Where Death Meets the Devil

by L. J. Hayward

  Keenly aware of Blade only pretending to sleep, he scrambled back into his clothes. The DPDU top was ruined and he didn’t have another. So, sleeping bag wrapped around his shoulders, he grabbed his Desert Eagle and a cleaning kit, and sat at the bend in the cave so he could see the outside world.

  Hands moving instinctively, he broke down the gun and began cleaning it, staring out at the night.

  There wasn’t much to see, just darkness and the faint hint of the far wall of the gorge. He couldn’t see the sky, couldn’t look up at the stars and feel release. Instead of opening up around him and giving him the space to let his thoughts and troubles go, the night seemed to condense down, narrow in on the cave, isolate him—lock him in with his numb thoughts and raging doubts.

  Even if Blade had cuddled or asked for more, Jack would have left. Well, he hoped he would have. He was already one-nil for giving in to bad decisions tonight. That didn’t bode well for avoiding any more.

  He couldn’t even remember the moment he’d consciously decided fucking Ethan Blade was the only option available. Goddamn it. Jack had made some really dumb choices in the past, but this one was probably the dumbest. In the middle of the bloody desert with an unstable assassin, hunted by a crazy megalomaniac, and Jack let his dick make the decisions. The dick that, despite the sour turn in his thoughts, was still warm and content, hoarding a residual hum of pleasure that with very little encouragement could become something more active.

  It had been good. More than good. Fantastic. When Blade had let go, had responded naturally, it had been mind-blowing. Jack hadn’t come that hard in so long he couldn’t remember the last time. Certainly not over the past fifteen months when he’d had to be satisfied with his hand in the shower. Not even the blowjob in New Zealand.

  Pulling in a deep breath of the cold night air, Jack forced his thoughts away from the man rolled up in his sleeping bag. He pushed his own bag off his shoulders, hoping the chill, and actually paying attention to cleaning the gun, would take care of the growing hardness in his pants. Still took a while but thankfully, his body settled down. It would have been easier if he could have run off the endorphins, but he wasn’t going out there with the dingoes. Then again, a frantic fight for his life might be just what he needed.

  He emptied the magazine and cleaned it.

  This was it. He was done. It was out of his system. He didn’t need to wonder what it would feel like to bury himself in Blade. Or what sounds he might make as Jack moved in him. Or the way Blade’s body would react to his touches. No more wondering because he knew now.

  And Christ, he wouldn’t be forgetting any time soon.

  Gun clean, Jack stood and went back into the inner cave.

  Blade was asleep, properly, not just pretending. In the soft light of the torch he looked much younger, an innocence at odds with the sated slackness of his body. The urge to roll up behind him, to wrap around him, rocked through Jack and obliterated a few of his hard-won convictions.

  Jesus. Jack quickly found Blade’s Desert Eagle and retreated.

  He’d just slapped home the sparkling-clean mag when Blade appeared. He stood in the curve of the rock wall, in the shadows, sleeping bag around him.

  “I’ll take the watch,” he offered, tone neutral. “You should sleep.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” Jack stood, stretched, and held the assembled gun out to Blade. “Cleaned it.”

  Blade took it and checked it with the swift touches of a pro. “Thank you.” He didn’t look at Jack once.

  Great. This wasn’t going to be awkward at all.

  Jack gathered up his bag, and when he eased past Blade, the other man visibly stiffened.

  Teeth grinding, Jack ignored it and kept going. Was it his fault if Blade regretted the fuck? No bloody way. Jack had given him more than enough chances to refuse. Or was it because Blade had lost control and he really didn’t like doing that?

  Jack settled down in the sand, rolled up as securely as Blade had been. He didn’t sleep though. An all-new set of disturbing thoughts worked to keep him awake and alert.

  What if Blade was upset enough to want retaliation?

  And there it was. The result he should have thought of before giving in to his base desires. Whatever truce he and Blade had come to, it was most likely over now. If the assassin decided he really didn’t like what Jack had done, then Jack probably wouldn’t even feel the bullet that killed him. Damn, he wished he’d damaged the striker in the Eagle now.

  The remainder of the night passed in slow, agonising indecision. He’d been happy enough to dive right in when it was all about his dick. Now that it was about the ugly aftermath, he couldn’t work out what to do. Say something? Apologise? Ignore it?

  By default, he ended up going with the last option. When Blade stirred from his post and came back in, Jack got up and in silence they packed up their gear. Before they set out, though, Blade assembled a needle and syringe, then drew up a measure of broad-spectrum antibiotic. Syringe between his teeth, he unfastened his pants and shoved them down enough to expose part of his arse.

  Swallowing hard, Jack offered, “Want a hand?”

  “No, thank you. I can manage.” Blade’s tone was even. He jabbed the needle in, depressed the plunger, and then fixed himself up.

  Uneasy quiet broken, Jack felt a bit better in asking, “What’s the plan?”

  Blade slung on his pack. “The plan is to get through the pack’s territory while they’re safely tucked away in their den.”

  “Right. And then?”

  “And then, Jack, we will be making a two-man assault on Valadian’s compound.” He glanced at Jack, one corner of his mouth turned up. “Do you feel up for it?”

  Jack carefully kept his expression neutral. Double entendre or unfortunate choice of words? With no clue, he just shrugged. “Shouldn’t be hard.” He internalised a wince at his own unconscious choice. “If the quality of the search parties is anything to go by, the gates should be wide open and everyone too drunk to care what we do.”

  “Cakewalk, then.”

  Still a little troubled, Jack followed Blade out, and they made the climb down without a hassle. Then the awkwardness of the morning after was put aside for the cautious trek through the gorge.

  Dawn was rolling around as they started out, brushing the shadowed gorge with hints of orange and silver-grey. The air was still incredibly cold, their breaths puffing out as white mist, but Jack quickly warmed up.

  Signs of the pack were everywhere. Shit, paw prints, tufts of fur caught on rocks or the branches of the scraggly scrub. The pungent stink of freshly marked territory was thick and rank. Jack wanted to hack out the taste of the smell, but silence was their best ally. Despite a desire to rush, Jack kept to the slow, guarded pace Blade set. The threat of alerting the dingoes did very well to distract Jack from thinking about Blade’s reaction to the sex. By the time they reached the far end of the gorge, the relief he felt at making it through unscathed translated into an ease with Blade that seemed reciprocated.

  They emerged onto another plain, more red dirt than sand, stretching out into the distance. There was more plant life here, and Jack recognised the general area. The compound was roughly ten clicks north.

  This was it. Whatever Blade had planned would happen tonight.

  Blade turned them northward. The sun hadn’t risen over the top of the ridgeline, leaving the western front in shadows. Although the temperature was heading upwards, it wasn’t as bad in the lee of the rock cliff. They covered a lot of land before they agreed with a silent acknowledgement it was too hot to carry on.

  They set up a small shelter against the cliff face, and Blade put out tinned fruit and beans, again. It felt like years since Jack had eaten anything other than tinned peaches and cold baked beans.

  “Maybe we will get steak tonight.” Blade speared half a peach and contemplated it on the end of his camp fork.

  Jack grumbled at his beans. “You read minds now?”

  Blade snorted.
“If I did, you wouldn’t . . . have taken me by surprise last night.”

  It wasn’t what he’d meant to say. Changed it at the last moment and, perhaps inadvertently, changed it to something worse, judging by the way he immediately pressed his lips together and looked away.

  Shit. They were going to do this now?

  Jack put his tin down. “You could have stopped it at any time.”

  Blade ate his peach half, slowly, methodically. He picked another one out of the tin, then put it back and sighed. “I know.”

  Several minutes of uncomfortable silence passed, and then Jack found himself asking, “Did I hurt you?”

  “No.” A firm answer. Then a little tremulously, “Not at all. It was . . . good. I’m just not . . . Blast it. Have you ever made a decision that seemed right at the time, but it turned into an utter disaster?”

  Jack couldn’t help it. He laughed. Hard.

  Blade frowned at him. “You’re not helping, Jack.”

  “You crazy bastard,” Jack managed between gasps for air. “You’ve just described the last week of my life. Not to mention the fifteen months before it. And let’s not forget the nine years in the military.”

  After a moment, Blade snickered. “Yes, I suppose so.” Then he grew serious again. Swirling the last couple bits of fruit around in the juice, he asked, “How do you deal with it? The . . . emotional fallout, I guess you’d call it. When you realise it hasn’t gone to plan and someone’s going to get hurt?”

  The last vestiges of humour drained away like water into the parched land around them. Jack focused on the far horizon, shimmering away like the world’s biggest cooktop. Even in the shade, the heat was closing in, pressing down on him like God’s stern hand. It was too hot to puzzle out Blade’s words. He wasn’t talking about the sex—that much seemed obvious—but just what it was, Jack couldn’t fathom.

  “I don’t,” Jack said. “Not right away, anyway. I’d push it aside, forget about it, and keep going until the mission was done. Then I’d keep going until I got home. Then I’d keep going until I found myself in a pub, three sheets to the wind, usually picking a fight with some poor bastard who just happened to get in my way. That’s when I had to deal with it. In the local lockup or on base, depending on who got me first. Either way I’d be sent to the psychologist, and I’d talk about it, get it out in the open. The last time, though, I didn’t go home or get to the pub. I just kept going right into the CO’s office at base and, stone-cold sober, laid the prick out with one punch. Didn’t help me deal, sadly. They said it was PTSD and gave me a medical discharge rather than a court martial and sentence. Really, they were just buying me off. That wanker put my squad into Jharkhand knowing the intel was bad, knowing we had a less than forty percent chance of surviving. I lost half my people and he lost some teeth. I lost my job and he . . . Well, as far as I know, he’s still there, putting more soldiers into no-win situations and getting away with it.” Jack sighed and tipped the last of the beans out, leaving them for whatever desert dweller might want them. “Sometimes, I wonder why I went back to the government for work.”

  Beside him, Blade made a noise of agreement and followed suit with the peaches.

  “You really have a thing against any sort of bureaucracy, don’t you.” Jack said. “Why?”

  Blade glanced at him. At least the dark panes of his sunglasses turned Jack’s way, then back to the red expanse before them. “They have their place, I guess, but no, I don’t like being in their control. It makes it too easy to forget why you do the things you have to do.”

  Taking another risk, Jack said, “You were military, weren’t you.”

  Silence was an answer on its own, but after a while, Blade said, “If it makes you feel better, I wasn’t navy.”

  Jack snorted a laugh. “Thank God for that. If you were, I would’ve had to knock you down a rank or two on the John Smith List.”

  Blade smiled. “Well, you’d try.” Then the smile faded. “I don’t regret last night. It wasn’t . . . what I expected, but I don’t regret it.”

  Unable to agree or disagree, Jack settled back and waited for the world to stop cooking itself so they could get this over and done with and he could go home and start not dealing with any of it.

  Jack awoke to an otherwise empty bed. Soft murmuring assured him Ethan was somewhere out of his line of sight. Considering he was belly down, face in a pillow, that wasn’t hard. He didn’t feel like moving to find him, either. A pleasant lethargy weighed down his limbs, but a not-so-pleasant pressure in his bladder had other ideas.

  Jack rolled over and levered himself up onto his elbows. Blinking his eyes into focus, he found Ethan.

  The assassin stood by the car. He wore a pair of loose pants, the drawstring waist sitting low on his hips. Above it, the muscular curve of his toned stomach caught Jack’s gaze, shown off as Ethan leaned against the car, one hand resting on the silky-smooth metal. Head tilted forwards, he spoke softly into a smartphone, nodding occasionally. Whoever he was speaking with did a lot of talking, not letting Ethan get too much out. The hand on the car curled and uncurled into a fist.

  The call didn’t look like it would end soon, so Jack scrambled out of the bed and hit the shower. The hot water sluiced away the dried sweat of the night’s exertions and left him feeling like he had perhaps a modicum of control back.

  Right. He’d believe that when he didn’t bloody well jump Ethan’s bones in the next twenty-four hours.

  Towel around his waist, he left the bathroom and found something to wear. By the time he was buttoning up a flannel, Ethan was done with his phone call and was setting out breakfast.

  “Who died?”

  Jack certainly hadn’t meant to start the morning after with such a topic, and by the way Ethan fumbled a plate of toast, he hadn’t been expecting to talk bodies over breakfast, either.

  Deftly catching a fleeing piece of toast, Ethan frowned at Jack. “Pardon?”

  Grimacing, Jack decided to just get it over with. Like ripping out stitches. “At the Office. Who did you kill?”

  Continuing to set out a breakfast—toast, bacon, poached eggs, mushrooms and, naturally, a pot of tea—Ethan said, “Hopefully no one. I do recall your objections to unnecessary loss of life, Jack, so I tried to inflict nonfatal injuries. It may be that I wasn’t entirely successful, but I did my best, I can assure you.”

  Holy shit. Had Jack, in his deepest, darkest thoughts, really missed this?

  “Not that, but thank you for trying, anyway. I mean, which director was it? Who was the traitor?”

  Ethan beamed at him. “You believe me.”

  No. No, he hadn’t missed this. Not at all. “What? Believe you . . . What?”

  “About the traitor within the Meta-State.”

  “Jesus. Yes, I believe you. I think. I mean, you’re here, aren’t you?”

  Ethan put an egg and bacon on a plate, then set it on the table in front of Jack. “Indeed I am. As are you. Thank you.”

  He was doing it intentionally. Making up for a year of not messing with Jack’s head. Wondering if he should even bother trying to sort through Ethan’s crazy conversational method, Jack sat and contemplated his food while Ethan fetched him a mug of coffee.

  “You’re welcome,” Jack eventually muttered as Ethan sat opposite and picked up a piece of toast. “But what for?”

  “For coming here.” Ethan’s lips fought some overpowering expression, but his cheeks nevertheless flushed as he added, “Twice.”

  Jack groaned, then snorted, then chuckled. “Smooth.”

  Ethan’s smile was part shy, part wicked, and totally derailed Jack’s thought train, so he spent several minutes just eating and watching the man across from him. However, reality intruded and Jack got his head back in the game.

  “So, who was it?” he asked blatantly. “Tan?” Please, don’t let it be McIntosh. She hadn’t treated him so well lately, even before the Great Escape, but it wasn’t as if it had been unjustified. Given how Jack’s
behaviour and actions must look from her position, he couldn’t blame her for any of it.

  “No one died, Jack. I don’t know who the traitor is.”

  Jack’s brain went offline again, though it was anger, not lust, induced this time. “What? You mean I helped you escape for nothing?” And yes, Jack knew “nothing” was unfair. Getting Ethan out for his own well-being wasn’t “nothing.”

  “Not for ‘nothing,’ Jack.” When Ethan continued, his tone was low, hesitant. “Even when you gave me what I needed to escape, I kept wondering if you would go through with it. Or if perhaps you were setting me up for a fall. I probably would have deserved it.”

  “No probably about it.” Jack smiled to take the sting out of the words. “I considered it, though. Must have changed my mind about four times.”

  “May I ask what convinced you?”

  “Wasn’t any one thing. All of the directors were acting weird. None of them seemed too concerned about you directly, but more about what it meant for them that you’d shown up. Then someone killed Maria Dioli, the asset in charge of the Valadian operation. She found something about your involvement in the whole thing that got her killed.”

  “And you believe it was someone who works for the Office.”

  “Had to be. It’s a secure building.”

  Ethan lifted his cup and sipped. “I got in.”

  “Only with a sensational display. Are you saying you killed Maria?”

  “I was locked in an escape-proof cell.”

  “And yet you escaped.”

  “With help. Thank you for the fudge, by the way. Though next time, perhaps something that doesn’t have chocolate chips.” Ethan touched his nose gently. “One of the little blighters got stuck up there.”

  “Remind me, when this is all over, to go tell Gillian Golightly how her fudge, when stuffed up a nose, helps against gas attacks.”