by Jez Morrow
“Not my fault,” said Hunter, the edges of a hard smile on his thin lips. “Your phone line is disconnected and the Bureau canceled your cell phone a long time ago.”
Martin studied Hunter curiously. He had never realized how much this man looked like Lurch. Except, from what Martin had seen of the old shows, the hulking zombie butler had never been mean. Hunter was enjoying this.
The short, burly figure of Special Agent Moo Park blew past them, throwing on his coat to go outside. “Hey, Martin, they found your car!”
“Good!” Martin made an instinctive reach for his car keys, which, of course, were not in his pocket. “I’m getting real tired of the Metro. Where is it?”
“Bottom of the Chesapeake.”
“Oh.” Martin guessed he wouldn’t be driving home after all, keys or no keys.
“Want to go see it?” said Moo, waiting in the doorway.
“Sure,” said Martin, falling in step with Moo. “You’re driving.”
* * * * *
Moo Park pulled into a parking lot on the riverfront in time for them to see a giant crane fishing the once-white Volvo out of the muddy water.
Martin Winter and Moo Park climbed out of Moo’s car into the blustery cold wind that was blowing off the Chesapeake. Martin turned up the collar of his trench coat. The two agents walked out to the river edge to watch the Volvo rise into the air.
“Oh wow. I’m screwed,” said Martin.
A brittle voice sounded behind them, “Is that a confession?”
Martin and Moo Park turned. Special Agent Ann Jefferson was there. It looked like she’d been here for a while, her face windburned, her eyes fixed in a squint.
She wasn’t pretty, wasn’t ugly. If she would lose that permanent frown, she would look like a normal human being. That red color she had chosen for her short curls was all wrong for her. So was the blue eye shadow.
She had been supervising the raising of the Volvo. She gestured with her cell phone, which was seldom far from her ear. “So what is that car going to tell us, Martin?”
“It’s going to say it doesn’t think my insurance payments are current,” said Martin. He turned back to watch his car dangling on the giant hook. He uttered a lot of foul language to the cold wind.
“Sorry, man,” said Moo Park. His broad paw of a hand patted Martin’s shoulder.
“Maybe I can hit the Colombians up for a new car,” Martin said.
Moo Park turned to face him, suddenly suspicious. “I thought you said you were in Guatemala.”
“I was. Doesn’t make me Guatemalan. And I don’t think the guys who held me were Guatemalan either. They had Colombian accents.”
The car teetered, dripping mud. Moo Park’s lipless mouth, turned down at the sides, looked like a cartoon of a frown. His chin jutted forward. “What a mess. What a mess.”
Martin got the feeling he wasn’t talking about the car.
The car tilted on its hook. A rear door popped open and a cascade of gray-brown sludge spilled out.
Ann Jefferson moved away, yelling into her cell phone.
Martin asked Moo, “Did your divers get all my drugs out of the backseat before you dragged her up?”
Moo wagged his head. “Talk like that is going to get you shot, Marty.”
“Again?”
“I am your friend,” Moo chided him, stung by his sarcasm.
“Yeah? Want to act like it?” Martin snapped.
“You make it hard,” said Moo.
“I’ve been told.”
Moo could not possibly know what Martin was referring to. So it shocked Martin when Moo said, “Tell me about Jack Reed.”
The sound of the beloved name left Martin ringing inside. “Leave Jack out of this,” said Martin darkly.
“You didn’t,” said Moo Park.
No, Martin realized. He hadn’t. Martin had dragged Jack into this.
Furious with himself, Martin turned ‘round and shouted. “Hey, Annie, you running this show?”
Ann Jefferson lowered her cell phone from her ear to answer, “Yes.”
“Great. Can you tell someone in HR to issue my back pay? I’m just about broke here and I’m not expecting payment from my drug buddies for a long, long time.”
* * * * *
Jack made for a cheery presence in his office at the Pentagon. He brought carnations for all the women in his department, just because he was happy and wanted someone else to smile. He also brought a better brand of coffee for the coffeemaker.
A coworker tasted the new brew. His eyebrows skied. “Are you running for office, Reed?”
* * * * *
“Well, Jack,” said Martin, hauling another suitcase up the two flights of stairs of Jack’s townhouse. “All the women at the office want your phone number—except Ann Jefferson, who already has it.”
Martin had gone to work only sporadically over the past few days. He was admitted as a visitor and grilled with questions.
“Moo Park calls you Captain America. And Larry Hunter? Do you know, I think Hunter’s holding a torch for you?”
“Torch?” Jack asked, following him up the stairs with a couple of lamps from Martin’s condo. “As in the villagers coming after the wolfman?”
“No, I think he’s hot for you.” Martin dropped his suitcase in Jack’s closet. “Come on, Jack, where’s your gaydar? Aren’t we supposed to have that?”
“I think we’ve already established that I’m thick as a brick on that score,” said Jack. And any thought of Larry Hunter made his face look as if he had just sniffed ammonia. He looked about for a place to put the lamps. The place was getting crowded with Martin’s stuff.
While Jack was at work Martin spent most of the day moving his belongings out of his condo, getting it ready to put on the market.
Martin tried to remember the discussion. Couldn’t, because they’d never had one. Jack had just told Martin, “Let’s get you out from under this place,” and hired a cleaning service, telling them to do a sell-the-condo job on it.
What did Martin expect from a man who told him he owned his life?
Funny how he could be in such deep trouble and feel so safe.
“Why are they giving you such a hard time at the Bureau, Martin? Aren’t these people supposed to be your friends?”
“No one loves a traitor,” said Martin. “And if I really were a traitor, they would be right to hate me. I would hate me. The sticking point is that I can’t account for all my time away.”
“You were in captivity,” Jack answered. “Even I know that.” Jack was there when Martin had been taken. He had not been able to save him. Martin could tell that bothered the hell out Jack.
“Yeah, they read your police report,” said Martin. He tried to show Jack the FBI’s view of that. “You were there but you didn’t actually see it. You heard shots. You heard a van door slide. You heard vehicles drive away. You saw taillights and tire tracks of two vehicles—the van and the car. You didn’t see who was driving my car. That could have been me driving off into the sunset with my cohorts.”
“Oh hell!” Jack’s anger was intimidating and beautiful. He looked like an enraged archangel. It comforted Martin to have that power and fury on his side.
“And,” said Martin, “there are great gaping holes in my story because there are great gaping holes in my memory. Amnesia is a word that makes the FBI suspicious.”
Jack’s face showed shock. He dropped the lamps on the bed and came over to take Martin’s hands between his. “I didn’t know you had amnesia, Martin.”
Martin was relieved that Jack had heard of traumatic amnesia. Some people—Martin’s coworkers in particular—thought it was a convenient fraud.
It was real. Traumatic amnesia was the mind’s defense against memories that were just too horrible to hold.
“Of course you didn’t,” said Martin. “I never told you.”
Jack would have assumed that Martin was not telling him anything about his absence because Martin’s work was clas
sified. And that was a part of it. But it never occurred to Jack that even Martin did not know all of what he had been through while he was missing.
Something too horrible.
There were blind spots in Martin’s memory from when he had been tortured. He was pretty sure he had been tortured, though he could not tell anyone precisely what they had done to him. He did not know. He had blanked it out. But like the missing parts in a jigsaw puzzle, he could tell the shape of what ought to be there from the shape of the edges. He remembered men pounding him with questions. He remembered the questions.
But he did not know for sure that he had not talked.
“There are also things I do remember and I can’t tell them at the Bureau. Like how I got across the border. I do remember crossing the border. No one asks a wolf for his passport, that’s how. Border patrol thought I was a coyote and I was lucky no one was in a coyote-shooting mood that day. But everyone is real interested to know how I got across the border and they won’t let go of that question. And I sound like I’m lying when I say I walked.”
“Is that how you got home?” Jack asked, appalled.
“That’s part of what took me so long. The Bureau wants to know how I survived without money and how I did it without ever showing up on the information grid. I really can’t tell them I survived on grasshoppers, rats, rabbits. The odd poodle.”
Jack looked down to see if he was kidding. Was. Maybe. A little.
“Do not ever serve me prairie dog or rattlesnake. I’ve had my fill.”
“There goes my dinner plans,” said Jack. “Cocker spaniel?”
Martin snorted. Like Jack could ever hurt a cocker spaniel.
Martin caught in his breath, suddenly remembered, “I need to send some money to some folks. Anonymously. I had to steal clothes off of some clotheslines. And you know if they’re hanging their clothes out on lines, these aren’t people who have money to burn. Do you have any idea what it feels like to steal from a migrant?”
“I can get cash to your victims,” said Jack.
“Be careful. The FBI is watching you now too.”
Chapter Seven
Martin sat across from Ann Jefferson in the interrogation room. He thought the use of this room was a little over the top but he had nothing to say about it.
Ann Jefferson slid photographs of two grim-looking men across the table. They were smarmy, sneering images that could rape you with just their eyes.
Martin picked up each photograph, considered it, put it down.
He folded his hands on the table and waited for Special Agent Jefferson to ask a question. He knew this game. Never volunteer information. A guilty man starts babbling.
None of the vulnerability he showed to Jack was here. He waited in perfect calm. No fidgeting, no glancing around, no throat clearing, no eyebrow lifting to cue the woman across from him to speak.
He sat straight, picturesque, patient and contained as the cat on the windowsill of Jack’s cabin.
True love provides a floor to one’s world, a place to stand. It does not shift or rock or heave. It is steadfast. Physical threats remained but no one could touch him, the Martin Winter whom only Jack Reed had ever seen, only Jack Reed had ever touched.
This woman did not threaten him.
Ann Jefferson considered herself a hard-ass. She sat there with something to prove.
Martin assessed her during the standoff. He tried to figure out what was driving her. Ann Jefferson was as tenacious as a pit bull. Martin wondered if she kept pressing her case against him just because she could not admit she was wrong. That would be typical Annie. No reverse gear.
Or did she need to convict him of espionage because she needed there to be someone to take the fall for her own crimes? It would be just like a traitor to try to pass off her own actions on the person who came closest to revealing her.
It was a long wait. Ann got tired of it first. She tapped at the two photographs on the table between them, and broke the silence, “Do you recognize either of those men?”
“Yes,” said Martin.
“Which one?”
“Both.”
“Who are they?” Ann demanded.
“I don’t know.”
He gave her no more than she asked for, like a stubborn two-year-old.
She made a face of irritation. “Are you going to make me pull teeth here?”
“Yes.”
She gave an impatient huff. “Well, Martin, it just so happens that I do know who these men are.”
Martin waited. He had not been asked a question.
Ann again had to break the silence. “Fingerprints of two drug cartel strongmen were preserved inside in your car. Prints of wanted men. These men.” Her forefinger hammered down on the photos.
Martin still had not been asked a question. He said nothing.
“What are the fingerprints of these men doing in your car?” Ann demanded.
“If their fingerprints are in my car, I would conclude those men were in my car.”
“You’re claiming you didn’t know they were in your car?”
“I didn’t actually see them in my car.”
“You recognize them. They were in your car. But you say you don’t know them.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t know them,” she said, skeptical. “So how do they know you?”
“I’m not a mind reader. Why don’t you bring them in and ask them?”
“They’re in Colombia,” said Ann.
“Are you sure this time?” said Martin. “Because last I saw them they were in Guatemala.”
“You don’t know them.”
“I already said that.”
“You saw them in Guatemala.”
“Yes.”
“Martin, I am going to beat you.”
“If it gives you joy.”
“So you know them from your dealings in Guatemala?”
“I recognize them from Rock Creek Parkway. They were two of the men who kidnapped me. One of them may have shot me. They were there when I was shot but there were others, so I don’t know which one actually pulled the trigger. I know for sure that I took the shot while they were on the scene. Do you want to check the position of my scars?”
“I’ve already seen your medical file,” said Ann.
“There were more than two men that night. I didn’t see which men actually drove off in my car and which bundled my bleeding carcass into the back of the van. I don’t know any of them. And I didn’t know who ditched my car in the Chesapeake. Could have been the tooth fairy for all I knew. But if the fingerprints say it was those two men, then it was those two men. Now I know that much.”
Ann retrieved the photographs from the table. She regarded the two repulsive images. “So, Martin, you were going to roll over on these friends of yours?”
“If that were the case, then I would still be in the car, Annie, now wouldn’t I?”
“Well, Marty, if you are not their friend, why didn’t they leave you in the car when they pushed it into the Chesapeake?”
“Because they needed to know what I knew.”
“What do you know?”
“I know that they have someone on the inside of Federal law enforcement.”
“Well, lord almighty,” she declared dryly. She folded her forearms flat on the table and leaned over them to glower at him hard. She turned his words around on him. “Now isn’t that just what I’ve been saying all along?”
* * * * *
Martin took the Metro to the station nearest to Jack’s townhouse. He arrived at Jack’s place in a bitter mood. He hung up his green trench coat, frowning. “You know you’ve had a bad day when your coworkers are trying to link you to the same drug dealers you’re trying to bring down.” He dragged his fingers back through his dark blond hair.
Jack said, “Your department isn’t even in drug enforcement.”
“Really?” said Martin, oozing sarcasm.
Jack’s hands went up as if Martin had opened
fire. “Whoa. Friendly.”
Martin let his head fall forward, penitent. “Yes, I am an ass.”
Jack came to him, kissed his brow. “Go get upstairs and get changed. I’ll take you for a romp in the woods.”
“I don’t romp,” said Martin.
“Yes, you do.”
Martin changed out of his monkey suit and let Jack drive him out to the cabin. The drive, Jack’s buoyant presence made it hard for Martin to hold on to his scowl.
The sun had already set by the time they arrived but the sky was brilliant with cold stars winking through the treetops.
Jack no sooner shut the car door when he vanished into a pile of clothes and big bundle of black fur with a white toothy grin. He ran a circle around Martin.
Romping. He meant romping.
Martin transformed, shook himself out of his clothes and followed Jack into the forest.
Woodland scents of old leaves, acorns, moss and bracken, the innocent chuckle of a stream in its rock bed, the haunting call of a great horned owl, the near presence of the black wolf with his bright cheery dog smile, all conspired to wash away the claustrophobic madness of the day.
A woodpecker scolded them with a rattling cry. Martin named it Ann.
Jack bit his tail, and Martin tore after him, snapping.
They returned to the cabin fairly muddy.
Jack transformed next to the car, collected up his clothes and went inside the cabin. Martin followed him into the warmth. Jack was already in the guest shower, so Martin took over the master bath to rinse off the mud and the last frustrating thoughts of the work day.
Towel around his waist, Martin came out of the shower to find Jack lying back on the bed with his hands folded behind his head. He was tantalizingly half dressed. He wore only his dark trousers, which fit snug against his hips and across his groin. His obvious interest swelled there. His shirt was open, baring his spectacular male torso, his wide chest with its handsome scatter of dark springy hair. A line of dark hair made a trail down that slight furrow where hard muscles met in his flat abdomen, leading the way to forbidden pleasures below.
Romping, thought Martin.
Lying there on the four-poster bed of the log cabin, dressed only in a timeless cut of trousers, Jack might have been a dashing sea captain of old. Sea captain, because Jack Reed was too gallant, too heroic ever to be a pirate. But he was just as daring and lusty and playfully arrogant. Martin felt his dazzling white smile call to him. His dark hair, tossed across his brow, made him look like a rogue.
