Page 40 of Escape into the Night

Luke jumped in as soon as she paused. “If you're still in the race, you have leverage. You're too public to take out quietly.”

He shifted his gaze between them as he let the weight of it settle deeper. The reality of what they were up against was likely insurmountable, but as he listened to their appeal, he realized that for the first time since he’d first thought about running, he hadn't felt doubt. There were no moments of second-guessing, no anxiety over if he should or shouldn't. He wasn't naive about the risks involved in politics, but this was all out war. One thing he knew about himself, perhaps the only thing he was ever really truly sure about, was the fact that he wouldn't back down from a fight between good and evil. For the first time, he didn't need any convincing.

“I'm not backing down.” Elias let them absorb his words for a brief moment before continuing. “But we need a counter-offensive.”

“Si.” Bella nodded, uncrossing her arms to swirl and twist her hair into a knot at the top of her head. “I will speak with Director Robbins, while Taz works on the leak at the Bureau.”

“I’ll work my contacts and try to get to this defected General before the CIA does.”

“And I need to talk to Connor about contingency plans.” Elias pressed his palms to the cool granite of the countertop. “Cay, call Matt and Cynthia. I think it's time we took them up on the offer to stay at the guest cottage.”

“Aye, aye, boss man.” Caleb leaned in and pressed an audible smooch to Elias’ cheek before hopping from his stool. He captured Luke on his way out of the kitchen with promises to show him the secure phone line they’d set up in the office. The less Elias knew about what was on that thumb drive, the better. He already knew entirely too much.

The evening swiftly turned to night as everyone worked together, in turns commiserating their fate while also strategizing their future. It was chaos, but a muted, quiet sort of smoldering chaos. Elias floated somewhere just above it all. He checked in with Taz, who had magically commandeered a laptop. He spoke at length with Connor, who was busy contacting the security team about the updated address and heightened threat level. Beau offered more details that Elias needed to grit his teeth to stomach. Bella brought promises of discretion and full support directly from the mouth of the Director of the FBI. There was still one last thing he needed to do before he could rest. One more very important thing.

He found Theo cloaked in darkness, huddled on the couch in the family room beneath the folds of a throw blanket, his face pale in the feeble moonlight filtering through the sheer curtains of the window. Elias’ heart hurt to see him struggling. Too many times in their shared history he had seen the young man clinging to the brink. He couldn't stand aside and watch himsuffer without extending his hand. He refused to. Theo was, for all intents and purposes, his. He never could pinpoint the exact moment he began to think of Theo as his family, but the bond was there nevertheless, and he wouldn't allow them to drift apart on opposite sides of this rift between them.

“It's good to see you, Theo.” Elias stepped into the room and approached the couch with slow and steady movements.

“If you're here to explain why you didn't tell me, or try to convince me why this is a great idea, just… don’t.” Theo didn't look up, his voice flat and hollow.

“I wasn't going to.”

That got his attention. He lifted his head, eyes shadowed with exhaustion and something deeper. Something haunted, hurt, and desperate.

Elias slowly eased himself downward to sit on the table before Theo. “I came to apologize. I know I should have talked to you first. I was wrong. And I know your feelings about this are complicated. More complicated than I could ever try to comprehend. I'm not going to try to convince you that I'm making the right move.”

“I just—I don't get it!” He ran a hand over his face and somehow sank even deeper into the folds of the blanket. “After everything we’ve seen, after everything we learned about how the system works, why would you still want to be a part of it?”

“Because it's the only way to change it.” Elias reached out and laid a gentle hand on Theo’s knee.

“No. No, you know that's not how this works. The system isn't designed to allow people like us, like you, to change anything. They're either going to control you, or k-kill you.”

Elias flinched, but refused to look away. “Maybe. I won't say I'm not scared. I won't lie to you. But if I don't try, they win. If we don't do something, they will get what they've been working for all this time.”

“What happens to Caleb? What happens to—” Theo cut himself off with a shake of his head. Burgeoning tears threatened to spill from his hazel eyes, making them sparkle in the moonglow. “Damn it, Eli. You're the closest thing I've ever had to a mentor. I believed in you. I do believe in you. I just—I just can't watch you walk into the fire. I can't lose you, too.”

Elias’ heart cracked right down the middle and all his emotions, every single conflicted, tortured feeling that had been building up for years spilled out in messy, real, raw sobs. He couldn't promise anything. He couldn't promise he wouldn't be hurt. He couldn't promise they'd all make it out the other side. But he had to do something. He had to do everything he could to try and make those hopes he couldn't promise come true.

They moved in sync, arms wrapping tight around one another as they crumpled to the floor between the couch and coffee table, a pocket of unspoken promises forged in a tearful embrace that said everything they couldn't utter aloud. It was a feedback loop of fear, worry, sadness, but above all else, love. Elias clutched Theo even tighter, a buttress of love shielding them from the horrors they'd been through and those yet to come. Because at the end of the day, that was all they had to fight with. Love was all they had to fight for.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Luke

ThesafehouseBeauhad given Luke directions to was exactly what he had expected to find and yet somehow so much worse. The decrepit little building on the outskirts of DC was the kind of place meant to be forgotten, easily overlooked where it huddled behind an unassuming auto body shop, a remnant of a past operation left to rot under a mountain of false paperwork and bureaucratic neglect. He’d been staking it out for the last hour, but despite the silence blanketing the car, he wasn't alone. Taz had refused to let him leave alone. In fact, Taz had become so damn clingy lately, Luke rarely found himself out of the direct eyeline of his tormented lover. About the only time they weren't within arm’s length of one another was when either of them were taking a shit or if work demanded they go their separate ways. In those instances, Taz resorted to texting memes or rude commentary about a mutual acquaintance. Often, it was both. Luke was tentatively calling it a breakthrough in their relationship. Instead of running, Taz had foregone his chosen namesake to become a koala—cute and clingy on the outside, full of feral rage on the inside.

Communicating in silent gestures, Luke and Taz climbed out of the car and shut the doors as quietly as possible. For all his lack of tactical field training, Taz was a quick learner. He fell in line behind Luke, holding the rear at an angle to stay close enough for cover but not too close in the event Luke had to pull his weapon. His footfalls were whisper quiet and perfectly timed with Luke’s surefooted heel-toe creep across the street, over the sidewalk, and through the narrow gap he’d used to surveille the location. The key was also exactly where Beau had said it would be: tucked on the back of the metal flap covering the mail slot and held in place by an epoxy-covered button magnet. Judging by the amount of gritty dust covering the thing, it hadn't been disturbed in years.

Inside, the space smelled of old dust and moldering wood, the air still with a heaviness that was indicative of lengthy abandonment. He didn't even bother trying the light switch. Places like these were bare-bones. Utilities would raise too much suspicion and leave too much of a paper trail. There was no Wi-Fi. No electricity. Hell, there wasn't even evidence of a kitchen or bathroom that would require water. It was simply a shell. A mundane, featureless shell made to look like an even more mundane, featureless home on the outside. A cot laid under a heavy blanket of greyish-brown dust in the farthest corner. Opposite that stood a moth-eaten couch that looked like it had last seated someone in the eighties. Luke vehemently refused to acknowledge the five-gallon lidded construction bucket in the other corner. Given the lack of facilities, he suspected it served one very inglorious purpose and he wasn't about to pry open that lid to confirm his suspicions. His target, his entire reason for being in this shithole, stood in the last corner, the farthest from the door.

The desk was scuffed and water stained and covered in the same murky blanket of oily dust as the rest of the room’s meagerfurnishings. Dead center sat a landline telephone. Not a cordless number, either. This was an honest to God hardwired landline phone, complete with its twentieth century beige casing and a fucking rotary dial. The system was so damn analog, even the most sophisticated tracking software wouldn't be able to tap into it in time. This was the sort of Cold War shit Luke’s instructors used to romanticize in his military days. The parallels were not lost on him as he shut the door behind them and crept toward the desk.

Luke rolled his shoulders and exhaled before reaching for the receiver. He had one shot at this. One shot, because if former General Jenkins was already compromised, if this was a setup, they'd be dead before they even had a chance to fight for their lives. The small scrap of paper he’d written the number on was smudged by the sweat from his hands, hands that shook more and more with each rotation of the dial as he cycled through each digit with rising apprehension. A click. It rang. Once. Twice. And then—

“Who the hell is this?” The voice that answered was gruff and cautious, the aged telephone line surprisingly clear despite the faint crackle in the background.

“A friend of a friend.”

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