Hush by Tal Bauer (6)

Chapter 36

July 29^th

Ballard ended the prosecution’s case simply, closing out on another round of Barnes’s testimony hammering home the physical evidence. One fingerprint on a cocaine baggie. One text from Kryukov’s cell phone to Desheriyev’s with the confirmation code of six-two-one. And Desheriyev’s testimony. Surrounding that were Kryukov’s statements against the Russian president, his former arrest and maltreatment, his history of activism, his overt hatred for the regime. His apparent motive.

It was a mountain of evidence for Renner and Kryukov to climb, all the little pieces adding up to a damning picture. Small though those pieces of hard evidence were, in the totality of everything, Kryukov appeared to be a cold-blooded mass murderer, calmly dispatching an assassin to take out a man he hated and anyone who got in the way of his bullets.

Lingering doubts about the role of the U.S. government, the CIA, and even Dylan Ballard plagued Tom’s thoughts. He’d tossed and turned throughout the night and had needed two large coffees to get through the morning.

Now, the defense was set to begin presenting their case. But unless they had something new, some bombshell piece of evidence they were holding back, the court had already heard the defense’s entire case. Renner had done all he could to chop the legs out from beneath the prosecution in his cross-examination, raising every question, every doubt, that he could pull from the evidence… or the lack thereof.

How would he begin? Tom waited as the courtroom settled down and for the gallery to finish their whispers. The jurors were hanging in there, but on only day three, they looked exhausted, worn thin. Ballard, as always, was a tightly-wound lightning rod, ready to surge at the slightest strike.

Renner conferred with Kryukov, softly talking while Kryukov nodded.

“Counselor, are you ready to present your case for the defense?”

Renner rose. “Your Honor, I am.”

“Please call your first witness.”

“The defense calls Vadim Kryukov.”

Tom froze. His jaw dropped, for a moment, until he yanked himself back to propriety. The rest of the court wasn’t as subdued. Ballard whipped around, staring at the defense table. Barnes, and behind him, the deputy director of the FBI, shared long looks. Reporters turned to each other, hushed whispers and chatter breaking out as confusion ran rampant. Jurors looked around uncomfortably, completely out of the loop.

He rapped his gavel three times. “Quiet, please. Step outside for your conversations.” He took a deep breath, and chose his words carefully. “This is a surprising choice, counselor.” He couldn’t ask ‘are you sure?’ or second-guess Renner’s legal strategy. He was already floundering, according to the media, and anything that looked like favoritism to the defense would be adding an anchor to his sinking career.

But calling the defendant to the stand was risky in all criminal cases and was reserved for the end of the defense’s case as a last-ditch effort to humanize the defendant to the jury. Putting a defendant on the stand ran the risk of the defendant tying themselves in knots with their testimony, or accidentally incriminating themselves, or worse.

Ballard looked like a shark that had spotted a tasty seal swimming on its own. He’d get the chance to go after Kryukov in cross.

The entire day could turn into a bloodbath, very, very quickly.

Renner nodded. “Your Honor, Vadim Kryukov needs to tell his story.”

Defense attorney-speak for he was drawing on empty and down to his last circus trick. His entire case had been spelled out in cross, and there wasn’t anything more he could do. He couldn’t call expert witnesses to dispute the cause of death or manner of shooting—the cause of death and the shooter were clear. He couldn’t call experts to testify on the authenticity of the text as coming from Kryukov’s cell phone—cellular tower and carrier data confirmed that it did. And Kryukov was a known drug dealer. Who could he call to testify about the cocaine?

Tom nodded, and Kryukov crossed to the witness box. He was stiff, his spine rigidly straight, walking with all the pride he could muster as every eyeball in the courtroom followed his path. He still limped, but waved off the marshal who started forward to help him. His arm was in a thick cast, from his fingers to just below his armpit.

The bailiff swore Kryukov in, admonishing him that he was to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

He took his seat. Renner nodded to his client, smiling softly.

Tom leaned forward. The entire court seemed to be holding its breath.

“Let’s start plainly, Mr. Kryukov. Did you or did you not plan the attempted assassination of the Russian president?”

“I did not.” Kryukov’s voice was deep, his accent thickened. His lower jaw trembled, just faintly, after he spoke.

“Did you receive any CIA funds or assistance in order to perpetrate such a plot?”

Tom hissed. He held his breath. The entire conspiracy defense, laid out in one question. His eyes darted to Ballard. Ballard clung to the edge of the prosecution table, his muscles tense, primed and ready to jump to his feet.

“I did not,” Kryukov repeated, his voice thick with passion. His words shook.

Muted gasps rose from the gallery, and Tom saw the jurors look among each other, confused. Kryukov was throwing out his entire defense in three simple words. What on earth?

Renner nodded, smiling again at his client. “How do you feel about the Russian president, Dimitry Vasiliev?”

“I hate him,” Kryukov spat. “I hate him, and Putin. I hate them both for what they did to me, and to my country. He—” Kryukov’s voice cracked, and he looked away, glaring at the far wall as he blinked fast and swallowed. “Vasiliev was friend of Putin’s. He continued Putin’s policy on homosexuals. We—our existence—was a crime, in everything but the law. We were harassed, beaten, entrapped. Arrested. I was beaten by Putin’s thugs over and over again. They used to follow me. One police officer pretended to want to meet up with me. It was a trap.” Kryukov swallowed again. “I was in hospital for three weeks.

“I was arrested for organizing protest in Moscow. I went to Lubyanka first, and then to prison camp in Siberia. I was… marked in Lubyanka. They said they were getting me ready for Siberia. That it was cold in the camps, and I should be ready to keep everyone there warm.”

Tom’s stomach lurched, turning around and around and tying itself into a Gordian Knot. He closed his eyes, blocking out memories, days from his past, echoes of his own history colored in similar shades of shame and terror.

But for the country of their birth, he and Kryukov had led different lives, had come to different destinies. He, the judge in Kryukov’s trial, and Vadim Kryukov, telling his story to a room full of people who believed he was a murderer.

Was Tom his judge because he’d stayed in his closet? Would he have been a firebrand if he’d had to fight the battles Kryukov had? Was he looking into a mirror darkly, as the poem went? What would he have had to endure, what indignities, grievances, tortures, had he not been a coward? What man would he have become?

Would he be strong enough to hold his chin high and share his truth in a court of law, in a country not his own?

Of course not. He couldn’t speak his truth today, and he was the judge. He had all the power, and Kryukov none, and yet Vadim Kryukov made his soul feel infinitesimal, his bones like pieces of a puzzle put together wrong.

Kryukov kept going. “I was thrown out of the prison because I was sick. I had very bad infection, and tuberculosis. I spent two months in hospital in Siberia. I made my way to the U.S. consulate in Yekaterinburg, in Western Siberia. I applied for asylum, and moved to the United States.”

“Your application for asylum was approved because you were being persecuted in Russia for being homosexual?”

“Yes.”

“Please, continue.”

Tom glanced at Ballard. He could object, if he wanted to be a son of a bitch. Long, winding narratives were objectionable, and Renner’s relevant legal point had yet to be made. But Ballard stayed down. He watched with narrowed eyes, his lips pressed together in a flat line.

“In the U.S., I knew no one. I had nothing. I did what I could to survive. I joined a few Bratva groups, just to make some fast money. They asked me to start dealing for them. What could I do? I said yes.”

“That’s how you started dealing cocaine?”

“Yes.”

“And you dealt to how many people?”

“Many, many people. Hundreds. Many, many.”

“And, do you know exactly where each and every baggie of cocaine that you sold is today?”

“I have no idea. What people do with them, after they buy…” He shook his head. “I just sell to one person. They do whatever they want.”

“Did you ever put a baggie of cocaine into a locker at Union Station, along with maps of the Capitol, an LGBT pride parade march permit, and information on President Vasiliev’s trip?”

“No. Never.”

Renner nodded again.

One piece of evidence addressed.

“Does the number six-two-one mean anything to you?”

“Yes. It is number of one of many laws in Russia that criminalize homosexuals. The anti-LGBT propaganda law. I was arrested and charged under this law.”

“Do you use this code ever in texting?”

Kryukov swallowed. “Yes, sometimes when I am dealing. When we move shipments and checking to make sure everything is legitimate. That no one’s phone is tapped or compromised.”

“Did you ever text Bulat Desheriyev and use this number as an authentication code in your texts?”

“No, never. I never texted Desheriyev. I never have met the man. Never spoken to him. Never.

Was this pure and brutal honesty, or carefully crafted perjury? Tom couldn’t figure it out.

“The prosecution alleges that you sent a text from your phone to Desheriyev’s phone on Thursday morning. Did you send this text?”

“No. I could not have sent that text. I was asleep. I passed out at three in the morning. I did not wake up until two in the afternoon. I was drunk. I was high on cocaine. I was unconscious.”

“Was there anyone with you who could corroborate this?”

“Yes.” Kryukov’s voice, again, broke. He gritted his teeth, breathed hard, almost hissing. Took a shaking breath. “Yes, I was not alone. I had a lover over that night. He was gone when I woke, but he was there until late morning.”

“How do you know that?”

“My building records when people come and go. He left sometime after ten in the morning.”

Tom again glanced at Ballard. Ballard scowled, leaning forward and hunched over his notes. This was sounding more like a deposition or an FBI interview and less like a direct examination. How much of this did Ballard already know? What did he not know?

“Who is this lover?”

“I don’t know his name. We met on an app. GrindMe. It is… an anonymous hookup app. We’d met several times before. But I never learned his name.”

“How would you get in contact with him?”

“Through the app. Messaging him. He had a profile.”

“Had?”

“It has been deleted. I cannot find him.” Real pain threaded through Kryukov’s voice, weighted down his words.

“Is that usual? That people delete their profiles on GrindMe?”

Behind Tom, Mike stiffened, and Tom heard his soft inhale, the shuffle of his shoes against the carpet.

“Very. People come on and off the app. Delete the app for different reasons.”

“And is this the only way you’ve contacted this man?”

“Yes.”

“Did the FBI ever ask you about this man?”

“They did. But they say they could not find him. That GrindMe does not keep user data, and they could not find him if the company keeps no logs.”

“Could you describe him for the court?”

“Middle-aged. Dark hair, cut short. Slender, but strong. He was what the app called ‘clean cut’.” Kryukov smiled, wistful. “I liked him a lot.”

“Anything else?” Renner pressed, as if he knew there was more, as if he was trying to jog Kryukov back to his own testimony.

Kryukov nodded, blinking, focusing. “Yes. He had tattoo. On his—on his butt. A rainbow with a crown on top, a bit tilted.”

Tom’s world came to a blinding, screeching halt.

Mike surged forward, hovering behind him. Tom could feel him vibrating, feel his restraint, the raw power that Mike had within him being held back by every micron of Mike’s being.

Ballard rose, shaking his head and throwing his hands out. “Objection. What does any of this have to do with the case? Why are we hearing about Mr. Kryukov’s lost lover?”

“Your Honor, we’re attempting to find this man. The FBI and the prosecution have failed to identify or locate him.”

“We’re not a dating service!”

“Your Honor, this man may represent the only individual who knows if my client sent that text or not!” Renner hesitated. “Your Honor?”

Renner’s voice, Ballard’s voice, the hushed whispers of the courtroom—everything came through as if Tom were stuck underwater, had plunged into the deep end of a giant pool and was struggling to free himself. Was someone holding him down, pushing him underwater? What was happening?

Mike’s hand landed on his shoulder. His grip was firm, squeezing hard, even through the bulletproof vest he wore. “Judge Brewer,” Mike growled. His voice shook. “You’re very pale.”

God, what must Mike be thinking? Oh, God…

He took a breath, and then another, slow inhales through his open mouth. Cold sweat beaded on his skin. His spine shivered, the echo of a lover’s kiss.

“The court needs a recess,” he breathed. He cleared his throat. “I’d like to see both counselors in my chambers. Special Agent Barnes as well.”

Twin expressions of confusion stared at him, Renner and Ballard, frozen in place like dumbfounded goldfish. Renner blinked. Ballard’s eyes narrowed.

Tom rose and climbed down from the bench before the bailiff could sputter, “All rise!” He slipped past Mike, ducking past his burning, haunted eyes and his reaching hands. Tom spotted the jury staring at him, confused and frowning, looking back and forth among each other. Reporters chattered, their conversations rising like a crashing wave, breaking through the hum, the roar that was crescendoing through his world.

Breathing hard, he escaped into the hallway behind his courtroom.

“Tom! Wait!”

Mike’s voice, behind him, as if he was at the end of a long tunnel.

He pitched forward, not waiting, and his shoulder clipped the wall. Stumbling, Tom ended up slumping sideways, his forehead pressed to the cool paint, both hands up by his face. Was he surrendering? Or trying not to drown?

“Tom?” Mike, suddenly there, at his side. Mike’s hands on him, on his waist, turning him around. Mike’s face swam before him. Concern, fear, confusion, suspicion. God, his heart broke at the sight, at Mike looking at him with anything other than the joy and raw affection that had suffused his gaze for weeks. “Tom? Talk to me. What’s going on?”

He reached for Mike, grasping his forearms. His hands were shaking, and when he grabbed Mike, Mike’s arms started shaking, too.

“Why did he describe your tattoo, Tom? Why did he describe a man who looks like you, with your tattoo?” Mike was talking to him like he’d talk to a spooked horse. Or like he was girding himself, preparing to hear the worst. Like he was holding his hands beneath his heart, ready to catch the shards as they fell when it cracked.

Tom’s own heart cracked. He licked his lips. Shook his head, slowly. “Not my tattoo,” he breathed. “Peter’s. It’s Peter.”

“Peter?” Mike frowned. “Who?”

“Peter… My…” His throat closed. They were in the courthouse’s back hallway, and the bailiff was going to walk out of his courtroom any moment. Anyone could hear him. Judge Juarez’s office was ten feet to the right. The law library four feet to the left. “My college boyfriend,” he breathed. “We got those tattoos together.”

A light flicked on in the back of Mike’s eyes, before a wariness crept in. He pulled back. Dropped his hands. “Oh.” His eyes skittered down the hall. “We, uh. We should get you to your chambers. The attorneys will be there soon.”

“Mike—”

“Come on, Judge Brewer.” Mike wouldn’t meet his gaze. “Let’s go.”

A new panic slithered up his throat, seized his heart. He trailed after Mike, his mind a blur, memories of two men crashing into each other like head-on trains. Mike averted his gaze as he held the door to his chambers open for Tom, but as soon as Tom was inside, he turned back to Mike.

“Mike. I—” He had no clue what to say.

Mike flinched. Tom’s heart shredded. He reached for Mike—

Knocks broke through the silent office. “Your Honor, Mr. Ballard and Mr. Renner are here for you.”

He winced, and shook his head. “Mike…”

“I’m staying here. Like I said I would. I don’t want you alone with Ballard. I don’t care if Renner is here too. I don’t trust him to save your life, if it comes to that.”

“Okay. Yes. Stay.” Keeping Mike close, even though it meant Mike thought Ballard was a threat to his life. What world had he been dropped into? What rabbit hole had he fallen down, what mirror had he fallen through?

Clearing his throat, he called for the attorneys to enter. Barnes trailed after them both and took up position near the back. Tom shucked his robes, buying time. He moved to his conference table, standing behind his chair. “I believe I know the identity of Mr. Kryukov’s missing lover.”

Renner perked up. Ballard scowled. “What? How could you possibly—”

“The how isn’t important at the moment.” He spoke with a steely conviction he did not feel. “If, in fact, the man that I believe is the man the defense is searching for, we can discuss the details then.” And, he’d have to talk to Chief Judge Fink about a recusal. In the end, was he going to lose this case anyway? And all because of his past? Could he ever escape who he was?

“Who do you think it is?” Barnes stepped forward. He had his notepad out, pen ready to take notes. An FBI agent to the core.

“He went by Peter, but his name was Pasha. Pasha Baryshnikov. We went to the same university. We were… friends.”

Barnes eyeballed him. Friends. Right. Friends enough to recognize a man from a bland description, aside from one vividly identifiable tattoo on his ass.

“He was Russian, too?” Renner frowned. “Kryukov didn’t mention that.”

“He came over when he was young. Before going to university. He was a refugee in the late eighties, I think. He didn’t care much for Mother Russia. By now, he’s probably shed everything he could of his Russian past.”

“Approximate age?” Barnes was still taking notes.

“My age. Forty-six. Maybe a year older.”

“DC local?”

“He was at the time. He intended to move to New York right after graduation, but said he wanted to return to DC sometime later.”

Barnes nodded. “We’ll start looking.”

Ballard sent Tom a sour glare. “How long will the court be in recess for, searching for some long-lost boyfriend?”

Tom flinched, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw Mike step forward. “Agent Barnes, if I recess the court until Monday, will that give you enough time to search for Mr. Baryshnikov?” The rest of the day and Friday, and the weekend if they needed it.

“More than enough, Your Honor.”

“Then we’ll recess until Monday morning at nine. If it’s him, we will address moving forward on Monday. If it’s not him, then we will resume with Kryukov’s testimony at nine AM.” He nodded to Renner and ignored Ballard. “I will see you all then.”

As they filed out, Tom grasped the back of his chair, squeezing the leather until his fingers burned. Finally, the door shut, and he pitched forward, almost collapsing.

Arms wrapped around him from behind. “Hey.” Mike’s soft voice rumbled behind his ear. “Tom.”

Turning, he buried his face in Mike’s neck. Mike held him.

“That was brave,” Mike murmured. “That was really brave. Revealing that.”

“I had to. If he’s a witness. If he knows that Kryukov is being set up… If he can prove that Kryukov didn’t send that text…” Tom pressed his face against Mike, cheek to cheek. “My secret is not worth another man’s life.”

“This isn’t how you wanted to come out, though.”

He shook his head. “No. Is there ever a right way, though? I just want it done. I just want to be free of this.”

“This?”

“Living in the closet. Hiding. Having this secret.” Secrets and lies, cover-ups and denials, always circling around the truth. What was true? What was really true?

Mike kissed his cheek, his nose. Pulled back, and cradled his face in both hands. “I’m sorry.”

“You have nothing to apologize for.”

“I shouldn’t have closed down like that. I was being stupid.” Tom frowned. Mike tried to smile. “I… thought about asking you if I could get a tattoo that matched yours. A rainbow and crown on my ass, too. I thought…” Shrugging, he sighed. “Doesn’t matter. Someone beat me to it.”

Tom’s bruised heart didn’t know what to do. He ached, in every way. “He wanted to cover up a prison tattoo. He’d been thrown in jail for having sex with an older man in a park in St. Petersburg. He was a teenager, but they still sent him to some big Russian jail. His first day, he was held down and attacked.” Tom closed his eyes. One night, Peter—Pasha—had told him the story. They’d been huddling in Tom’s bed, one stubby candle on his desk the only light in the room. Pasha had spoken softly, describing the horrors of the Soviet Union. How much freer he was in America. How freedom tasted like Tom’s kiss.

“After the attack, they tattooed him on his ass. It was a playing card. The ace of hearts. He said it was a prison sign, telling everyone that he was gay and that they could use him if they wanted. For anything they wanted. He had no say at all. I’ve never forgotten that.”

“How could you?” Mike stroked his arms, and looked like he wanted to puke. “Jesus…”

“He wanted to cover it up. We kept joking about what to cover it with. He decided on a rainbow and a crown. He was the king of his own life, he said. When we went to get it, he asked if I wanted to get one with him. Be a king, too. His king. I thought…” A shaky inhale. “I thought I was going to spend forever with him. I thought this was our version of a proposal, or something young and dumb like that.”

“I get it. I… wanted to get a matching tattoo with you for the same reason.” Mike looked like he was collecting the shards of his heart in both of his hands, like he was swallowing back his own bitter pill. “Why didn’t you guys stay together?”

“I broke.” Tom squeezed his eyes closed as a sob tore through him, a lightning blast that shattered his heart. “I thought I was strong enough to love him—to love myself—but I wasn’t. And I broke apart.” Whatever else he wanted to say, whatever else he needed to say, he couldn’t get it out. Not past his tears, the sobs that ripped apart his heart, made his soul bleed down the inside of his ribs. His knees buckled, and he pitched forward, collapsing against Mike and clinging to him like Tom’s own bones would betray him where he stood.

Mike pulled him closer, as close as he physically could, until if they pressed any harder their cells would merge. “You’re not broken.” His words fell on Tom’s hair, slipped down the curve of his neck. “You’re not broken, Tom. You’re not.”

They stayed wrapped together until Tom’s tears ran out and his soul had scraped itself raw against the wreckage of his past.

Tom spent the rest of the day in a daze. The jurors were sent home and reporters buzzed all over the courthouse, trying to wheedle information out of anyone and everyone. Barnes disappeared to FBI headquarters. Ballard disappeared somewhere. Mike stayed close, but he gave Tom space in his chambers, stepping out and leaving him alone for several hours.

Tom spent each of those hours with his head in his hands, trying to comprehend the Möbius strip shitshow that was his life.

Eventually, it was time to head to the Hyatt. Mike slid into the back with Tom, even though Villegas spun all the way around in the driver’s seat and stared at him for a solid five seconds before putting the SUV in gear.

Tom laced their fingers together, hidden in the press of their thighs, side by side.

“What are your dinner plans, Judge B?” Mike spoke softly, but even still, Villegas glared at Mike in the rearview mirror.

“I’m not hungry.”

Mike arched one eyebrow at him.

Tom chuckled. “What do you suggest, Inspector?”

“How about I get takeout from the Mexican place? Queso and both soft and crunchy tacos together?”

This time, Tom actually smiled. The dinner they’d shared when Mike first asked to take him out. Granted, it was a professional ‘thanks for not chewing me out’ dinner, but still. It was theirs. And Mike apparently remembered it just as fondly as Tom did.

He nodded, leaning his head against Mike’s.

“I’ll go get it and bring everything up. You relax.”

“Thank you.”

“No problem.” Mike smiled.

Villegas watched them in the rearview mirror, until the darkness of the Hyatt’s parking garage stole through the SUV, washing Villegas in shadows and obscuring his harsh glare.

Upstairs, Tom scrubbed his face and waited on his balcony, after getting his hugs and slobbery kisses from Etta Mae. She hung nearby, seeming to sense he needed the comfort, and trotted outside with him.

He stared over the city, letting the heat, the humidity, and the hum and buzz of the capital work through him. His whole life, he’d worked for the capital, for the District and the nation as a whole. Was it all coming apart now? Was the puzzle of his life, so meticulously put together, finally breaking apart? Was Humpty Dumpty falling again?

Mike texted him from the Mexican restaurant, sending a picture of the corner booth they’d eaten in and a heart. [ <3 Our first date.]

Circles upon circles upon circles. He’d loved Pasha as a young man, more a boy than a man, on the cusp of his own existence. He’d given up Pasha in exchange for the life he thought he wanted, and now Pasha was back, at the edge of the life Tom had worked so hard for… and was willing to give up to be with Mike.

His sob hit him again, out of the blue with the force of a tank, and he doubled over, gut-punched with the slam of his realization. He wanted Mike. He wanted the life they were building. He wanted freedom, the freedom he’d tasted as a younger man.

What had happened to Pasha in the years since? He’d looked at Tom like Tom was his life, his liberty, and his personal pursuit of happiness. He used to practice the pledge of allegiance, and called America the ‘United States of Freedom’. He’d been drunk with happiness, giddy at the liberation he’d felt in America.

Tom had only seen a prison cell made by words of hate and violent discrimination. Paths that led only to a tomb, the grave of both his dreams and his life. His hopes, his plans, were too big for 1991.

Pasha’s dreams had been the dreams of a refugee—to live simply, to love deeply, to laugh often. To stay safe within his community.

Did Pasha still think America was a glorious refuge, a home away from people who hated who he was? Had he ever found the hate that Tom had? What had his life made him into?

How had he come to be Vadim Kryukov’s lover? In all the ways, in all the days, that he ever imagined seeing Pasha again, he’d never, ever thought it would be in his courtroom. Certainly not in the most important trial heard on the world stage.

Mike arrived as the tears were drying on his cheeks, blown off his skin by the hot winds of summertime DC. Mike said nothing, just kissed him sweetly, thumbing his damp cheek before he pulled out dinner.

Tom picked at the chips and ate a taco, and managed to smile and even laugh as Mike distracted him with stories. He felt better after eating, and told Mike so. Mike beamed.

“What now? We’re in recess until Monday. Are we locked in this hotel until then?”

Mike frowned. “According to Villegas, yes.”

“‘According to Villegas’?”

Slowly, Mike smiled. “In my professional opinion, I think you need a break. I think we should get out of DC for the weekend. You need to get away from all of this. Barnes is looking for Baryshnikov. Ballard is… well, I don’t know where he is. No one has seen him since this morning. But, there’s nothing we can do until Monday. Except, if you stay here, in these four walls, you’ll be spinning your wheels and running your mind in circles.”

“You do know me well.”

“I try.”

“Are you proposing a jail break?”

“I am. Any thoughts on where we should we go?”

“My parents had a place in the mountains. Far enough to be far away, close enough to get there in a few hours’ drive. We used to go there when I was a kid. They turned it into a winter rental for backcountry skiers and hikers. I kept that going after they passed. I haven’t been there in years.”

“Will anyone be there now?”

“No. It was never rented in summer. That was their time to go. The town postman would act as a caretaker when they were gone. He still watches over the place. The keys are in the post office, in their mailbox.”

“Sounds like a plan. We need to leave around four in the morning to get past Villegas and the rest of the guys.”

“You sure this is all right?”

“I’m in charge of you. Villegas is in charge of the trial. Villegas has no real say over your protection, he just likes to pretend that securing the courthouse and the Hyatt means he can order you and me around. Doesn’t work like that. I’m above him.”

“All right. Jailbreak it is then.”

Mike laughed and kissed him, and then said he had to get everything ready. Tom told him where he kept the keys to his parents’ mailbox and asked him to grab jeans, t-shirts, and a few long-sleeve flannel button-downs. “Sexy,” Mike purred, kissing him one last time before he ducked out of the hotel room.

He tried, but failed, to fall asleep early, and only passed out after one in the morning. Mike had texted that he was going to bed early to be ready to drive out of town before dawn.

At three thirty, his phone, tucked under his pillow, rang. “Hey sleepy. Time to get ready.”

Mike had a pillow in his car that he’d swiped from his hotel room for Tom to go back to sleep with. Tom grunted directions for the first half of the drive, guiding him west on Interstate 66 to the West Virginia border. He—like Etta Mae in the back seat—was asleep before they made it to the outer loop around DC.

Hours later, he woke with the morning sun shining on his face and Mike holding one of his hands. Hills rolled by on either side of the car, with thickening trees rising from both sides of the winding blacktop.

“Morning beautiful.” Mike squeezed his hand and then passed him a cup of coffee. “I picked this up for you when we got gas. They didn’t have fancy sugar syrups, but I did my best turning it into a diabetic nightmare.”

He chuckled and took a sip, and then another longer swallow. “Perfect. Thank you.”

“I need more directions soon. Good timing for waking up.”

He turned Mike onto US-48 West, and then West Virginia Route 28 South. Oceans of forest rose into the mountains on either side of the winding road, waves and waves of pine and spruce, dotted with oak and patches of rolling meadow where trees had died years ago, and the sunshine let in had drawn forth bursts of wildflowers, riots of color that speckled the endless greenery. Tom rolled the window down, and the fresh breath of the forest rose on a cool wind, wild as it whipped through his dark hair. A hawk glided on a thermal far in the distance, the only sign of life.

Mike shifted, glancing sidelong at Tom. “I, uh. Didn’t think we’d be going down West Virginia’s spine. Into this area.”

“Problem?”

Mike gripped the steering wheel. “I used to work here,” he said. “On the task force.”

“Here? The Whitmore search was here? I thought it was farther south. In the Carolinas.”

“We had some leads that took us north. I helped run this end of the hunt. What town are we going to?”

“Lonely Pine Gulch.”

Laughing, Mike shook his head. “Jesus. I had contacts there. Leads.”

“Oh my God. Should we… turn around?”

“No. It’s okay. They were friendly.” He shrugged. “As friendly as associates of sovereign rights groups can be to a federal marshal, the embodiment of everything they hate.”

Tom squeezed Mike’s hand. “I guess both our pasts are coming back this weekend.”

Mike squeezed back. He kissed Tom’s fingers. “I like my future more than my past.”

“Me too.” Tom smiled, really smiled, as he gazed at Mike, lit by the sun falling through the pine branches, wisps of gold and emerald light dancing over his skin. “Me too.”

They got the keys from the post office and said hello to Mitch, the ancient postman who had been delivering the mail to the town and the surrounding warrens for decades. Tom remembered him as an old man when he was a child. Mitch didn’t believe that he was “the Brewers’ scrappy lil’ kiddo”, but gave him a giant hug and looked at him like a grandfather might look at his grown children. He spent ten minutes filling Tom in on the gossip of the town, happenings about people he barely remembered and would never recognize.

Mike, though, chimed in a few times. He remembered Rosa, and Old Jim Bailey, and Crazy Willy by the bend. He laughed when Mitch said Willy was the same old cuss he’d always been.

“Still doing business?”

Mitch peered at Mike. “Well, I dunno about all that. You know Willy, you can ask him yourself.”

“I will. Willy and I go back a bit.”

That seemed to satisfy Mitch, who wished them well and sent them on their way.

Either he hadn’t read the news about the trial in DC, or he didn’t care about such federal things. He made no mention of Tom being a judge, or the trial, or Russia, or anything else. He didn’t bat an eye at Mike, either, who Tom introduced as a “friend”.

Etta Mae sniffed the lot and did her business in a patch of grass and wild clover, and then wanted to follow her nose down a sloping ravine into a winding tributary off the main creek running through town. Her tail went crazy, and she locked her paws, practically pointing as she picked up the scent of a wild animal. Tom had to carry her back to the car.

Finally settled, Tom turned a bemused gaze to Mike. “You and Crazy Willy by the bend go way back? My parents’ neighbor Willy? Crazy Willy with the rattlesnakes?”

Mike grinned wide. “Those rattlesnakes are something else, huh?”

“They live in the gulch between his and my parents’ place.”

“It’s a small world after all.” Mike winked and backed out of the post office’s gravel parking lot as Tom groaned.

Tom’s parents’ place was a small log cabin built into the forest at the start of a long curve winding around the middle of the rising mountain. Spruce and pine surrounded the cabin on all sides, and a long gulch split the right side of the property. Bright signs and triangle placards warned of rattlesnakes in the gulch, timber rattlers that lived in the rocks and the gullies. They didn’t climb up and try and escape, and as long as no one went down there, the rattlers and people were just fine with each other. Years ago, Willy had bred timber rattlesnakes and kept them in the gulch, feeding them rats and mice and bragging about his herd. As a child, Tom had played on the left side of the cabin only.

A hill sloped to a gentle creek behind the cabin, a tributary off the main creek through town. Sycamores and poplars crowded the banks, mixing with tall river fronds and swaying grasses. At the end of the meandering creek, a golden meadow stretched to the edge of the next mountain that crowded in close to the town, as if both peaks were cupping Lonely Pine Gulch between them.

Mike carried their duffels in and took them both to the master bedroom as Tom opened the windows and started to air out the place. Etta Mae went crazy, following her nose over every inch of the cabin, the porch, and the yard. There were too many smells to smell, and her tail beat a small windstorm behind her. She stayed close, though, always whipping around and looking for Tom or Mike and staying within eyesight. She was, at her little adventurous Basset heart, kind of a wimp.

Crisp mountain air floated through the cabin, clean pine and riotous wildflowers, fresh water and mossy fern. He ended up on the back porch, built just above the creek, and watched the water tumble over ageless river rock. Mike followed, and he wrapped his arms around Tom’s waist and rested his chin on Tom’s shoulder.

“Can I ask you something?” Mike’s voice was barely a whisper, but in the silence of the forest, he might as well have shouted.

“You can ask me anything.”

“You said— You said you weren’t strong enough to stay with Pasha. And that you left him because of everything… because of what happened to you.”

Tom nodded, pressing back against Mike’s hold. He laced his fingers through Mike’s, holding his waist, one of his arms.

“What about now? Are you going to leave us because of what’s happening now? It’s… the same kind of thing. People are finding out—” Mike buried his face in Tom’s hair. “I need to know.”

Tom turned in Mike’s hold, his hands seeking Mike, grabbing his arms, his elbows, running up his biceps to his neck. He held Mike, tugging his face up until they were staring into each other’s eyes. There was fear in Mike’s gaze, naked, raw fear tangled with hope. And something else. Something that made Tom’s heart go wild.

“It’s different now. And I’m a different man than I was back then. Back then, I was just starting my life. I thought other things were more important than following my heart. Being who I was. I didn’t have any role models. There was no one I could look at and say ‘yes, that’s how it works. That’s what I’m going to do. I can be like that.’ I was petrified of myself more than anything else.” He smiled, and his thumbs brushed Mike’s cheeks, his gently-growing stubble. “You’ve shown me how to live, Mike. How to be truly alive.”

“I haven’t—”

“You did it just by being you. By being the gay man I’ve always needed to see. You’re everything. You’re proud. You’re confident. You’re happy. You’re in control of your life. You are everything I ever dreamed of, in so many different ways.”

Mike swallowed slowly. Tom watched the fear in his eyes turn to a blaze, an inferno, as his jaw clenched hard. “What are you trying to say to me?”

“I’m saying that I want you. I want this. Us. A life with you. Even if that means I’m no longer a judge. That’s not the most important thing in my life. Not anymore.” Maybe he should go be a lawyer for “the gays and their organizations”, as his old professor had once said.

It was time to embrace himself, everything about himself, and stop running away.

He was still scared. Still terrified, actually. But it was worth it.

Surging, Mike captured his lips, a kiss that was all of Mike’s restrained longing, his desire, his fear, and his hope, mixed into one. His hands rose, cupping Tom’s face, and he moaned as they kissed, half sobs that made him tremble. “Tom…” Mike breathed. “Tom…” He started to say something, but kissed Tom again instead, holding him close, as close as he could.

Tom kissed him back, pouring every hope, every dream, every bitten-off whisper he’d uttered for twenty-five years into the meeting of their lips, the press of their bodies. This is exactly—exactly—what I want. And who I want.

Mike was shy after, nuzzling his forehead against Tom’s and stealing kiss after kiss as songbirds chirped and the creek babbled on and on.

Villegas stormed into Winters’s office, fuming. He hurled a balled-up sticky note onto Winters’s desk. “They’re fucking gone!”

“Gone?”

“Lucciano took Brewer in the middle of the night! Left that Goddamn note on my door!” The note had simply read: Getting him out of DC for the weekend. Back Sunday PM.

Winters unwrapped the wrinkled ball of yellow paper and stared down at the messy handwriting. “Is the tracker still working?”

Villegas exhaled. “Yes. It’s still transmitting.”

“Follow them. Don’t let them know you’re there.”

“Yes sir.”

“Get close to them.” Winters’s steel-hardened gaze bored into Villegas. “You know what to do.”

Chapter 37

July 30^th

“Hey Willy. Remember me?”

Willy glared over the barrel of his shotgun at Mike and Tom. He had a raggedy beard, stained overalls, no shirt, and an orange trucker’s hat pulled over his thin hair. “Marshal? That you?”

“Sure is me.” Mike held out his hand and smiled wide. “Been a while, Willy.”

“Hell.” Willy slung his shotgun over his shoulder and grabbed Mike’s hand. “Thought you was getting on back to the city. Leaving all this behind you.” Willy smiled back at Mike.

“I did. I’m working in DC now.”

“Ooo, big DC fed.” Willy glared again, but snorted. “Who’s with you?”

“You probably don’t remember me. The last time you saw me I was ten. Tom Brewer.”

“You’re the Brewers’ boy?” Willy reared back, taking in Tom from head to toe. “You used to pet the turtles in the creek and stare at the fish for hours.”

Tom laughed. “I did. And my mom warned me about your rattlers every single day.”

“Those old things. They wouldn’ hurt a fly. Unless you went into their gulch.” Willy winked. “What brings you both out here? How’d a marshal and my neighbors’ gangly lil’ kid meet up?”

Tom eyed Mike, but Mike spoke first. “We work together in DC. It’s hotter than hell out there right now, Willy. Thought we’d escape for a weekend.”

“I told you, there ain’t nothing good in that city.” Willy wagged one dirty finger at Mike. “Not a damn thing. I told you.”

“You did.” Mike grinned at Tom. “I’m doing all right, though.”

Willy harrumphed.

“Hey, you still in the business, Willy?”

Willy’s eyes shone, and he glared at Mike, lips twitching. His beard, a mix of gray and white and dirt, trembled. “Depends on who is asking, marshal. You here as a fed?”

“No. I’m here as a friend.”

Willy stared at him for another long minute. Tom glanced between the two men, worry starting to chew at his stomach.

“’Course I am, marshal. You think I’m dumb enough to give that up? Nah. Hell, I’ve expanded.” Willy waved for them both to follow him around his porch and down a set of old steps made of half-rotted railroad ties, built into the hillside. They descended into a grove on the far side of Willy’s house, shaded with thick branches. A leaning shed in bad need of a coat of paint squatted in front of two rusted-out trucks, their hoods gone, engines exposed, and tires long since rotted away.

Willy disappeared into the shed and reemerged carrying two mason jars of crystal-clear liquid. “This is the good stuff, marshal. You paying?”

“Of course.” Mike pulled out his wallet and forked over forty dollars. Willy passed him the jars. Mike unscrewed one. He sniffed it, and then pulled back, blinking. “You have improved.” He held the jar out for Willy to take a sip.

Willy downed a hefty swallow, like he was gulping water, and passed it back, smacking his lips. Mike took a much more delicate sip, and then handed the jar to Tom.

Tom felt the fumes before he took a drink. His eyes watered, and as the moonshine passed his lips, liquid fire bloomed over his tongue, through his mouth, and down his throat when he swallowed. He coughed hard, fighting his body’s reaction. Get it out, get it out! Mustering his dignity, Tom managed to keep the moonshine down. “That’s strong,” he croaked.

Willy laughed. “Your folks bought two jars each summer, every year. Lasted them the whole season.”

“I can see why.”

Pocketing the money, Willy sent them away. “Go away, boys. Go get to fishin’ or doin’ whatever you came up here to do. I ain’t needin’ any feds in my business.” He smiled, but there was a weight to his words, an underlying tension that Tom couldn’t remember from his boyhood memories.

Mike guided him back up the rotten steps to the gravel road. Willy was a little over a hundred yards away from Tom’s place, around the bend in the old mountain track. It was far enough away to feel like they were the only two people living in the forest, and might as well be a hundred miles apart.

They spent the rest of the afternoon hiking down the creek, passing between hazy shafts of sunlight as they made their way to the meadow. Woodpeckers drilled for bugs in the fallen trunk of an oak, and buckeyes grew in scattered copses, their branches filled with twittering birds and fragile nests of newly-hatched babies. Sun-dappled wildflowers grew next to golden threads of wispy, waving weeds. Hickory trees shivered in the light wind, branches creaking far overhead. Etta Mae sniffed and sniffed, and then napped at the base of a sugar maple.

There was only one rule for the day: no talking about the trial.

That evening, Mike grilled burgers as Tom tried to drown a shot of moonshine in a quart of tangy juice. It still burned going down, but they shared the drink and a plate of burgers on the back porch by the glow of the old buzzing porchlight, its yellow gleam droning away and pushing off the impenetrable darkness of the woods. Etta Mae lounged on the deck, eyeing the plate of burgers before she fell asleep and started to snore.

Eventually, they made their way inside.

Mike guided Tom to the bedroom. He spun Tom into a slow dance, cheek to cheek, humming an old-time love song as he sneaked kisses. They stripped slowly, trading clothes for long, lingering kisses and soft caresses, the feel of fingers ghosting over each other’s skin. Mike trembled as Tom wrapped his arms around him, swayed him gently, and kissed the skin beneath his ear.

They ended up in the sheets, silver moonbeams falling through the pine branches and leaving trails of light on their skin. Ribbons of cream and scattered starlight flitted through the bedroom, curled around their arms, legs, faces. In the whole world, it seemed like all the light had fled, vanishing from the hushed forest, and leaving only the twinkling stars and the occasional firefly.

A glow curled over the bed, tickling toward Tom’s cheek, and Mike reached for it, for him, the pads of his fingertips shaking against Tom’s skin. He was buried inside Tom, making love to him slowly, slower than they ever had before. “Tom…”

There was something in Mike’s eyes, something that looked like a dam was cracking in half. Something was pouring out of Mike, something he’d held back.

“Tom,” he breathed, wincing. “Jesus, Tom… I love you. I love you.” He surged against Tom, kissing him, whimpering, trembling. “I love you.”

The last piece of Tom’s broken heart and broken life slipped back into place, finally finding a perfect alignment. His soul caught fire, bursting with too much love, too much joy, too much happiness that had suddenly flooded his existence. Mike, and everything that he was, swinging into his life from out of nowhere. Rewriting his entire world. “Mike, I love you, too.” He grabbed Mike, trying to pull him closer, deeper. Tried to wrap his arms and legs around him so he never had to let go. “I love you, too.”

Mike’s smile could have blinded the sun, and said more to Tom than Mike ever could. He cradled Mike’s face, trying to show him how he felt, trying to pour every dream, every hope, every moment of happiness Mike had given him, into his touch.

He loved Mike, in every single way. Would love him, for every single day. “I will never stop loving you.”

Chapter 38

July 31^st

Tom woke to the sounds of birds chirping in the trees and fluttering behind the cabin. He opened his eyes, and saw Mike already awake, watching him with a soft smile.

“Hey. Morning.”

“Morning.” Mike ran his finger down the side of Tom’s face, a featherlight touch. “How’d you sleep?’

“Perfectly.” Tom scooted closer and reached for Mike’s hand. “You?”

“Pretty good.” He kissed Tom’s hand, his knuckles. “About last night…”

Tom frowned.

“I meant it. I really love you.” Mike licked his lips and tried to hide his crimson cheeks. “I didn’t just say that because we’d been drinking and were—”

“Neither did I.” Tom pushed Mike back and rolled on top of him, straddling Mike’s hips. Their naked bodies pressed together, warm and hard. “I love you, Mike Lucciano.” Tom kissed him sweetly, and felt Mike smile. He pulled back, a half-inch. “Question.”

“Answer.” Mike grinned as he held Tom’s hips, stroked his back.

“Why did you say ‘shit’ the first time we kissed?”

Mike chuckled, and his flush deepened. He looked away, for a moment. “Because I knew that I wanted that to be my last first kiss. I knew it like… I knew I was gay, or that I wanted to serve my country. It was just… there. True.”

His heart melted at that, and he kissed Mike again, and then again, and then Mike’s arms were around him and the rest of his thoughts fled.

It was afternoon by the time they clambered out of bed, weak-legged and sated, but beaming. They dressed casually, ate, and headed out, hiking down to the creek and following different trails from the day before. Mike threaded their hands together and stopped to kiss Tom every half-mile. Etta Mae trotted along, darting off to check scent trails and then crashing through the brush and back to their sides.

Mike broached the topic they’d been avoiding since leaving DC. “What do you think is really going on? With the trial?”

Tom sighed. “I’m not supposed to be thinking about it. I’m supposed to be impartial, and only judge the merits of the case.”

“Is that possible here? Between the Russians, the CIA, and, hell, even Ballard. What’s going on with him? How is he involved?”

“Do you think the CIA did it?  Do you think Kris might be involved?”

It was Mike’s turn to sigh. “I’ve learned to never underestimate Kris. Or what he’s capable of.”

Tom squinted at Mike, but Mike didn’t elaborate. His mind was churning, his lawyer’s brain hunting for the logical sequence, the path through this conspiracy. “Ballard is getting his orders from main justice. The DOJ, and through them, the White House. For this to truly be a government-sanctioned CIA hit, it would need to come from the top.”

“All the players who could have ordered it, and ordered the cover up, are right there.”

“I know.”

“Why? What would the motive be? Why risk this confrontation, upset the international order?”

“If President Vasiliev had been killed, there could have been a real chance for true regime change in Russia. If the CIA was willing to assassinate Vasiliev, then they had to have a plan for after.”

“Okay, so what about Kryukov? Why isn’t he screaming about being hired by the CIA? Why is he insisting he is innocent, and that the CIA wasn’t involved?”

Tom’s mind spun, possibilities darker than the one before rising in his mind. “I want to check the timeline for his arrest. Was he ever alone with Ballard? Was there an opportunity for Ballard, or anyone else, to make him an offer?”

“What, he denies the CIA involvement and they’ll… prosecute him for the death penalty anyway?”

“Something like that. He never mentions the CIA. Or, he goes even further, muddying the water by denying anything at all. He’s derailed his own defense. Renner looked defeated when he said he wanted to call Kryukov to the stand.”

“But he agrees to go down publicly for this?”

“You and I both know that special prisoners get lost. Or redirected. Remember Ali Mohamed, the U.S. Army Special Forces soldier and al-Qaeda double agent? He’s been ‘lost’ since he entered his guilty plea. His sentencing hearing is still TBD. It’s been nearly two decades. Where do you think he really is?”

“So Kryukov takes the bullet in public. Shields the CIA and the U.S. government. And then they spring him free after trial?”

“If the goal was to make his defense as incoherent as possible and strengthen the government’s somewhat-weak case against him, then it lines up.”

“But the Russians won’t accept Kryukov acting alone. They’re demanding the International Criminal Court look into the CIA and the attempted assassination.”

“Leaving Ballard—and the White House—stuck between a rock and a hard place. No matter what they do, Russia is going to explode.”

“Which takes me back to Kris. What’s he really doing over there?”

“Finishing the mission?”

“God…” Mike shook his head. “It really would have been better if Vasiliev were killed.”

Tom grimaced, but he had to agree.

“If we can find Pasha, though, we might be able to find a new angle on this. He could confirm whether Kryukov did or did not send that text that morning. See what Kryukov’s state of mind was. How he behaved. If he noticed anything while he was there. We need to find him.”

Mike gripped his hand, and they wound deeper into the forest, catching up to Etta Mae and her wild squirrel chase. She’d treed a group of them, and they teased her mercilessly, skittering from tree branch to tree branch, snickering down at her as she circled the trunk and barked. They let her have her fun, until the squirrels fled and Etta Mae lost interest in the lifeless tree, and all three trooped off again.

Hours later, sweaty, exhausted, but happy, they made their way up to the main gravel road circling the mountain and walked back. There was no one around, not even Willy, and they held hands on the way. Etta Mae, exhausted, trudged at their side, her tongue hanging out but her tail still wagging.

As they came around the bend, past Willy’s house, their cabin came into view.

A black SUV with blacked-out windows, the staple of federal DC, was parked on the gravel road, blocking Mike’s car in the squat driveway.

“Shit.”

Tom’s heart pounded. “Someone found us here? Who? Why?”

Mike scowled. “They’ve gone to a lot of trouble to find us, whoever it is. Take Etta Mae inside. I’ll see what this is all about.”

Tom clipped Etta Mae’s leash onto her harness and squeezed his hand. They were in full view of the SUV, out in the open, but he still leaned in for a kiss on Mike’s cheek. “Good luck.”

Mike waited until Tom was inside before he approached the SUV. No one had come out while he and Tom were in the road, but he’d seen a shadow in the front seat. The driver was still inside.

He came up along the driver’s side and waited.

Finally, the door opened.

FBI agent Lucas Barnes stepped out. He grinned, waving, and squinted as he took off his sunglasses. “Hey, Inspector Lucciano. How’s it going?”

Mike frowned. “I’m fine. What’s going on?”

“Nice place out here. You guys really buried yourselves.”

“It’s Tom’s place. He wanted to get out of DC for the weekend.” He hesitated. “What’s up? Do you have any information on Baryshnikov?” Why had Barnes driven all the way out here?

Barnes started walking, a slow amble as they headed for the cabin. “Yes, I do. We’ve been searching for him. So far, we’re coming up empty. I thought I could ask Judge Brewer if he had any more information about Mr. Baryshnikov. Anything else he knew at all.”

Mike’s cheeks puffed out as he exhaled. Tom knew a lot, a whole lot, but would it be helpful? And, was he ready to come fully out of the closet today, right now on this summer afternoon in Lonely Pine Gulch? Mike’s thoughts swirled as they kept walking, slow steps across the gravel driveway.

“What’s up with these snakes?” Barnes jerked his chin to the warning placards, feet from them. He frowned, looking the ground over as his hands landed on his hips.

“The neighbor apparently keeps a bunch of timber rattlers in the gulch. It’s steep, maybe a fifteen-foot rocky drop. The snakes can’t get out. You’re fine.” Mike grinned. He turned toward the cabin. “Let’s go talk to Tom.”

A hand grabbed the back of his neck, yanking him off-balance as a blade slid into his back. Once, twice, a third time, rapid strikes that sent fire racing through him. He felt the blade pierce his skin, slide deep. Bursts like bombs going off roared in the muscles of his right side, and he stumbled, suddenly unable to breathe. Someone grabbed his gun, tucked into a concealed holster in the small of his back, and hurled it down the gravel drive. “What—”

The hand on his neck rose, covering his mouth, his nose. He tried to scream, but the sound was muffled. Over his shoulder, he saw the blade rise in Barnes’s hand.

Jesus. Barnes was going to kill him. He was going to slit his fucking throat. Mike screamed again, the sound of a desperate, dying animal, trying to thrash, trying to move against the tidal wave of pain, a lava flow of burning agony that was searing through his right side.

“Fuck,” Barnes hissed, his feet slipping. He tugged Mike with him, but Mike pushed into Barnes, using his momentum, and spun out from under his grasp. He opened his mouth, ready to shout, to scream, to warn Tom—

Barnes kicked him, a fierce front kick right to his sternum that stole the breath from his body. He flew backward, knocked off his feet, and his heels skittered in the gravel.

And then, he tumbled over the edge.

Falling, a dark boulder, sharp, slammed into his side. A crack, and pain roared out from his ribcage. Spinning, he tumbled again, sliding against vines and ferns and wet moss as he plummeted to the bottom of the gulch.

The gulch. The rattlesnake gulch. He tried to gouge his fingertips into the stone and stop his fall, climb his way up.

He hit bottom, landing with a thud in a patch of dried leaves and scattered weeds. He froze, his right side on fire, every inhale shooting agony through his body, his heart beating a frantic, wild, primal rhythm.

He had to get to Tom. He had to save him.

He had to get away from the rattlers.

Where were they? He couldn’t see them—

The sound started slowly, a rattle like a baby’s toy. One, two, three, and then more, and more, coming from all sides. The ground in front of him wriggled. Something fell from a crack in the rock on his left. Mike scrambled back, raw panic eclipsing everything else.

Fangs sank into the back of his hand.

Roaring, Mike jerked his hand away, but another rattler was rearing up, and another. Everywhere he spun, rattlers were surrounding him, fangs bared, hissing, tails beating like a drum percussion. He was trapped at the bottom of the gulch, surrounded by venomous timber rattlesnakes, and Barnes was up there, alone with Tom.

He gritted his teeth and squared off against the snakes. Damn it, but he was going to save Tom.

All at once, the snakes struck, fangs sinking into his skin. His legs, his arms, his stomach, his back. He fell, trying to rip them off and fling them as far as he could. One sank its fangs into his cheek, just below his eyes. His flesh tore as he ripped the snake away.

His vision swam, but Mike stumbled for the gulch edge, searching for handholds, footholds, anything to escape.

The taste of metal filled his mouth.

The rattlesnakes’ venom was starting to flood his body.

Tom shut Etta Mae into the bedroom, hiding his and Mike’s duffels and their unmade, clearly-they’d-slept-together, bed. He waited, fidgeting in the kitchen.

He tucked the moonshine away, too.

A noise made him turn, a sound like a bird screeching, somewhere far away. He froze, trying to hear it again. Nothing.

The front door opened, the old hinges creaking as the heavy wood swung. “Mike?” He padded toward the front hall, crossing his arms as he peered into the shadowed hallway.

“Hey, Judge Brewer.” Lucas Barnes waved, coming out of the darkness. He smiled and put his hands in the pockets of his cargo pants. “Mike said to come in. He’s looking some stuff over in the car.”

Tom relaxed and smiled back. He’d always liked Barnes. He was warm and affable where other FBI agents had been cold and officious, or stern bruisers who liked to pretend they were in the military. Barnes was a straight shooter, passionate about his job, and he’d always been good to work with during cases when Tom was a prosecutor. “Agent Barnes. To what do we owe the pleasure of your visit?”

Barnes’s grin widened. “Just wanted to ask you a few questions.”

“Come in.” Tom invited him into the kitchen, pulling out two chairs. “Have a seat. Is this about Pasha? Did you find him?”

“We’ve definitely made progress, Judge Brewer. We’ve got a plan now.”

Footsteps sounded down the hall, by the front door. Tom turned in his chair, smiling, waiting for Mike.

His heart stopped.

Pasha Baryshnikov stepped into the dappled sunlight streaming through the windows. His gaze swept the cabin and landed on Tom. Just like twenty-five years ago, his eyes were filled with an intensity Tom couldn’t explain, a passion that had seared through Tom’s body from the first time they’d met. He felt Pasha’s eyes strike his soul again, a bolt of lightning that hit him right in the chest. “Pasha?”

“Damn it.” Barnes glared at Pasha. “You were supposed to wait in the car.”

“I told you. I needed to see him.”

“And I told you that we needed to do this right! Needed to make it look good!”

Pasha spat something in Russian, a long string of harsh, angry words. Barnes’s mouth snapped shut. He grimaced, and his skin flushed, turning maroon, but he said nothing. Pasha snapped again, and Barnes headed for the front door.

He stopped, though, next to Pasha. “Make it quick,” he growled. “We have to go.”

Pasha didn’t look at him. Barnes snorted, stomping out of the cabin.

Slowly, Tom rose. He couldn’t think, couldn’t put two and two together. Pasha, here? With Barnes? Why? And Mike? Where was Mike?

Dread flooded his soul, his and Mike’s conversation from the creek coming back. Oh, God, they’d had it wrong. They’d had it all wrong.

“Hello, Tom.” Pasha’s voice was smooth, devoid of any accent. He smiled, looking Tom up and down. “It’s been a long time.”

The world spun, and Tom almost staggered, thrown sideways by all the many ways they’d been wrong. “Pasha… You and Barnes—” He shook his head. “You’re helping the CIA?”

Pasha laughed. “Oh, Tom. I thought, out of everyone, you might have put it all together.”

“You’re helping the CIA cover up the attempted assassination of President Vasiliev. You must be. You’ve always hated Russia. Is this how you’re striking back?”

Pasha laughed again. He stepped closer, holding his hand out. “You know, after we broke up, I went to New York, like we’d planned. I thought maybe you’d still go, and I’d find you and convince you that we could get back together.”

Tom swallowed.

“But I didn’t find you there. Instead, someone found me.”

“Who?”

“Dimitry Vasiliev, head of the New York KGB office.”

All the air fled from Tom’s lungs, ripped out of his body, his soul. “You hated Russia… They tortured you... You wanted to be free…”

Sadness stole over Pasha’s face, an echo of history, memories of the past. “There is no such thing as freedom. You found that out. You left me because you chose to be a slave to your fears. To society’s fears. I was young and dumb and thought that I could find a better way.” He shook his head. “You just learned sooner than I did: there is no freedom for men like us.”

Panic leached beneath his skin, crept over his bones. He started to breathe fast, quick pants that left him lightheaded.

“The best we can do is find others who will protect us. Who will look the other way in exchange for our utility. We can live in the shadows, in the negative spaces. If we’re not seen, and not heard, we’re not cared about.”

“Is that how Vasiliev treated you?”

“That, and much more.” Pasha smiled. He stepped forward again, close enough to touch. He reached for Tom’s hand. His skin was cold, like ice, and Tom shivered. Pasha laced their fingers together. “Do you still think I work for the CIA?”

All he could hear was the sound of his own breath, his own hyperventilating. He blinked, slowly. His brain wouldn’t work. He said nothing.

“You have all been so consumed with the thought of what went wrong that you never looked at what went right in everything. Who has benefited the most from this attack?”

Jesus. It was all there, suddenly. Blindingly obvious, staring him in the face. The one man, the one nation, that had benefited from this attack: President Dimitry Vasiliev.

“Vasiliev planned this whole thing? With you?”

“I would do anything for Vasiliev. He saved my life, and brought me back to Mother Russia.” Pasha grabbed him, held his face in both hands. His eyes burned, cobalt lit on fire, and he yanked Tom to him, aligning their bodies. Twenty-five years vanished and Tom was suddenly back in college, pressed close to Pasha, about to kiss him. He gritted his teeth. No. NO!

“Come with me,” Pasha growled. “Tom, come with me. We can go to Moscow. Tonight. We can start again. Pick up where we left off. You do not have to be a slave anymore. We can be together. Live in the shadows. Have our freedom, what little we can have. At least we can be together again.” He smiled, and his eyes traced Tom’s features. “It can be like the past. You can love me again. As for me… I have never stopped loving you.”

Mike. Where was Mike? What had they done to him? He tried to pull away, but Pasha wouldn’t let go. His hands tightened, gripping his skull. The pretense of tenderness had fled. “You’re hurting me.”

“Come with me,” Pasha growled again. “Barnes wants to kill you. I’m the only one who can save your life.”

He struggled, thrashing, but Pasha held on like a vise. “What did you do to Mike? Where is he?” He shouted, roaring at the top of his lungs. No, God, no, please. Mike couldn’t be—

“He’s gone.”

Tom’s knees buckled, and he collapsed against Pasha, sliding to the floor, screaming. “No!” Tears blurred his eyes, searing hot.

Behind the closed bedroom door, Etta Mae started whimpering and scratching at the frame, frantically trying to get free and get to Tom.

“Shhh, shhh.” Pasha followed Tom down to the floor, still holding his face. He hovered over Tom, gazing at him like he was seeing a shooting star for the very first time. “I couldn’t believe it when they said you’d been given this trial. I had thought I’d lost you forever. But this is our second chance.”

“You’re insane. You think I want anything to do with you?”

“We loved each other—”

“You’re a monster!” Tom roared. “What you’ve done. And Mike—” He gasped, his heart seizing, and fresh tears rolled down his cheeks.

Pasha’s eyes turned ice cold, Siberian cold. “Come with me, or you will die.”

Snarling, Tom reached for Pasha, clawing at his face, trying to gouge out his eyes. Pasha twisted, and Tom jerked back, ripping himself from Pasha’s hold. He crawled across the kitchen floor, heading around the island, and tried to hide.

Damn it, he wasn’t brave. He wasn’t a hero. He wasn’t like Mike, who could probably karate chop Pasha with his eyes closed. He was a lawyer, he was pathetic and weak and he wasn’t a fighter.

Pasha chuckled, and Tom heard him stand by the kitchen table. “Tom… you don’t want to do this.”

“Fuck you, Pasha!”

“Do you really want to die? Is this how you want to end your life?”

Footsteps, slowly coming closer, creeping over the wooden floor. Etta Mae scratched and scratched at the door, her whimpers turning to mournful howls.

Tom thunked his head against the oak cabinet and closed his eyes. What do I do? What do I do? When he opened his eyes, his gaze landed on the sink.

He’d chopped a tomato last night for the burgers.

Pasha’s measured steps came closer, and he stepped on the creaky board, the one four feet from the kitchen island that he’d always had to avoid as a child whenever he sneaked in for a midnight snack after his parents went to bed. “I’m going to fuck you again before I kill you.”

Tom scrambled around the side of the kitchen island. He breathed in. Counted to three. And lunged.

The knife he’d used the night before was still in the sink, an oversized chopping knife he’d had to sharpen before using. They’d left the dishes, not caring about the mess, more interested in getting into bed. Thank God.

He heard Pasha rushing for him. He had his back to his former lover. Former lover, and now Russian spy, co-conspirator of a mass murder. How had it all come to this?

Spinning, Tom gripped the knife handle in a fist, raising it high over his head. Pasha was only a foot away, lunging for him, his face twisted in a lecherous sneer, hands outstretched—

Tom plunged the knife into Pasha’s chest, just to the right of his sternum. He felt bones crunch and crack as the thick blade slammed through his ribs, plowed through cartilage, and entered Pasha’s lung. In his long career as a prosecutor, Tom had seen his share of stabbings.  And stabbings to the chest, he knew, were most often fatal.

His first love. His first murder.

Pasha’s eyes went wide. He stared at Tom, and then down at the knife. He reached for Tom again.

Tom heaved the knife from his chest and stabbed him again, lower. Again, the crunch of bones, the slice of soft tissue. Pasha coughed. He stumbled back, clutching at the knife, falling to his knees as he reached for Tom.

Etta Mae howled, wailing inside the bedroom, scratching frantically at the casing.

The front door burst open, banging off the wall. “Pasha!” Barnes shouted. “What the fuck is going on?”

Pasha’s gaze landed on Tom. His eyes watered, and he stared at Tom wistfully. He opened his mouth, croaking out a pained grunt.

Tom heard Barnes curse, heard him start to run.

Jesus, he had to move. He had to escape. He had to get out of there, now.

Tom stepped over Pasha, racing for the backdoor, fleeing to the porch and then over the railing, into the tangled brush around the creek. Behind him, he heard the backdoor swing open again, and then Barnes shout his name. He kept running, heading for the cover of the forest.

A gunshot cracked the air, splitting through the forest, and a tree trunk just to his right spat bark and debris as a bullet slammed into the side. Another shot. Tree bark and wood splinters sprayed him from the left.

Tom turned deeper into the thickening woods.

Villegas peered through his binoculars as he lay in his blind on the mountainside, watching Brewer’s family cabin below the bend. He was wearing camouflage and had set up a small blind in the trees and boulders, obscuring himself from the road below.

He didn’t have a perfect line of sight on the entire place, though. There was a giant boulder by his right shoulder, digging into his side, and beyond the boulder, a drop-off into a ravine that gouged into the mountain. He was as close as he could get without being seen, and as far over as he could get without plunging into the ravine, but he still couldn’t see the far side of the cabin, with the rattlesnake ditch.

Who in their right mind would keep a ditch full of rattlesnakes?

And, what in the hell was that black SUV doing in Brewer’s drive?

He watched and waited as Lucciano and Brewer came strolling up the bend, hand in hand, with Brewer’s dog. Damn it, Mike. He knew, he already knew about him and Brewer, but damn it. It would be easier if he didn’t.

At least Brewer’s dog was cute.

Brewer went inside with the dog, after giving Lucciano a kiss. Villegas rolled his eyes.

And then Lucciano went to the black SUV, and Barnes stepped out.

Barnes and Mike strolled out of sight, beyond his obscured view, thanks to the giant boulder. Damn it. He couldn’t see a thing.

Cursing again, he shuffled up and debated sliding down the hillside, just a bit. He’d be exposed, and if they saw him, it’d be game over.

Damn it. He had to see.

He slid on his side, landing behind a tree trunk at the same time a wild animal shrieked. Every hair on his neck stood straight up. He whipped around, staring down at the cabin where the shriek had come from. It had been crazy, fear-filled, desperate-sounding.

All he saw was Barnes, striding up the drive to Brewer’s front door and walking inside.

Moments later, another man got out of the SUV and headed for the cabin.

When Etta Mae started howling like her world was ending, Villegas pulled out his gun. And when he heard two gunshots behind the cabin, his decision was made.

He jumped up and slid down the mountainside in a tumble of dried leaves and twigs. Crouching low, he ran for the cabin’s front door.

Chapter 39

“Willy!” Mike clawed his way through Willy’s front yard, a scrap heap of car debris and overgrown weeds. He’d staggered from the gulch to the yard, weaving from tree to tree as his vision faded in and out. He spat blood as it filled his mouth. Finally, he’d fallen, right after two gunshots split the forest, coming from the cabin. He’d screamed, and tried to crawl faster. “Willy!”

Willy’s shadow appeared on his porch, shotgun in hand. “Jesus H, marshal. What in the hell is going on? What happened to you?” Shouldering his rifle, Willy ran to him and helped him up, guiding him up the porch and into his ramshackle house.

“Was attacked.” Mike coughed, collapsing onto a couch, more blood filling his mouth. Internal bleeding, from the venom. Or the triple stab wounds. Somewhere, deep in his body, he was bleeding. “Kicked into your snake pit.”

Willy paled beneath his beard, and Mike saw the yellowed whites around his eyes. “How many times you get bit?”

Mike shook his head, and a wave of dizziness rolled over him. He put his head between his knees, lost his balance, slumped off the edge of the couch and onto the rough wooden floor.

“Shit, marshal. You need a hospital. Now.”

“No! I need to get Tom!”

“What’s happenin’ with the Brewer boy? And who attacked you?” Willy stomped across his den to a toolbox he had on his brick fireplace mantel. Inside, he rifled through antique glass bottles and pulled out a syringe, filling it from one of the bottles.

“Barnes. FBI agent on the case that Tom is overseeing. Tom… He’s a judge.”

“A federal judge?” Willy turned and stared.

Mike nodded. Federal judges, like federal agents, were enemy number one to the sovereign rights groups that Willy was suspected of being friendly to. Or at least, he knew members of the groups. He’d been a contact for Mike during the Whitmore hunt, passing on gossip from the grapevine of sovereign rights terrorists and rabble-rousers. “Barnes must be dirty. He stabbed me, and then kicked me into the gulch.” His breath rasped, and he coughed, trying to drag in deeper breaths.

Willy grabbed his shirt and lifted it, scouring Mike’s back, his sides, and then rolling him roughly over. He cursed. “You been bit at least eight times on your trunk alone, marshal.”

“Got my arms and legs, too.”

“And your ugly face.” Willy stabbed Mike’s arm with his syringe and emptied the liquid into Mike’s vein. “This is antivenom. I just gave you a double dose, but you need at least another four. If you don’t get to the hospital soon, you’ll die.”

“I can’t leave Tom.” Was he already dead? Were those shots Tom being executed? He couldn’t think that, damn it. It couldn’t have happened.

“Some fed is trying to kill a fed judge, huh? That why there all that shooting and running going on?”

“Running?”

“Someone ran down the creek a bit ago. Heard them like they was a herd of elephants. Then the shots, and then you crawled over here and tried to die.”

Running. Tom had to be alive. He was trying to escape, trying to survive. Mike grabbed Willy’s arms and tugged him close, pushing their faces together. Already, he was starting to feel the venom ebb from his system. His vision was still blurry, and he still felt blood rising in his mouth, but the fire spreading through his body had cooled. “Willy, we have to help Tom. We have to save him.”

Willy arched one eyebrow at him. “You want me to save a federal judge?”

“Damn it, he’s Tom Brewer! You knew him as a kid!”

“Kids grow up. Become feds.”

“Willy! I’m a fed! Aren’t we friends?”

“You were useful to me, marshal. To us. I fed you lies to keep you away from Whitmore.”

“What? Jesus, you are one of them. You helped hide Whitmore!”

Willy smirked. “Guilty as sin, marshal. And you helped us hide him, since you was so easy to mislead.”

Damn it! Mike gritted his teeth, choked back a scream. Damn it all! He was too trusting, far, far too trusting, in every way. With his heart, with his mind. “Willy… please. I can’t let him die. I can’t. If you won’t help me, I’ll go alone.”

Willy peered at him. His look seemed to ask Mike why he should care at all about such a threat.

“If I die, and if Tom dies, there will be feds all over this Goddamn mountain. This Goddamn state. You thought the Whitmore hunt was bad? Try letting a federal judge be murdered! The entire fucking government will rain fire and brimstone on this patch of your sovereign fucking land,” he spat. “Are you ready for your end times? Are you ready for your apocalyptic war against the government? This is how it will start!”

Willy snorted. He pulled away from Mike and strode to his kitchen, stabbing the syringe into his cutting board. “You did better when you were reminding me of the boy Brewer was. I ain’t afraid of your feds, marshal.”

“Please…” Hot tears, boiling with frustration, leaked from the corners of Mike’s eyes. “Please. Help me. Just shove me out the door. Give me a gun.”

“This man hunting Brewer. You say he’s a fed? A dirty FBI agent?”

“Yes.”

He hummed, stroking his beard, and then reached for a CB radio tucked into a shelf above his kitchen sink. “Hammer, Hammer, this is Fox Den, over.”

“Fox Den, go ahead.”

“We got a lion in the blind, heading southwest through the gap.”

Mike heaved a shaking breath, making fists as he tried to slow his heart. A lion was the radio code for a federal agent, used by the hardest of the sovereign rights terrorists. Used when they were targeting feds, tracking them. Planning an attack.

“Time to form a hunting party.”

“Affirm. Meet at the old Shawnee cave in fifteen. Out.”

Willy hung up the radio. “Let’s get moving, marshal. We got ground to cover.”

Tom crashed through the branches and brush, pumping his legs as hard as he could. Behind him, Barnes was shouting, calling his name. Hollering at him to stop.

He’d never stop. He’d burn his lungs out first.

“Brewer! Damn it! Let’s just talk about this!”

Ahead was the edge of the meadow he and Mike had spent the day in, the sun-drenched, wildflower-strewn meadow. Poplars and sugar maples ringed the edges, and sprawling oaks stretched their branches across the wide, open, treeless space.

If he ran into the meadow, he’d lose the cover of the trees, of the forest. But he was rapidly running out of options. Behind him was Barnes. To his left was the mountain, and if he scrambled up that, he’d be exposed. The meadow was his only option, other than turning around and running right at Barnes. That would be suicide. But so would be running into the open meadow.

He had to live. It wasn’t just the panicked firings of his primitive brain, pushing him to keep escaping, keep evading. He had to live so he could bring these killers to justice. Bring Mike’s killers to justice. Had Barnes killed Mike while he was in the kitchen? Had he been fidgeting while Mike was dying?

He had to live.

Breathing hard, Tom veered into the meadow, sprinting as hard as he could, as fast as he could propel his body.

Behind him, the sounds of Barnes’s pursuit faded. Was he pulling away?

A gunshot exploded.

Fire burned across his right shoulder, slammed into his shoulder blade, his armpit. He screamed and went down, thrown to the ground by the shot tearing into him. He got a face full of dirt as he rolled, arms and legs akimbo as he tore through the golden meadow grass.

Screaming again, he reached for his shoulder. Blood soaked his hand. He felt warm drops slide down his chest, his back. Soak his shirt. Sounds swam, and the meadow grass went triple, fading in and out of sight. He’d been shot in the back. Barnes had shot him. Barnes was going to kill him, right here, in the meadow.

He staggered to his feet and tried to run. A second gunshot cracked, and he dropped reflexively, trying to become one with the dirt. He shouted as he fell, his wounded shoulder slamming into the ground.

“Judge Brewer!” Breathless, Barnes jogged up behind him. “Damn it, Judge. Why’d you have to run?”

Tom rolled over. Barnes was moving in close, his gun at the low and ready. “What did you do, Lucas? You’re working with the Russians?”

Barnes sighed, long and low. “You shouldn’t know that, Judge. I told Pasha he couldn’t talk to you.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry. You weren’t supposed to get hurt in all this. But when you identified Pasha…” Barnes shrugged. “It’s really just dumb luck that you got this trial. You’re the only one who could have identified Pasha Baryshnikov based off Kryukov’s description.”

He squeezed his eyes closed. Of course. All the people who’d told him to let this trial go, get rid of it. Were they all in on it? Had the whole world gone bad?

“What about Kryukov? Why did he even give that description? Isn’t he in on it, too?”

Barnes shook his head. He kept his gun trained on Tom, but fished out his cell phone from his pocket. A few swipes, and then he pressed the screen.

Tom’s own voice blared from his phone’s speaker. “No… Mike… please. Don’t do this. Don’t do this! No!” Muffled scuffling followed, and then a crash, and a scream. The audio ended.

“That’s not me. I never said that. I never said anything like that.”

“Voice hacking. It’s the new thing. We can clone any voice these days. As long as there’s enough audio of the target’s voice, a computer can analyze your pitch and inflection. Recreate your voice, and synthesize a perfect copy. We can make you say anything.” He waggled the phone again, and then shoved it back in his pocket. “There were enough videos of Kryukov giving his speeches against the Russian government to clone his voice. Then we hired Desheriyev.” He smiled. “Got rid of two problems at once. Kryukov and Desheriyev will go down for this. They’re the perfect cutout. They don’t know a damn thing about what’s really going on.”

“You won’t get away with this.” How many hopeless victims had spouted those words before? Were they the universal last words of the desperate who knew their demise was imminent? Who were staring at death, straight down the literal barrel of the gun?

But his words were all he had. As an attorney, as a judge, and now, bleeding in the dirt. Worthless words.

“You’ll disappear. This recording will end up on a voicemail. An investigation will show that Mike Lucciano attacked you and then fled. He’ll be a wanted man for the next sixty years. No one will know he’s already gone.”

Tom’s heart, already broken, shattered to dust. He gasped, closing his eyes, and let the tears fall. Mike… I wanted forever with you. I should have walked away from the trial. You’d still be alive. You’re more important than all of this.

“I am sorry, Judge Brewer.” Barnes raised his weapon, aiming for Tom’s head. “I’ll make it quick.”

Tom flinched. He whimpered, waiting for the end. Would he feel it? Or would there just be sudden blackness, never-ending darkness?

A gunshot rang out. He held his breath.

Barnes cursed and dropped to his knee. Tom heard it, heard him fall, hit the ground. He opened his eyes. Barnes was kneeling, looking back over his shoulder.

This was his chance! He started to scoot away, crawl back on his elbows. His shot shoulder gave out, and he crumpled to the dirt. But still, he tried to scrabble away.

Barnes fixed his gun back on him. “Come out!” he shouted. “Or I’ll kill him right now!”

Tom followed Barnes’s line of sight back to the tree line. For a moment, he hoped. God, he hoped. Please, Mike, please. Please have survived!

Villegas picked his way out of the trees, his weapon up and ready to fire. He had Barnes in his sights as he moved into the meadow. “Barnes.”

“Inspector Villegas.” Barnes smiled. “Nice to see you.”

Villegas was silent. His eyes flicked to Tom and then back to Barnes. “What’s going on here?”

“Villegas… Rob.” Barnes kept smiling. “I know you. I’ve worked with you for a few years now. You’re tired of being an inspector. Being stuck in the courts. Don’t you want to get back in on the action?”

Villegas blinked. “What are you offering?”

“You want to be a part of the biggest action on the planet? Make a real difference, all around the globe? I can get you in.”

“In where? What exactly are you saying, Barnes?”

“Money, power, influence… It’s all yours for the taking.”

“Russian money?”

“Money is money.”

“What makes an FBI agent like you turn on his country? It’s never just about the money. What is it? What made you turn?”

“Villegas, you don’t have to do this. You don’t have to die today.”

“But he does?” Villegas nodded to Tom.

“He knows too much. But, if you help me, you can walk away from this. And I’ll reward you. My people will reward you.”

Villegas’s eyes narrowed. He seemed to look beyond Barnes, a thousand-yard stare into the middle distance, as if weighing his options, the long path of his life. He nodded, slowly, sighing. Lowered his weapon. “I want double. And I want out of this Goddamn shithole.”

Barnes grinned. Villegas came across the meadow and shook hands with Barnes. God, what was he witnessing? The end of morality? A man’s life—his life—bargained for with treasonous money? If this was the world, he didn’t want to live in it. Especially without Mike. He closed his eyes.

Mike breathed hard, wheezing as he lay on his belly in the tree line next to Willy, overlooking the meadow. Willy’s men were spread out on either side of them, a line of hunters who’d appeared at an abandoned Shawnee cemetery deep in the forest, buried in the dark side of the mountain.

Willy had spoken to the men alone, gesturing to Mike as he told them a fast story about Barnes and Tom and where they were headed. There were only so many routes through the forest on that side of the mountain, and all tracks led to the meadow. A natural flushing point.

They’d ridden in in an ancient pickup truck, more rust than steel, with shotguns and rifles mounted on every spare inch. Flood lights bolted to the truck’s roof had guided their way through the thick forest, and in the truck’s bed, blood-stained tarps had been folded with care.

Willy had given him a shotgun and a worried look, but they’d all piled into the truck, Mike in the back with the others.

Mike’s vision had started going triple again. He’d spat blood every few minutes. Finally, after bouncing over a rough game trail, they appeared at the far side of the meadow he and Tom had explored the day before. They’d set up in a line, hidden in the trees.

They hadn’t had to wait long.

He’d watched Tom burst from the far side, the tree line of oak and sugar maple. He’d tried to run, desperate to get to Tom, rip him from the jaws of danger. Tear into Barnes with his own hands, kill him and then kill him again.

Now, he tried to rise, but Willy grabbed him and pulled him down, shoving him back into the dark dirt. The rest of the guys sighted their rifles on Tom, peering through their scopes. Willy’s hand pushed on the center of Mike’s back when he tried to get up. Blood bloomed across his shirt, stained Willy’s hand. Mike cried out, digging his fingers into the dirt, loose and dark and collecting under his fingernails. A hot iron was stabbing into him, right where Willy’s hand was.

“You’re bleeding out, marshal.”

“Doesn’t matter.” He groaned through gritted teeth. “Have to save Tom.”

“Just who is this Brewer boy to you?”

Mike turned and stared into Willy’s eyes, begging him to understand. Begging him to keep helping him, even though everything he was—as a person, as a man, as a federal agent—was against everything that Willy believed in. Willy and his boys would be more likely to shoot him in the back of the head and leave him in the woods than help him, a gay United States deputy marshal who loved a U.S. federal judge. “He’s everything to me,” Mike whispered.

Willy’s eyes narrowed.

A gunshot snapped. The guys tensed, fingers half-squeezing their triggers. Tom went down, screaming, a shower of dirt rising where he landed.

Mike screamed through gritted teeth. He tried to move, but Willy kept him pinned.

“’is shoulder’s shot,” one of the men grunted. “From the tree line. Another one’s coming out.”

“Watch him.” Willy pulled up his own rifle, scooting away from Mike. “He’s our lion.”

Barnes slipped out of the trees and made his way to Tom. Mike watched, agony ripping through him, as Barnes held his gun to Tom’s head. “What are you waiting for?” he hissed. “Kill him!”

“Just wait…” Willy had told them all to hold until he gave the order. “He ain’t the only fed in these woods. There was another trail.”

Another gunshot. Villegas stepped out of the trees. Advanced on Barnes, talking to him.

And then put his weapon away.

Mike cursed, kicking the ground where he lay, furious and heartbroken and utterly betrayed. How many of his people were working against them?

Should he just run out there? Be with Tom, at the end?

No, stick to the plan.

Fuck the plan. Only Tom mattered.

He couldn’t think straight anymore.

He spat blood, again, building a small puddle beside him.

He was dying. Snake venom was murdering him, making him crazy. Making him bleed out from the inside, more than even Barnes’s stabbings. Closing his eyes, Mike bowed his head, trying to breathe slowly. Trying to come back to reality.

When he looked up, Villegas was staring right at him. Their eyes met. Held.

Mike stopped breathing. Willy cursed. “Ready…”

“Wait! Wait. He’s—” Mike spat another mouthful of blood, coughing. “He’s trying to help. He’s distracting him. Distracting Barnes.”

“You sure about that? Looks like he joined your fed friend there.”

“He’s waiting for us. He’ll help, I swear to God he will.”

“You know this fed real well? Enough to stake the Brewer boy’s life on it?”

Shit, shit, shit. He stared at Villegas, still looking right at him. Villegas was just to the side of Tom, ninety degrees off Barnes. Barnes was talking to Tom, but getting ready to execute him.

Villegas was in the classic bodyguard position, the ready-to-jump leap. Would he throw himself in front of Tom? Protect him from Barnes’s shots? Do what Mike couldn’t do?

How well did he know Rob Villegas? Enough to fight with him, bicker every chance they spoke. Enough to curse his name, avoid him at the courthouse and in the hotel.

Enough to trust him with Tom’s life?

“He’s helping us,” he breathed, more a prayer than a certainty. “He’s helping.”

“Focus your sights on the lion,” Willy growled. “Ready… Aim…”

Tom closed his eyes and waited for the end.

Shots rang out, too many to have come from Barnes’s handgun, and too far away. He opened his eyes, tried to turn, but something tackled him, pinned him to the ground. A man screamed in his ear, cursing as he held Tom down. Shouts rang out, voices from the trees. Running. More shots.

Hands. The body on top of his was ripped away. Sunlight burned his eyes.

A head appeared, dark shoulders and a shadowed faced. “Tom!”

He knew that voice. “Mike? I thought you were—”

Mike grabbed him, hauled him close. Pulled him into his arms, screaming, heaving drags of air as he shouted nonsense. His hands raced over Tom’s shot shoulder, his bloody arm, hanging limp and useless. Tom clung to him on his knees, squeezing hard. He felt Mike tremble, felt his body shaking.

When he pulled back, his hands were covered in blood. “Mike—”

Villegas sat up beside them, grimacing. He glared at Mike. “Fuck, man, you took forever.” Villegas held his arm, trying to stop blood oozing out of his elbow, wrecked with a bullet and hanging limp and askew. Another bullet hole leaked blood from just above his knee, staining his camo pants, from when he’d leaped in front of Tom when Barnes fired. “What the fuck happened to you?”

Behind them, five ragged mountain men were standing over Barnes. Tom recognized Willy, by Barnes’s feet. Barnes shook as he lay in the meadow grasses, choking, struggling to breathe. Through the golden blades, Tom spotted blood burbling from between his lips. “Don’t shoot,” Barnes croaked. “I’m a federal agent—”

“That’s why we’re gonna kill you, dumb ass.” Willy raised his rifle and fired, dead center into Barnes’s forehead. Barnes went limp, sagging into the dirt.

All eyes turned to Mike, Villegas, and Tom.

Fear sluiced down Tom’s spine. These men weren’t heroes. They weren’t knights riding in to save the day. Mike had brought Willy into the forest to rescue him, but who else had come along?

Mike shifted, moving himself in front of Tom. He tugged Villegas behind him as well, squatting in front of them, protecting Tom and Villegas, two wounded, bleeding men huddling in the dirt. Mike was also hurt, badly. “Willy… please. Let us go.”

“They’re fuckin’ feds,” one of the men behind Willy shouted. He spat, a messy glob of spit that misted in the air. “We should do ‘em right!”

“Shut your mouth!” Willy raised his hand, as if he’d slap the man.

Behind Mike’s back, Villegas slowly tried to draw his weapon. Tom watched him, and tried to shift to cover his movements.

“Drop it!” One of Willy’s men had his rifle up in a flash. “Throw it over here!”

Cursing, Villegas chucked his handgun. Another of Willy’s men picked it up, looked it over. Pointed it back at them. Mike held up his hands. He swayed. Blood soaked through his shirt, dripped from the hem. “We just want to get out of here.”

Willy stalked toward them, his rifle held with the casual indifference of a man used to killing, used to the power that a weapon over another man held. He crouched low, staring into Mike’s eyes. For a moment, he looked at Tom, but his eyes, formerly warm and neighborly, were dark and closed off.

“Now you listen here, boy,” Willy said, his voice a low growl. “You walk out of these woods, what guarantees do I have you won’t be back? ‘Cause this part of the world ain’t for you.”

Mike swallowed hard. “We’ll never come back.”

Behind Willy, the rest of his men were gathering around Barnes, pulling out knives. Each man spat on his corpse, hurling curses at his lifeless form.

Villegas breathed hard, and he scooted next to Tom, inching one shoulder in front of Tom’s. As if he could do anything to protect him now, like this.

Willy peered at Mike, his gaze sharp, as if he was staring into Mike’s soul. Tom rested his hand on Mike’s blood-drenched back. Mike was still trembling, swaying. What had happened to him? What had Barnes done? How was he still going? Adrenaline and pure grit? He leaned into Mike trying to help support him.

“Let us go,” Mike whispered. “You’re ghosts. You’re ghosts to us. We’ll never come back. We were friends, weren’t we, Willy?”

“I ain’t your friend, marshal. I ain’t your pal, or your ally, or your boyfriend, or whatever you city folk do. This is my land and my home, and my word is law in these parts. You feds are invaders, and I don’t take kindly to invaders on my land. You hear?”

 “We just want to live,” Mike breathed.

“You helped me in the past, marshal. Now, I’m helping you. After this, we’re square. We’re done. And I don’t ever want to see you again.” Willy stood, staring down at Mike like he was trash that needed to be burned. “We’re moving out.”

“What about them?” One of the men shoved his knife in their direction.

Mike reached behind his back and squeezed Tom’s hand.

“We’re dropping ‘em at the highway.”

“What?”

“I said we’re dropping ‘em at the highway! You deaf?”

Willy’s men sulked, cursing under their breath as they shied away from the man, like a pack of hyenas falling away from their leader. One man turned to Barnes. “They don’t need ‘im, do they?”

“We do.” Tom spoke up, helping Mike stand. Villegas put his shoulder under Mike’s other arm. “We need to bring him back with us. He’s a traitor.”

“You don’t need all of him.” The same man spun his knife in his hands and dropped to one knee. He grabbed Barnes’s hand and pulled back his middle finger. Three hard saws were all it took, and Barnes’s finger was gone. He rose and pocketed the finger. “My eff you to the feds.”

“Get moving!” Willy waved them all back to the trees. Tom and Villegas helped Mike limp along, even though they both were bleeding from their own bullet wounds. Mike, by far, was worse than both of them combined. His breath rattled in his chest with every inhale, and blood dripped out of the corner of his mouth, slipped down his chin. Tom stumbled more than walked, and braced Mike with a hand on his belly.

Eventually, they made it back to Willy’s truck. Villegas helped Mike and Tom in, and then one of Willy’s men tossed Barnes’s body into the truck bed beside them. His corpse stared, eyes wide and sightless, up at the canopy.

In the truck bed, Willy called someone on the radio, but his voice was muffled by the roaring engine and the bouncing of the tires as they rumbled over the dirt track. Tom huddled over Mike, holding him close, propped up between his legs, their hands laced together and folded across Mike’s rattling chest. Villegas sat beside him, shoulders pressed together, and he kept one hand on Mike’s arm, as though holding on to a lifeline.

Eventually, Willy parked his truck on an uphill dirt slope, twenty feet inside the thick tree line off the state highway. Few cars traversed that section of road. Tom eyed the trees, the isolation, the soaring mountains surrounding the canyon they were deep within.

Willy’s men hauled Barnes’s corpse out first, flinging it to the dirt and logrolling it up to the highway. Tom and Villegas helped Mike shuffle out of the truck bed. Mike’s eyes were barely open. Each breath was raspy, dangerously shallow. He leaned almost all his weight on Villegas and Tom.

Willy grabbed Mike’s face, holding his jaw in one hand. “Go get to living your life, marshal.” He nodded to Tom. “Get him to a hospital. He needs more antivenom. Goodbye, Brewers’ boy.”

Willy’s men skirted them and climbed back into the truck. The engine roared, the tires kicked back dirt and the truck bed fishtailed. Willy’s men stared as they roared away, their dark eyes burning through the forest long after the truck disappeared.

Stumbling, Villegas and Tom carried Mike up to the highway. No weapons, no cell phones, no gear. No cars, and likely not one for hours. They were all bleeding, and Mike was dying. He needed antivenom? The blood, it was snakebites? God, how many times had he been bitten? He was going to die in Tom’s arms.

They collapsed at the side of the highway, exhaustion and blood loss and the loss of adrenaline pulling their legs from beneath them. Tom rolled Mike into his arms, dragged him up, until their cheeks were pressed together and he could wrap his arms around Mike from behind. Villegas slid in beside him, holding one arm over Mike as well.

“Why are you here, Inspector Villegas?” Tom’s eyelids were heavy. He wanted to close them, but tried to blink them open.

“Winters tasked me to follow you. I put a tracker in your bag, that night I took over from Mike.”

“Why? Why follow me?”

“That’s way above my paygrade. All I know is, Winters is working with Ballard.”

Fear made Tom freeze. Ballard and Barnes were close. Colleagues and friends. Co-conspirators? Again, he felt that nausea-inducing sense of vertigo, of standing above the edge of a dark chasm, and wondering how far the drop to the bottom was. How deep did the betrayals go?

“I hear something.” Villegas shifted and sat up. He frowned, as if he could force his ears to work harder. “Sirens. I hear sirens.”

A few seconds later, Tom heard them too. Sirens screaming up the highway, the roar of tires, brakes squealing around the hairpin mountain turns. “Willy. He radioed it in.” Tom sagged over Mike, watching the ragged rise and fall of his chest. He smiled, and let his eyes slide closed as Villegas struggled to his feet and waved down the cavalry.

Chapter 40

August 2^nd

Tom went from the hazy nothings of sleep to adrenaline-fueled wakefulness in a split-second. Gasping, he surged upward, staring wildly around him. Where was he? What had happened? Where was Mike? He was in a hospital, in a private room. Monitors beeped steadily beside him, and an IV pole held a bag of fluids. A line went into one arm, a steady stream of who-knew-what pumping into his system. His other arm was in a cast, his shoulder wrapped in bandages and immobilized in a sling.

“Whoa! Easy, easy.”

Tom whipped around.

Dylan Ballard was rubbing his eyes, sitting up from a chair pushed next to his bedside. His suit was rumpled, jacket gone, button-down untucked, tie loose and the top buttons undone. He looked like shit, and Ballard never looked like shit.

He tensed. Was Ballard there to shove a pillow over his face? See how much he’d found out? Where was Mike?

Ballard sighed, scrubbing his hands down his face before holding them together in front of his lips, as if praying. “Jesus Christ, Tom,” he muttered. “Jesus H Christ.”

“What’s going on? Where’s Mike?” Tom coughed after he spoke, his voice raspy and dry. Ballard passed him a cup of water from his bedside table.

“Inspector Lucciano is in ICU. He’s… It’s not good. Between the stab wounds and the fourteen rattlesnake bites, it’s a Goddamn miracle he even made it out of West Virginia.”

The monitors beside Tom beeped faster, the tones spiking in time with his racing, pounding heart. “Is he—”

“He’s not going to die. That much I know. But everything else is being kept quiet.” Ballard sighed. “Medical privacy, you know. Only his family, his next of kin, can see him, or know any of the details.” Ballard swallowed. “Are you… his next of kin?”

 Tom squeezed his eyes closed. The monitors kept beeping, a frantic, panicked pace. He breathed in, as deeply as he could, though his lungs seemed frozen. They didn’t work. He couldn’t breathe. He shook his head. They hadn’t gotten that far. Jesus, would he ever be able to see Mike? Who was taking care of him?

Would he be shoved aside, medically, legally, politically inconsequential in the eyes of the law, as far as he and Mike were concerned? Was he alone? Who was with him?

“Marshal Winters is acting as Mike’s health care proxy. His surrogate.”

Tom nodded, blinking fast. The marshals, like all law enforcement agencies, had systems in place, procedures to take care of their people. Mike was being taken care of. He’d be all right.

Tom had to believe that. He had to. He’s not going to die Ballard had said.

After everything, after all that they had been through, after finding the love of his life—

He couldn’t lose it all now.

Taking a slow breath, Tom forced his mind to switch tracks, like a giant train engine lurching from one rail line to another.

“What’s going on?” He almost didn’t want to know, didn’t want to face the way the world had completely and totally unraveled.

“What isn’t…” Ballard muttered. “The FBI processed your cabin. They found Pasha Baryshnikov with a knife in his chest. Your prints on the blade.”

“Is he dead?”

“No.” Ballard eyeballed him. “But he’s not talking. Won’t say a word about what happened. Rob Villegas is our only witness right now, and he didn’t see everything.” Ballard held out his hands, defeat in the lines of his shoulders and the deadness of his eyes. “Why is Lucas Barnes dead, Tom? Why did he drive out to your cabin with Pasha Baryshnikov? What the hell happened?”

If Ballard was in on it, he was covering his tracks well. Tom hesitated, but started talking, starting from him and Mike heading out for the weekend and going to his cabin. He skimmed the first day and skipped to the second, when they were coming back from their hike and found Barnes’s SUV parked in their driveway.

Mike, staying outside. Him, inside with Etta Mae—

“Where’s my dog?”

“They brought her back from the cabin. She’s fine.”

Worrying, wondering. Waiting. Pasha showing up. Shock, and then the horror of realizing just how they’d all been duped. Betrayed. The sickness, the agony, the raw hate and sheer dread he’d been washed in when Pasha told him Mike was gone. His desperate escape and flight through the woods, Barnes on his heels. Villegas, appearing out of nowhere. Mike, aided by his crazy old neighbor and a gang of domestic terrorists, who wanted more than anything to kill all three of them.

Ballard hung his head as he listened, his hands laced behind his neck. He stared at the floor, letting Tom’s story wash over him in wave after wave of death and despair. “Jesus Christ,” he finally muttered.

“How far does this go? Barnes was working with Pasha. He offered to turn Villegas, bring him into their operation. He was a double agent for the Russians. Did you know?”

“No. I had no fucking idea.” Ballard heaved a sigh, like his lungs were cracking in half. “We knew there was a mole, though,” he said slowly. “That’s why Villegas was following you. We thought someone might try and take a shot at you, especially since you were sticking to your guns with this trial. Making it so damn hard for everyone.”

Tom frowned. “Now it’s my turn, Dylan. What the hell is really going on here?”

“We’re still trying to put it all together. Figure it all out. I…” Ballard spread his hands, helpless. “I only know my part. The White House didn’t know what the hell was going on, after the shooting. We all really thought it was Kryukov. The evidence was there, Desheriyev was righteously pissed, and his confession stood up to scrutiny. We thought we had it nailed. But… the Russian documents.” Ballard shook his head. “We knew those were fake. The White House, the president, everyone knew. But how did the Russians know the details about our Russian operations? How did they know exactly what they did to be able to create that forgery? So many details about the Russian CIA station, the embassy, hell, even the bank accounts used for clandestine operations. We knew we had a mole. But who? Were the arrests of the three officers just a cover for extracting a double agent? Or was it someone here? How deep had we been penetrated? We had a CIA team on the ground, trying to find out more.”

“I know about the CIA team. I’m friends with one of the guys who went over there”

“You? Friends?” Ballard smiled, pathetically, at his weak joke. But then he winced, as if preparing to deliver bad news. “We realized if the Russian documents implicating Kryukov were fake, then Kryukov must have been innocent.” Ballard winced. “It was the only logical answer.”

“You prosecuted an innocent man? You forced an innocent man to endure a trial, when you knew he didn’t commit the crime?”

“I never claimed to be an angel, Tom. That’s your specialty.” He clasped his hands together, wringing his fingers. “You needed to be clean. You needed to be above everything. We can’t mix intelligence operations and the judicial system. But… I knew I could wind you up. Treat you like shit, and turn this trial into a disaster. I knew I could build in openings for Kryukov’s appeal, if I just acted like a monster.”

“You certainly did that.”

“I know.” Ballard looked down. Stared at the floor. “I know, Tom. I’m…” He shook his head. “We were trying to find the mole, and trying to make it look like we weren’t onto them. Trying to keep the prosecution of Kryukov going, so they might slip up. Jesus, Barnes was in on it. He was helping to find the mole. He was throwing the investigation from the first moment.” He shook his head, chuckling at himself, darkly. “Winters thought you might be a target, since you were being so damn unimpeachable through the whole thing.” He looked up. “You never once buckled. Never once compromised your principles.”

“That’s what judges do, Dylan. They uphold the law, no matter what. They respect the Constitution, and due process.”

“That’s what good judges do. Fink… he would have folded.” Ballard wrung his fingers again. “It’s a Goddamn blessing you got this trial, Tom. You’re the only one who could have done this.”

Silence. “You mean, identify Pasha? Because he and I were lovers, a lifetime ago?”

He thought there’d be something when he finally said it out loud, finally admitted that he was gay, that he loved men. Some split in the sky, some rend in the earth. Some reaction, somewhere. Ballard rearing back, at least, or staring at him like he had three heads, or running from him in disgust. He’d always girded himself for the worst.

For twenty-five years, he’d been his own monster in his mind. Of course the world would react the same. He’d known that, like he knew the sky was blue, and he needed air to breathe. And, like he knew he loved Mike, every inch of the man, inside and out.

But Ballard just shook his head. “Not that. I mean, that was a shock. To everyone. No one had any idea. But, because you and Baryshnikov were lovers, you blew Barnes’s entire world, and the whole conspiracy, open. What I meant was, you’re the only one who could have steered the right course, Tom. Could have done this the right way.” Ballard smiled, just once, briefly. “Your Honor.”

“Villegas said Winters was working with you?”

“Winters came to us. Said he was concerned about someone in this conspiracy taking a shot at you. That we didn’t know who all was involved in this whole thing, but he knew one person who wasn’t: Rob Villegas. Villegas and Winters worked together before coming to the judicial side of the marshals. Villegas was undercover, for years. Winters was his case agent. Those two men went through hell and back. Winters knows everything about Villegas, because he had to put him back together after their undercover operation went south, and Villegas ended up in the hospital for five months.”

Tom stayed quiet. He’d never known any of this. Not a single hint, or a whisper. The marshals ran a tight ship, and took care of their own.

“Winters said he was going to task Villegas with tracking you. When you were in DC, it was easy. We put a tracker on you, and then you moved into the Hyatt. And thank God he put that tracker on you, or Barnes would have had no one to stop him out in West Virginia.”

“How did Barnes track us?”

“He skipped the FISA courts and went straight to breaking the law. Or, further breaking the law. Tracked your cell phones out of the SCIF room at FBI headquarters.”

“Why didn’t Winters trust Mike?”

“Inspector Lucciano was acting suspicious.” Ballard shrugged. “We eventually figured out why. But, early on…”

“Mike is the best man I know.”

“Clearly.” Ballard spared a small smile. “How long have you two been together?”

Tom swallowed. “We started dating a couple days before the shooting. We were… we were there. At the Pride march. On a date.” He shook his head. “I didn’t know what to do or what to think after, but I knew I wanted to be with Mike. No matter what. I didn’t want to have to give that up.”

“You… had to give up a lot in your life.” Ballard’s expression turned soft. “We all thought you were a robot. Or a eunuch.”

“Closeted. Deeply, deeply closeted.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “Too afraid to come out.”

Ballard reached for his hand, closed in a fist around his hospital blanket, and squeezed. “I’m glad you did, Tom. You deserve to be happy. Especially after this.” He stood, heaving a sigh. “I have to go to the White House and the FBI and then back to the courthouse and try and put all this shit together. The president is going to call the Russians soon.”

“Why are you here?”

“Didn’t want you to wake up alone.” Ballard grabbed his suit jacket from where it had fallen on the floor and balled it up. “Tom… Your Honor…” He sighed, his shoulders slumping like a broken justice scale pulled down and falling toward the floor. “I’m glad you were picked as judge. Instead of me.”

Tom’s throat closed, but he managed to nod, almost smiling. Dylan smiled back and then walked out. Tom fell back against the mountain of pillows on his bed and let the tears fall.

He was released from the hospital two days later with a bottle of painkillers and his arm immobilized for the next two months. “Ironically, you have a similar injury as President Vasiliev received,” the surgeon said. “Only not as bad. Vasiliev was shot with a high-caliber rifle round. You were only hit with a nine mil.”

“Only.” Tom tried to smile. His shoulder ached, and his arm itched under the cast.

Marshal Winters walked into his hospital room, then, wearing his usual dark suit and crisp white button-down. His gaze swept over Tom, sitting in the hospital’s rickety wheelchair in just a borrowed pair of scrubs. For the first time ever, Tom saw him crack a small smile.

“Judge Brewer. How are you feeling?”

“Pretty terrible.”

“I can imagine. Your Honor, we are placing you under U.S. marshal protection. We’re still untangling what happened with Barnes, Baryshnikov, and their connections to Moscow. You are a witness, Judge Brewer. We need to keep you under protection in case there is another attempt on your life.”

Tom sighed and sagged back in the wheelchair. “And this time, no Mike.” He fidgeted. He hadn’t been allowed to see Mike, or even ask about him. All information about Mike’s condition, and even his location, was being held back, kept locked away on a need-to-know-basis.

Winters cracked a tiny grin. “Your Honor, I will be managing your protection detail personally.”

Tom’s eyebrows rose, sky-high.

“We’re taking you home. I’m sure you want to recover in the comfort of your own place. I’m posting ‘round the clock surveillance on your curb and in a perimeter around your house. You’ll have to deal with some press camping on your street, but we’ll do our best to scare them away.”

“I’ll be camping on my couch, so they can bore themselves out there all they want.” Tom tried to smile. “Thank you. I appreciate your consideration. In this, and… with everything.”

Winters stepped behind him and gripped the handles of his wheelchair. He said nothing as he steered Tom down the hall and into the elevator, and then into the garage, where a team of marshals were waiting in a convoy of blacked-out SUVs. Winters personally helped Tom into his SUV, cradling his shoulder and sling as he clambered inside.

Going home was a depressing experience.

The one spot of happiness was Etta Mae, waiting for him with a pink bandana and a ribbon around her neck, galloping down the hall as soon as he and Winters walked in. Winters held her back so she wouldn’t hurt his arm—she had to sniff every inch of his cast and sling—and then she trotted at his heels, never letting him out of her sight.

“Did she get a bath?”

“I took her to get groomed this morning. She’s been staying with me.”

Tom didn’t know how to react to that.

Winters showed him the fridge, which had been stocked with the basics, and his countertops, covered with bread, apples, chips, salsa, soup, and crackers. “If there’s anything you need, call us.”

He closed his eyes, not sure how to ask for what he really needed. It wasn’t fear, not anymore. Months ago, in this very spot, he’d told Mike he was gay. Now, he was staring at Mike’s boss and trying to figure out how to keep his heart from breaking.

“I need to see Mike.”

Winters frowned. “That’s not a good idea. We’re keeping both of you under protective watches. It’s best for you to lay low right now. Don’t make yourself—or him—any more of a target.”

He closed his eyes. “How is he? Really?”

“Not good. But he’s a fighter. Every day he’s getting a bit better.”

“Please, there has to be a way I could see him? Even for just a few minutes? Anytime, even if it’s the middle of the night. Whatever you think—”

Winters sighed. “He’s in a coma, Judge Brewer. The doctors have put him in a medically-induced coma. He won’t know you’re there.”

His heart shattered. He wanted to vomit, wanted to collapse to the floor, wanted to scream and shriek at Winters to just let him go. Let him be at Mike’s side. Damn it, Mike would know he was there, he would. And he’d wake up, and the first thing he’d see would be Tom. They’d smile and kiss, and everything would be fine. It would all be fine.

“He’s in isolation. The hospital isn’t letting us in to see him either. Every day, I call for an update. I will call you immediately, every day, and tell you everything they tell me.”

He mumbled something and walked Winters to the front door. Winters looked like he wanted to say more, but didn’t. He stared at Tom for a long moment before stepping out.

Shutting the front door felt like he was closing a tomb.

His shutters were all closed, blinds drawn, curtains pulled shut. Dust had settled over his bookcases and end tables, his granite countertops and glass light shades. He hadn’t been in his house for months. When was the last time he’d slept here? Oh, right. The night of the shooting, when he’d watched the news for hours and frantically clung to his phone, praying that Mike would be safe.

Upstairs, his bed was unmade, blankets tossed akimbo, as if someone had gotten up in a hurry. Mike’s clothes—tactical gear—were on the floor. What he’d worn the night of the search for Desheriyev. Tom plucked out Mike’s old t-shirt and held it to his nose. God, Mike…

Gently, he folded himself into the space Mike had left, the empty tangle of sheets and an indent on the pillow. Etta Mae whined to jump up next to him, but she settled for resting her chin on the edge of the bed, right next to his face.

He could practically feel Mike’s arms around him, feel Mike holding him close, cradling him in the safety of his arms. Gasping, Tom buried his face in Mike’s t-shirt, breathing in Mike’s stale scent after a night of searching for Desheriyev, adrenaline and action. It was all Mike, and, to Tom, it was heavenly. It was home.

Mike had promised to keep him safe through the trial. Had promised, over and over again, and Tom had always believed him. He knew Mike would go to the ends of the earth, do anything to keep him safe, and he’d never felt more protected. Never felt more cherished, or loved, than when Mike took his hand in that reassuring way, or sat beside him, silent and sentinel and supporting.

But keeping Tom safe wasn’t supposed to come at the expense of Mike. That wasn’t how this was supposed to go. That wasn’t how this was supposed to go at all.

The tears came swiftly, searing rivers that melted from his eyes. He wailed into Mike’s shirt, trying to huff his scent, as Etta Mae licked every one of his tears from his cheeks.

The trial did not resume on Monday, and a nervous public watched and waited. Speculation about the events in West Virginia and the death of an FBI agent and the wounding of a federal judge sent the media into a frenzy.

True to his word, Winters called Tom every day with an update from the hospital. Mike went from critical to serious, and his vitals were slowly improving. He’d had multiple surgeries patching up internal hemorrhages from the envenomation of the multiple snake bites, as well as Barnes’s stab wounds. He was still in a coma, though, and his blood pressure was still too low.

On Wednesday, Winters and Ballard came back to his house.

“We need to talk to you about Pasha Baryshnikov.”

Ballard and Winters sat outside with Tom on his deck, watching as Etta Mae strolled in the yard. His rose bushes were dead and the flower beds overgrown, but he’d hired a gardener to tame the savannah that had sprouted in his absence.

Tom squinted at Ballard. “What do you want to know?”

“It’s not that. Your business with the man is all in the past, right?”

“Ancient history. A different geological epoch.”

Ballard smiled. “We wanted to know if you were open to helping the investigation. Baryshnikov has given us information on Barnes in order to spare his ass a one-way ticket to Guantanamo, but he’s not saying anything else. He says he’ll only talk if he gets to see you again. Talk to you.”

Tom turned away, watching Etta Mae root around in his dead planters. Circles within circles within circles. His past, roaring back in every which way, every possible way imaginable. Freedom and incarceration, choices made and unmade and remade.

The last time he’d seen Pasha, Pasha had threatened to attack him and kill him. And the time before that, twenty-five years ago, Pasha had cradled his face and told him he loved him, loved everything about him, and wanted to be with him forever. The same man, a lifetime apart. Circles within circles within circles.

But he was a different man than the Tom Brewer who’d been there for both of those memories. Different from twenty-five years ago, and different from just a few days ago.

“No. Pasha is completely free. Free to talk, free to deal, free to make up his own mind. He’s capable of deciding whether he speaks up to save his own neck without me. I won’t be blackmailed into seeing him again. He has no power over me. Nothing and no one has any power over me. Not anymore.  I have no obligation to the man. If he wants to condemn himself over his stubbornness, that is his free choice.”

On Thursday, Tom watched Dylan Ballard on TV, giving an address from the steps of the courthouse.

“The United States government has come into new evidence which changes the course and focus of our investigation. At this time, the government is declining to continue the prosecution of Mr. Vadim Kryukov. Mr. Bulat Desheriyev, who has already pleaded guilty to four counts of homicide and attempting to assassinate the Russian president, will be sentenced at a later date.”

He did not take questions. The media frenzy tripled.

Russian President Vasiliev exploded in a press briefing after, accusing the United States of covering up their own conspiracy and trying to get away with murder, as well as his own attempted murder. He vowed that the Russian people would not stand for this abject degradation of the international order, and the international rule of law, and he put, officially, the United States “on notice”.

In the new light of understanding, Tom saw his words for what they were: the bluster of a buffoon, the railings of a man trying too hard to sell his outrage. He ranted and roared, and the media gobbled the outrage up, utterly convinced the world was tipping over into the chasm of the next global conflagration, a war that would devastate millions, perhaps billions. Russia would react over this, the news assured Tom. They would seriously react over this. What on earth was the U.S. government thinking?

Still, every nation on the planet was locked and loaded, ready for war. Sides were already being called, alliances drawn up. Military exercises ramped up in the South China Sea, the Norwegian Sea, and off the Baltics and Kaliningrad.

Chapter 41

August 7^th

Friday morning, President McDonough sat with his Secretary of State, his National Security Advisor, his close staff, and Dylan Ballard in the Situation Room at the White House. They all listened to Russian President Dimitry Vasiliev, his booming voice echoing out of the speakerphone embedded in the long conference table.

“Mr. President, you cannot expect that we will allow this travesty to stand. You know we know the truth. You know we know what you and your CIA ordered. This, Mr. President, is an act of war.”

“Actually, Mr. President, you and I both know what really happened here in DC. It was an act of war. An act of war against America, by Russia.”

“How dare you—”

“An act of war perpetrated by you, President Vasiliev. We know all about it.”

“First you attempt to kill me and now you threaten me with—”

“We have Pasha Baryshnikov. I understand he’s an old friend of yours? At least, that is what he’s telling us. He’s also telling us all about the plot you two concocted. How you planned this entire operation, not just to frame America for the attempted assassination, but wipe out two troublesome dissidents as well: Bulat Desheriyev and Vadim Kryukov. Kryukov has been a thorn in your side for some time now, hasn’t he? Wasn’t he the man who exposed the sexual abuse going on in Russian prisons? He kicked off that investigation by Amnesty International, right? And wasn’t Russia accused of gross human rights violations? Wait, I have the report here. Let me refresh my memory. Yes, that’s right. ‘Gross human rights violations’.”

Silence, from Vasiliev.

“Let me be perfectly fucking clear, Dimitry. We know everything. We know that you cloned Kryukov’s voice and hired Desheriyev. You used Pasha Baryshnikov as your footman, planting evidence against Kryukov. The cocaine. The text from his phone. You even had Baryshnikov order Desheriyev to shoot you in the chest instead of the head. You were wearing a vest, weren’t you? A level four vest to catch rifle rounds. But that doesn’t cover the head, does it? No wonder the Secret Service thought you were a heavy fat ass when they carried you to your motorcade, thinking they were saving your life. With a rifle that powerful, you’re lucky all you walked away with was a shattered shoulder.”

More silence.

“You tried to frame an innocent man, the CIA, and plunge the world into war. Your plan cost the lives of three Americans, three brave men who were doing their duty. You, Dimitry Vasiliev, are a murderer. You murdered Americans, and that is an act of war. You have also used this entire conspiracy to invade NATO allied countries. I will say this once, and only once: get your fucking troops out of the Baltics, or we will force them out.”

Vasiliev hummed, a combination grumble and hiss. “Estonia has experienced… internal secession problems, of late. That is entirely an internal matter. We do not care about such things.”

“I expect every single Russian soldier to be gone, out of NATO lands, in twenty-four hours. Or our missiles will take care of any stragglers.”

Vasiliev snorted.

“The American diplomats you have illegally arrested will also be released. Immediately. Have I made myself perfectly fucking clear, Dimitry?”

Vasiliev hung up.

Chapter 42

August 8^th

Mike had been dreading this moment, this very moment. Winters hovered outside his hospital door, finishing a call. He was about to walk in, face Mike, and read him the riot act. Probably hand over his termination papers. Flush him from the marshals.

He deserved it, he supposed. And he wouldn’t change a thing. But, it still sucked. If only he had a time machine, and he could skip past this part. Skip past all of this, from waking up bleary in the hospital bed, with a nurse crowing about how they’d been certain he wasn’t going to last the first night, what with the number of snakebites he had, the blood loss he’d endured. He’d needed bags and bags of blood, triple the number of antivenom doses usually administered. He’d needed multiple surgeries, after the antivenom brought him back from the edge of death. He’d been on a breathing machine for days, and had come to as she was pulling his breathing tube out of his throat. Miraculous, she said, watching over his recovery. Miraculous.

“I have something to live for,” he’d told her. “Someone.”

She’d thought that was the dreamiest thing she’d ever heard, and she batted her eyelashes at him every time she came in to help him to the bathroom or help him hobble up and down the halls. She’d rushed in and given him an early warning, that the whole ward had been alerted that Marshal Winters was on his way.

Mike picked at his sheet, pulling fibers from the scratchy hospital cotton. At least he was in clothes. His nurse had gotten him a pack of boxers and some t-shirts. He wasn’t going to be talking to his boss in a flimsy gown with his ass hanging out.

Finally, Winters hung up. He hesitated before walking in, and Mike didn’t know how to read that. He straightened, squaring his shoulders, and tried to look respectful, professional, as Winters marched to his bedside. “Sir.”

Winters held out his hand. “Drop the sir, Mike. You’re back from the dead. You can relax.”

He smiled and shook Winters’s hand, and then leaned back, just slightly. “Thank you, sir.”

Winters sent him a droll look, but pulled up a hospital chair and sat down. He peered at Mike.

The moment stretched like a rubber band, pulling and pulling until Mike thought he was going to snap. “Sir, I know—”

“Why didn’t you tell me about your relationship with Judge Brewer?”

He hunted for words, the right thing to say. “It… was brand new at the time. When you asked if I had anything to share. I didn’t know if it was going to last the rest of that day, much less the week. The month. We’d only gone on our first date.”

“And after that? You didn’t come back to update me?”

Mike hung his head. “I didn’t want to be pulled off his protective detail. I’d have gone crazy, not being able to be there for him during this trial.”

“You could have worked command staff. On my team. Not off the detail, but not the point man. And you wouldn’t have had to hide where you were every night, either.”

Mike peeked up at Winters. “A marshal and a judge have never, ever hooked up. I know. I checked. There are procedures in place for AUSAs, defense attorneys, other agents, and witnesses—”

“First time for everything.” Winters arched one eyebrow. “As you might have realized, the marshals are more of a cowboy kind of organization. We circle the wagons. We protect our own, sometimes to the wrong ends. For good or for bad. But we never cut a marshal loose, or hang them out to dry. Ever.” His eyes bored into Mike. “We’re also flexible. We adapt to new situations. No one ever thought a judge would want anything to do with a marshal because most judges are ancient. Or married. Or otherwise undesirable.” A glint appeared in his eyes. “But you happened to find the one judge who was the exception to all that.”

Silence.

“What happens now?” Mike croaked.

“Now, you heal. You’re coming back from the dead. Take time to recover.”

“And after?”

“After, you’ll report to the courthouse, where you and Villegas will switch court loads. You can’t date Judge Brewer and manage his security. But you don’t have to be escorted out of the building because of it, either.”

He didn’t know what to say. The sheet he’d been mangling was a mess, ripped threads, balled-up sections, torn fabric and knots in the strings. He shifted, stared, opened his mouth. Closed it. “Can I see him? Judge Brewer?”

“Not yet. We’re still chasing down our last leads. Judge Brewer has been put in temporary witness protection until we’re sure Pasha Baryshnikov doesn’t have any more agents, Russian or American, working for him.”

He slumped backward. Damn it.

“It’s best you keep a low profile. You and Judge Brewer are known to be close associates now. If someone wants to get at either one of you, they may strike from the side. You can best help Judge Brewer right now by lying low.” He fixed Mike with a firm glare. That wasn’t a suggestion. It was an order. Mike nodded.

Winters pulled out an envelope from his jacket pocket. He passed it over. “These evidence photos were taken at Tom’s cabin in West Virginia. They were not pertinent to the overall investigation, so they were pulled from the file.”

He flicked through the photos: his and Tom’s duffels, their messy bed, their clothes strewn everywhere. Two pairs of men’s underwear on the floor. Lube on the nightstand. Obviously, a bedroom where two men had made love, over and over again.

The room where he’d told Tom he loved him, and where Tom had said the words back. He replayed that memory a thousand times a day, listening to Tom’s breathless whisper, watching the sparkle of his eyes as he gazed up at Mike, in the darkness behind his eyelids. Tom loved him. That would still be true, still be there, after all of this, right? He’d said he wasn’t going to go back to the closet, no matter what. That they were going to be together, hopefully forever.

The room where he’d bared his soul to Tom looked drab and lifeless in the harsh light of the evidence photos. There was a chill to his memories now, a pall that felt like death.

Would Tom cling to that conviction, now that everything was out in the open? It was easy to love in secret.

It was much, much harder to live in the sunlight and be known. Make the world your own.

“You should know…” Winters peered at him. “I call him every day with an update on your status.”

Mike closed his eyes. Tom… I miss you so damn much. I love you.  

“What should I tell him when I call today?”

Mike swallowed hard. Everything that had happened, everything that was still happening, was Tom’s worst nightmare. A public outing, the spotlight of the media, the world’s gaze turned on him and his secret, painting him in shades of shame and self-hate. What would happen to them? What would they be after this? Would Tom’s fear seize him again? He said he wouldn’t, said that he wanted this, them, together. But that was before their worlds had imploded.

Was he enough? Was he, Mike, enough for Tom to change his entire life? The course of his existence?

Was their love enough to survive this?

History was a cruel mistress.

Tom had run from his first love. Would he do so again?

He shook his head, blinking fast as he fought through his clenched throat. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“I can’t… I can’t pressure him. He needs to decide if he wants this. Us.” Mike swallowed hard. He didn’t want to lose it in front of his boss, Goddamnit. “I won’t push. I’ll wait for him. Wait for him to make his choice.”

His nurse bustled in, smiling. “There’s another visitor here to see you.”

Behind her, Kris appeared, his duffel slung over his shoulder, dark circles marring the skin under his eyes, and his delicate lower lip split and scabbed. He grinned. “I came straight from the airport, you big bruise.”

Winters left as Mike held out his hand for Kris, his expression cracking, the anxiety, the misery, the heartache all cresting and wrenching apart his heart. His tears started to fall as Kris sat on the edge of his bed, and he folded into Kris’s arms, letting it all out into his shoulder as Kris stroked his hair.

Chapter 43

August 12^th

Tom was a nervous wreck, pacing up and down the long length of the Roosevelt Room in the White House. What was he doing there? Why had the president wanted to see him? How was Mike? Was he getting better? Was he hurting? When would they be able to see each other again?

The separation ground on his nerves, filled his brain with too many thoughts, too many neurons firing off in every direction. His anchor was gone, and he was rocking on the waves of his anxieties, lost at sea. Fears crept in, slipping in through his nightmares and his hesitations.

And, damn it, his cast still itched and his shoulder ached.

The door opened, creaking softly, and Tom whipped around.

Chief Judge Clarence Fink shuffled inside. He smiled sadly as he spotted Tom.

Tom’s mouth went dry. He tried to speak, tried to find his voice, but only managed to croak out a tiny hello.

Fink sighed. “Strange times we live in these days.”

Tom could only nod. Fink made his way to the table, pulling out one of the heavy leather chairs and sitting down slowly. He seemed older than the last time Tom had seen him, aged somehow beyond the three months it had been. The last time they had interacted, Fink and he had shouted at each other, and Fink had disparaged his judicial abilities. He’d bucked Fink’s authority, refusing to bow to his command at the court.

Fink stared at the wall, at a painting of Teddy Roosevelt. “Tom?” He didn’t look Tom’s way. “Is it true? What they’re saying at the courthouse? You and that marshal…”

He breathed in, slowly. “His name is Mike. Inspector Mike Lucciano, Deputy U.S. Marshal. And… Yes. We’re seeing each other.”

Fink’s shoulders slumped, sagging deep into his chest as he curled forward. “I’m getting too old for this world. I was born in the nineteen-twenties. I thought I had seen it all.” He shook his head and glanced at Tom. “Are you… happy?”

Tom nodded, again. “He’s—he’s the man I came out for. He’s the man I love.”

When he smiled, Fink’s face scrunched up and his eyes almost disappeared, hidden in the folds of his wizened face. “That’s good. I’ve learned, in all my years, that the most important thing is to be happy. And, to not break the law.” His smile faded. “This job made me happy for many years. But… it’s time to move along.”

“Sir?” Tom frowned.

“I’m going in there to tell President McDonough that I’m retiring. Which means there will be a new judge coming to our bench soon. Well, not our bench anymore. Your bench. You won’t be the baby judge for very much longer.”

He didn’t know what to say. Chief Judge Fink had been the lion of the DC federal bench for decades. He’d been a fixture in DC, a bastion of justice. He’d been a part of every major landmark trial impacting the federal government, the world. He’d shaped history in more ways than Tom knew.

But the country was a different place than it had been when Clarence Fink donned his robes. There was more freedom, more hope. More anger, too. And hurt, and danger. More of everything that made up the world, all of the good and the bad and everything in between.

They all just had to find space in that maelstrom called life and hang on tight.

“Good luck, Judge Fink.”

Fink smiled at him. “You too, Judge Brewer.”

Finally, it was time for Tom to meet with President McDonough.

He was escorted into the Oval Office by the president’s chief of staff, a fussy man who constantly checked his phone and muttered under his breath. He waited with Tom, breathing curses and fast-typing with his thumbs.

McDonough breezed in from his private study, smiling as he came toward Tom. “Judge Brewer. It’s an honor to meet you.”

“The honor is mine, Mr. President.” He shook awkwardly with the opposite hand, his good arm still bound up in his cast and sling.

“I’m glad you could come. I know you’re recovering. Thank you for taking the time to drop by.”

Drop by. As if being invited to the White House by the President of the United States was a backyard picnic invitation he could blow off. “Happy to, sir.”

McDonough thanked his chief of staff and invited Tom to sit on his lemon-colored couches. The Oval Office was bright and cheerful, the obvious touch of his wife brightening the office. Sunflowers sat in a vase in the center of the coffee table between the two couches.

“Judge Brewer, I wanted to personally thank you for your tenacity, your diligence, and your bravery in this entire situation. Without you, we would never have uncovered the Russians’ plot.”

“I was just doing my job, Mr. President.”

“You did a hell of a job, Judge Brewer. One hell of a job.” He nodded to Tom’s arm. “And you got injured in the line of duty, as it were. That’s not a usual risk for federal judges.”

He smiled, weakly.

“I also wanted to fill you in on the rest. As we’ve learned from interrogating Pasha Baryshnikov, Lucas Barnes was coopted by Russian FSB agents about sixteen years ago. Baryshnikov was a mid-level FSB agent working in ‘New Russia’, and he set up Barnes, working at the New York field office at the time, in a honeypot trap. Barnes fell for a beautiful woman, someone he thought was a Swedish dancer working her way into the New York City Ballet. She was actually Lena Orlov, and she died a ‘hero of the Russian Federation’… in Barnes’s apartment, in a staged scene set to look like Barnes had lost control and had beaten her, then raped her and killed her. Baryshnikov was there, and he offered Barnes a choice: either he worked for them, or Baryshnikov turned over evidence implicating Barnes in her death.”

“He chose door number two?”

“He did. Along the way, blackmail turned into a partnership when Barnes realized he was making a tidy profit. We’re still uncovering all his financial hidey-holes. Bank accounts in Switzerland. Homes bought in cash with dummy corporations in Europe and the Caribbean. A boat he kept in New Zealand.”

“How much damage has he done to national security?”

“Sixteen years’ worth of espionage, and working his way up to being the number one Russian counter-operations FBI agent? He did quite a lot. We’re still working that out.” McDonough sighed. “He and Baryshnikov—and Vasiliev—almost got away with this. They almost got away with pushing the planet into war.”

“The world still thinks we’re heading for war, Mr. President. Have you seen the news?”

“I’m about to address the nation. The White House gave the networks a heads-up when you arrived. I’d like to ask you to join me as I speak, Judge Brewer.”

“Me?”

“Every story needs a hero, Tom.” McDonough stood, buttoning his suit jacket. “And you’re the hero of this one.” He squeezed Tom’s good shoulder, smiling broadly. “I also want to tell you I think you’re one hell of a judge, and you’ve catapulted your way to the top of my short list of candidates for the Supreme Court. If you want it…” He winked. “We’ll see what happens in the next few years.”

The world spun, and Tom stumbled, just slightly, as he stood. “Mr. President— I can’t— I—” He slowed down, taking a steadying breath. “Mr. President.” He closed his eyes. Opened them. “You should know. I’m gay.”

McDonough’s smile grew even wider. “Fantastic! It’s high time we had a justice on the Supreme Court represent the LGBT community.” He squeezed Tom’s shoulder again, and then dropped his hand. “Are you seeing someone?”

This wasn’t real. This wasn’t happening. This wasn’t the reaction he was supposed to get when he came out. Blinking, Tom fumbled for words, for his own breath. “Uh, yes, Mr. President. I am.”

“Well, we’ll have to have you and your partner over for dinner soon. I’d love to meet him.” He gestured for the door out of the Oval Office. “Will you join me, Judge Brewer?”

McDonough’s speech was an arrow to the center of the DC Sniper attacks.

He began by thanking law enforcement, the national security and intelligence agencies, the courts, and the judicial system, for their diligent, exacting work. He heaped praise upon their efforts to uncover the true roots of the DC Sniper attack.

And then, he let it all out of the bag.

Russian President Vasiliev’s role in the attacks. His using a cutout, and framing Kryukov for an attack he knew nothing about. His goal, to push the world to war, which had very nearly succeeded.

“A short time ago,” McDonough said, his voice booming. “I ordered the State Department to rescind diplomatic protection for Russian President Dimitry Vasiliev, and further instructed the Attorney General to issue an arrest warrant for President Vasiliev. He is a murderer. He meticulously planned an operation that led to the deaths of three American heroes. In America, we bring justice to those who have suffered, and to those who have lost. We bring justice to those who have been wronged. The whole world has been wronged by your actions, President Vasiliev. And if you ever attempt to enter the United States again, for any reason, you will be arrested. You will be tried. And you will be sentenced.”

He turned to Tom, then, smiling wide, and launched into a lengthy speech about Tom’s dedication to the truth and his pursuit of justice, and how he’d been crucial to uncovering the true depth of the plot. The full details were classified, but he gave the public a face and a story to cling to, the good guy to hold up. Tom felt the burn of the cameras on his skin, the eyeballs of millions and millions of Americans staring at him through their lenses like he was a hero in some kind of fairy tale.

“Judge Tom Brewer, on behalf of a grateful nation, I thank you for your actions.” President McDonough shook his hand and pulled him in, hugging him for a long, long moment. Tom heard the whirr and snap of a thousand cameras flashing. He closed his eyes and smiled.

After, McDonough led him back down the hall, away from the press and the mob of reporters, and back to the Oval Office. Winters was there, and McDonough shook his hand, traded small talk for a minute, and then reminded Tom that he’d be coming over for dinner soon, him and his partner both. President McDonough signed his cast, an ornate scribble with an American flag doodled at the end. Winters escorted Tom out of the White House.

In Winters’s SUV, Tom finally exhaled, letting go of the panic that had circled his heart, clenched his lungs until he felt like he couldn’t breathe. “I didn’t expect that.”

“What part?”

“Any of it. All of it. I thought—” He shook his head. “I always thought it would be so much worse.”

Winters frowned.

The world was still spinning. Tom gripped the edge of the seat and tried to hold on. He closed his eyes.

“Pasha Baryshnikov has cooperated with us. We now know his cell was only Barnes, himself, and Vasiliev. We’ve downgraded the threat level against you, and against Mike. You don’t need personal protection anymore.” Winters smiled. “And, Mike was released from the hospital. He’s back at home.”

Tom whipped around, staring. His heart hammered, joy thundering through him, a million lines of fire and lightning racing to his heart, his soul. “Take me to him.”

Mike stared at the TV screen, clutching his pillow to his chest. Another tear rolled down his cheek, running sideways to his temple. Kris brushed it away and then went back to running his fingers through his hair.

He’d been secreted out of the hospital by a team of marshals and brought back to his place with Kris. Kris thanked them for their chauffeuring and threw the entire team out, and then settled Mike on the couch. He pillowed Mike’s head on his thigh and stroked his hair, over and over and over.

“Your man is a hero.”

“I know.” Another tear slipped free. “I’m scared, Kris.”

“Why?”

“This is exactly what he doesn’t want. Exactly what he was terrified of. Public exposure. The world focusing on him, putting him under the microscope. He never wanted this.”

Kris was quiet. Long fingers ran over his scalp, smoothed through his strands, again.

“I’m so scared. I told you it would end this way.”

Banging on the front door made them both jump. Kris cursed, Spanish and English mixing together as he gently shifted Mike’s head to a pillow and stood. “If it’s some puta reporter who got in, I’ll give them something to cry about.” Mike heard him rip open the door.

A beat. “It’s for you.”

Mike heaved himself up.

Tom stood in the doorway, swaying, as if he was going to fall into Mike’s place. His eyes were wide, blazing, burning, staring across Mike’s place and into Mike, staring like Mike was the sun, was a priceless jewel, a treasure he’d hunted for his whole life. His mouth was open, lips trying to form words.

Mike hurled himself unsteadily over the back of the couch. He ran to Tom, sizing him up, his eyes traveling over Tom, his arm in a cast, his shoulder in a giant sling. He reached for him, wrapping his arms around Tom’s waist, cradling him gently.

Tom melted into his hold. “Mike…”

“Oh my God… Oh my God…” Closing his eyes, Mike pressed his cheek to Tom’s hair, gasping as his heart finally shattered, burst apart in the best possible way. He tried to keep his sobs in, but couldn’t. He gasped again, shaking, and pulled Tom close, pressing their bodies together.

Tom clung right back, burying his face in Mike’s neck. “I did it,” he breathed. “I did it. I came out.”

Mike pulled back. “What?”

“I came out to the president. I told him I was gay. That I was seeing you.”

Mike’s jaw dropped.

“He said he wants to have us over for dinner.” Tom laughed, breathless, nearly hysterical. “Mike…”

Beaming, Mike wrapped his arms around Tom again, laughing with him, the tears on his cheeks now ones of joy. “I love you. I love you so much.”

“I love you, too.”

Kris slipped out as Tom and Mike started the “I love you more” game, breathing promises of everlasting love in between kisses and stroking hands.

He smiled. He’d been like that once.

At the curb, he spotted a dark SUV and a familiar man behind the wheel, tapping at his phone.

“Marshal Winters.” Kris leaned in the open passenger window, smirking. “I haven’t seen you since the Ali Mohamed thing.”

Winters arched a single eyebrow toward him. “What Ali Mohamed thing?”

Kris winked. “Exactly.” He opened the door and slid in. Winters kept staring at him. “Well? Where to?”

Much later, Tom lay propped on pillows in Mike’s bed, wrapped up in Mike’s arms. They were both in no shape to make love, but the comfort, the physical closeness, was a drug they couldn’t resist. Didn’t want to resist.

Tom cupped Mike’s cheek. Traced his cheekbones with his fingers, the line of his jaw. The curve of his lips. He wanted everything with Mike. Mike was his fairy tale, and they’d worked through the dark part, the danger. They were out of the woods now. His fairy tale would have a happy ending. “Move in with me and Etta Mae? Stay with us, forever?”

Mike beamed. He nodded, and cradled Tom’s cheek in return. Bit his lip. He gazed down into Tom’s eyes, love pouring into Tom like a waterfall. “Marry me?” he breathed. “Not next week, or next month. Not even next year, if you don’t want. But someday? Marry me?”

Smiling, Tom leaned in for a kiss, holding Mike’s gaze. A whisper away from Mike’s lips, he breathed, “Yes. Yes, Mike. Yes.”

Author’s Notes

Hush’s suspense and plot hinge on the technology of voice cloning, where Pasha was able to clone Kryukov’s voice and use it to frame Kryukov for the terrorist attack.

This technology is real and exists today. This is not science fiction.

Multiple commercial firms exist that will clone a person’s voice. CereVoice Me Voice Cloning Service, iSpeech, and Lyrebird all have programs (or AIs) that can replicate a near-perfect copy of a specific individual’s voice, and then use that synthesized voice to say or speak anything, as if they were that person.

Moral of the story?

Watch where you speak! Don’t let your voice get cloned!

About the Author

Tal Bauer is an award-winning and best-selling author of LGBT romantic thrillers, bringing together a career in law enforcement and international humanitarian aid to create dynamic characters, intriguing plots, and exotic locations. He is happily married and lives with his husband and their Basset Hound in Texas. Tal is a member of the Romance Writers of America and the Mystery Writers of America.

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Other Books By This Author

Please check out my other books:

The Executive Office Series

Enemies of the State

Interlude

Enemy of My Enemy

Enemy Within

Apocalypse of the Angels Series

A Time to Rise