Chapter Sixteen
Two steps back. Shaw could sense the impending crisis.
“What do I say?” Lee asked in a small voice when Shaw set the laptop in front of him. He bit his lip.
Shaw raised his hand before he even realized. Raised it to touch Lee’s face, to soothe away Lee’s frown, to run his thumb along Lee’s lip until his teeth released it. And then what? Well, that was the fucking problem, wasn’t it? Neither of them knew where to stop. Shaw moved back. He sat down and leaned his elbows on the table. He smiled slightly. “I dunno, mate. Just tell them you’re okay.”
This wasn’t Shaw’s idea. This was the DEA’s idea. And Shaw thought that it was bullshit. Two days. Why couldn’t they give him two days and let him do this inside a psychologist’s office? What difference would two days make to the people who had thought Lee was dead?
Shaw was not qualified for this.
Lee squinted at the screen. He sucked in a breath. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah.”
Shaw had read Lee’s file that morning, or at least what the DEA had passed on to Callie. Lee Anderson, twenty-two years old, DEA, Denver office. He had been born in Andover, Minnesota. Shaw had been right about his accent.
“What were you doing in Colombia, Lee?” Shaw asked him. He couldn’t imagine a Minnesota boy ending up in Colombia via Colorado. Which was a conceit, probably, because Shaw had been born in Ayr, a small town on the north Queensland coast with a population of about eight thousand. But Lee was still so young. Not the nineteen or twenty Shaw had first thought, but still young. He must have been ambitious at one point. He must have been assertive. Shaw couldn’t imagine that.
What a difference two months made. Would the people back home even recognize him?
Lee’s gaze flicked up from the screen. He looked grateful for the distraction. “Um, surveillance.”
“I know that.” Shaw smiled. “I meant you, specifically.”
“Oh.” Lee flushed. “I wanted to get more field work. I was on a temporary transfer to the Miami office. It was a joint operation…” He bit his lip. “Shit, I don’t know if I’m allowed to tell you any of this.”
Shaw shrugged. “Nah, I guess not. I was just curious about you. I wondered why you joined the DEA.”
“I wanted to be a cop, but…” Lee said. A shadow crossed his face and he looked away. “Doesn’t matter.”
“I wanted to be an astronaut,” Shaw told him and waited until Lee looked up again. “But it turns out we don’t have those.”
Lee rewarded him with a hesitant smile. “So you became James Bond instead?”
“Something like that,” Shaw agreed.
Somewhere under there was Lee Anderson, and Shaw was slowly drawing him to the surface. Shaw wanted to see him as a human being, just once, before it was all over. He wanted to know about his life. He wanted to know what sort of person he’d been before Vornis had broken him.
“Write your e-mail,” he said gently. “They’ve already been told you’re alive, Lee. They just want to hear it from you.”
Lee hunched over. “I don’t know what to say.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Lee said. He reached across the table and caught Lee’s hand. “Dear Mum and Dad, I’m okay. I’ll see you soon. Love, Lee.”
“Mum,” Lee said and snorted with amusement. “Mum!”
Shaw felt his breath catch in his throat. Was that the first time he’d heard anything like a laugh from Lee? Jesus, he wanted to hear it again! He raised his eyebrows. “Are you taking the piss out of my accent?”
“Mum,” Lee muttered and then laughed.
Shaw laughed as well. “Okay, Mom.”
He saw the moment Lee sank into himself again. The light faded from his eyes, and he pulled his hand away. He hunched his shoulders and stared at the screen of the laptop. “Yeah. Do you think I should say that? Do you think I should say I’m okay?”
Shaw forced an encouraging smile. “I think that’s enough for an e-mail. I think anything else you need to tell them should be done face-to-face.”
“I guess,” Lee said. He closed his eyes for a brief moment. “I didn’t think I’d see them again. I was sort of glad.”
Shaw didn’t say anything. He wondered if Lee was waiting for him to condemn him, to call him selfish or deluded, but Shaw didn’t believe in black and white. Shaw existed in shades of gray. Other men painted themselves into idealistic corners, but never Shaw.
“I don’t want them to know what happened to me,” Lee said at last, his voice strained.
“I know,” Shaw said. “You tell them what you think they need to know when you see them, and keep what you need a secret. You look out for yourself first, Lee.”
Fuck. That was harsh. For all he knew, Mom and Dad Anderson were the kindest, most loving, most understanding parents on the planet. For all he knew, they both had advanced degrees in psychology. And what was Shaw’s stellar advice? Avoidance. That was the best thing about avoidance, though. You got to avoid shit.
You sure you should be giving advice on mental-health coping mechanisms, king of the night terrors?
And there was that look again: full of trust and hope. Shaw hated that look.
“I’m going to tell you something,” Shaw said, “and I want you to really try and listen, okay?”
“Okay,” Lee murmured.
“When I get home,” Shaw said, “to my flat, I mean, not just Sydney, the first thing I’ll do is get undressed and get in the shower. And then I’ll take the dog for a walk to the dry cleaners. And when I get those clothes back, I won’t wear them. I’ll put them in a box at the back of my cupboard. Those are my work clothes. Suits, boxers, T-shirts, it doesn’t matter. I won’t wear them except for work. I won’t even look at them. You understand?”
Lee narrowed his eyes. “You mean I should put everything that happened to me in a box in the back of a cupboard?”
“If you have to,” Shaw said. “Not forever, not always. Just until you need to take it out again.”
Lee wrinkled his nose. “I thought you were James Bond, not Dr. Phil.”
“You and me, Lee,” Shaw said. “We’re out of Dr. Phil’s pay grade.”
Lee’s lips quirked.
“Everything that happened,” Shaw said, “it will always be there. But you have to learn how to put it away. I’m not the same guy I was on that island. That was work, and shit, Lee, I hope you know that. I hope you know that me, the real me, wouldn’t have let it go that far.”
His heart was thumping. Shit. What was that? He hadn’t meant to unburden himself like that. Lee didn’t need to have the passenger seat on Shaw’s personal guilt trip along with everything else.
“You saved me,” Lee said. He blinked in confusion.
Shaw knew his regret showed on his face. “Lee, I could have saved you the night I met you.”
Lee shrank back. His mouth worked for a moment, but nothing came. The look on his face, Shaw thought—stricken, trapped—must have been the one Vornis saw in Colombia. The one when Lee came face-to-face with a monster.
Shaw gazed back. I want you, Lee, but you deserve better. You have to know that. You have to know what I am.
Someone has to.
“I understand,” Lee said at last. “You think I don’t, but I do. I know why you waited. I know it was important.”
Shaw frowned slightly. “No, you don’t understand. I’m not your savior, and I’m sure as hell not your redemption. You need to remember that I let Vornis take you back all those times without a single objection.”
“What difference does that make?” Lee scowled, jutting out his chin. “A few more sessions after so many. What difference is it?”
Aggression, Shaw thought; that’s interesting.
Shaw folded his arms across his chest. “It doesn’t make a difference to you, Lee, not in the long run, but it makes a difference to us. You trust me because your head isn’t in the right place yet. But when it is, you’ll see exactly what went down on that island. At the moment, you don’t understand what I mean.”
You’ll see exactly how I failed you.
“Don’t tell me what I’ll see,” Lee said. He was breathing heavily. “Don’t tell me what I’ll feel. You are the only one who looked me in the eye in that place. You are the only one who saw me. And you saved me.”
“I did,” Shaw said. “But not soon enough.”
Not soon enough to deserve you.
“I don’t—” Lee managed, and couldn’t finish the thought: I don’t understand.
Shaw smiled slightly. He’d proven himself right, and there was a sort of a grim satisfaction in that. God knows it was the only satisfaction he warranted out of this whole sorry incident.
Lee chewed on his lower lip, and hell, that was distracting.
“There’s something else,” he said, keeping his tone gentle.
Lee’s brilliant green eyes flicked up and down but not before Shaw saw the tears.
Shaw’s stomach churned. “You’ll be okay,” he said. “You will be. You’ll go home, and you’ll see your parents, and you’ll see a shrink, and you’ll be okay. You’ve done your time, Lee. You get to relax now. You get to have your life back. Any life you want.”
Oh, Jesus. He had a sudden vision of Lee, old and fat and happy. And it made him want to laugh. It made him want to be the other old, fat, happy guy in that mental picture. He wanted them to take turns yelling at kids to get off their lawn.
“Maybe…maybe it’s you that doesn’t understand,” Lee said, blinking away his tears. “I know you think I’m just a weak kid. I mean, I am, I know that, but you made me stronger. You didn’t hurt me. I believed you when you said you’d help me. I didn’t expect you to save me. I thought you’d just make a call, like you said, and that was more than I could have hoped for. You think I didn’t know what you were risking by telling me you’d help me? I might not have known what you were, but I knew Vornis would kill you as well.”
Shaw had no answer for that.
Lee trailed his fingers across the keys of the laptop. “You think he didn’t ask me about you? You know what he couldn’t get over? The number of times you showered. Know what I told him?”
Shaw shook his head.
“I told him you liked to force my head back and see how long it took before I started to choke under the water.” Lee shivered. “He got a kick out of that.”
Shaw swallowed with difficulty.
Lee looked up at him. “So don’t tell me that I don’t understand what was going on. I was your fucking accomplice every time I was with Vornis.” He frowned, and his eyes flashed. “And don’t ever tell me that you didn’t save me, because that is bullshit!”
“Okay,” Shaw said. Lee’s sudden fierceness surprised him. He reached out and took Lee’s hand again. “Okay, Lee.”
Lee pulled his hand back quickly, like he’d been stung. He breathed heavily for a moment. His teeth were clenched, and there was a tic in his jaw. “Don’t do that.”
“Okay,” Shaw said again. He fought to keep his face impassive.
Lee swallowed. “I just mean, when you touch me, I want more.”
Holy shit. From any other guy in any other circumstances, Shaw would have been flashing a cocky grin: I know it! But this wasn’t right. This whole conversation had been a mistake. It wasn’t Lee’s job to soothe Shaw’s conscience, and it wasn’t fair of Shaw to put this shit on him now. He should have just shut his mouth until Sydney and walked away. Because that was all that could happen. “Write your e-mail.”
Lee nodded, relaxing his jaw. “Okay.”
Shaw looked away.
He’d chosen this job. And he’d been good at it, until Lee. And he’d always known that with this job there were things he couldn’t have. Normal things. And it hadn’t bothered him, not really. Until Lee.
* * * *
“Huh,” was all Zev said when he came by Shaw’s cabin later that night and found Lee asleep in Shaw’s bunk. “Come for a cigarette with me, Shaw.”
Shaw rose from the chair he’d been dozing in and stretched. He didn’t really care what Zev thought. Lee needed the reassurance of Shaw’s company, as simple as that. If he slept better in Shaw’s cabin, what of it? It was no business of anyone’s.
Except it would be, in Sydney.
Shaw sighed and followed Zev outside. Zev’s escort was waiting in the hallway. He looked young and spotty enough to still be a teenager.
“Get lost, kid,” Zev said. “Shoo!”
Shaw nodded at the kid. “I’ll make sure he doesn’t steal the silverware.”
“Yes, sir.” The kid vanished.
Zev rolled his eyes. “What if you tell the captain I am a perfectly nice spy and not at all planning on building a machine to control the weather?”
“His boat, his rules,” Shaw told him.
They headed up on deck.
Shaw sniffed the salt air. He loved the Pacific. It had always felt like home. The stars were brilliant. They felt close enough that Shaw imagined he could reach up and snag them with his fingertips.
“Are you gonna ask me why Lee’s sleeping in my bunk?” Shaw leaned on the rail.
Zev shrugged as he lit a cigarette. “Seems like that’s none of my business now.” He exhaled pale smoke that was lost in the night air. “You know what I don’t like about this work?”
Jesus, where to start? Shaw could think of a hundred things.
“I get homesick,” Zev said. “And then, when I get home, I get restless.”
Shaw nodded. He knew that contradictory feeling well.
“My wife is a schoolteacher,” Zev said. “I don’t think I’ve ever told you that.”
“I didn’t even know you were married,” Shaw said.
“I would show you a picture, if I could carry one,” Zev said. “She’s my other half, I tell people, but it’s not true.”
Shaw raised his eyebrows.
“I wish she was,” Zev said. “But my other half is whoever they tell me it is. Do you understand?”
“Yeah,” Shaw said, wishing he didn’t.
“I can’t tell my wife about my work,” Zev said. “And I think that if I did, I would not like the way she would look at me. And then I think I should have married someone else in my line of work, and then I wonder if I would be able to look at her without always wondering. So I tell myself I am very happy with my schoolteacher wife, and she tells herself she doesn’t need to know what I do.”
Shaw felt regret close in on him. Was that what he had to look forward to? A life of shared solitude, if he was lucky?
“You should get out while you can,” Zev said.
His frankness surprised Shaw. He felt his stomach clench. “Maybe.”
This was Zev’s idea of a pep talk, he supposed. It was probably kinder than the one he’d get from his boss. Frank’s would probably go something like, Don’t let the door hit you on the arse on the way out. It surprised him, coming from Zev. Zev was a consummate professional, or at least that was the impression he gave. Shaw supposed he should have stopped being surprised by the impressions people gave years ago.
He didn’t know Zev that well. They’d met a few times before, but crossed paths undercover only once before the island. Pakistan, Shaw remembered. Shaw had been posing as a journalist, and he’d hated it. That was a line he didn’t like to cross, but it had been short notice and only a week. Still, he hated knowing that every time a journalist was accused of being a spy, it was because of men like him.
Zev had been posing as a businessman, and they’d met at a restaurant in Islamabad. Zev had shaken Shaw’s hand enthusiastically and introduced him to the men he was dining with. Coffee and cigars and aliases, Shaw remembered. It had all been very congenial, and then they’d gone their separate ways. Shaw still had no idea what Zev had been doing there, and it was probably mutual.
And once, Shaw had seen Zev torture a man.
Shaw had hardly known Zev before he’d put his trust in him in Vornis’s dungeon. It occurred to him for the first time that he’d taken a leap of faith after all, as desperate as the one Lee had taken.
Shaw looked down into the black water.
“What happened back there,” Zev said, “was a bloodbath. When I’m not smoking, my hands are shaking.”
Shaw looked at his face in the darkness, wondering if it was true. He was never sure with Zev.
“Lucky for you,” Zev said calmly, “there’s a boy in your cabin who saw the whole thing and still wants to be in your bunk.”
“He won’t,” Shaw said with certainty. “Not once he’s back home.”
Zev only shrugged and watched the smoke from his cigarette curl away into the darkness.
* * * *
It was what it was, Shaw thought later. It was two days of artificial happiness. They were adrift on the Pacific, just as he’d always imagined, and it felt right. Lee felt right. He was coming out of his shell. He was smiling. He was relaxing. Shaw wished it could last forever, but he knew better than that.
On the final day, Shaw watched the approaching coastline with a strange mixture of relief and regret. It was good to be home, even if he’d be walking into what Callie had called a shit storm. And he knew he wouldn’t see Lee again. That felt like the biggest waste of all. He was only just starting to know Lee.
He was a baseball fan. That was no surprise, probably, but the night before, they’d sat in front of the TV with some of the crew and watched a few hours of cricket.
“I have no fucking idea what’s going on here,” Lee had announced at last, watching the animated duck stalk along the bottom of the screen as the batsman was dismissed. “This doesn’t make any sense.”
“At least when we have a world series, we’re not the only country in it,” Shaw had told him.
“The World Series was named after a newspaper,” Lee had informed him. “At least we don’t play for ashes!”
Lee gave as good as he got, and Shaw liked that. If he’d met him under different circumstances, he would have wanted to get to know him just for that. It didn’t have to be about beauty and brokenness and protection. It could have been about laughter and desire. Shaw wished they’d met as equals. He wished they could have fucked as equals. It felt like Lee was finding his way again, taking back control, but it was too late for Shaw. Every hour that passed was one less hour they had.
“He’s doing well, I think,” the doc had told Shaw. “I mean, he’ll need psychiatric help, but he’s doing okay for now.”
“Did he tell you what happened?” Shaw asked curiously.
The doctor shook his head. “No, but he didn’t have to. It’s written all over him.”
Lee liked television. They were close enough to pick up the broadcasts from the Australian commercial channels, and Shaw had found Lee sitting in the rec room at three o’clock in the morning watching an old rerun of Spyforce.
“Is this what you do?” he asked Shaw with a smile.
“Yeah.” Shaw laughed. “I just got back from blowing up the Burma railroad.”
“Hey, turns out we didn’t need to help out at all in the war,” Lee told him. “You guys had it covered.”
“Oh, we needed the help, I’ll admit,” Shaw told him. “And you were only three years late.”
Shaw gave as good as he got as well, and he liked the way it made Lee’s eyes light up. Letting him go would hurt.
Zev, who spent his time on deck smoking and doing crosswords, looked at Shaw curiously when he saw him with Lee. It was the same look he’d given Shaw several times back on the island: What are you planning?
Shaw hadn’t had a plan back on the island, and he sure as hell didn’t have one now.
The final day on the HMAS Stuart was a flurry of activity for the crew. They scrubbed and swabbed and worked furiously. By the time they entered the harbor, the crew was lined up on the deck in brilliant white dress uniforms. Other boats sounded their horns in greeting, welcoming them home.
White, Shaw had always thought, was such an impractical color for a uniform of any sort. But they looked good as they entered the harbor.
Sydney Harbour was the most beautiful harbor in the world. Shaw had never seen anything to rival it. It was the world’s largest natural harbor. It glittered. Shaw felt an ache when he saw the familiar arch of the Harbour Bridge rising up in front of them and the Opera House gleaming like a shell on Bennelong Point. That was Sydney’s real triumph: postcard views from every angle.
Shaw looked at the sun gleaming off the bridge. He was home, he was alive, but he ached.
“It’s beautiful,” Lee said, leaning on the rail beside him.
“Yeah.” Shaw felt it again: regret. There would be no more quiet moments like these between them. He wondered if Lee had realized it. Every minute that brought them closer to the port pushed them further apart.
Shaw wanted to reach out for Lee. Couldn’t. He fixed his gaze on the sunlight gleaming on the water and let it blind him. He thought hard about not touching Lee. He shifted, and their shoulders bumped together, and that was it. That was probably the last time they would touch.
Don’t. Don’t.
The sun burned the back of his neck as he stared at the water.
There were families waiting on the dock. Wives and husbands and children. And, Shaw saw, a fiery little redhead with an excited yellow Lab on a lead. Shaw smiled at that, even as he felt a tug of sadness. There was his life, waiting for him, and there was no room in it for Lee.
Lee shifted closer to him, nervous at all the people. “What happens now?”
“You’ll be okay,” Shaw said.
They didn’t have any luggage. They didn’t have anything except their borrowed clothes. They let the crew go first, down to the waiting smiles and tears and hugs.
Zev lit a cigarette on the gangway. “Where’s our next ride?”
Shaw could see it. Behind all the happy families there was a cluster of dark sedans and men in suits and sunglasses. None of them were smiling.
Lee tried to take his hand when they reached the dock, and Shaw shook his head.
He could hear Lee breathing heavily. He was terrified.
“Agent Shaw?” A cheap suit pushed an ID in his face. “John Meyers. United States Embassy.”
Shaw shook his hand.
“Mr. Anderson,” Meyers said. “Welcome to Sydney.”
Lee swallowed and nodded.
Meyers opened the car door. “Come with me, please.”
Lee looked at Shaw anxiously, and Shaw forced a smile. “Good luck, mate.”
“I want to stay with you,” Lee whispered. “Please.”
Shaw felt his chest constrict. Oh Jesus, Lee, don’t. Not now.
“Please, Shaw,” Lee said. His green eyes were wide. His breath caught in his throat. “Please, can’t I stay with you?”
Shaw felt the disapproving gazes of the embassy officials turned on him. Disapproving and maybe disgusted. Should have seen how pitiful he was a week ago, Shaw wanted to tell them, but Lee didn’t deserve that.
“You’ll be okay,” Shaw told him firmly. He hated himself when Lee looked at him, trusted him, and nodded. Shaw kept his smile until Meyers had bundled Lee into the car and let it fade again as they drove away toward the main gates.
He wondered where they were taking him. Some hotel in the city, probably. He hoped they’d let him sleep, at least, and not attack him with questions immediately. Nine weeks ago, Lee had been with the DEA in Colombia. Now he wasn’t the same person anymore, and Shaw hoped they’d go easy on him.
Shaw frowned. Why was he even worrying about Lee anymore? He had his own problems. It was supposed to have been infiltration, not a bloodbath. However he looked at it, Shaw knew he’d fucked up. The intel alone he could have got from Guterman and the others was easily worth the cost of Lee’s life. The worst part was, he didn’t regret saving Lee. He just didn’t know how he was going to justify it to his bosses.
The night before, after Spyforce, Lee had found an old rerun of I Love Lucy. Lucy, you’ve got some ’splainin to do!
Shaw knew that feeling.
“That kid’s got Stockholm Syndrome,” Zev announced, dropping his cigarette butt on the ground and standing on it. He looked at Shaw curiously. “Unless he doesn’t.”
“Shut up, Zev,” Shaw told him. What the hell was wrong with him? Why didn’t he want to let Lee go? He couldn’t keep him, couldn’t fix him, so why did he even want to try?
Zev clapped him on the back. “You’re an odd one, my friend.”
“How’s that?” Shaw asked as they pushed their way back through the small crowd toward Callie and Molly.
“You blew your operation to save that American,” Zev said. “You stood up to a room full of killers for that kid, outran armed security patrols, and escaped an island for him, but just now you didn’t tell Meyers to go and fuck himself.”
“Well, I wasn’t sure you’d back me this time.”
Zev clapped him on the back again. “It didn’t stop you before.”
Before, Shaw thought, was a different world with different rules: a world full of gods and monsters, life and death, judges and executioners. None of that worked here. It didn’t even feel real. Here, Shaw was a middle-grade public servant with a mortgage and a daily commute. He put the other side of him away when he was home. Callie hadn’t come to meet the man Shaw had been on the island.
Callie’s face lit up with a brilliant smile as Shaw approached. She tugged Molly forward to meet him. She flung her arms around Shaw’s neck and squeezed. Her hair tickled his face. “Welcome home.”
A wave of relief caught him.
“Thanks, Cal.” Shaw held her for a moment.
“You okay?” she murmured in his ear.
“Yeah.” Shaw released her and knelt down. He opened his arms, and they were suddenly full of dog; wriggling, squirming, tail thrashing, tongue everywhere, the whole package ready to burst with excitement. “Hey, Molly!”
This was good. This was right. He was home, his girls had come to meet him, and Lee would be okay. Shaw would shake this off, same as always.
He didn’t have to turn around and see if the dark sedan was still in sight. He didn’t have to think about Lee. He was home, he was covered in dog hair and slobber, and in that sea of happy reunions beside the dock, he had no right to want more.