by Tanya Chris
“And Tanner’s dead.”
He lifted his left shoulder just slightly. “And I end up with both the plans and the money.” From the corner of his eye, he could see Tanner flinch, but he couldn’t be distracted by that, couldn’t do anything to assure Tanner that they were on the same side.
“What’s to keep me from shooting you and ending up with both the plans and the money myself?” Holly asked.
“I’m not the one you’ve got your gun aimed at.” Aim at me, he begged her silently. Aim it at me. “And you don’t know where the plans are, whereas I’m betting the money is either in your pack or somewhere on your person. If not?” He shrugged again. “I can sell the plans elsewhere.”
The gun shifted, but she didn’t waver enough for him to get a clean shot off.
“He told me you’re a good guy.”
“That’s what he thinks. It’s what I’ve told him—that I’m here to help. He’s a child and an addict.” Look at Holly, don’t look at Tanner, don’t think about how much it took to win his and Joe’s trust. Steadfast. His gun, his eyes, Holly.
“Who are you?” she asked, shifting to Russian. “Not FSB.”
“Call it FSB-adjacent,” he said, following her lead. “I know enough to know where the FSB will be.”
“And you go there, why?”
“For my own personal gain. Why does anyone go anywhere? I buy the plans from the boy at one price, I sell them to you for another. Everybody wins.”
“The situation is awkward.”
“It doesn’t have to be. This snowstorm and the boy’s unfortunate tendency to talk too much have complicated things for him, but they don’t have to change how this works for you and me. I have the plans. You have the money. We swap as we always intended and go our separate ways.”
“I’m supposed to trust you?”
“You could be profitable to me again in the future, and I have no desire to bring the FSB down on my head. What do you care how I came to have those plans in my possession? I do have them and I’ll sell them to you at the agreed-on price. That’s all you need to know.”
“And the boy?” she asked, still in Russian.
He shrugged. It took every ounce of strength he had to move his shoulders that small degree. “We’re both better off if he’s not left to open his mouth again. I’ll take care of him.”
Holly laughed. “You almost had me believing you didn’t care about him.”
“I don’t.” He waited a moment, poised, not allowing himself to breathe a sigh of relief when she didn’t pull the trigger. “The plans are upstairs. He kept them in—”
“His trekking pole. I know. Go ahead then,” she said with a nod.
He backed through the foyer, his gun trained on Holly for as long as he could see her, then up the stairs, bracing for the sound of a gunshot behind him. He fetched the pole and carried it downstairs.
“I don’t turn it over without the money,” he said when they were faced off once again. He’d gotten closer this time, going all the way through the doorway into the great room, improving his chances of an accurate shot.
“And I want to see plans, not a pole.”
She had him there. The plans weren’t in the pole. Obviously. Joe had them tucked inside his coat where they would be turned over to his support team. He was running out of ways to bluff his way through this. It was time to end it.
“Takes two hands to get the grip off,” he told her. “Sorry, but I don’t trust you enough to put down my gun.” He tossed the pole towards her and when she instinctively moved to catch it, the way he had when Lars had done the same thing to him, he pulled the trigger.
Holly’s gun fired too, but he didn’t have time to track the bullet. He stepped towards her, continuing to fire even as she crumpled. He stood over her, holding the gun steady on her forehead, watching for movement. Some part of him was aware that Tanner was screaming.
“Quiet,” he ordered. He needed to concentrate. He bent down, still keeping the gun aimed at the bloody, blond head and brushed the fine strands of hair out of his way so he could check her pulse. Satisfied, he stood up and flipped the safety on his gun, then tucked it back into his holster. Only then did he turn to check on Tanner.
His baby sat with his knees pulled up to his chest, much too tall to be huddled that way, no longer screaming but scrabbling backwards on the seat as though someone were still threatening him, his mouth a gaping O and his eyes wide with terror.
“Shh,” Pyotr said, more gently this time. He crouched down until they were at eye level. “I’m not going to hurt you. Do you really think I am?”
He reached a hand forward, his heart breaking when Tanner flinched. He brushed through the soft curls and Tanner gave a choked sob and launched himself into his arms. Pyotr wrapped him up with a small prayer of gratitude.
“Did you get shot?” He groped over Tanner’s arms and legs, ran his hands over Tanner’s face. Tanner shook his head roughly against his chest. “You’re OK?”
“I’m OK.”
“Thank God.” He looked around the room, trying to spot the trajectory of the bullet Holly had gotten off. The wood along the doorway was splintered at about chest height, which meant she’d aimed for him, not Tanner. Thank God, thank God.
“You said—” Tanner started.
“I’m sorry for what I said.” At least the worst of what he’d said had been in Russian. “It wouldn’t have helped for her to know that you were the only thing I cared about here.”
Not the plans, not the money, not even his own life. Acting cool in the face of someone holding a gun to Tanner’s head was the hardest thing he’d ever done, but it had worked, thank God.
Tanner was sobbing now, heaving gasps born of relief and terror. Pyotr knew how he felt, even if he couldn’t let his own floodgates open that way. The agency would be there soon, and it would be a madhouse with a dead foreign agent on the floor, two civilians involved, and his own cover destroyed.
“Oh God,” Tanner moaned, his breath hiccoughing out between sobs. “I’m going to be sick.”
Pyotr looked around wildly and, not seeing a better answer, carried him to the door and out onto the porch. Tanner retched over the railing into the snow, again and again, pouring out the final dregs of his sickness.
Over Tanner’s wracked body, Pyotr saw a mass of color form on the edge of the horizon—blue and red and yellow jackets heading their way.
“Done?” He rubbed circles over Tanner’s hunched back. “Because we’re about to have company.”
Chapter 21
Joe
They wouldn’t let him go down to the hut. People and helicopters kept coming and going, landing and departing. It was cold standing in the snow, colder as the last rays of the sun faded. Nothing to do but stand, nowhere to be but there, the people coming and going, coming and going.
They’d wanted to take him down to the valley, but he’d refused. There was no way he was going anywhere until he knew what’d happened at the hut, until he knew that Pyotr and Tanner were OK. And they wouldn’t tell him anything.
A woman with an expressionless face had taken the plans from him and put him in the care of a man with an equally expressionless face. The woman had refused to answer questions and the man was just following orders. He watched Joe closely, preventing him from heading down the trail the led to Longline.
Didn’t they understand that those were his men down there? Pyotr might be dead. Tanner might be in custody. They might both be whisked away by helicopter and disappear out of his life as unexpectedly as they’d appeared into it, and he would’ve missed the chance to say what he should already have said: “I want.”
He wanted something. He wanted more. He wanted … what?
That was why he hadn’t said it, because he couldn’t express what he hadn’t figured out. He knew now, standing and watching the people coming and going, that he couldn’t narrow it down to Tanner or Pyotr, couldn’t choose just one. If either of them was still alive, he’d be
grateful for them, but he’d mourn the other. He wanted both.
And what did that look like? Even if he could bring himself to come down off this mountain and return to a life that included other people, how did something like that work? The last few days were a dream. Reality, down there in the valley and out beyond the valley, might play out differently.
Another helicopter landed, this one with the red and white colors of an air ambulance. His breath caught in his throat as two medics jumped from the copter and walked off beyond the horizon with their stretcher. The copter waited. He waited. He waited a long time, longer, he’d have sworn, than it could possibly take to walk to Longline, load up a patient, and walk back, but finally the stretcher came back into sight with two people carrying each end now, the shape of a body stretched between them.
The draped figure wasn’t tall enough to be Tanner, he was pretty sure. But Pyotr? It could be Pyotr.
“Who got hurt?” he asked the man guarding him. He refused to ask who’d been killed, even though the way the drape covered the victim’s face made their fate pretty clear. He wouldn’t say killed, not without knowing who it was.
His guard shrugged. “I been here with you.”
“I want to go down.”
“You can’t go down.”
“I want to go down,” he repeated louder. “That’s my home. All my things are there. It’s cold out here.”
None of that swayed his guard at all.
“You can’t keep me if I’m not under arrest,” he tried. “That’s false imprisonment.”
The guy laughed. “We’re not cops,” he said. “You’re free to go anywhere you want. Just not to that hut.”
“So I could walk to Flume then?”
Longline was on the way to Flume. If they’d let him go to Flume, he could just run down the hill at the right point. Even if they caught him at it, he’d be that much closer.
“You’re not going anywhere.”
“You just said—”
“Look, if you’re cold, I’ll get a helicopter to take you down to lower elevation, but you’re not going anywhere until the boss lady has had a chance to debrief you.”
So much for you can go anywhere you want.
“I want to talk to her,” he demanded. “I want answers. I want to see Pyotr and Tanner. I want—”
“Enough about what you want.” The woman who’d been supervising the loading of the body into the helicopter nodded at his guard. “Go ahead.”
“Go ahead?” He took a tentative step away from his guard, towards Longline.
“Go ahead. I’ve got clearance for you to go down to Longline now. You need an escort?”
He didn’t even bother to answer. Of course he didn’t need an escort. This was his territory. The hordes who’d landed had brought flood lights with them which dotted the landscape at intervals regular enough that he could see the heavily-packed trail they’d worn.
He took off running. The snow had re-hardened as night fell, rendering it slippery and prone to sharp edges. His feet were leaden from standing in wet snow, almost like foreign objects clipped to the ends of his legs, not quite obeying his commands.
He ran faster, not caring, following the trend of footsteps where they turned off the main trail down to Longline. He could see it all laid out before him—the floodlights and the people. He headed towards it, his feet sliding out from under him as he descended the last twenty feet so that he slid unceremoniously to a stop in front of the porch.
“Hey.” An arm grabbed him as he headed up the steps to the hut. “Your badge should be on display.”
“I don’t have a badge.”
“Then you don’t go in.” The man shifted his body to more directly block the steps up to the hut. “Where’d you come from?”
“The woman up at the landing zone said I could come down now.”
“The landing zone? Ah.” The man smiled and relaxed a little. “Pete!”
Joe followed his gaze and there he was—Pyotr. In his familiar orangey-red coat, no hat on his head, his boot laces undone, and a giant grin on his face. Joe rushed him, pulling him into a hug and wrapping him all the way up. He buried his face in Pyotr’s hair, then remembered that the people standing around them were Pyotr’s coworkers and released him slightly, only to have Pyotr pull him back in.
“Tanner?” he asked when he felt steady enough.
“Inside, keeping warm. All that excitement got him sick again. I put him in your room for now, but we’re not staying. Pack a bag for yourself and get Tanner ready too. We’ll catch a ride down to the valley as soon as I’ve got the scene wrapped up.”
“I saw a stretcher.”
“Holly, yeah.” Pyotr squeezed him.
“She’s dead?”
“Dead. I didn’t have a choice, Joe. She had a gun on Tanner.”
He didn’t want to think about it—didn’t want to think about what Pyotr had seen or what he’d had to do. He put a hand under Pyotr’s chin, asking for permission, and when Pyotr’s eyes gave it to him, he leaned in and kissed him.
“Thank you.”
With Pyotr’s OK, the guard at the door let him inside. The first thing he noticed was that the power was back on. The light blazing in the foyer wasn’t something the CIA had brought in. It came from the hut’s own LED bulbs which were strung around the rim of the room like giant fairy lights.
The hut swarmed with people who gave him curious looks as he walked between them into the great room and through it to his bedroom. Tanner was in the bed, but he wasn’t sleeping. He sat upright in a cross-legged position, his eyes instantly on the door as soon as it opened, his face pale.
“Shh, just me.” He sat next to Tanner on the bed and pulled their bodies together, so grateful to see him alive and in one piece, even if he did look like shit. “Pyotr said you got sick again.”
“Just scared, I think. I don’t feel too bad.” Tanner shuddered, belying his words. Joe knew the sickness would come and go for days, weeks even.
“Pyotr said to pack up.” He made to stand, but Tanner clung to him.
“Don’t go.”
“OK, OK. I’m not leaving you.” He needed to check in with Susan, to let her know the hut would be closed for business again tomorrow, but Tanner could come with him while he did it. He huddled Tanner against his side as he made his way to the radio.
“What the hell is going on up there?” Susan asked, answering the radio instantly as if she’d been hanging over it. “We’ve got a pile of people with guns down here—cops looking to get up there and arrest somebody and a bunch of federal agents telling them ain’t no one going up, not even cops. What the hell did you do?”
He laughed, relieved to learn that yes, something could still be funny. “I don’t think I’m allowed to tell you. But they’re evacuating us tonight. I wanted you to know the hut will be empty. Or, maybe not empty exactly ….” He looked around at the five or six people still prowling the great room.
“Don’t worry about it,” Susan said. “Like I said, ain’t nobody going up there. They tell me you’ll be closed a couple of days, so enjoy the holiday. What about that sick guest you had?”
He looked down at the guy who’d curled up in his lap as best a man who was six foot two could possibly curl up in another man’s lap. He kissed Tanner’s head where it rested against his shoulder.
“He’s coming with me,” he told Susan.
~~~
Joe flipped the switch on the light to the hotel room. He’d declined the CIA’s offer to get him and Tanner separate rooms and likewise declined the clerk’s offer of a room with two queen-sized beds.
“We prefer a king,” he’d growled.
The clerk had lifted both hands and said, “Hey, me too. Just playing the odds.”
He’d forced himself to soften his expression. “Sorry. It’s been a long day.”
“Yeah, your boyfriend doesn’t look good.”
Tanner had been near puking on the helicopter ride down—thank God t
he ride had been short—but he looked better now. As soon as Joe had the door to their room open, he pushed past him to the bathroom.
“A real toilet,” he exclaimed, immediately shutting the door behind himself.
Joe stacked their packs against the wall and sat down on the edge of the huge bed to unlace his boots. He glanced around the room, which was more spacious than he’d expected but still small enough to be dominated by the bed, and furnished in standard motel fare. An air conditioner ticked in the corner. Back down at ground level, August meant summer.
He lay back against the bed and spread his arms, appreciating how they didn’t hit the edge, not even when he spread them as wide as they’d go.
Tanner popped out of the bathroom. “And a shower,” he said, as if surprised to find it there.
He knew the feeling. It always took him a few days on the ground to get used to modern conveniences again. The toilet, he didn’t much care about. After four years up at Longline, the outhouse did what it needed to do and a pee bottle was more convenient on cold nights than schlepping out of bed. But a shower? Real hot water spraying down from a real shower head, not tepid water trickling out of a tube? Fuck yeah.
“Well, what are we waiting for?”
“Exactly.”
Despite the intimacy of them sharing a stall barely big enough for two full-grown bodies, the shower didn’t turn sexual. Tanner spent most of their shared time under the spray telling him what had happened in the hut—how Holly had taken him hostage, how Pyotr had shot her where she stood.
He’d seen the hole in the door jamb leading to the foyer. Learning that Pyotr had been standing in the doorway at the time? He almost threw up himself thinking about it.
“Hey,” Tanner said, wrapping an arm around his waist. “We’re all OK now.”
“I think that’s supposed to be my line.” He slumped back against Tanner’s body, feeling the warm, lean heat of him and the hot wash of water cascading over them both. “You’re the one who almost died.”
“And you’re the one who couldn’t do anything except wait and worry. Once Pyotr got there, I knew I’d be OK somehow. Before, I’d been ready to let her kill me if it would’ve saved you two, but once he was there, I knew he’d handle it.”
