Page 54 of Without Fail

“I do. I was. So listen to me and stay hidden.”

“Am I your boyfriend?”

“What?” He pressed his free hand at the bridge of his nose when a headache started.

“Am. I. Your. Boyfriend?”

“Do you want to be?” Marshal countered, afraid to get his hopes up.

“Very much, but your words are telling me something different.”

“I didn’t mean them,” Marshal breathed out the words.

“I want to believe you.”

The agony in Ryker’s whispered, tear-filled words crushed his heart.

“You can believe me. Please, baby, will you stay put?” he asked, needing the younger man’s reassurance.

“Why after all these years? Why didn’t you give me a hint that you were into me?”

Ryker was full of questions, but Marshal couldn’t answer that one right now.

“Later,” he promised.

He needed Ryker calm and he also needed to have Ryker where he could grab ahold of him.

Because when he did tell Ryker the reason he’d kept the wall of distance between them, the man was going to do one of two things.

Either run.

Or kill him.

“Marshal?” Ryker asked when the silence went on too long.

“Yeah?”

“I found one of their earpieces. I’m listening to their conversations.”

“Is it the press and hold kind to talk or do they hear you when you speak?”

Fear made Ryker feel suddenly sick. “I don’t know,” he whispered, freaking the fuck out. He went back over his conversation with Marshal. He hadn’t said anything about the hiding places and hopefully, they wouldn’t be able to hear Marshal’s part of the conversation.

“It’s okay, you didn’t give anything away,” the man assured him. “Crush it under your boot. Then, move through the walls until you reach the garage exit. I’ll be waiting.”

Ryker hung up the phone and tucked it away. He took out the earpiece and crushed it beneath the heel of his black John Varvatos boots. As he ground down on the small white object, he couldn’t keep the silly grin from his face.

Marshal had called him baby.

Right then, though, was not the time to think about any of that.

The situation was dire.

Which brought back up his family.

His dad was an asshole for sure and as much as they fought, he would die saving the man. Robert Langston was a tough son of a bitch and could handle himself. It was his mother whom Ryker worried about the most.

And while he was going to work his way through the passageways toward the garage exit, he was going to search for his parents along the way.

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