by Sidney Bell
“Brogan.”
“...that’s all he’s good for anyway...”
Brogan’s whole body quivered, his hands coiling into fists, and he was going to kill Coop, and then Henniton, and he didn’t give a fuck about anything else, couldn’t give a fuck, not with this trip-hammer thundering inside him, not when every word Coop spewed was an accelerant stoking the fire higher—
“Brogan,” Embry said again. That familiar, much-loved voice somehow broke through Coop’s vicious litany and brought Brogan’s thoughts to heel. Brogan’s vision narrowed down until all he saw was Embry’s face, beautiful and bruised and Brogan...he couldn’t bear it. He had to do something, had to get this feeling out somehow, it didn’t matter—
“Brogan,” Embry repeated. “That’s not what I need. Are you hearing me? I need you to stay calm.”
Coop was laughing. “I bet he’s lying about that ‘almost’ part, Smith. I bet he took every inch.”
Embry’s expression never flickered and his scrutiny of Brogan never wavered; Coop might not have existed, for all the attention Embry paid him. He simply said quietly, “Brogan, if you want to help me, you have to stay calm. Can you help me?”
Coop was shuffled into the background again as Brogan nodded, the movement jerky, like his skull was on strings being manipulated by someone else’s hand. Embry’s hand. Those eyes—usually so shrewd, but warm and loving just now—were latched onto Brogan’s, and he’d never known that someone’s gaze could be so immovably strong and impossibly tender at the same time, not the way Embry’s was.
It gave Brogan ground to stand upon, and reason to try.
“There you are,” Embry said. He was all the way across the room, but he might as well have been standing right beside Brogan, that was how close he seemed in that moment. Brogan couldn’t use his hands to keep him here, not at this distance, but he held on with everything else in him.
“Stay with me, all right?” Embry ordered gently. “That’s how you can help me.”
Coop ground the gun into the back of Brogan’s head. Pain flared, and Coop was speaking, but Brogan missed what he said. He didn’t dare look away from Embry, didn’t dare hear anyone else’s words, because he would lose his tenuous grasp on sanity and attack, and then...
He’d get himself shot, he realized. Embry was trying to keep him from getting shot.
“You told me,” Brogan said, and maybe this was a weird time to be proud of someone for being able to say something that difficult and personal, but since Brogan couldn’t even think it, that only made it more monumental for Embry. He’d undermined Coop in the process, too, which was no small thing. Hell, yes, Brogan was proud of him. “You didn’t even hesitate.”
A tiny smile quirked at the corner of Embry’s lips. “No reason to.”
Brogan took a deep breath, because that...that made all the noise in his head quiet down.
“—will totally fucking shoot him in the head if you don’t answer me, Ford,” Coop was shouting. “I only need one of you to find out what I want to know. What did you do in the safe room?”
“I copied the files onto a flash drive,” Embry said. His gaze shifted, but Brogan held on, reorienting himself. Coop shoved the pistol harder against Brogan’s skull and he couldn’t muffle a small grunt. Embry shifted his weight, and in his peripheral vision, Brogan saw Dillon draw his weapon.
“Give it to me.”
Embry studied Coop as if he were a puzzle Embry had been tasked with putting together, and Coop ordered, “Information, now, or I’ll put a hole in his skull the size of a lemon.”
Embry pulled a USB drive out of his pocket and threw it to the ground a couple of feet from where they were standing. Coop dragged Brogan to it, then slammed the heel of his boot against the thing several times. Brogan couldn’t help wincing, knowing how much that drive meant to Embry, but if Embry was bothered by the destruction, he didn’t show it. Instead, he met Brogan’s gaze before pointedly looking at Dillon.
Brogan gave him the tiniest nod he could manage. Message received. Dillon was Brogan’s responsibility.
“Ford’s not my last name, you know,” Embry said.
Coop was still focused on smashing plastic.
“It’s Evans,” Embry continued. “Sound familiar? My father was in computers, if that helps. Before you killed him, I mean.”
“What?” Coop asked. Now he looked up, confusion creasing his forehead. “Evans? But that was—”
“Five years ago,” Embry prompted, nodding. “That’s a lot of time to prepare. It’s already too late for you, Coop.”
The gun began vibrating against Brogan’s head—Coop’s hands were trembling. He was scared now, as he should’ve been, because he’d realized how well Embry had played all of them, how far back it went. He was realizing that a man who’d gone as far as Embry had would never have shown himself without a contingency plan, even with a gun to Brogan’s head.
“You little bastard,” Coop whispered.
“The computer in the safe room doesn’t have an internet connection.” Embry jerked his head to the right, nodding to the desk beside him. “But this one does. The ATF has everything they could ever need to take all of you down.”
The gun dug into Brogan’s skull hard enough to push his head forward, and Embry hastily added, “Joel, come out now.”
At this, Joel Henniton emerged from the nearest cubicle to Brogan’s left. He was barely five feet away, and his sudden presence made Brogan, Dillon and Coop all jump—never a good thing when guns were in play. Dillon looked back and forth between Henniton and Coop, probably wondering who he was supposed to listen to.
“You?” Coop asked, the word so bitten off that his teeth clacked. “You...you fucking traitor.”
Henniton remained focused on Embry. He was glassy and too still—if Coop weren’t already so angry, he’d have noticed, but Embry had manipulated the players well. Coop had hated Henniton for years now, and it was easy for him to believe that Henniton would betray them all. Coop probably wanted to believe it, just so he could be right.
“Joel,” Embry said. “Take Coop’s gun away from him.”
Henniton didn’t even hesitate—the drug had ruined his sense of self-preservation. He lurched forward, slapping at Coop’s arms even as Coop started to turn the gun on him.
Brogan yanked free and jumped Dillon, taking the other man by surprise. He knocked his gun away, but Dillon retaliated by grabbing his wounded forearm. Red, ugly agony shot through his nerves. Pissed off, gasping, Brogan elbowed him in the face, sending him back a few steps, buying himself time to refocus through the pain.
Embry, Coop and Henniton were fighting behind him, Coop shouting, Henniton grunting, but Brogan couldn’t afford to look. He head-butted Dillon, then kicked the guy straight in the knee, sending the joint backward and ensuring that Dillon had hours of surgery and half a year’s worth of rehab before he’d be walking again. The man gave a strangled scream, crumpling.
Brogan ended it by kicking Dillon in the face. The man dropped into unconsciousness like a rock through water.
Out of breath, his arm on fire, Brogan whirled in time to see Henniton collapse under the butt of Coop’s gun, while Embry—bleeding now, disheveled, shoved himself to his knees several feet away. His pistol was on the floor nearby, far enough that he’d have been in trouble if not for Coop’s temper. Coop took the time to crack the already-out-cold Henniton over the head once more, grinning triumphantly.
By the time he lifted his head, Embry was armed and aiming.
Coop straightened slowly, and the two of them measured each other across the ten feet of space separating them. The pistol in Coop’s hand was pointed at the ground—a gunslinger in the Old West couldn’t have beaten Embry to the trigger from that position. Any sane man would drop his weapon.
Brogan held his breat
h, wondering if Coop would assume Embry didn’t have the nerve, wondering if Coop expected to die no matter what he did in the next—
Coop’s pistol darted upwards.
The gunshot echoed.
And Coop fell, a gaping, raw hole in his head where his right eye used to be.
Brogan only realized he’d been holding his breath when black spots appeared at the edges of his vision. He sucked in air.
Embry got up laboriously and went to stand over Coop, staring down into the grizzled face. “I win,” he whispered.
Ears ringing with the sound of gunfire in such a small space, Brogan heard him only distantly. Embry sounded empty rather than pleased—Brogan couldn’t imagine what thoughts were going through his head.
It wasn’t until his ringtone jangled that Brogan remembered there were dirty Touring guards in the building. He pulled out his cell phone and read the text from Mario: I found Nora. WTF happened? Parks woke up & I duct-taped him to a chair & made him radio all-clear to Touring guards. Is this your gun on the floor? Cops on the way. You’re not dead, are you? Please don’t be dead.
A small relief, but Brogan couldn’t pay it much mind. He texted back: Ten mins.
He started to tell Embry about the cops, but Embry was walking away, right arm tucked against his torso like it hurt, stepping over Coop’s body and toward Henniton’s sprawled form. Brogan wanted to go to him, but the expression on Embry’s face kept him still. There was nothing of Adam Embry Evans left—just raw rage and grief.
For the longest time, he simply stared at Henniton. He seemed to have forgotten that Brogan was there.
“Wake up,” he whispered, tilting his head as if listening for a response from the unconscious man. “Wake up and talk to me, fucker.”
Henniton didn’t stir, so Embry kicked him in the gut hard enough to shift his entire body.
It was really late and it’d been a really bad night, and Brogan didn’t understand at first. He thought Embry wanted the chance to look Henniton in the eyes—the knife cut more deeply when held in a trusted hand, after all—and Brogan wasn’t too decent to find that thought satisfying. But when Henniton didn’t come to, Embry seemed desperate rather than angry.
His mouth trembled open between demands that Henniton wake, and his eyes were hollow pits of need. He shook as he aimed another vicious kick at Henniton’s undefended ribs. This time bone cracked. That was when Brogan got it.
He felt stupid for not putting it together faster. Iraq had taught him that he could take a life when he had to—he truly believed there were times when killing was justified. But pulling a trigger when your enemy gave you no choice was one thing. Shooting a defenseless, unconscious man took something far more cold-blooded.
Embry’s gun hand wobbled and he bent over, cringing around his right arm, and caught his breath before lifting the weapon again.
“Wake up,” he cried. He kicked Henniton again. Tears ran down his cheeks, but he seemed oblivious. He gasped for air, then folded almost in half, resting one hand on his knee for balance. “Fight back,” he whispered. “Please.”
He couldn’t do it, Brogan realized. Embry couldn’t kill this way. He didn’t have it in him after all.
In all honesty, Brogan wasn’t that surprised.
He swallowed hard and went to Embry’s side. He reached down, curling an arm around those slender hips, helping Embry stand upright, ignoring his low groan of pain as Brogan propped him up. He put his hand around Embry’s so they were gripping the pistol together.
In his peripheral vision, Brogan saw Embry’s pale face turn to stare at him, his big, dark eyes wide, but Brogan stayed focused. Something sick burned inside him, but he believed Embry deserved satisfaction. Not only for his family and Amy, but for himself, for every mark that this man had left on him.
This would take what was left of his own goodness, that was true. He’d spent the years since the war convincing himself that he’d been the good guy. The certainty that it’d been necessary, that he’d never done more evil than he’d been forced to was what let him live with the things he’d done. That would be gone now. The line between being a soldier and being a killer was fairly thick, and he was pretty sure there was no coming back once you’d crossed it. He’d give up more than that for Embry, and a part of him might even get a dark, pleasurable vindication from it, but fuck, it cut deep.
He put his finger over Embry’s on the trigger.
“Brogan,” Embry whispered brokenly.
“It’s okay, Embry. Let me help you.”
He took aim, but he didn’t get a chance to pull the trigger. The gun was wrenched out of his hand and thrown to the side. Embry was in his arms, locked around him, mumbling against Brogan’s throat in bursts of hot breath, and it took a moment for his brain to catch up to their meaning.
“Not for me,” Embry said, over and over. “I won’t let you. Not for me.”
Brogan could smell gun oil and pomade and Embry’s sweat and cologne, and he closed his eyes to better take it in, pulling him closer.
* * *
The night became a blur of orders and demands and insinuations while people with badges told Brogan where to go and what to do.
The cops seemed unsure about what to make of him—he suspected the Touring security tapes, which didn’t record sound, had been less than helpful on that front. They kept giving him hard, suspicious glances, but they also offered him endless cups of bad precinct coffee. Although he supposed the coffee could’ve been a sign of hostility, too.
The cops were less conflicted about Embry. He’d been arrested before Coop’s blood had dried on his suit jacket.
Brogan tried to keep his worry on the back burner—he needed all the brain cells he had left to figure out what the hell he should say to their pummeling questions, but it wasn’t easy. He didn’t know if Embry had managed to transfer all the data to the ATF before Coop had destroyed the flash drive, didn’t know if Embry had a plan for any of this. Finally, in a fit of exhausted desperation, Brogan demanded a lawyer and put his head down on the table to wait.
The expensively dressed suit who eventually showed up was also Embry’s lawyer, and Lucas Trilby-Something-or-other-the-third was as terrifying as only an Embry-chosen lawyer could be. He didn’t say a single word of greeting to Brogan. Instead, he handed over a printed statement and a pen. “If this is correct, please sign it.”
Brogan read the form and decided it was...spun, but contained no outright lies. He scrawled his name on the line and within minutes, he was swept from an interrogation room to the waiting room. Mario was already waiting, fresh from his own interview. He had blurry eyes and a change of clothes in a bag, and when he held it open, Brogan saw the unsealed envelope and the green flash drive on top.
“It was on your bed,” Mario said, his voice rough and slow with weariness. “Seemed relevant to the events of the evening. I also fed and walked Giz.”
Brogan put a grateful hand on his friend’s shoulder and pocketed the drive. It didn’t have the info from the Touring computer on it, but it had everything else Embry had collected over the years. It must be worth something, or Embry wouldn’t have left it with him.
They sat alone in the sterile waiting room in silence as the sun rose, watching men and women trickle in as the workday started. Mario left at one point to get them some takeout breakfast, which they chewed mechanically while watching bad talk shows. Brogan was so beyond tired at this point that he’d circled back around again—he didn’t think he could sleep if he tried. Of course, part of that was knowing that Embry was getting grilled in one of those claustrophobic interrogation rooms.
Trilby, the lawyer, didn’t seem too concerned about the whole Embry-in-jail thing, though. Midmorning, he came out from the depths of the precinct to update Brogan, and he leaned back in one of the plastic chairs like a king surveying his well-
managed kingdom.
He spoke confidently about ATF agents and Homeland Security and the footage taken from the Touring security cameras. Brogan tried to track, but he’d been anxious for too many hours. “Stupid” was the mildest word that could be applied to his thought processes at the moment. His arm ached, his head pounded, and all he really wanted was for the guy to say, “Embry is fine, he’ll be out in a minute, and this is all over.”
“Can you sum it up for me?” he asked, interrupting Trilby-something midsentence, which yeah, rude, but the guy was apparently too well-paid to do anything other than change topic without blinking.
“After speaking with Mr. Ford and the district attorney, I can tell you that they will not be charging him with anything today. It could be weeks before they decide what they want to charge him with, if anything, and I’ll be working in the meantime to try to attain a deal of some sort for him. Agent Carthy of the ATF will be here to—”
“Worst case scenario?” Brogan asked impatiently.
“Eight to ten years.”
Brogan lost all of his breath, and it was Mario’s turn to clap a hand to his shoulder. “Best case?” Mario asked.
“They give him a medal for curtailing the criminal activities of numerous scallywags,” Trilby replied dryly. “Now, Mr. Ford did say that there was the matter of a flash drive in your—”
Brogan was already digging it out. “Ah,” Trilby said, snatching it up and making the drive disappear with the speed and subtlety of a magician. “Excellent.”
“Is that likely?” Mario asked, sounding doubtful. “The, uh, medal thing?”
“More likely than prison for a decade,” Trilby said. “I’m very good at my job. Excuse me.”
Trilby got up to shake hands with more men coming in from the street carrying briefcases.
“You believe him?” Brogan asked, finding his voice again.
