Long Time Gone (Hell or High Water ) (29 page)

“He’s going to be okay.”

“Damned straight he is.” Prophet touched his hand to Tommy’s. “Stop the guilt shit, okay? None of this is your fault. I need you to believe that.”

Tom wanted to, desperately, and so, at that moment, he did.

They dragged themselves back to Della’s twenty-four hours later, after Remy’s condition had been upgraded to good—she welcomed them with hugs, and then she yelled at them for scaring the crap out of her.

“And I’m making us a big dinner tonight—no arguments,” she said after asking about Remy.

“None,” Tom told her.

“Good. Roger and Dave are helping me. You two, go . . . shower.” She crinkled her nose. “How long were you in the swamp?”

“Too fucking long,” Prophet called over his shoulder, already halfway up the stairs. Tom followed him into his old room at the far end of the hall.

Prophet’s bags had already been here, and someone had brought Tom’s up here too and placed them next to each other. Prophet just grunted and headed to the bathroom, stripping as he walked.

Tom grabbed clean clothes from both their bags, threw them on the bed, and went to join Prophet. Neither of them was up for anything more than getting clean. Tom couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so sore.

“You think your wrists are okay?” he asked as he soaped Prophet’s back and neck.

“I don’t know,” Prophet said honestly. He stared down at them like they could give him the answer. Made fists and then stretched them out. Tom was going to offer to massage them for him when a knock at the door pulled his focus.

“I’ll get it.” Tom grabbed a towel and went to open the door. Dave was there with a tray.

“Della figured you guys would need something to tide you over before dinner,” he said.

“Thanks, Dave.”

“Good to have you guys back here safely,” Dave told him, then mouthed, “I like him,” as he pointed toward the bed where Prophet had now deposited himself with his iPad.

“Me too,” Tom told him.

Dave shut the door behind him, and Tom slid the tray onto the bed.

“Smells good,” Prophet said as he made some kind of hand signal.

Tom was about to ask what the hell he was doing, but when he sat next to Prophet, he saw exactly what was happening.

Prophet was Skyping with Mal.

Mal the psycho. Mal, who he guessed was better than Cillian, except that was like saying a gator was safer than a rattler. He and Prophet were both signing quickly—looking intense and serious—although he knew Mal could hear. The wicked looking scar across his throat had taken away his ability to speak, probably severely damaged his vocal cords. His survival was no doubt something of a miracle, or a testament to the fact that psychos were harder to kill than most. So either Prophet was just comfortable signing with the guy, or he didn’t want Tom to know what they were talking about.

Mal glanced in his direction then made a hand motion to Prophet that certainly didn’t seem like it came from any ASL dictionary.

“What’s that mean?” Tom asked Prophet.

“Just saying hi.”

“Yeah, because he’s the friendly, pop-in-for-a-chat kind of guy,” Tom muttered, fighting the urge to give the screen the finger, then giving in and doing just that.

Mal smirked and cut the screen off in reply.

Prophet smiled. “Everyone has that urge with Mal.”

“What does Phil see in him?” Tom asked and immediately felt guilty, because the guy had saved Prophet’s life when he couldn’t. “Forget it. Sorry.”

Prophet cleared his throat. “Mal doesn’t
exactly
work for EE or Phil.”

“What does that mean?”

Prophet shrugged and actually succeeded in looking innocent. But Tom wasn’t buying it, especially when Prophet came back with, “Mal’s like, you know, extra help.”

“Like for an after-school project?”

“If it involved C4 and a machete, yes.”

Tom opened his mouth and closed it. Shook his head like that might be able to stop the crazy, and still had to ask, “Phil has no idea you call him?”

“I’m, uh, kind of forbidden to call Mal.”

“But you still do it.”

“Well, yeah.” Prophet looked at him like he was the crazy one. “Figured what Phil doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

Tom tried to digest that, thought about the fact that Prophet had called Mal instead of Phil when he’d been shot. Which meant Doc was complicit in this whole Mal thing too. “I thought Phil knew everything.”

Prophet considered that. “He hasn’t killed me over it yet.”

“He might be biding his time.”

“Maybe. But look, he’d kill Mal first, and that would give me time to run.”

Suddenly the iPad screen came to life, and Mal shot Prophet the finger.

“I knew you were still listening, you asshole!” Prophet shouted.

Mal signed something back to him.

“You hurt yourself using that word?” Prophet asked.

Mal signed something again, pointed at Tom, and Prophet just shook his head.

“What did he say about me?” Tom demanded.

“You don’t want to know.”

“You’re right.”

“Told you,” Prophet said, looking quite pleased with himself. “Don’t say I never tell you anything.”

He signed to Mal, and Mal cut the screen again. This time, so did Prophet. He pushed the iPad onto the nightstand and pulled the food toward him.

Della had prepared some fried shrimp and other seafood. She was probably making gumbo and had bought too much, as always. They ate directly from the tray, not bothering to scoop anything into bowls. Tom asked, “Will you finally tell me what you were doing for the past four months?”

“Can’t say.” Prophet said around a mouthful of shrimp. “Can’t remember if I’m allergic to this or not.”

“You’re kidding me, right? Yeah, you are. You’re trying to distract me rather than tell me anything.”

“I tell you what I can.”

Tom put his hands out toward Prophet as if to say,
I rest my case
. “I can’t fucking protect you if you don’t tell me shit. If I don’t know who—what—I’m protecting you from.”

Prophet stared, and Tom waited for the joke, the snort, the wiseass comment, because he was well aware that was he repeating Prophet’s earlier words to him, but was also aware of how stupid it was to try to protect a man who was a weapon.

But Prophet didn’t say anything. Instead, he reached out and grabbed the front of Tom’s shirt and pulled him close. Gave him a kiss that tasted like cocktail sauce, and then pulled away, grinning.

“That’s not getting you out of my questions.”

“We almost died in that godforsaken bayou. That should get me out of any kind of interrogation for at least a week, if not more.”

“You owe me.”

“I owe you?” Prophet asked incredulously. “I saved your ass like three times. Three and a half.”

“You can’t save someone’s life by halves,” Tom told him. “And I helped save us. And I saved you from the alligator.”

“I could’ve just shot it the first time.” Prophet sighed. “You really want to do this now?”

“What I don’t want is to not be able to get in touch with you until the next natural disaster.”

“And that wasn’t all my fault, Tommy. But fine.” Prophet pushed the tray away, propped his head on the pillows, and crossed his long legs. “What do you want to know?”

“Start anywhere.”

“I was born in a small town—”

“Why’d you go to work for the CIA?”

“I had no intentions of working for the CIA, but the Agency had other plans for me.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “They saved me from a court martial.”

“And beat the hell out of you,” Tom muttered, and then realized what he’d said. “It was the goddamned CIA in that video.” The video he’d gotten before he’d ever met Prophet had documented an interrogation Prophet had endured after he and John had been captured by Sadiq’s brother, Azar. In that video, Prophet had pinned his interrogator under the table, nearly breaking his neck in the process. But something about what Tom had watched on screen had never seemed right to him.

“I figured you had to realize it wasn’t Azar in the video at some point,” Prophet said.

“It felt like CIA,” Tom admitted. “Where’s the agent from under the table now?”

Prophet gave a small grin. “Still hating me.”

“At least you let him go.”

“It wasn’t an easy decision. Bastard kept me tied down for four days. Wouldn’t let a doc come see me. Wouldn’t feed me. So you treat me like an animal, don’t be surprised when I bite.”

He spoke the words calmly, but there was tension in his neck.

“They run through guys like toilet paper,” Tom said, and Prophet glanced at him strangely. “Sorry, just an expression Ollie—my mentor at the Bureau—used to say.”

An odd expression crossed Prophet’s face for just a second, so briefly that Tom could easily talk himself into believing he’d imagined it. So he did. And then Prophet told him, “Well, you’re not there anymore. And he’s right.”

“How do you know Mal?” he asked, and Prophet sighed. Shifted a little. “And if you tell me to ask him . . .”

“He was on my team.”

“Mal was a SEAL?”

Prophet nodded. “We came up through BUD/S together. Training for SEALs,” he added.

“I know that.” Tom crossed his arms.

“What? I answered your question.”

“Minimally,” Tom pointed out, and Prophet rolled his eyes. Rubbed his wrists.

“I’m not giving you Mal’s history.”

“Was Mal on your team when all this happened with John?”

“Yeah.”

“Where are the others?”

“You know . . . around.” Prophet waved in the air like the men would magically appear. Tom even looked over his shoulder, a slight chill running through him, but he shook it off.

“So, still in the Navy?”

“Nope.”

“CIA?”

Prophet snorted. “Definitely not. They’re a little bit . . . wanted. Well, I guess it depends on what country they’re in and what names they’re using,” he added, almost helpfully, like that made things better.

“And that doesn’t bother any of them?”

“We were trained for that shit. Picked for it because we’re good at it. Because we loved it. That doesn’t stop. It’s like, when we got too good, no one liked that. Well, tough shit.”

There was way more to this. “Do any of them work for Phil?”

“None of them work for Phil. I don’t either,” Prophet added, with a gleam of anger in his eyes.

“Do they not work for Phil because they’re looking for John?”

Prophet didn’t answer.

“Tell me this—if your team is still so close and loyal—” Prophet didn’t argue with that. “—then why didn’t any of them show up to save you from Sadiq?”

Prophet’s jaw twitched, and he stared at Tom.

“The Irish guy with the skullcap,” Tom said slowly. “What the fuck, Proph? Are they around us, all the time, like ghosts? All those texts . . . I thought they were EE or Cill . . . but your team . . .?”

“What do you want me to say?”

“You want me to be your partner—your partner—and you won’t let me in.”

Prophet shook his head. “It took a murder charge to get you to open up to me.”

“Tit for tat?”

“Tommy, I have a team. A past. A lot of shit I can’t talk about. I know you want to try to help, but you can’t.”

“If you took over EE, would you hire any of your boys?”

“I’m not taking over EE.”

“If you were allowed to partner with your old teammates, would you?”

“Yeah.”

“So much for being anti-partner.”

“They saved my life.”

“Thought you saved your own life when you forced the CIA to release you,” Tom challenged him. “Guess it depends on what version of the story you tell?”

“Guess so.” Prophet said, his voice quietly frustrated. He stalked off and Tom let him.

“Guess I pushed it too far,” he muttered to himself.

A voice with a tinge of an accent said, “You did. You should really leave him alone.”

Tom froze. Didn’t turn around right away. “Leave him alone, as in forever?”

“Depends. Will you pull that shit constantly?”

Tom did turn then. Same guy, same skullcap, standing by the window. “You’re damned straight I will. For one thing, he’s my partner. I take that shit seriously. For another, I’m already involved. Sadiq knows who I am. So for better or for worse, I’m a part of this. So no, I’m not going to leave him alone. Maybe you can start telling me what the fuck’s going on?”

The guy grinned. “I can see why he likes you.”

“I’m not liking him much right now.”

“You and I both know that’s not true. Look, I can’t hang out here. I shouldn’t even be here.”

“Then why are you?”

“Sadiq’s guys are sniffing around. Getting a little close.”

“And you’re sniffing around them, looking for John?”

The guy’s eyes flashed. Tom was pushing his damned luck all around. “Tell Proph I’ll be in touch. And if anyone besides him asks, you never saw me.”

Before Tom could say anything, the guy was gone out the window in a jump to rival Blue’s.