”

“Oh, come on.” Tom leaned back against his desk and crossed his arms. “You’d be a great ninety-six-year-old marshal. Standing post in the courtroom, leaning on your cane with your badge and your gun. By then it will probably be a laser or a sonic-something, though. Something high tech that will make us feel really ancient.”

“And I’m sure I’d have to help you off the bench so you could go talk to the jury. You’ll keep doing that even when you’re ninety-six, I bet.”

He winked. “It’s just around the corner.”

“You’re not that old.”

How could he be both thrilled and depressed at the same time? Mike, saying he wasn’t that old, wasn’t a dinosaur, that he didn’t see him as an old man. He was no Chief Judge Fink. But, the truth of it was, he was still too old for Mike. Too old for popped collars and a smooth, sleek face. Too old for the men on GrindMe, even.

He took a breath and pasted his polite smile on, his judicial smile, the little quirk of his lips that he used in court. “How can I help you?”

Mike frowned and leaned back slightly, and a wariness settled in his eyes. “I… noticed you were here pretty late for the past two weeks. Just wanted to check in on you.”

His smile softened. “Thanks. I’m buried in a white-collar crime case. Embezzlement. I’m…” He nodded to the stacks. “Trying to get a handle on case law and precedent. The evidence is detailed, and a lot of it is challenged. I have to rule on evidence every day, and I want to make sure my opinions are well-grounded in legal fact. I don’t want the appeals court to overrule me because I didn’t know enough.”

“Sounds like a lot. Is it almost through?”

“Yes. Thank God.” Tom smiled as he crossed his arms. “I have never been so happy to see the end of a case.”

Mike’s small frown faded. “If you’re busy, I can leave you to your reading—”

“No, I need a break. I’m going cross-eyed.” He scrubbed his face, his fingers rubbing his eyelids and pressing on his eyeballs. What time was it, even?

“Can I repay your generosity, then?”

Tom opened one eye, staring at Mike.

“Can I buy you dinner?” Mike spoke like his offer was an easygoing nothing, like his words were the easiest thing in the world to say. Like they didn’t have any deeper, richer meaning to them. Like they weren’t what Tom had been longing to hear for twenty-five long years, and, more recently, for the past several weeks, ever since Mike had begun starring in Tom’s personal fantasies.

He boggled, blinking, frozen.

“I never got a chance to repay you for lunch. When we went out for BBQ?”

Mike was trying to jog his memory. Oh, he remembered. He remembered every moment of that lunch, of that day. Swallowing, Tom nodded. “You don’t have to pay me back—”

“I want to. Something simple. You haven’t eaten, and you said you need a break, right?”

“Yes, but—”

“What do you feel like? Mexican? Indian? BBQ again?”

A cold shot of tequila sounded great. Maybe six. If he could shoot them out of Mike’s belly button, even better. He squeezed his eyes closed. “Mexican sounds great. I could go for some tacos.” And a side order of sanity. “But, really, you don’t have to do this.”

“I want to, Judge Brewer.”

What could he say to that? He didn’t say anything, just grabbed his briefcase and his suit jacket off the back of his chair and shrugged into it, trying to shake out the wrinkles he’d put in his pants. “Lead the way.”

They ambled down the stairs side by side, Mike loose and relaxed like Tom rarely got to see. The Annex was closed, the doors locked, and only badged personnel were inside at this hour. Their shoes squeaked on the tile, dark wingtips and heavy soles clipping a steady pace. He kept shooting sidelong glances at Mike, listening as Mike summarized Judge Juarez’s high-risk trial, where he’d been since leaving Tom’s courtroom and the Lincoln case.

The evening sun cast long shadows across the judicial plaza and down the marble steps, a heavy glow shrouding the pavilion. The colors seemed heavier, the blue in the sky closer to the earth. Time slowed in the evening, the sun reluctant to set, the day holding on for just a few minutes longer. The air was warm, just on the verge of hot, brimming with humidity. Enough to feel it in the lungs and make the skin prickle. Golden light clung to Mike’s skin, caressing the planes of his face.

Mike led the way to the Mexican restaurant down the block, a cheery place in yellows and reds. Men clustered around the bar, watching the Nationals play the evening game, and families sat in booths along the wall. The hostess was a friendly young woman, her dark ponytail swishing from side to side as she said hello. Mike asked for a private table or booth against the wall, and she led them to a secluded corner booth.

Mike slid in on one side, his back to the wall, facing the restaurant. A lawman’s instinct, to survey the surroundings. Tom smiled as he sat down. He’d had enough lunches and dinners with FBI agents and police officers over the years, working as a prosecutor, to know that all federal agents and lawman types fought for the corner seat with the best vantage point of their surroundings. The gunfighter’s seat.

“Old habits die hard. I was a member of a task force for a long time.”

He’d been on the other side of the marshals, hunting fugitives. Where every marshal wanted to be, ostensibly. He heard Inspector Villegas talk about it in the break room, how he wanted to be “back in the thick of it” and he was “doing his time” at the courthouse, in judicial security, until he could transfer out. He even heard the marshals on prison transport talking about it, counting down the days until their time in the courthouse and the prisons was done.

“Why did you become a judicial security inspector?”

Mike perused his menu, pursing his lips. “Do you like queso?”

Avoidance. Hmm. His lawyer’s brain couldn’t resist a challenge, the gleeful chance to examine a witness. One corner of his mouth curled up. “I do.” He licked his lips. “Do you like being a JSI?”

Mike glanced up, eyeballing him across the table. “I do.” He tried not to smile.

The game was on. Tom flicked his eyebrows, smothering his own grin. “And you didn’t like being on the task force?”

“I never said that.”

“You never said you did like it, either.”

Mike flipped a page in his menu, his lips pressed together. “Do you like your tacos crunchy or soft?”

“Both at the same time. Crunchy, with a soft tortilla smothered in beans or guacamole wrapped around the outside.”

“That sounds pretty good.”

“As good as being on the task force?”

Sitting back, Mike flicked shut his menu, his smile breaking free. “Your reputation as a thorough prosecutor is well-founded, I see.”

“You heard about me?” He had been one of thirty AUSAs for the DC federal court, and though he’d been on the criminal side of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, he’d never met Mike until he was a judge. When he needed a JSI, it had always been Villegas or Winters, or the guys who had been there before Villegas, Winters, and Mike. Never Mike.

“I read your file when you were assigned to me.”

Not as exciting. He’d thought he’d made an impression on Mike, that Mike had known him before they’d even met. “Ah.”

“Villegas said you were a hell of a prosecutor, though. Said you could eviscerate on cross-examination.”

“I enjoy a good conversation now and then.”

“Conversation? Is that what you call it?”

“Of course. Speaking of, where were you when you were on the task force?”

Mike shook his head, holding back his laughter. The waitress came and asked for their drinks. Tom waited, letting Mike order first, and when Mike ordered water, he stuck to a diet soda. Some Dutch courage wouldn’t be amiss right now, but he should keep it professional. Mike was, obviously. Mike also ordered queso to share.

“I was assigned to a big fugitive hunt, and by the end, I was disgusted with the whole thing. I didn’t like any of it. I came away thinking that this country is holding together with bubble gum and twine, and one lit fuse in the wrong place could blow the whole thing. I wanted to do more.”

“Like investigating crimes?”

“That’s more the FBI’s job.” Mike sighed. “I wanted to make sure that this country always had a fair system in place for everybody. That our legal and justice system worked more times than it didn’t. Judicial security seemed like a good fit. Protect the best, and keep the system honest.”

Slowly, Tom smiled, his grin stretching until his cheeks hurt. Mike snorted and looked away, a flush dusting the arches of his cheeks.

“I know, I’m a sentimentalist.” Mike shrugged.

“I think it’s great. You’re great.” He spoke too quickly, words tumbling from him, filling the empty table and the space between them. Mike’s gaze flicked to his, but Tom froze, overly exposed like he’d been caught unprepared in a trial. His mind was a blank hum, his words repeating in a loop.

The waitress bustled back, saving him and dropping their drinks and queso on the table. Mike ordered tacos, along with a side of guacamole and a stack of flour tortillas. Tom ordered the same.

“Going to give my way a try?” He tried to redirect the conversation, get them back to safer ground.

“Yep. So, tell me about this trial that has you fearing you’ll die behind a stack of law books.”

Tom groaned. “If I tell you about it, you’ll die of boredom, too. Then where will the court be without its best JSI?” He grinned as Mike’s flush returned. “How’s Judge Juarez’s trial?”

“Going well. The defendant has gotten uppity a few times, but he’s settled down when Judge Juarez has warned him. He’s on his last warning, but seems to be behaving. No outbursts for the past two days.”

“That’s good.” Tom grabbed a chip and broke off a corner. “What’s next, after her trial? Judge King have anything coming up?” Judge Tonya King, by some mystery of the universe, usually got civil cases instead of criminal cases. Every case was randomly assigned to each of the fifteen judges, but out of the four on their combined fourth-floor docket, Judge King handled three times as many civil cases as him, Judge Juarez, and Chief Judge Fink all together.

“I have a week without trial protection, actually.” Mike grinned. “I can catch up on everything else I’m supposed to do. I’ve got fifteen different intelligence reports I need to analyze, low-level threats I need to circle back on for their three-and-six-months checks, monthly prison gossip analysis from headquarters to review—” He stopped, shaking his head. “Hopefully I can get it all in in that week. What about you? What’s after this trial, if you manage to survive?”

Tom groaned. “A patent trial, unfortunately. The only thing worse than this current case is a contested patent.”

Mike frowned. He took a long drink, his throat working, and then set his glass down, licking a bead of water from his bottom lip.  

Tom fought not to stare. “Patent cases are a special kind of awful. There’s no jury. It’s just the patent lawyers and me. And, patent lawyers are usually engineers and attorneys. Double doctorate plus a law degree type of person. They’re specialists in the field of the patent, and the whole case is two legal and technical experts arguing over very, very specific technical knowledge. The one patent case I heard last year made my brain bleed, and I still have no idea what the patent was actually about. I really thought about flipping a coin to decide whether to validate or invalidate it. I was that inadequate.”

“What did you do?”

“I validated the patent, and I waited for it to go to appeal. I figured Chief Judge Fink was going to be in my chambers by the end of the week, reading me the riot act and telling me what I should have done. He likes to do that. But… there wasn’t an appeal. They accepted my ruling.” He shrugged, scrunching up one side of his face. “I hope I did both parties justice, but I honestly didn’t have a clue what they were talking about. And, I like to think I’m a pretty smart guy.”

“Kinda smart. You are a judge, after all.” Mike winked. “So, what’s this patent case about? What’s the dispute?”

Tom ignored the compliment, just pushed it out of his brain, or he’d go silly like a teenage girl. “From what I can tell from the brief, it’s challenging whether a section of code… within a section of code… within a section of code—” Tom arched his eyebrows as Mike grinned. “—was lifted from another company’s proprietary software. It’s more than a decade old, as well, so there’s civil ramifications if I invalidate the patent, or give the patent to the plaintiff. But, I am in for a crash course in computer technology and software code next week.”

“Sounds exhilarating.”

“You’ve never seen one, I take it? Drop in. You can share my pain. And, hey, if you understand what’s going on, I’ll get you to rule on the patent.” Somewhere, there was a boldness within him, a hint of the younger man he’d once been. He knew how to flirt, once.

Mike laughed. “I am still amazed at the breadth of cases you all hear. Watching TV, it’s like judges hear only the big murder cases, or only civil cases, or only drugs. But in a month, you’ve had two civil cases, two drug cases, and a white-collar crime case.”

“And that terrorism case is gaining speed. It might be coming to our court. We’re all watching the news on that one.” The FBI had foiled a homegrown terrorist months before, stopping his plan to bomb the DC Metro by using an undercover FBI agent posing as a member of ISIS. He’d gone silent after he was arrested and the case against him was made by the government. Slowly, rumors of his case—was he or wasn’t he cooperating? Would he or wouldn’t he go to trial? Would he just plead guilty?—grew.

Nodding, Mike crunched a chip. “Winters, Villegas, and I have been working on some plans for all new terrorism cases. There are a lot of angles on those.”

“They’re media circuses, for one.”

“And everyone will need protection. The jurors, the prosecutor, the judge.” He pointed a chip at Tom. “If it goes to trial—and there’s a really good chance he could just plead guilty, according to what we hear—then we’ll take care of you. Or whoever gets this case.”

Mike heard a lot of gossip from his fellow marshals, especially the ones on prison transport and in the jails. He should probably ask Mike more about the rumors he heard, and for information on the judicial grapevine. It was likely more accurate that the information he got from the U.S. Attorney’s Office. “With my luck, it will probably be me.”

“Then we’ll be working together again.”

Mike’s words shouldn’t make him giddy. They shouldn’t fill him with warmth, with happiness. He shouldn’t want high-risk trials just so he could be near Mike, fill his days with sights and sounds of the man.

Their waitress arrived, bringing their food. The plates were a riot of color, boisterous with spirals and flamboyant flowers, and she spread out tortillas and cups of guacamole between the two of them. When she left, Mike looked questioningly at Tom.

“Like this.” He showed Mike how to spread the guacamole on his tortilla and then wrap it around the outer shell of his taco. Guacamole squeezed out of the sides of Mike’s, smearing all over his hands, and Tom almost stopped breathing when he licked his fingers clean. He waited, watching while Mike took his first bite.

He forced himself not to react to the blissed-out expression, the eyes-rolled-back happiness that he saw on Mike’s face. That would stay with him.

“This is really good,” Mike muttered around another mouthful. “Where has this been all my life?”

“Clearly there weren’t a lot of tacos where you were stationed on the task force.” Tom winked and took a bite of his own as Mike snorted.

“How do you like being a judge?”

Mike’s question, tossed at him in-between bites, made Tom pause. He blinked at Mike. “It’s…” He sighed. “I never expected it. Never thought I would ever be a judge, so I never imagined what it would be like.” He looked down. Picked at the lettuce trailing out of his taco shell. “I really have no idea if I’m even doing it right.”

“You don’t like being a judge?”

“I do,” Tom said quickly. “I do. It’s meaningful. It’s amazing, and I’m honored every day. I still think, though, one day I’m going to get a call from the Senate. ‘Oops, you’re not the Tom Brewer we wanted. Our bad. Here’s the door.’”

Mike swallowed a huge gulp of water and shook his head. “Nonsense. You’re great.”

“Uhh, thanks.” Tom looked down, looked sideways at the salt, and willed the heat in his cheeks to disappear. “It’s harder than I imagined. And I don’t mean the cases, or managing the courtroom, or applying the law. I mean, that’s all challenging, but it’s the aspects of the job that no one talks about that are the hardest.”

Silently, Mike waited, his full attention on Tom.

“I was an AUSA. A hard-ass one, and I know a lot of my fellow AUSAs expected me to be a hard-ass on the bench, too. I remember FBI agent Harvey congratulating me and telling me that they needed some good blood on the bench. Stern sentencing.” Tom shook his head. “But, I fought for the government’s case because I believed in those cases. I took the ones that were good cases to trial, and I believed in every one of them. We were getting bad people off the streets, and upholding the law. I also let go of cases that I didn’t believe in. I didn’t try to cram a suspect into a crime that didn’t fit. I also don’t believe that just because someone is accused means that they’re automatically guilty, especially before all the facts and the evidence have been borne out. And, I worked hard for fair plea deals.” He shrugged. “My old coworkers won’t speak to me anymore. I earned a reputation early on as a softie on the bench. Remember the Sousa trial?”

Mike nodded.

He’d sentenced a first-time offender to the lower end of the criminal sentencing guidelines, defying the wishes of the AUSA, and his former coworkers. Even Chief Judge Fink had come tottering into his office, hollering at him in his scratchy southern drawl that he’d just fallen on his face right out of the gate. He was going to be the defendants’ favorite judge and get all the trick defense attorneys clamoring for his sympathy, his bleeding heart. He listened to the Chief Judge in silence, taking his lumps.

He’d read in the newspapers after the trial that he’d been eviscerated at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, called a soft-on-crime judge and a traitor to his own people. Ballard had resented him before for leapfrogging into the federal judiciary, but after the Sousa trial, resentment had coalesced into a burning hatred.

He’d been off to a great start, on the federal bench. Pissed off his Chief Judge, made a name for himself in the papers as a bleeding-heart softie, and was now a sworn enemy of the United States Attorney’s office.

Compared to Ballard, he was a softie. The United States Attorney for the DC district was a man who seemed to have been born without a heart. Instead of a warm, human center, Ballard had a cold fusion device instead. He was as friendly as an android, as gentle as the Terminator. His soul existed in a ball of passionate rage, focused through his job on a somewhat perverted sense of justice.

He'd been worried, when he worked for him, that Ballard would one day become a federal judge.

“I don’t believe in being overly harsh. I believe each and every crime, each and every defendant, is unique. A mafia boss is not the same as a desperate drug smuggler. A low-level gang member who joined because he didn’t know what else to do and didn’t have any options in his life and got caught selling drugs is not the same as a stone-cold killer. Painting everyone the same, and shoving lesser criminals in with the major criminals, is only hurting everybody. Only hurting society.

“So,” he sighed, sitting back. “I have to be extraordinarily careful with my sentences. With what evidence I allow into trial, and what I exclude. Every action I take, every decision I make, will be evaluated by an appeals court. My decisions have to stand on the merits of the law. I can’t be open to accusations in either direction: that I am too hard, a prosecutor’s judge, or too lenient, a softie who gives defendants everything but the keys to their own cells. I have to be fair, and there’s no guide for that. Fair isn’t fixed. I can’t point to a line and walk it and say, ‘this is fair.’ I have to be individual—”

He broke off, snapping his lips shut. “Sorry, this is incredibly boring. You don’t need to listen to an old judge whine.”

“It’s not boring.” Mike sounded serious, as serious as he did when he delivered his threat briefings and warned Tom about suspicious activity around the courthouse. “What you said…” He shook his head. “I mean, that’s why I became a marshal. I wanted to make sure that everyone got their day in court. The bad guys, who needed to go away, and the ones who needed to be heard before the law and needed their name cleared.” He exhaled. “I once chased a woman across three states because she’d shot her husband dead and then ran. She was wanted on felony murder, and the state wanted to prosecute her hard. I found her and brought her back. Her husband had been beating her six ways from Sunday every day for seven years. She snapped. I told her she’d have her day in court and the judge would hear her out. It would be justifiable. A crime of passion, or self-defense.” He shook his head, and a sad smile turned down the corner of his lips. “Turns out, the judge and the sheriff were both family members of her dead husband. Small town courts are like that, and there wasn’t a thing I could do.”

“Was this when you were on the task force?”

“Before.” Mike was quiet. “I thought, ‘these aren’t the kind of judges this country needs.’ I mean, her life is over. When she gets out of prison, the hate will have eaten her up. She was free. She was finally free, and I brought her back to hell.”

“I’m sorry. That wasn’t justice.”

“No.” Mike shook his head, but tried to smile. He was trying to fight back through the sudden sadness, the heaviness that had fallen over their table. It cocooned them, the vivid colors seemingly muted beneath their shared dismay. “I didn’t find a lot of justice out there. But, I see it happening in your courtroom. You’re a good judge, Your Honor.”

He smiled slowly, his lopsided grin turning embarrassed, so wide his cheeks ached. He looked down, before the burn on his face turned into a blazing fire. “Thanks.”

“And you’re not old.”

Tom snorted. “Putting on the judge’s robe has made me ancient. No matter what my driver’s license says, the judge’s robe says ‘grandpa.’”

“Grandpa? No way. You’re, what, forty-one?”

He beamed. “Forty-six.”

“Well, you look good.”

Tom’s chest swelled. His mind burst, like an opera singer had just struck her high note, or a new year’s celebration had exploded into fireworks. Mike kept speaking, and Tom blinked, focusing back on what he said.

“No family? No grandkids?”

Snorting, Tom shook his head. “No grandkids. And no family. Never married.” Because I’m gay. Because I’m gay, I’m just like you, but I’m too scared to—

No. He couldn’t leap from his closet like that. He was going slow. Being deliberate. Being careful. Cautious.

“I think you’re one of the only single judges in the country.”

“Thanks,” he said dryly, arching his eyebrows.

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Being a federal judge is very attractive, I know.” Tom held up his hands, as if telling Mike to back up or slow down. “It’s hard to beat back the admirers.”

Mike had the good sense to look bashful.

“It is lonely being a judge. I didn’t have a lot of friends before I was appointed, and now…” He blew air out of his lips and waved, waving goodbye to his social life. “It’s me and my dog and my law library.”

“You have a dog? What kind?” Mike seemed to light up, sitting forward. Dog people were easy to recognize.

“I do. A Basset Hound. Her name is Etta Mae.”

“That is a good Basset Hound name.” Mike laughed. “Do you have any pictures?”

“Do I have any pictures…” He reached for his phone, swiping on the screen. His background was Etta Mae rolling on the grass on the National Mall, the Capitol Dome in the background. He clicked into the gallery and pulled up his camera roll. Idle snapshots of weird things he saw around DC, a few pages from law books he wanted to remember for later, and then row after row of Etta Mae. He was pathetic.

He pulled up a cute one of her looking at the camera, all long ears and droopy jowls and hangdog eyes, and pushed his phone across the table.

Mike put his fist over his mouth and chuckled, deep guffaws as his eyes seemed to melt. “She’s adorable. Look at that face.”

“She’s my princess.”

“And I bet she knows it. She’s got you wrapped around her paws, doesn’t she?”

“She does.” He glanced at the time on his phone. Damn it, it was getting late. “It’s actually time for the princess’s dinner.”

Straightening, Mike nodded, leaning back. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to keep you for so long, Your Honor—”

“Please, call me Tom when we’re out of the courthouse.” Mike gave him a wry look and a raised eyebrow, as if to say, ‘yeah right, fat chance.’ He grinned anyway. “This was great. I had a great time. Thank you for dragging me out of there.”

“I had a good time, too.” Mike smiled, really smiled, not his polite smile or his working smile, but an honest smile, uneven and dimpled. “You are a really good judge. I’m proud to work with you.”

He couldn’t come up with something good to say to that, so he just slid out of the booth and buttoned his jacket. Mike had slipped his credit card to the waitress when she came to refill their drinks for the third time. They ambled toward the door, Tom ducking into the bar to catch the score for the game. The Nationals were up by three.

“Thank you again, Mike. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“I’ll duck into your courtroom. Check out this case that has you building a fort out of law books.”

That would make the day infinitely better. But he didn’t say that, didn’t tell Mike that now he’d be waiting for him, glancing at the door every five minutes, hoping to see his smile and his blue eyes. Instead, all he said was, “Goodnight.”

“Night.” Mike trotted across the street, back to the courthouse, leaving Tom at the entrance to the Metro. Just a short ride across the city, and he’d be home with Etta Mae. She was probably wondering where he was, or, more likely, wondering where her dinner was.

“Say hi to Etta Mae for me!” Mike called back from the steps of the courthouse, waving one last time before he headed inside.

Tom felt his heart skip a beat and then crack in two.

Chapter 7

June 4^th

GrindMe was out. That app wasn’t for him. At least… not right now.

Spark, the other app Tom found, was better. Kind of. Spark was supposed to be for men who were looking for something a little more serious. Or, longer-term than just the next thirty minutes. He put up a picture of his suit-covered torso instead of Etta Mae’s photo.

The first night he’d been on the app, he’d swiped right on a younger guy’s picture, and then got a message from him a few hours later. He was actually a they—a couple, two married men, younger and in love and looking for a little excitement and adventure. They were wondering if he was interested in meeting them to explore the possibility of a long-term threesome arrangement.

He had a hard enough time with himself, let alone the thought of one other man. Three of them together? He’d die. The stress would kill him. He politely declined and wished them good luck.

Another man and he had matched a few days later. Someone in his early forties, closer to his age. Honey hair and blue eyes, but not as suave as Mike. He didn’t have the same laughter in his gaze, the same boisterous smile that Mike had.

Mike had graced Tom with his perfect smile when he ducked into the back of Tom’s courtroom during the final phase of the white-collar criminal embezzlement trial. He, the prosecutor, and the defense attorney were alone in the courtroom, trying to hammer out instructions to give to the jury before sending them out to deliberate. The two attorneys exploded into a snapping match that threatened to escalate to shouts and possibly even fists. He dragged them both in front of his bench and read them the riot act, threatening contempt of court charges if they blew up again.

The attorneys stalked back to their tables like furious peacocks, and he ordered a half-hour recess for cooler heads to prevail. He needed to calm down, too, before he charged the jury and sent them off to deliberate. Damn it, but they all just wanted to get this case over with.

The attorneys stormed out. Usually, he left first, the bailiff calling the courtroom to stand for his stately exit, but it was just him and the attorneys, and he’d told them to get out, so he couldn’t be angry when they followed his command. The bailiff wisely decided to escape when he had the chance.

And Mike stood at the back of his courtroom, his smile a mile wide, eyes laughing, ambling down the center aisle like he was there to take Tom to prom. His anger vanished, melted away, disappearing in the face of Mike, his smile, his presence, everything about him making Tom’s heart skip a beat.

He shouldn’t be comparing other men to Mike, but damn it, it was so hard not to. The heart wants what it wants, or so Emily Dickinson said. One day, he’d get over this crush, get over the way his body felt as light as a feather, his skin turning inside out as his heart skipped beats and his palms sweated whenever Mike was near.

The man who looked like Mike, but not really, not enough, had messaged him first, asking easy questions every day or so. What did Tom do? He demurred, saying he was a lawyer. He was, still… But he wasn’t ready to go all out there, just yet.

What kinds of hobbies did he have? What did he like to do in his free time?

Free time, there was an idea. He’d been a workaholic for years. As a prosecutor, there were always more cases, always more trials to plan, always more evidence to review, and legal strategies to perfect. He could bleed away his hours at the office or bring his work home, scribble on his legal pad or peck at his laptop on the couch next to Etta Mae.

Reducing his life down to a few sentences to send back to a guy who was kinda-sorta close to the actual man he was crushing on was a depressing endeavor.

I swim to keep in shape, play with my dog, and I like to work on my house. Home renovation, design stuff.

[Ooo, a handy man. That’s great. What kind of dog?]

He didn’t respond quickly, letting the conversation drag over several hours. The guy’s name was Doug, and he was a physician specializing in podiatry. A foot doctor. He was the last man on earth to throw stones about a boring career, but next to being a judge, was there anything more boring than being a foot doctor?

Doug liked to kayak, liked to cook, and liked to visit California and go wine tasting.

All great things. All wonderful, normal things. He could be happy jetting off to California for a weekend, sipping merlot and pinot noir with his man, or cooking side by side with him, stepping around Etta Mae when she decided to be underfoot. She loved to park herself right beneath the stove when he cooked, as if she was afraid he’d forget her existence.

But when he tried to imagine it, tried to imagine paddling across a pristine lake, staring at the back of Doug, the image of Doug always shifted and shimmered into Mike. Mike twisted in the seat, grinning at him. Mike playfully splashed lake water into his face.

At night, he’d trade a few messages with Doug, give a thumbs-up to the picture Doug sent of his homemade dinner—risotto with a truffle reduction, and a spinach and cranberry salad with a glass of Chianti—and made small talk about the Nationals or the traffic on the Metro, or whatever else.

And when he lay down, his body went hot, the feel of his skin against the sheets like a lover’s caress, the ruffle of his hair against the pillowcase like fingers sliding through his strands, his hands reaching out for a lover. He was a young man again, aching and eager and full of fantasies.

He tried to think of Doug. He was talking to the man, for Christ’s sake.

But it was always Mike. Always Mike he imagined, their bodies entwined as they drifted into sleep, Etta Mae snoring at their feet.  Always Mike, hovering over him, leaning in for a long kiss, a nuzzle beneath his ear. Always Mike, smiling as they talked, as they laughed, over good wine and a dinner he’d made. Always Mike, filling the lonely spaces of his house made for two. Always Mike’s hands on him, and always Mike’s name on his lips when his release branded his skin, hot shame that made him want to crawl under his bed.

What was Mike like, as a lover?

He had to stop. He couldn’t fantasize like that, couldn’t think of Mike as anything but who he truly was: a coworker. Perhaps a friend.

And so far out of his league it wasn’t funny.

Doug wanted to meet, for coffee or drinks or a walk on the National Mall. He hesitated, saying he wasn’t ready yet, and Doug’s messages started dwindling.

He wished he was sorry about that.

Benjamin was a few years older than him, grayer than him, a lobbyist for an NGO focused on climate change. After hello and how are you, Benjamin flat out told him he was looking to marry and start a family by the end of the year. He wanted children, and his biological clock was ticking. He wanted to find a good man to be his husband and the father of their kids.

God, he wasn’t ready for that. From closeted to gay dad? That was a warp-speed leap he couldn’t quite make.

Mike slipped into his courtroom in the middle of the patent case, during the testimony of one of the software engineers describing what their specific line of code in the program did, and how they had created the code, and for what purpose.

Tom’s ears were bleeding and his eyeballs were crossing, and he was struggling not to prop his forehead in his palm and just give in to the tedium.

But then Mike was there, sitting in the back, listening to the double doctorate engineer and attorney string together indecipherable sentence after indecipherable sentence. He started to smile, and even from the bench, Tom could see the laughter in his deep blue gaze. He was supposed to be listening to the testimony, but his eyes kept flicking back to Mike.

Mike smiled, and he almost hurt himself holding back his own answering grin.

“Your Honor?” The plaintiff’s attorney politely tried to get his wandering attention back to the case.

“Yes, my apologies. Please continue, counselor.”

Mike ducked out silently.

He wished he could follow him, go wherever he went, stay by his side for the rest of the day, the rest of the week, the rest of the year. The rest of his life.

He had it bad. A bad crush that was going to crush him one day. Mike was going to find a new boyfriend sooner or later. A man like him… he didn’t stay single for long.

On that day, Tom was just going to have to listen to his own foolish mocking, his mind lambasting his heart with a thousand I told you so’s, and then scrape together the shattered remnants of his dignity, pluck out the slivers of his broken heart, and get on with his life.

Chapter 8

June 12^th

Until then, though, he still fantasized. Mike was a mosquito light, and he was the helpless bug pulled towards Mike’s brilliance. It was going to burn, in the end, but it would be worth it for the ride.

He padded down the hallway toward Mike’s office after Peggy said goodnight and her heels click-clacked down the corridor. Judge Juarez and Judge King always left before four-thirty PM, and Chief Judge Fink usually called it a day around three. Danny had skateboarded out of there a few minutes before Peggy.

Tom slouched against Mike’s doorframe and shoved his hands in his pockets. He’d left his suit jacket over the back of his desk chair and had loosened his tie sometime after five. Some of his hair was probably sticking up from when he’d run his hands through it after finally escaping the last testimony of the patent case. He most likely looked like a dork.

But, Mike grinned when he saw him, looking up from his computer monitor. “Hey, Your Honor. You lived through another day of the patent case?”

“Barely. Just barely.” He whistled, gazing at the confines of Mike’s minuscule office. “This really is tiny. Are you sure it’s even an office?” If Mike spread his elbows, he could touch both walls.

“We marshals don’t get grand chambers like you fancy judges. They designed this office for us, unless they wired a custodial closet for internet and phone access.”

“That’s not right.”

“I think it’s to encourage us to get into the courtrooms. But…” Mike sighed. “That means I end up falling behind on paperwork more often than not. Winters is barking at me about my missing trial reports.”

“Trial reports?”

“Gotta file reports on all of the high-risk trials. Judge Juarez’s, yours. An after-action brief. Just describing what happened—or what didn’t happen, in this case.” Mike leaned forward, crossing his arms over messy piles of papers and lopsided stacks of folders. Sticky notes clung to the walls and the edges of his computer monitor, and waved like flags off the edges of his desk. “What’s up, Judge Brewer?”

He could stand here and talk to Mike all night long and be as happy as a pig in mud. But, he shrugged and rested his head on the doorjamb. “I was going to grab a drink. Celebrate the final day of patent purgatory. Want to join me?” He held his breath.

Mike laughed, tilting his head back. His Adam’s apple jutted from his tanned neck, sharp-angled and dusted with a five o’clock shadow. Tom wanted to bury his face in Mike’s neck, breathe him in, lick his way down his throat to the hollow of his collarbones, the fur of his chest. He must be furred, must have beautiful chest hair to go with that great body, those broad shoulders and slim hips.

“Only if you twist my arm, Judge B.” Winking, Mike stood, powering down his monitors and flipping a file folder closed.

They ambled out, stopping for Tom to grab his jacket and briefcase, and then headed down the center staircase to the ground floor. Mike was relaxed again, laughing and teasing Tom about the patent case, about his valiant ability to survive the dregs of technical testimony.

Tom steered them both to the Mexican restaurant they went to before. Mike grabbed a table in the corner, a tiny high top with two chairs practically side by side with a view of the bar and a wall for Mike to back himself into.

When Tom sat next to him, they were so close he could practically feel Mike’s warmth through his suit pants, the heat of his skin just beneath his button-down. Mike’s wrists rested on the edge of the table, his cuffs peeking through the dark sleeves of his suit as he flicked through the drinks list. Just the sight of his skin was enough to make Tom’s pulse quicken.

“What’s your poison, Judge B?”

Where had that nickname come from? If only Mike would call him Tom. He fantasized about it sometimes, Mike hovering over him in bed, whispering his name oh-so-sweetly. He had no frame of reference for it, no idea what his name would sound like on Mike’s lips.

“I’m a tequila guy.” Tom snagged the menu from Mike and flipped to the margarita section. “They keep tricking up margaritas. Coconut, pomegranate, cranberry, mango…”

“You’re a traditionalist?”

“I’ll try anything once.” He held Mike’s gaze for a moment too long. His eyes flicked back to the safety of the plastic menu, darting over words that swam under the dim lights of the bar. “Haven’t had a coconut margarita yet,” he murmured. “I’ll do that.” Please, make it a double. Could he flash his eyebrows twice as some sort of code, some bartenders’ Morse code that he needed Dutch courage, and stat? “What’s your drink of choice?”

The waitress walked up, perky and cute and young, her blonde ponytail swinging behind her. She wore a low-cut top and itty-bitty shorts, and she eyed Mike up and down. Tom tried to hide his smile. Wrong tree, miss. But I know how you feel.

“I’ll take a whiskey on the rocks.” Mike winked at the waitress, and she gave him a coy smirk over her shoulder as she walked away. Mike sent a private grin to Tom, an inside joke in the curve of his dimple.

“So you survived the patent case.”

“Barely. Testimony wrapped up today. I get to rule on the patent tomorrow at three.”

“Will it be a coin flip again?”

Tom laughed. “No, this time I followed it a bit more closely. The tech was easier to understand. Software, instead of chemistry and nuclear physics.”

“You still looked like you wanted to run out of your courtroom.” Mike leaned into him, jostled his shoulder gently.

God, it took everything in him not to melt against Mike’s side, not lean in and just let go, rest his head on Mike’s shoulder and then turn into his neck, his collar, nibble on his skin—

He laughed, breathless, and curled half over himself, bracing his forearms on the edge of the table. “Yeah, I did, at times.” Get a hold of yourself! He reached for the center spinner, a pyramid of plastic and shiny advertisements. “How’s your week been?”

“Quiet. Full of paperwork. Intel analyses and reports.” Mike rolled his neck, as if shaking off the office. “For once, the prisons are quiet. No threats coming down the wire for any of my judges.”

“Your judges? We’re yours now?”

“Of course.”

God, Mike’s smile could melt his bones. Swallowing, Tom looked down at the plastic pyramid he held. He flipped it in his hands, over and over, not looking at the sides.

“What’s up next for you? Do you have a trial next week?” Mike kept talking, oblivious to the tempest in Tom’s soul.

“I do. A felony murder rule trial—”

“Who is your JSI?” Mike frowned. Every murder trial was considered high-risk and had a JSI providing personal security during the trial.

“Villegas.”

Mike’s frown turned into a scowl.

“You and Villegas not on the same page?”

“We’re not even in the same zip code.” Mike gave him a long glare. “Villegas and I are as different as two marshals can be. He wants to do his time and get out of the courts. He just wants to bang down doors and arrest the bad guys. He’s a cowboy.”

Villegas was definitely not as thorough as Mike was. Tom already knew that. Mike was perfect, professional, polished. Villegas treated most court cases like they were exercises in boredom he had to endure, and when a defendant got a little rowdy, it was like a switch got flipped and Villegas was suddenly the defendant’s worst nightmare, a prison warden and a drill sergeant combined. “Are you guys randomly assigned to cases?”

“Winters assigns them, usually. Unless we request something specific. I should have gotten that case, though. You’re my judge.”

There was no reason for him to feel like a flower opening to the sun, but Mike’s words had him blooming. A little ball of spring, right in his chest.

“Winters does like to move things around, though. In case we do have to switch long-term, or rotate out. We need to know all the judges’ personalities and styles.” He grinned, lopsided, at Tom. “Still. I’d rather handle your cases.”

I’d rather you handled me, too. He coughed. “Well, uh… You’re very good at your job. I like working with you.” He nearly faceplanted after he spoke. God, he could sound so incredibly dumb sometimes.

“Tell me about this case next week.” Mike, at least, seemed to take pity on him. Did he see right through Tom? Did he know exactly how ridiculous Tom truly was?

“It’s the trial for the getaway driver during a bank robbery. His friend went in to rob the bank with a fake gun, an unloaded airsoft. The guard didn’t think it looked fake and he killed the friend. The driver was charged with his murder since any death during the course of a felony can be pinned on all participants.”

“I remember this. It was in the papers about a year, year and half ago.”

“Yes, that’s the one. Finally going to trial.” Tom sighed. “His attorney thinks he can win juror sympathy. The defendant’s a young guy. Got a bad shake in life. But the evidence is rock solid, and I don’t think jury nullification or jury sympathy will play a factor. I’m still trying to convince the defense attorney to accept a plea. Otherwise, he could be looking at the death penalty.”

“I hope you get him to change his mind.”

Nodding, Tom opened his mouth, ready to reply, but froze.

A rainbow stretched across the plastic pyramid. A burst of rainbow, running across the length of the advertisement, a brilliant banner. White puffy letters marched across the top, capital letters screaming at him: Pride Celebration Month, Washington DC.

It was June. Mid-June, to be precise, the middle of Pride Month. He blinked, staring down at the rainbow in his hands.

There was a march in two weeks, at the end of the month. Festivities and fun, the advertisement promised, and in solidarity with pride marches around the nation.

And, this weekend—Jesus, tomorrow—there was a pride celebration on the National Mall. “Come out and party! Celebrate your fabulous life!”

Celebrate your life. A gay life, celebrate a gay life. The thought was almost brain-breaking. Nothing, not a single thing, in his entire life had been worth a celebration. Not watching as his own people got sick, chained themselves in lines and to doors, begging for someone, anyone, to help, for them not to be sentenced to death by indifference. Not growing up in fear, terrified that he was destined to join them, one of a long line of coffins buried in the night, forgotten and ignored by history, his existence a passing thought to a footnote of hatred. Not listening to snide remarks and under-the-breath comments, or shouted slurs and thrown beer bottles. Six blocks away, as an undergrad, he’d run from the police one night after they raided the bar he was at. Across town, he and Peter had been chased by a group of men with baseball bats. They were shouting that they were “dirty faggots” and they were going to get what they deserved—

“Here you go.” The perky blonde waitress was back, sliding their drinks across the table. Mike’s had an extra napkin, folded and slipped alongside the whiskey glass. Her number, for sure.

“Thanks.” Mike flashed his million-watt grin at her. She batted her eyelashes, looked him up and down, and then slowly smiled. If Tom had been into women, he’d have thought she was sultry. Seductive.

But he wasn’t into women, and that was the problem.

“You all right?” Mike’s hand landed on his arm, and even through his suit, through the layers of fabric that he wore like armor against the world, he felt Mike’s warmth, the essence of him. His toes curled.

“I’m good!” Breathless, again, Tom set the plastic pyramid back on the high top, carefully straightening it so the rainbow and the advertisement about DC Pride and the weekend schedule was turned away from him. He grabbed his margarita—worryingly, it was white, not lime-green—and downed a healthy swallow. Oh, right. He’d gotten the coconut one this time. “Enough about work.” He turned to Mike, plastering a smile to his face, and raised his glass.

Mike met him, clinking his whiskey against his overlarge Martini glass with a small smile.

His insides were spaghetti and his knees were Jell-O. He took another deep swallow, staring at Mike the whole time. God, Mike was so suave, so cool. Even after a day at the office, he still looked like a model. No wonder the waitress slipped him her number. Mike hadn’t once looked at it, but come on. That had to be a weekly thing for him. He probably beat women and men off him, used a firehose to keep them at bay.

“Tell me about you, Mike. What do you do, outside of the office?”

Mike’s eyebrows shot straight up as he sipped his whiskey. He set the glass down and batted it back and forth, slow, deliberate slides across the high top. “I’m kind of a workaholic,” he said, ducking his head.

Tom raised his margarita, a silent cheers.

“It was a problem with my ex. But I like my job. I like being a JSI.” Mike grinned at him, and then took another sip of his whiskey. “I’m on a local sand volleyball team. My friend, Kris, and I play doubles, and we’re part of a bigger team that plays a bunch of other local teams.”

“Sand volleyball? Where do you play?”

“The courts by the Lincoln Memorial, by the Rock Creek Park trails. Right on the river, near the Tidal Basin.”

“Oh, cool. Never been out to those.” Visions danced in his head, Mike diving for a volleyball, leaping, lunging, landing in the sand. Suntanned skin, shirtless, sweat beading on his shoulders. Sunglasses and a ball cap, and his face, concentrating on the serve—

“It’s awesome. Great court, and my friends and I have a lot of fun playing.” Mike shrugged. “I work out—”

Tom’s mouth got away from him. “I could tell.” Mike flushed crimson, and he chuckled into his whiskey glass as Tom tried to restart his stuttering heart, tried to hide the horrified terror blazing through him. “Where, uh, do you work out?”

“Little gym by where I live in Logan Circle.” Mike jerked his chin to Tom. “What about you? You must do something. You’re the fittest judge on the eastern seaboard.”

It was Tom’s turn to flush and stare into the swirls of his margarita. “I swim at the judicial plaza gym. Three times a week in the morning.”

“Swimmer, huh?” Mike sat back, appraising him. “I can see that.”

He wasn’t going to live through this margarita. Asking Mike out was a bad idea. He couldn’t control himself. Forty-six-years-old, and he was helpless, hopeless in the face of Mike’s smile and his teasing humor. He preened, pushing out his chest a bit, straightening his shoulders. “I do what I can.” He smoothed his tie.

Mike smiled slowly and opened his mouth.

A blaring cell phone ring stopped short whatever he was going to say. Wincing, Mike reached into his suit jacket and pulled out his phone. He cursed as soon as he saw the screen. “Shit.”

“Your ex?”

“No. I’m late. I totally forgot I had this… thing.” Mike swiped his screen and answered the call.

Oh. Well, tonight might be the night his dreams were crushed. Of course Mike had a new boyfriend. Of course he had someone he was supposed to see. Friday night, and Mike was hanging out with Tom? No, he had a far better place to be. Of course.

Tom sat, suspended between dread and hope, trying not to eavesdrop on the call, trying not to watch Mike out of the corner of his eye as he scraped the bottom of his margarita with his tiny black straw.

“Yeah, I know, I know. I’m sorry.” Mike patted his pockets as if he was looking for something. He slid off the barstool. “I’m out with a coworker. I lost track of time.” Silence. “Yeah, I’m on my way now. Yeah. You too.”

Tom could fill in the missing gaps on his own. He poked at the melted ice, slush in the bottom of his glass.

“I’m sorry, Judge B. I totally forgot about this other thing I’m supposed to be at right now.”

“It’s all right.” He smiled. It felt forced. Hell, it was forced, but he hoped he looked better than he felt.

Mike dug into his pockets and pulled out his wallet.

“No, no, this is on me. You paid last time.” Tom shook his head. “Go. I’ll take care of the check. You don’t want to keep them waiting any longer.”

Smiling, Mike nodded. “I appreciate that. I’m sorry to cut this short. We’ll have to do this again, Judge B.”

“Yeah.” He tried to muster his enthusiasm. Tried to sound excited.

But all he wanted to do was go home. Complain to Etta Mae. Wallow in self-pity for a while.

Mike shot him a final grin and strode out of the bar. He didn’t look back.

The waitress appeared as if she’d been watching Mike and had tried to get there before he scooted out. “Your friend leave?” She frowned and grabbed their glasses, and then spotted the folded napkin she’d left for Mike. It was untouched, right where she’d slid it.

“He has a date tonight.”

She pursed her lips and sighed, blowing air out of her pert nose. With a twirl, she walked away, ponytail swinging. She didn’t ask Tom if he wanted another drink. Just as well.

He tossed a fifty on the high top and grabbed his briefcase. Time to go lick his wounds in private. This wasn’t anything other than what he knew was going to happen. He’d known it would be like this. He’d only ever nurtured his fantasies in a vacuum, a pretend make-believe of his desires amid his delirium.

Mike would always be the man who kick-started his midlife crisis, though. If it ended well, he’d be thankful.

If he crashed and burned…

Well, he only had himself to blame.