Zero at the Bone (32 page)

“Look, I gotta get home. Don’t wanna leave Jack fer too long.”

“D… watch yourself.”

“Always do.”

“This is a new situation for you.”

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“Avoidin’ crazed killers ain’t no new situation.”

“It is when you’re in love with the man they’re hunting.” D sat stock still for several beats, his heart thudding against his chest. “Who says I’m—”

“You aren’t fooling me, you know.”

D shut his eyes. “Son of a bitch,” he drawled.

“I have a feeling we might meet face-to-face soon, D.”

“Yeah, same here.”

“And it will probably not be under the best of circumstances.”

“No. But listen… you owe me some kinda debt, and I ain’t never been sure what that is, but it’s just there, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then….” He sighed. “If somethin’ happens ta me, will ya….” He trailed off.

“I’ll protect Jack if you can’t, D.”

D sagged against the car door. “Yeah. Thanks.”

“Have a safe trip.”

“Feels like goin’ ta my damn execution.”

“Into the lion’s den.”

“Nah, not that. ’Cause… well….”

Silence. “I know. But you’ll see him again.”

144 | Jane Seville

D HESITATED outside the door that led into the house from the garage.
Remember, ya
don’t know ’bout the trial date. Let him tell ya and don’t forget t’act surprised.
He nodded to himself and went in.

“Hey,” he heard Jack say. “What took you so long?”

“I, uh….”

“Well, hurry up.
CSI
’s starting.”

D shucked off his jacket and went into the living room. Jack was sprawled out full-length on the couch, arms crossed over his chest and the remote clenched in one hand like a sword before a duel, his face turned toward the TV. D lifted up Jack’s feet and sat at the other end, resettling them on his lap once he did so. “You call Churchill?” he asked, hoping his tone sounded neutral.

Jack said nothing, just kept his eyes on the TV, his face stony.

“Jack? Ya hear me?”

He sighed, then muted the TV and looked over at him. “Yeah, I called him.”

“And?”

Jack rubbed at his eyes with one hand. “And he says the trial starts in two weeks.” D let a few beats pass in silence. “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Well… then we gotta leave in a week.”

“Yeah.” Jack turned his head back toward the TV but didn’t turn the sound back on.

“I ought to be glad,” he said, quietly.

“Glad?”

“To be getting it over with. To have this trial start so it can finish and I can get my new identity and try to move on.”

“Yer sayin’ yer not glad?” Jack just shook his head. “Why not?” At this, Jack looked at D with a cocked eyebrow. “What, are you fishing for compliments? You know damn well why not.”

D just grunted, staring at the silent TV screen with his hand cupping Jack’s calf where it lay across his thighs. “Best thing fer you is ta get yer testimony over then getcha gone, and good.”

Jack just lay there, blinking. “You could pretend to at least be a
little
sorry,” he said, his voice rough.

D stared at his profile, silvered by the pale glow of the TV. He toed off his shoes and brought his legs up, then stretched out on the sofa, tucking his body between Jack and the cushions. Jack said nothing, but scooted forward a little to make room. D

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wrapped his arm around Jack’s waist and slipped his hand under his shirt so it rested on Jack’s warm belly. He slotted his other arm above Jack’s head, his fingers lacing through Jack’s hair. He sighed and let his eyes fall closed, knowing that he couldn’t tell Jack what he wanted to hear.

He pressed his mouth into the crook of Jack’s neck. “Ya think I won’t be sorry?” he murmured, his hand stroking Jack’s stomach and dipping lower, his fingers sliding beneath the waistband of Jack’s jeans. “Huh?” He had Jack’s jeans open now. Jack kept quiet, but his breathing quickened as D stroked him, his hips making shallow thrusts into D’s hand. D wrapped his other arm around Jack’s shoulders, holding his chest close against his own.

Jack reached back and shoved his hand between them to cup D through his jeans, then grabbed at his own and pulled them down. D left off stroking Jack and quickly yanked his zipper down. They didn’t have any lube so he just slipped between Jack’s legs. He wet his palm and took Jack in hand again. “Think I ain’t sorry?” he hissed into Jack’s ear. “Show you sorry.” He barely knew what he was saying; Jack was writhing against him and squeezing him with his thighs. “Fuckin’ sorry….” Jack reached back and grabbed a handful of D’s ass, his head arched back into D’s shoulder, the remote falling forgotten to the carpet with a muffled thump.

A few minutes of thrusting and stroking later and they were both coming with swallowed cries. Jack lay still for a moment, then sat up. “Shit,” he muttered, looking down at himself. He stood up, holding his jeans around his waist. He sighed and glanced down at the couch where D was still lying there. “Yeah, I’ll bet you’re sorry,” he said.

“Sorry to lose a warm place to stick your dick.” He stalked off to the bathroom.

D just lay there as the shower started up, staring at the featureless popcorn ceiling, feeling the trial date rushing toward him like a freight train.

one week later…

PACKING didn’t take long. Clothes, toiletries, some snacks for the road, a cooler full of bottled water and ginger ale for D.

All Jack wanted was one sign. One indication that this departure was as painful for D as it was for him. All week he’d waited for it. Now, he had little choice but to conclude that this departure simply
wasn’t
as painful for D as it was for him.

He couldn’t have misread everything. He couldn’t be
that
wrong-headed. D
did
have feelings for him. What kind of feeling was less clear, but there was something.

There had to be.

He’s shutting himself off so he won’t be distracted by it,
he told himself.
And you
shouldn’t be surprised. He dealt with all those years of killing by detaching from his
emotions. No wonder he’s doing it again now.
But then he thought he might be flattering himself that D’s feelings for him were such that the prospect of separation was on a level with committing murder, and enough to make him retreat behind the emotional barriers he’d spent years building around himself.

They’d have the road, this cross-country trip they had to make by car for security, and then… that’d be it, probably. D would hand Jack over to Churchill in Frederick, Jack 146 | Jane Seville

would testify and go into Witsec, and he’d likely never see D again. The thought of it was almost enough to make him say
Screw the trial; let’s just disappear.

On top of everything else, D was acting shifty. Ducking off for private cell-phone conversations, probably thinking that Jack didn’t notice. Keeping his phone on him at all times and furtively checking for text messages. Stepping up the amount of gun and hand-to-hand practice they were doing together, not to mention the amount he did by himself.

He’s getting ready for something.
Jack sat on the front porch, waiting for D to come out with the last of the metal briefcases they’d retrieved from that bunker in Arizona so long ago.
Yeah, he’s getting ready to run from whoever set him up for all this. Probably
be on the run for the rest of his life. You may be facing testifying and losing your identity,
but once he leaves you, D has a whole new set of problems to deal with.

Jack hated to think of D like that. Hunted, hiding, looking over his shoulder, always wondering, never relaxing. D was the hunter, not the prey. He couldn’t help but feel responsible.
Wasn’t your fault somebody set him up. You were just the means to their end.

The end of D.

As much as he hated to think of D on the run, the thought of him being caught was too awful to even hold in his mind for very long. He saw in his mind’s eye D dead on the ground, shot or tortured or beaten to death, and he felt sick to his stomach. What made it worse was knowing how profoundly helpless he was to do anything about it.

Since that night on the couch when they’d gotten the trial date, their physical relationship had been strained. Jack could still feel D’s breath on his neck as he growled

“think I won’t be sorry” while he humped Jack roughly, demonstrating just what he’d be sorry to lose. Jack and D had had sex many times now, but that had been the first time Jack had felt used.

Since then, the bedroom thing had just not been working. D’s close-mouthed stoicism was back in force and it wasn’t conducive to good sex, and Jack’s dejection over their looming departure made everything seem hopeless and doomed. Two of the nights since they’d just slept side by side, not touching. This morning, the last in this house that had started to feel so much like theirs, had begun with D leaping out of bed without a word and Jack lying there trying not to feel abandoned.

D came out of the house with a cigarette clamped between his lips, his mirrored sunglasses on his face, the last aluminum briefcase in his hand. Jack saw with vague dismay that D had also shaved his head back to the quarter-inch of stubble he’d had when they first met. “Let’s go,” he said, going to the car and putting the case in the trunk. Jack got up, looking around.
That’s it? Just, “Let’s go?” Not one comment about leaving our
house, not one backward glance, nothing?
D looked at him from where he stood by the driver’s side. “Lock up, will ya?”

Guess that’s it.
Jack tugged the door shut and checked it; it was locked. He slung his jacket over his shoulder and went to the car. They got in their respective doors and put on their seat belts. D started up the car and backed out of the driveway, and then they were gone.

Jack watched out the window as the house receded from view until he couldn’t see it anymore. He crossed his arms over his chest and faced forward.
No use looking back.

At least, that’s what he’d say. If he were saying anything at all.

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HE’D thought that driving for four days straight with D at his most D-like would be excruciating, but it was surprisingly easy. They sat side by side staring out the windshield, not talking. Jack spent a lot of the trip listening to audio books on his iPod and watching the scenery scroll by out the passenger-side window. He kept waiting for D

to ask him to take a driving shift, but he never did.

Each night they stopped at a remote motel and paid cash. Salt Lake City, then North Platte, Nebraska, then Chicago. Too tired to do much more than swallow some fast food and shower, they slept in the same bed, more out of habit than anything else, it seemed.

Jack waited for D to make a move, but he didn’t. He debated making one himself, but couldn’t quite work himself around to it.

The second night, at the motel in Nebraska, Jack woke up in the middle of the night to find that in his sleep, D had rolled close to him and wrapped him up in his arms tight enough that Jack could barely move. He lay quietly, sweating from D’s body heat, until D

grunted in his sleep and turned over, releasing him and rolling away.

And finally, Frederick. Last stop.

They rolled into their last nondescript motel. D went to the office to get their key, as he always did, while Jack got their bags from the backseat.

They moved the aluminum briefcase into the room with them, locked and chained the door, and sat down, each on their own separate beds.

Jack took out his cell phone and called Churchill. “I’m here in Frederick.”

“Good. Tell me where you’re staying and I’ll come get you in the morning.” Jack glanced at D, who wasn’t supposed to exist as far as Churchill knew. “Why don’t I just meet you someplace?”

“All right. Um… meet me in Baker Park, at the corner of Church and North Bentz.

You got that?”

“Yeah. Nine?”

“That’ll be fine. Trial starts Monday, so we’ll have the weekend for the prosecutors to prep you, which they’re damn mad they’ve had to wait until now to do.”

“Oh, they’re damn mad, are they? I’m the one with hired killers on his ass here.”

“I know. It’s taken extraordinary restraint on my part not to point that out to them.” Churchill sighed. “You be careful.”

“I will.” Jack hung up. D had moved to the junky little motel room table, his sunglasses clamped on his face and a cigarette between his lips, staring out at the parking lot. Jack stood up and paced off a few steps in each direction, about as far as he could go in the confines of the small room. “So I’m going to meet Churchill tomorrow morning,” he said, as if D hadn’t been listening in to his half of the conversation.

“Mm.”

“They’ll take me into Baltimore.”

“Mm.”

“And that’ll be that.”

D just nodded.

Jack felt tears pricking the corners of his eyes and blinked hard. “That’s it, then?

That’s all you have to say to me?”

He saw D’s shoulders rise and fall in a quiet sigh. “Whaddya want me ta say?”