Page 5 of Escape into the Night

“No. No, I don't think it does.”

“Me neither. Tonight, we sleep. Tomorrow, we plan how to save the world.”

Elias couldn't help but laugh as he gently shut Parker’s bedroom door and turned to face his indomitable husband’s adoring expression. “We’ll need to discuss the platform. And I need to make a lot of phone calls—”

“Ah!” Caleb reached up and pressed a hand to Elias’ mouth. “Bad El. Naughty bossman. Tonight, I'm in charge, and I distinctly remember sayingtomorrowis for planning.”

Duly chastened and a willing victim to the innuendo lacing Caleb’s words, Elias nipped at the flesh of the palm against his lips. The sparkle in Caleb's eyes promised freedom from the weight of his worries and he gladly ceded that control. Cay was right, as always. Tomorrow sounded like a much better day for making plans. Tonight, he simply wanted to feel.

Chapter Three

Taz

Thesmellofcomputerswas a distinct one. Computers, plural. Machines pushed to their limit and then some came with a more potent aroma that was one of the greatest balms for Taz’ soul. He needed to find a way to distill the essence of computer smell so he could inject that shit straight into his veins. Maybe then, he could get his fix without pissing off his caveman boyfriend. Without conscious awareness of his actions, he lifted his arm and rubbed the baggy sleeve of a sweatshirt belonging to the aforementioned caveman against the slope of his cheek. Soft, well-worn, and laced with his second favorite scent in the world—Luke.

Taz’ eyes pinged back and forth between the monitors on the wall, his focus growing sharper as the lines of text continued to fill the screens. The rattle of the keys beneath his fingertips was loud enough to be heard over the music playing through the over-ear headphones. He'd need to replace the hardware soon. Again. He went through keyboards like some people went through underwear. Hell, like he did. Luke’s penchant for tearing them had grown substantially over the months. Fuckingcaveman. A smile twitched at the corner of Taz’ mouth as he leaned forward and isolated a batch of text before pulling it into the adjacent screen. Bingo. He'd found another mouse in his late-night hunt.

Working on borrowed time, also known as unpaid overtime, he muttered to himself about protocols and the chain of evidence. He got a lot of work done off the clock on unauthorized computer systems, but the downside was that he had to jump through a million fucking hoops to make sure anything he found would be legit. He also had to do so in a way that wiped any evidence of his sometimes not-quite-legal paths to discovering said information. What the Feds didn't know wouldn't hurt them. It was a means to an end. Blah-dee-fucking-blah.

The familiar and intensely uncomfortable fingers of anxiety seized Taz’ lungs as he scrutinized the latest message thread he’d unearthed. It was choppy and incomplete, but he’d get them. As smart as the enemy was, they were dumb as rocks when it came to securing their servers. Sometimes, Taz liked to think maybe he was just that smart, but that delusion never lasted more than a few seconds. A couple keystrokes later, he blew through a backdoor of the forum server with a zero-day exploit that would have made him a lot of money on the black market if he were so inclined. Since he didn't want to lose his job or rot away in a jail cell, he only used his ill-begotten knowledge for fighting against enemies of the state. Not because of some ridiculous sense of loyalty or morality, but because those enemies were direct threats to his people.

The full breadth of his discovery had his stomach clenching with unease. Comment after comment, all of them increasingly vile, turned the unease into anger as bile threatened to rise up the back of his throat. More threats against The Bastard, aka Theo, were accentuated by new threats. Surprising ones, if Taz were to be honest with himself. The sick fucks who calledthis particular hidden forum home had a lot of shit to say about “untraditional families” being the scourge of society. The comments about the “ex-staffer” and his family rankled. The promises of violence, including detailed plans, should he run for office sent a shiver coursing through Taz’ body that he couldn't blame on the AC unit cooling his server rack. Fuck, fuck, fuck. This was where things got really screwy when it came to Taz working from home and uncovering something off the clock.

He knew he needed to properly catalogue the information, but his instincts had him weighing the more intense desire to say “fuck the Bureau” and jump straight to warning Caleb about the threats against him, Elias, and Parker. Decision paralysis was a real fucking problem when he was dealing with shit like this. Especially since his gut was telling him to screw the formality and that would directly affect not just his job, but Luke’s as well. Normally one to act first and figure out the rest later, this issue of becoming completely stuck in place was a new symptom he still hadn't figured out how to navigate alone.

He was still stuck in a purgatory of his own making when a touch to his shoulder had him barreling out of the chair in primal terror that was wholly caused by the fucked up shit in his past and not reality. He tore the headphones off and scrambled backwards with his breath caught somewhere between his lungs and mouth. The trembling came swiftly thereafter, even as his wide-eyed gaze recognized his boyfriend's concerned face.

“Fucking hell, Luke! You're supposed to flick the switch!” Taz erratically gestured to the light fixture on the wall over the monitors. It was their failsafe to warn Taz about someone entering his basement lair in their shared home.

“You weresupposedto be in bed,” Luke countered, equal parts soothing and sanctioning. He held out his palms and approached slowly, much like someone would approach a wildanimal. Taz hated it as much as he appreciated it. “I was coming down to switch the laundry over.”

“Right… shit. Sorry.” Taz’ shoulders fell and all at once, he was moving into the safe pocket of Luke’s embrace.

“No, I'm sorry. I should have known better than to touch you without getting your attention first. What has you so wound up?” Luke’s massive palms spread over Taz’ back beneath the voluminous folds of the oversized sweatshirt and made him feel even more dysfunctional, small, and vulnerable. All that from a simple touch and a calm gentling of his latent trauma-response. The shit part of it was that he still had to come clean and confess his guilt over breaking one of the rules. Again.

“I… it’s… fuck you.” Taz mumbled the words into the warmth of Luke's chest on autopilot before silencing himself, taking a deep breath, and trying again. “Work. Found something. M’sorry, Daddy.”

“Baby, you remember what we agreed on?” Luke’s patience pissed Taz off even more. He wasn't mad at Luke—he was mad at himself. None of that discounted the fact that he definitely had found something and it needed to be handled.

“Sorry. I wasn't tired. I figured I could fuck around for an hour or two, no big deal. It's not a big deal.” Taz’ defensiveness was dulled by his desperate need to cling to his partner's solid strength.

“Timothy, it's one o’clock in the morning. You told me you were going to bed at eight. Correct me if my math is wrong, but that's a lot more than a couple of hours.” Despite the censure in his voice, Luke’s touch remained tender and soothing.

Fuck. “I didn’t… no. That's not right.” Taz' protests died with a shaky exhale as he checked his watch and confirmed the accuracy of Luke’s statement.

“Talk to me, T.”

Hesitation lasted for a whopping three seconds before it all fell out of his mouth in an epic shit show of verbal diarrhea. “I was following up on some leads that I couldn't do at the office. No, I'm not telling you how. Your Neanderthal brain wouldn't understand it anyway. I found some shit. Yes, I'll figure out how to get it on file at work, but first I need you to take me to Caleb's house ‘cause I got some shit to tell him and I can't do it over the phone.

Taz lifted his face and found Luke’s censuring gaze and hard-set jaw. With a roll of his eyes, he begrudgingly exhaled, “Please, Daddy. I need you to take me to Caleb’s,please.”

“Such a fucking brat.” Luke’s hands withdrew from beneath the sweatshirt and rose to cradle Taz’ head. With an audible smooch, he kissed Taz’ forehead. “You're so lucky I love this cute face.”

A breathy snort left Taz’ nose before he could stop himself. “Not cute.”

“The cutest.” Luke held Taz at arm’s length, never loosening his grip from his jaw. “You're going to listen and be a good boy—upstairs, in bed, now. Tomorrow, we’ll pay the Cohen-Williams family a visit. Monday morning, you'll handle workat work.”

Taz’ lips parted to put up a fight, but Luke gave him the Daddy look and he promptly shut his damn mouth.

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