Page 39 of Escape into the Night

Elias sighed.

With a clap of his hands, Beau straightened in his chair. “Hope is not lost. We still have friends in the right places.”

“Hold up,” Connor interrupted with a dubious, flattened expression. “Reckon I'm still waiting for the reason we should trust you, all due respect.”

Beau fanned himself and grinned. “Lover boy’s the smart one—you shouldn't trust me. You're too smart for that. Same as I don't trust you, not fully. But I've put all my cards on the table, plus more I'll get to. We’re playing a rigged game here, all of us. You wash our back, we wash yours. Because at the end of the day, we’re all fucked if the other side wins.”

Ty shifted in place, his face monologuing while he remained mute. With an encouraging nod from Beau, he took a step forward as he withdrew a thumb drive from one of the million pockets of his heinously ugly, ill-fitting tactical pants. He cleared the gravel from his throat while setting the device on the top of the pile of photos.

“General Jenkins. Torah base in Surobi, Afghanistan. 2011. It is every file he stole before he went AWOL in 2015.” The man’s voice was startling for its rugged intensity and its rarity both.

“Jesus Christ, where did you get that?!” Luke bristled, his shoulders bunching up around his ears as he stared at the teeny tiny plastic device holding so much explosive potential.

“Wait… that's where—” Theo choked on his words before he could finish his sentence. Caleb felt like he was missing a very large piece of the puzzle.

“Lawrence.” Elias’ quietly uttered answer hit him like a freight train. Judging by the sickly pallor of Theo’s face, he felt it just as keenly. Lawrence, Adelaide’s late husband. Theo’s stepfather. Anna and Toby’s father. The man killed in action, whose death had sent Adelaide on her ill-fated dive into politics. The triggering event, the earthquake beneath the ocean that had them all facing the tsunami it caused today.

“Oh, fuck.” Caleb sidestepped and firmly planted his ass in the vacant armchair before gravity had her wicked way with him.

“Affirmative.” Ty shuffled his bulk around awkwardly before stepping back to his position beside Beau. “There is information there. Information you can use. And his contact details.”

Caleb was lost to a maelstrom of conflicting thoughts as he stared at the coffee table turned war room. This was so out of his league. This was above his pay grade by an exponent of a hundred. Fuck that, a thousand. Worries about campaigns and narratives and delegates and staff and Parker’s upcoming party at school seemed paltry in the face of this chaos. The laughter started as a silent shaking in his shoulders, but it was impossible to hold back. Shaking became quivering, his ragged breathing became a series of unattractive snorts, and then the dam broke. Manic, hysterical cackling akin to a hyena on cocaine fell from his lips as tears fell from his eyes. He shook his head and tore his glasses off to try and stymie the flow, laughing all the while. And then he pulled up his proverbial big boy pants and jumped to his feet.

“I'll be back with more hors d'oeuvres. And wine. Lots and lots of fucking wine.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Elias

Allaroundhim,theroom had fractured into smaller groups, their conversations hushed and urgent as they processed the sheer scale of everything that had unfolded. It sat like dead weight in Elias’ chest. The ache behind his ribs was excruciating. For a moment, he struggled to breathe under the magnitude of information pressing down on him. His cozy, perfectly staged basement suddenly felt more like a tomb, too small, too suffocating, too final and entirely too dark in the face of the sprawling conspiracy they’d just unearthed.

His mind reeled. Adelaide. Not just compromised, but controlled. He turned away from the room and braced his hands on the bookshelves, searching the spines as though he could find some sort of reason or answer among the multitudinous political biographies and policy journals he had collected over the years. The woman he had once called friend, who had stood beside him for years as an ally, whom he’d supported unfailingly in her bid to right the wrongs of the country for the betterment of its people, was nothing more than a pawn. Or worse—a willingparticipant. He swallowed down a wave of bile as his hands clenched tighter around the shelf.

“Hey, baby doll.” Caleb’s warm presence and soothing voice blanketed Elias’ back as he wound his arms around his waist. “I know that look.”

“Do you, now?” Elias let one hand drop to cover Caleb’s where they splayed over his stomach.

“Mhmm. It's the look you get when something epically fucked up fundamentally changes the way you see the world.”

Elias exhaled and let his forehead rest against the spine of Barack Obama’s memoir. Maybe he could learn something from one of the greats through osmosis. “I must be wearing it a lot lately.”

Caleb squeezed his arms before shifting, ducking under Elias’ arm to squeeze in front of him. “We don't have to figure this out tonight, El. We have time.”

“Do we?” Elias searched those earnest eyes, studying the unique patterns and swirls as if he didn't already have the sight memorized. “I'm running for the Democratic nomination. We’re already walking a tightrope. If the CIA, the military, and God knows who else is planning a coup from within, what do you think happens if I win?”

“When.” Caleb pressed his palms to Elias’ chest. “When you win, we fight like hell. We give’em hell like we always do, bossman.”

A quietly cleared throat pulled Elias out of their private moment amid the stacks. Turning his face, he found Luke and Bella lingering intentionally close.

“We need to talk strategy,” Bella nodded toward the stairs, her movements subdued and subtle in contrast to her typically large presence. With a nod in response, Elias and Caleb trailed them through their home and into the kitchen, away from the hushed chatter of those remaining behind. Elias slid into a stool at theisland, Caleb perching beside him, while Luke and Bell leaned against the counter opposite where they sat, arms crossed over their chests and matching somber expressions.

“We suspected the mole in the FBI already. I'm putting Taz on the job. Only that job, because if we don't root them out now, and they find out what we know…” Bella trailed off, the tension rolling off her body like relentless waves battering the shore.

Luke exhaled sharply. “And if what they said about Siamo is true, the military is not a failsafe. We can't just blow the whistle and expect justice. This is much bigger than a few bad actors.”

Elias released a slow breath and pressed his fingers to his sternum. “What’s the play, then?”

Bella and Luke exchanged glances before she spoke. “You must stay in the race. If you drop out now, they know something is wrong. You have momentum. If you back down, they win.”

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