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The most important reason for not thinking about it was that he knew he was having a harder time keeping things from James—he could feel the brain waves leaking out of his walls—and Matt was trying not to let James know how much or deeply he felt. He had to work on those mental walls. They were trying to crumble.

He just rode the high and didn’t think too much for the moment. And he let James feel some of that warmth and contentment because he thought it was helping him get through the mess his life had become.

They left the prefab and stayed out of the well-lit areas of the convent grounds. Pearl kept them to a sedate strolling walk (which James wasn’t particularly adept at), tucking her hands into the sleeves of her long habit. Just some relatives, catching up on a nice night, strolling along. Nothin’ to see here, Sister.

Pearl took a rambling path to a gate in the eastern wall, where a “gardener” was lounging conspicuously. Matt could practically feel James’s suppressed snort. He dipped his head, hiding his smile, and looped his arm through his “husband’s.”

Pearl greeted the man, and judging by their cryptic exchange it seemed he was under her influence. Possibly a Blue agent, but Matt thought not. Probably just bought and paid for.

Blue tax dollars at work. Or NACC tithing, more likely.

Matt’s suspicion was confirmed when Pearl slipped the man something just before he opened the gate for them and let them out.

“He’s letting us go because he trusts me not to be doing anything truly nefarious. And for the money, of course. Don’t trust him yourselves,” she warned in a low voice once they were away from the wall.

“What would he consider truly nefarious?” Matt couldn’t help asking.

“Sneaking two fugitives from the RIA out to contact an agency in the Blue that’s assisting their escape. That kind of thing.” Judging by her voice, Pearl was enjoying herself. Probably her career in R&D hadn’t allowed for a lot of playing spy.

It took a while to walk to the abandoned gas station on the nearby highway that they were apparently aiming for. Matt was starting to flag, and he was relieved when they got there and he could stop. James looked at him sharply, but wisely kept his comments to himself.

“So, what’s here?” Matt clamped his lips shut when he realized how out of breath he sounded.

Pearl pointed to a strange-looking square column poking out of the ground next to the wall of the abandoned building. It had some kind of boxlike structure attached to the top half, with an open side and bottom. As they approached it, he saw there was something in the box.

“Is that a
pay phone
?” He’d seen a few before, but they were obsolete oddities. You only ever saw them… at abandoned structures just like this, actually. Or in museums.

Pearl was grinning so big the minimal moonlight glinted off her teeth. “In case no one has ever mentioned it, Lance is a resourceful guy.”

“I’ve noticed.” Matt’s voice was dry. How could he have worked for QESA almost three years and never come across this before? It explained how Lance ended up with all those contracts to pass com on from Blue agents, though.

There was no vid, but it was a secure communication because you couldn’t scab on the waves. It relied largely on ground lines that had been laid more than one hundred years ago and then abandoned. Once the initial footwork was done and the abandoned pay phones with viable communication paths still intact were identified, it took very little maintenance and very little encryption. The quality varied, and occasionally someone, somewhere, destroyed a connection and it was lost, but for the time being it worked well.

Matt picked up the handset at Pearl’s urging and held it awkwardly to his ear. “Gah!” he yelped, and dropped it. It fell to the end of its little cord and hung there, making that strange, high-pitched droning sound. “What the hell is that noise?”

“It’s called a dial tone.” James was smirking. “It’s how you know you have an open line.”

“Th’fuck,” Matt muttered. He turned on James. “What did you do when you heard it?”

Pearl laughed. “Pretty much what you just did. Except he took cover.”

“Thought it was an alarm,” James muttered sheepishly.

“You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you?” Matt scowled at Pearl.

She shrugged. “Yeah, Carmella did it to me when I came here. I’ve been waiting years for a victim.”

“I only had to wait a day.” James sounded downright gleeful.

Matt snorted, sounding alarmingly like James to his own ears, and picked up the handset. “’S not working,” he reported after standing there a minute. He turned and looked. Pearl was grinning again, and James was back to smirking. “’Kay,
now
what?”

“You have to dial the number.”

Matt blinked. Duh. People still had com numbers. Except…. “What’s the number?” It was only ten digits, no letters or symbols. Old school all the way. He listened to the phone ring after a number of strange clicks and pauses.

“Hello?” shouted a voice in his ear.

“Jesus! I can hear you; you don’t need to shout.”

“Matt?” It was Grampa Lance. “It’s good to hear your voice, son.” Oh, God, he was calling him son. He could tip into sentimental any second.

“Yeah, Grampa, good to hear you, too.” Matt took a gamble that calling him Grampa would satisfy Lance’s emotional needs rather than invite him to become more maudlin. Either things were dire, or it worked, because Lance got down to business.

“Are you healing?”

“Almost there. Maybe two days and no broken skin.”

“Good. Can’t have you in the river with an open wound. We can’t get a Feng Niao bird in to pick you up ’til you’ve humped thirty-two klicks past the river.”

“Thirty kilometers is, like, a day of hard walking. I can do that.” Matt knew he might not be able to, but he had a weird faith that James would get him out of this. He glanced at James. The guy was giving him a piercing look, like he knew what Matt was thinking.

Or he was thinking Matt was nuts for thinking he could walk that far after swimming the Snake. Matt turned away and shut his mind down tight. He didn’t care what James thought. He would paddle his way across the Snake with his tongue and crawl forty kilometers if it would get James out of this fucking place.

“Matt, don’t push it. I’m trusting James to keep you safe.” Matt raised his eyebrows. They did trust James. Sorta. “Don’t jeopardize his testicles, Matt. I’m getting the impression you want him fully functioning, and Anais will take him down if anything happens to you.” Or Lance was trying to manipulate him. Relatively successfully.

“How do you know how I feel about his testicles?” he hissed.

“Your faith in him gave it away. When you refused to believe he wasn’t who he said he was, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary?”

“Oh. That.”

“Should I get the sit rep from James or you?”

Oh, dammit all. Why front? “James is in a better position to give you that.”

“And he told you the POA?”

“Yeah, got the plan.”

“Okay. Don’t hang up. Sid wants to talk to you. Take care, son.”

Grampa Sid? Good lord. He was being coddled via telephone.

“Matt?”

“Grampa?”

“Don’t be a smartass.”

“How is that being a smartass? I called you Grampa.” Grampa Sid didn’t usually sound so annoyed with him. Usually.

“You’re goddamned lucky it’s me checking up on you and not your mother. I had to argue with her for forty-five minutes on vid to get her to stay in Weimer and wait for you there. By the way, guess where you’re going soon as you get out of Idaho?” he added conversationally.

“You couldn’t tell her I’m an adult and this is part of my job?”

“No. She’s my daughter, dumbass. And your mother. She’s more worried than we are. The only thing keeping her there is knowing you’re coming to see her first. You wanted your family to find out about the shit hitting the fan after it was all over, you shoulda hired-on somewhere else.”

“I’ll keep that in mind when my contract’s up.”

“You don’t have a contract, Matt.” Grampa’s voice was smug. Matt stuck his tongue out at the handset. “I heard that,” Sid shot back.

He was fucking psychic.

“I had grandparents once, too, you know.”

Or, you know, just experienced. Matt sighed. “Grampa,” he said in a forcibly calm voice. “Was there something in particular you wanted to ask me?”

“Yeah. We’ve done some looking into Lieutenant James Ayala’s service record. I approve.”

“What is
with
you people? How did you know?” He decided denying it was pointless.

“I’m psychic.” Matt snorted. If Sid was, it was the first he’d heard about it, and he’d been close to the Grampas his whole life. “Lance needs to talk to Ayala, now.”

“Okay.” Matt was happy to hand over the phone.

“I love you, son.” Grampa said it just before Matt passed the phone to James. Sentimental old bastard was gonna make him teary.

James was looking at him with concern when he took the handset. Matt checked, and sure enough, he was leaking brain waves to James. Dammit, ever since he’d had sex with the guy he’d had a hard time controlling that.

James took the handset and slipped his other hand around Matt’s neck, squeezing it comfortingly. Matt sighed and gave in to it. He rested his head on James’s shoulder and listened to his conversation with Lance.

“Yes, sir,” James said crisply into the phone. An unintelligible answer, then James started to explain the situation. How they had excess baggage (Benigna), the state of Matt’s injuries (hadn’t he already covered that?), James’s estimate for time to the rendezvous, his estimation of problems and needs. Fairly quickly Matt zoned out, and the next thing he knew, James was nudging him toward the wall of the old gas station, and Pearl had the phone, talking sci-speak with Anais.

James kept his arm around Matt’s waist, holding him carefully until Matt had managed to lower himself to the cracked cement and lean against the wall. James looked like he’d like to sit next to him, but didn’t.

“Sit down,” Matt said. Then he cringed inside at the pleading note in his voice. In the next instant he decided it didn’t matter. He was going balls to the wall with James, so the guy may as well know that he craved him. Not just the sex, but the little things like this.

“Can’t, baby,” James rumbled at him. “Need to keep an eye out. We’re right next to the old highway.”

Oh, well that made sense. Matt could see across the asphalt where some tall electric lights had been placed, to illuminate the place. Thank God they weren’t working now. The electricity had either been cut off or the lights had been tampered with, because they were dark. Probably never re-sourced after the dam was blown up by eco-terrorists. And of course no one would bother hooking it to the local waste-gas energy grid.

Baby
. That was nice.

James leaned against the wall next to him, still standing. Matt reached out and circled James’s ankle with his hand, leaning his head against James’s thigh. He let himself drift. He was still so tired.

James’s hand on his head, shaking gently, brought him back. Pearl was off the phone, and they were both looking at him.

“We ready to head back?” Matt asked.

“Yeah.” James reached down and grabbed him around the biceps, helping him up.

He didn’t remember a lot of the walk back. James kept an arm around him, helping him, he supposed. Mostly the arm just felt warm and comforting. He heard James and Pearl talking very quietly. Something about discharges and falsified medical records and something about the Boulder Blue cell. He couldn’t remember.

And suddenly they were in the room, James’s strong hand on the small of his back, lowering him to the bed. He’d had to carry him? Had Matt fallen asleep or lost consciousness? “Shh, baby,” James said when Matt tried to ask. He helped Matt undress.

He vaguely remembered Pearl putting another IV vial in his arm, telling him she needed to feed the nano-menders. Then it was all fog until he felt James’s weight dip the bed behind him. He scooted back, snuggling his ass into James’s hips. James rumbled at him, and held him tight.

“Go to sleep, baby.”

Fine, he’d rest a bit, but then he had plans for James.

Chapter 16

M
ATT
couldn’t believe he’d fallen asleep the night before. He’d been so exhausted he’d somehow passed out, even with James spooning him, his hard dick up against Matt’s (very happy) ass.

When Matt woke up, he was on his back. The same hard dick was nudging his hip, and his own was valiantly pushing up the heavy blankets. He could feel warm sun on his chest and shoulders, and fingernails tracing across his abs and pecs, following the muscle contours. The touch slowly, teasingly, got closer to his nipple.

Matt lay there with his eyes closed, picturing James’s honey-tanned hand, fingers gliding across him. He could feel his nipples hardening in anticipation, and then a single fingernail tracing circles around his left nipple, not quite touching the areola. Sandpapery whiskers brushed his left shoulder, around his bandage. “Mmmmm.” He stretched a little, arching his back, smiling, trying to move so that finger would touch him where he wanted it.