Black Tie: Book One of the Sparrow Archives

by Kieran Strange

  “Is that coffee ready?”

  “I have a Keurig, the coffee is always ready.”

  “Something just... regular. Donut Shop, or whatever it’s called.”

  “I don’t have ‘regular’, poor person coffee, Sparrow.”

  “Can I please just have something made from beans with caffeine and cream in it?”

  Elliot snorted a laugh. “I suppose I can probably manage that. Do you want to shower?”

  Cabe thought about it for a few moments before shaking his head lazily. “Nah, I’m more of a fan of the whole walk of shame thing, myself. Plus I’m sure my team’s expecting it and I don’t really wanna deprive them, it’s one of their favorite perks.”

  The agent suddenly caught himself and backed up a little, stumbling over his words. “Not that I’m not able to like, y’know, keep my mouth shut about this, or be discreet...”

  Elliot rolled his eyes at his bodyguard. “Easy, Sparrow. I trust your team. Unless of course it’s going to create problems for you professionally, in which case I can help you set up a ridiculously convincing alibi. We can even have some fun coming up with it before my nine o’clock with Tokyo.”

  It was Cabe’s turn to laugh. “I’m good, but thanks. If anything it’ll reflect poorly on me, not you or the company. Let’s just say I know the rules.”

  “And you deliberately choose to break them. Gee, I’ve never done that before.” Elliot sipped his own coffee, black, as the Keurig began to make an unholy racket to his left. “Do you remember where all of your clothes are?”

  “I’m actually not sure yet. Did I put my shirt back on when we got out of the jacuzzi?”

  “I think you were wearing a robe.”

  “So my shirt is probably upstairs then. My jeans are in the den.”

  “This is sort of like a sexy scavenger hunt,” leered Elias as he pulled a nearly full bottle of half-and-half from the gargantuan refrigerator. “I can lend you some fresh underwear if you’d prefer, just help yourself to the small chest of drawers upstairs. I don’t know about you, but I just can’t put socks that have already been worn once back on my feet. It feels like sacrilege.”

  “Where’s my phone?”

  “As I already explained to that guy from the National Security Council, I have absolutely zero way of tracing the location of one specific WrightPhone from anywhere in this building,” the C.E.O. litigated boredly as he did something with a spatula on the stovetop. Cabe chuckled and took the opportunity while the other man’s back was turned to scoot off the couch and head upstairs to seek out the aforementioned underwear.

  Not sixty seconds later, he was padding back down the carpeted stairs in dark gray athletic socks and a pair of heathered lilac SAXX boxer briefs, which were snug and sexy and made him want a pair of his own. As if reading his mind, Elliot had to comment as he came into view, “You’re keeping those, Peaches. Just something else of mine that looks good on you.”

  “It’s unsurprising that everything you own looks good on me, when everything you own is designed to look good no matter what,” the blond man quipped in return, sliding his bulky, athletic arms into the sleeves of his Wrangler. He was grinning even as he jabbed at the younger, more privileged man. “That’s the beauty of buying the best shit.”

  “That’s what I keep trying to tell people,” said Elliot, returning to the kitchen’s wide island and motioning to the generous mug he’d filled with black coffee. “Cream’s on the counter, sugar’s in the bowl. How hungry are you on a scale of one to Eric Cartman?”

  “About a nine-and-a-half. No Cheesy Poofs for me, thanks.”

  Cabe gratefully accepted the warm mug of coffee shamelessly in just the open shirt and boxer briefs, wrapping both hands around it and inhaling. Wow. Once again, the world would not make a liar out of Elliot Wright; this coffee was most definitely not your regular donut shop blend. On that note, the cream reminded him of what the milk floats dropped off when he was a child, not what you’d find on the shelves in Fred Meyer, and he swore even the sugar had a distinctly rosy tint to it.

  A matte black dinner plate piled with both types of meat, sunny-side-up eggs (his dad had once accidentally called them ‘softly-fried’ shortly after they immigrated to Nebraska, and he hadn’t been able to eat them since without snickering to himself about it), and hash browns (which were a phenomenon he still to this day counted in his list of top ten best things he’d discovered in America) was deposited on the island counter top right in front of him.

  “Here. Don’t ever let some bitter ex tell you Elliot Wright doesn’t know how to take care of someone after he’s broken them in half.” The younger man leaned back against the island, about three feet from his bodyguard. It was the closest they’d been in about five hours, and even still, the heat and energy between them was electric.

  “I won’t. I’m gonna give this place five stars on Yelp, for sure.”

  “Yelp, hmm?” mused Elliot, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “Segway-ing onto another topic, that’s a word which reminds me of a very specific noise you made in the tub last night.”

  Ignoring the way the freckled skin probably darkened across his nose and cheeks, Cabe continued to dig into his breakfast without so much as looking up, let alone actually stopping for air. “I’m starting to feel a little sexually harassed on the job here,” was all he said in reply, his mouth full of food. Elliot chuckled again and sauntered away to let him eat, retreating upstairs with his attention on his cell phone.

  Cell phone... right. I should probably locate that at some point in the near future.

  Cabe’s brain was pretty much rendered useless for the remaining seven-and-a-half minutes it took to polish off his breakfast. He blindly groped along the counter cabinets in an unsuccessful search for a dishwasher before sliding the plate and fork into the double sink beside the refrigerator, collecting his coffee, and heading back toward the couch.

  ELECTORAL RACE HEATS UP IN ARKANSAS AHEAD OF PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARIES proclaimed the title of the current news segment, right above the fact that WrightTech’s stock market WRGHT was up almost six points. Cabe imagined Ronnie in the boardroom downstairs making notes of the market’s increase in her little mint-green Filofax while she and Flint talked politics. He could hear the soft, muffled padding sound of Elliot’s socked feet descending the staircase as he settled back on his blanket on the couch, nestling into one corner.

  “Here, wear these instead,” came the C.E.O.’s typically overconfident tone, and a pair of charcoal jeans landed heavily on the couch beside him. “Your ass will look spectacular in them, trust me.”

  “Much obliged, m’Lord.”

  “Are you aware that you talk in your sleep?” asked Elliot, sinking like a coiled dragon into the couch at the adjacent angle to the one Cabe had claimed. “It’s very destructive to my sleep cycles.”

  “You could always try suffocating me next time? I’ve heard that can be effective.”

  “So, who’s Aaron?”

  The question caught Cabe entirely off-guard, throwing a wrench into the cool, calm, devil-may-care demeanor he’d been told worked well after anything that might be considered at most a first date and at least a booty call. His entire face dropped, enough so that even Elliot looked like perhaps he may have crossed some sort of unspoken line in the sand.

  “Sorry. You know me by now, I try to be blunt.”

  “Nothing to apologize for, I... I just wasn’t aware I still... said his name.” Cabe threw out an uneasy, awkward chuckle, ruffling his messy hair.

  “If it’s any consolation, you didn’t sound depressed?” Elliot offered.

  Cabe shook his head. “It’s fine, he... he was an ex-boyfriend of mine. Well, more than that, he was my mentor. My first partner when I joined W.A.R.D., after I graduated all of the training programs.”

  “He kick your heart all over town?”

  “No, he...” Cabe shifted a little in his nest, finally resting the coffee mug on the arm of the couch instead of his bare
knee. It’s never ‘he’ when you’re a team, Sparrow. “We severely misjudged an Anomaly we had tracked to Armagosa Valley, Nevada. He was road-tripping to Vegas, but he figured out he was being tailed and hit our motel while we were sleeping.”

  Elliot winced, but uncharacteristically said nothing.

  “We locked the building down. Aaron – Agent Boone, he entered first. I was covering the exits and providing ground support, the place was fucking small enough. Then everything just... went up.”

  “Went up?”

  “I.E.D.” At this point, Cabe had gotten good at shrugging off the chills and shudders that tickled his nerves when he told this story. “We never saw him again, but they found his dog tags and gear in the wreckage. I’ve come to terms with it... least, I thought I had.”

  “It’s been seven years since my dad died and I still don’t think I’ve come to terms with it,” said Elliot honestly. “I don’t think you can come to terms with it easily, not when it happens that suddenly.”

  “Shit happens,” replied the blond agent, gulping his coffee hungrily. “Quoth the Sparrow.”

  “I don’t think I ever had the pleasure of meeting Agent Boone.”

  “You wouldn’t have done, unless you ran into him with S.S.A. Flint. He was one of the first agents recruited by W.A.R.D., though. Ex-Marines, shining record. I looked up to him so much.”

  “That’s adorable,” grinned Elliot. “You’re a hopeless romantic?”

  “Not always, but with him I was. I couldn’t believe my luck that he swung my way. Guys like him I fall for never are.”

  Elliot quirked one groomed eyebrow at him, fingers playing lazily across his lips. “Did you presume the same when you fell for me?”

  “Jesus,” muttered Cabe. “Do you never get tired of stroking your own ego?”

  “I still like to keep up a little of the façade even around my most favorite people,” purred the dark-haired billionaire from his corner of the adjacent couch. Cabe stared at him, as if trying to decide exactly how much of him was authentic.

  “You’re like a real-life Christian Grey,” he eventually declared, before rewarding himself with another mouthful of delicious, rich, creamy, pink-sugary coffee. He deserved it, especially considering the scowl his comment earned him from the man who had spent the better part of the night before tormenting every single nerve in his body.

  “Oh, please. I would talk circles around that prima donna at dinner, and then make him scream between the sheets.” Elliot’s nose was fully-upended by this point, and wrinkled at the insult of the comparison. “Besides, I’m certainly not looking to sign anybody into a long-term co-dependent relationship, so please don’t presume this is an opportunity to cross that off of your bucket list.”

  “Oh, trust me, I’m not,” replied Cabe unevenly. “Even more so now I’m aware I finished my therapy too soon.” Something amidst the sheepskin blanket vibrated gently, and Cabe’s face twisted in a combination of what-the-heck-was-that and huh-that-felt-surprisingly-good.

  “Phone?”

  “Unless you left me a treat before you went to bed last night.” Digging around beneath him, Cabe was able to uncover his brand new WrightPhone Kappa, along with the three missed messages from Ronnie that had been anxiously waiting in his inbox for about twenty minutes.

  08:08am – TEAM MEETING @ 9. SUITE 30M. BE THERE OR BE [ ].

  08:13am – FLINT SAYS BRING TODAY’S PAPERS.

  08:19am – NO PRESSURE, BUT YOU’RE PASSING THE LOBBY STARBUCKS ON THE WAY IN...

  “Crap,” he muttered. “Apparently I don’t get the joy of sitting in on your call.”

  “Your country needs you?” said Elliot, with only a trace amount of his usual sarcasm. “That’s okay. I’m sure I will somehow find a way to be without you for the next several hours.”

  “You joke, but I’ve had stalkers,” Cabe commented distractedly as he stood up and drained his coffee mug. The charcoal-colored jeans Elliot had selected for him were softer than they looked at first, and he eagerly squirmed into them to brace himself against the sudden chill of moving away from the fireplace.

  “Do you need change for a cab?”

  Cabe wasn’t surprised to see the shit-eating grin that was all over Elliot’s face when he glanced up from fastening the jeans. They were a little snug around the waist, but not in a way that was uncomfortable. “No. No, while I appreciate the fact that I may have found myself a new sugar daddy, I think I’m gonna save the favors for when I really need them.”

  “Don’t forget your gun, dear,” Elliot said with an ironically casual air to his words that he clearly enjoyed a bit too much as the Field Agent doubled back on himself on his way to the elevator, heading for the den where he had left his jeans, ergo his belt, ergo his sidearm, deciding against the professionally and possibly criminally negligent decision of leaving a loaded, licensed firearm in the middle of his client’s crib.

  ◉

  “Hakeem said he saw you get in the elevator wearing those clothes yesterday.”

  “Is that a fact.” It wasn’t technically a question, because Cabe didn’t particularly care about the answer. A wedge of folded tabloids found themselves stacked next to the grande latte he’d brought the young junior agent.

  “He was taking Angus out for a walk. Said you were going upstairs in a white button-up and gray pants.”

  “In my defense,” said Cabe as he dropped heavily onto the cluttered, messy couch beside her, “these are totally different pants.”

  “That’s your defense?” Ronnie pouted softly as she gave him a kind-hearted once over. She may have been relatively new to the unit, but reading people and deciphering their motives was something she seemed to have a knack for. “So the two of you are pretty much just wearing each other’s clothes now?”

  “Well, I’m wearing his clothes,” Cabe corrected her, “when he tells me to. I think he might spontaneously combust if I tried to put him in anything I bought on sale at Target.”

  Ronnie beamed at him impishly. “The power of polyester compels you.”

  “Okay,” came the abrupt address of their Supervisory Senior Agent as he entered the suite he shared with Ronnie from the one Cabe shared with Faraj, the other handler hot on his tail, “as much as we all enjoy discussing Sparrow’s sexual conquests and shortcomings first thing in the morning, we’ve got a lot to get through in a short amount of time. Actually, that’s a lie, but we do only have a short amount of time, so please try to make this as painless as possible for each other.”

  He was shaking up a bottle of orange juice in his hand as he walked, his laptop under his other arm. Flint was obsessed with orange juice, orange juice, all the time, orange juice. As he personally elected not to drink coffee or most teas or anything else that was caffeinated or even borderline alcoholic, he’d discovered from an early age a substitute wake-up sauce to take the place of mother’s bitter black milk, and that was orange juice.

  The pulpier, the better. In the S.S.A.’s own words, a long time ago, he liked to be able to chew his juice. The very idea of that had left Cabe with a look on his face Flint had been chuckling over for days. All he had to do was look at the much younger agent and flex his jaw to elicit that same expression.

  “Yeah, sure thing,” said Cabe in response to his supervisor’s desiccant tone. “And hey guys, if we end up getting thrown back together again in the next life, I promise I won’t be this annoying.”

  “You say that every time, man,” was Faraj’s knee-jerk retort as he flopped down onto the couch beside his friend on the couch. Angus didn’t even react to his master’s presence; the bulky Rottweiler remained flopped against one side of the armchair. “I’m starting to not wanna believe you.”

  “Fascist,” Cabe muttered playfully out of one side of his mouth.

  “As I was saying before Statler and Waldorf here were reunited,” interjected Flint before it could go on any further, “Agent Dasilva’s contacts managed to confirm that the company mole has been in contact
with the buyer, and he’ll be connecting with a mule to transfer a sample of the serum and a drive containing Mr. Wright’s research during the Christmas charity gala on Saturday evening.”

  “Massively excessive public events,” griped Cabe into his hand as he sprawled sideways on his arm of the couch. “Why the hell is it always during massively excessive public events...?”

  “Because the powers that be decided you need to be challenged in life,” Flint replied without so much as blinking, sinking into the armchair opposite and opening his laptop upon his knees. Angus finally chimed in with a lazy hufflng noise and stretched his rear paws out a little further. “We still aren’t aware of the identity of the mole, but given the location of the recurring level and how well-guarded the payload is, well, that narrows our suspect list down a little.”

  “Last night I went through all of WrightTech’s financial records and visitor logs to see who’s had access to the private third elevator or Mr. Wright’s office in the past six months,” said Faraj, reaching out for the extra takeout coffee Cabe was motioning him toward. Which, according to the statement he’d just made, he had more than earned. “The elevator was out of commission for a full day during its annual service in mid-November, and Mr. Wright has all of the building’s elevators and escalators and other related mechanical amenities serviced and inspected by a third-party company they’ve been using for about thirty years called APEX. They always send the same guy, some dude called Hamilton.”

  “Alexander?”

  “Brian.”

  “Shame.”

  “I know. But he’s a prime candidate for the working suspect list for the mole in the company, although apparently he’s an outside contractor and one of the absolute best in the business. He’s worked on the White House and all the big billionaire skyscrapers in L.A. and New York...” Faraj shrugged. “He’s down as an alternate.”

  “Well, apparently, discovering someone you’ve done loyal business with for decades is an Anomaly is now grounds for a change of heart,” Cabe said grimly. “Max Samuels, the pilot from the aborted Montreal flight? He was a family friend of the Wrights, had been for three decades. He and Mike Wright’s father flew together in the Air Force.”