Long Time Gone (Hell or High Water ) (22 page)

Tom lifted his head to meet the gray-eyed gaze. “But I’m here. Don’t you think I need to know, for my own sake?”

Prophet looked pained, then swallowed hard before saying, “Yeah, you do. But sometimes it’s . . . I never want to talk about it.”

“I get that.”

“Thanks, T.”

Tom buried his head against Prophet’s chest again, realizing that Prophet’s arms had never left him. Realizing that, in all of this, there was an implicit promise. “Not letting you off the hook though. And I’m not letting you go,” he said, his voice muffled.

“Considering I’m the one actively holding you . . .” Prophet started, but his words were calm and quiet. He got it.

They finally both did.

Tom slept restlessly. The pain had returned, but he was resisting more meds, and Prophet couldn’t blame him. He stayed next to him in bed, because that’s how Tom seemed to sleep best, and he checked the local news on his phone.

So much going on in New Orleans still. Extra police presence, plus people coming back to their houses. Out-of-state electrical trucks, contractors, and medical personnel. It was nearly impossible to carry out an investigation there. And a killer was running around in the midst of it all.

His phone beeped. A text. Cillian. Again.

He glanced over at Tom, who appeared not to have heard the beep.

You’re enjoying all the bayou has to offer?

When people stop trying to kill me
, Prophet typed back.

Seems to be a regular fault of yours.

Yeah. Not sure why.

You can’t even type that with a straight face
.

Prophet scrubbed his face with his hand.
It’s amazing how parents can fuck up their kids so badly.

Which is why I don’t plan on having any.

Prophet sighed, rolled restlessly out of bed, and he walked over to Etienne’s drafting table.

You paused. You want kids.

“You and those goddamned pauses,” Prophet muttered.
I didn’t say that.

You’d make a great father.

That statement slammed Prophet in the chest harder than he’d ever thought possible, and he was glad they weren’t face-to-face, because there was no way he could’ve kept his poker face on. He threw the phone onto the table with a clatter, a silent acknowledgment that not answering was more of a tell than anything.

He figured he could lie to Cillian that someone picked that moment to try to murder him again. Whether the spook would buy it or not was up to him.

His hands shook a little, and he wanted to do exactly what he’d told Tom not to do—drink to forget.

You’d make a great father.

Don’t go there
, he warned himself. Doing so would mean he’d have to expose shit he’d shoved down a long time ago.

“Do as I say, T,” he said out loud.

Tom’s hands landed on his shoulders, and Prophet reached up to touch them.

Tom kissed his neck. “What did Cillian say?”

“Something nice,” was all Prophet offered.

“I’ll make a mental note to never do such a horrible thing.”

Prophet snorted, then said, “You might want to call Cope.”

“Why?”

“He might know you got arrested.”

“Might?”

“Does.”

Tom groaned. “And you’re just telling me now?”

“Been busy,” Prophet pointed out. “But don’t worry, he blames me.”

“Well, in that case, no big deal.”

“Assholes, both of you.”

“Gonna tell me that Cope and I deserve each other?”

“Do not even . . .” Prophet pointed at him.

“What?”

“Your accent’s thicker when you pull shit like that.”

“You don’t like my accent?” Tom asked, attempting to make his drawl sound innocent and failing miserably.

“Not. A. Bit,” Prophet said, equally unconvincingly. Tom rested his chin on the top of Prophet’s head for a moment, then pulled away, tugging Prophet with him.

As Prophet turned to get up from the chair, he caught sight of a framed sketch hanging in the corner, almost out of sight. Gil Boudreaux. Younger, smiling—hard to fucking believe he ever had.

“The devil always smiles, Proph,” John said from his perch on a bench across the room. “Have I taught you nothing?”

Prophet rubbed his eyes then turned to refocus his gaze on the picture. “Why did Etienne draw your father?”

“I drew it,” Tom said quietly. “I was trying to find some common ground. Thought if I showed him I respected him . . .”

“You drew it?” Prophet echoed.

Tommy stared at him. “I’d wanted to give it to him on Father’s Day, but we ended up fighting, and then I went back to school for summer classes.”

“Let’s go back to bed, T. So much less complicated there.”

It really wasn’t, but Prophet was willing to let them lie to themselves a little while longer.

Prophet would really have liked to have moved out of this place and into hiding somewhere safer, especially since Gil Boudreaux knew where they were. Prophet had no doubt that if and when Gil heard about the newest murder, he’d let the police know where to find his son.

He watched Tom sleep. Reread Miles’s letter, trying to reconcile all this shit, when a sound at the door had him up and out of the small back bedroom. He gently closed the door behind him, weapon drawn.

The front door opened, and a kid walked in as if he had every right to. A suspicious, pissed-off kid who was probably somewhere in the fifteen- to sixteen-year-old range.

“Who the fuck are you?” the kid asked.

“Who the fuck are you?” Prophet asked back, although he knew the answer an instant later and softened. “I’m here with Tom Boudreaux—we know your dad. Etienne.”

The kid looked him up and down. “You don’t have any tattoos.”

“Is that like a state crime now?”

“Should be,” the kid muttered. “Have you seen my dad? I just got home from a class trip and stopped at his house to see him. There’s mail from three days ago in the box. Sometimes he comes here to paint, and he gets all caught up, and I have to remind him to eat. And shower.”

“What’s your name?”

“Remy.”

“Remy, I’m Prophet.” Prophet wished Tom was awake, because a total stranger shouldn’t have to be the one to break the news to a kid. “We haven’t seen your dad since the night after the hurricane.”

“Was he out in it? Because he likes to do that sometimes, go out and take pictures of the storm.”

“No. I saw him after the storm.” Prophet eyed him. “Has your dad ever just left before and not told anyone?”

Remy looked at the ground, like he wanted to say something but knew he wasn’t supposed to.

“He’s not in trouble. At least not with me or Tom. We’re just trying to find him.”

“Sometimes he’ll take off, yeah. But he’ll usually call or leave a note or something.”

“Did anything look out of place to you in his house?”

Remy looked troubled. “I just . . . I got a bad feeling in there, so after I saw the mail, I took off for here.”

“I didn’t hear a car.”

“Too young to drive. Legally anyway. So I hitched.”

Prophet just shook his head. “Put your stuff down and grab something to eat.”

Remy didn’t argue. “Where’s Tom?”

“He’s sleeping. Headache.”

“I’m not supposed to be here,” Remy admitted. “I live with my mom, and she and Dad don’t get along. At all.”

“Will she be worried?”

“Doubt it,” Remy said, and there was an honesty in his words that made Prophet believe him. “My dad’s trying to get me to live with him. I mean, I want to, but the court’s got to make it official.”

“That’s gotta be tough.”

Remy smiled at him a little. Maybe Prophet was the first adult who’d told him it was okay. Sometimes telling someone to buck up had the opposite effect, while admitting something bothered you was the key to overcoming it. Or at least not letting it scare the piss out of you.

Remy munched on chips. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

Prophet told him about Miles and Donny, glossing over the details of the murders, and Remy stopped eating the chips. “Shit.”

“Yeah,” Prophet said.

“Dad told me . . . about them. About what happened.” Remy looked troubled. “Tom’ll find him, right?”

“We’re doing everything we can. But if I don’t get you back to your mom—”

“The sheriff’s looking for Tom, right?”

“Kind of.” Prophet hated dragging a kid into this, but Remy seemed to know the score.

“I’ll go. Won’t tell anyone I was here.”

“I’m not letting you wander the bayou at night alone.”

Remy laughed—fucking laughed at him. “Seriously? You probably don’t even know how to get back here.”

“Dude, I would.”

“They’ll want to question you, right? Because you’re friends with Tom?”

Prophet wondered how the kid was suddenly smarter than he was. Remy smirked, like he knew. “Okay, fine,” Prophet said. “But I’ll drive you most of the way.”

“In my dad’s truck?”

Prophet considered the ramifications of being caught driving in a missing man’s vehicle. “Anything else I could borrow around here?”

Remy paused. “Old man Jensen’s down the road. He’s got a pickup. And he sleeps like the dead.”

“Let’s go.”

Prophet was just walking back into Etienne’s studio around eleven thirty when he heard Tommy’s phone ringing. No police cars had been around Remy’s house, and the kid had texted him ten minutes earlier.

Everything’s cool. No one missed me.

Prophet didn’t want to think about that.

He went into the bedroom where Tom was still out like a light and grabbed the phone. The number was unknown, and he debated for a second before answering it with a brief hello, but they’d hung up already.

A few minutes later, a text came through from that same number—an address for the road just off the bayou cemetery, and then:
Midnight. Got information on Etienne. Come alone.

Great. Just what he wanted to do. And what the fuck was with all the cloak-and-dagger shit around here? It was the bayou, not the Middle East.

Maybe it was Charlie texting him. Or hell, maybe it was Etienne, calling from a secure line and trying to trick anyone who saw his text. But whoever this was . . . they wanted Tom alone. And they sure as hell weren’t getting that.

He dragged a hand through his hair. Should he try to wake Tom to talk to him about this? But he’d given the guy extra pain meds, and he was out. And he deserved to be out. Hell of a couple of days.

The less Tom went outside while the police looked for him, the better.

And tomorrow, Prophet would get them the hell out of the state. Come back here with someone else—Mick or Blue maybe—and figure this out for T.

Yeah, good plan
, he told himself, tasting the sarcasm of his words.

If he headed out now, he could get there earlier than the planned meeting time. Because he wasn’t going to the meeting place. First, he was going to the graveyard and then to the shack to see if he could catch anyone there. And then he’d double back to the road.

He didn’t know why going to the graveyard was so important, and he couldn’t boast Tommy’s voodoo-shit skills, but his instincts always led him where he was supposed to be. Sometimes, it wasn’t the most pleasant of places, but getting good intel rarely put anyone in the best of positions.