Page 75 of Rarely Pure and Never Simple
"Says the nutball terrorist."
"Activist!"
Damien twined his fingers with Blaze's and managed a little smile. Working alone might have been easier logistically, but having help made the task look smaller, conquerable. "Tomorrow, then. I have a call to make."
It could be the most brilliant plan in history. They might still be dead by the next afternoon.
10
TAKEN AT THE FLOOD
Blaze had held him all night. Glorious and confounding, the things Blaze was able to do.
With Blaze, he never questioned who slept behind him, the arm around him somehow protective rather than possessive. Attached… He was becoming attached, and he couldn't. Dear God, he couldn't. Blaze deserved so much more. Needed so much more. Under all the snarl and snark lay a wounded, vulnerable heart that needed a normal man to help it heal. Most likely, when the job was over, Blaze would be able to move on. Best for everyone if he did.
A deep ache lodged in his chest. Soon he would be alone again, the state in which he had always been the most comfortable. He had always felt whole when he was alone instead of the scattered mess he was around other people. Until Blaze.
Would it be easier to see him sometimes, from job to job, or would that simply break his heart into smaller and smaller pieces every time?
"Damien?" Shudder plunked down next to him in the grass.
"Hmm?"
"Your air support, who is it?"
He blinked at Shudder, trying to start his brain down a different track. "Guild. It's Guild this time."
"Ah. Isn't always?"
"Depends who the job's for. I always have a clause in the contract for quick extraction in case things go wrong. When I work for the feds, it's Crimes Bureau air support."
"Small favors," Shudder murmured.
Damien pulled his knees up and rested his head on them. "If you need to make yourself scarce when they land, you do what you have to do."
Shudder nodded, uncharacteristically subdued.
"They won't arrest you." Damien tried his best to sound reassuring, his voice flat and unconvincing in his own ears. "Blaze won't let them."
The man in question crawled up the incline, keeping out of sight of the guard towers, and flopped down on his front on Damien's other side. "Blaze won't let who what?"
Dryad answered, though her gaze never left the compound. "Let the Guild arrest Shudder when they move in."
"I should let them. Would serve the annoying shit right."
Shudder clapped a hand over his heart and fell back in the grass as if shot. "And I thought he loved me."
Blaze gave him a dark look, obviously about to offer something scathing, so Damien intervened. "You can't. We can't. Shudder has an entire community of young people depending on him. He has to get back to them."
"I wasn't serious." Blaze's dark-red eyebrows tried to climb into his hair. "Tell me you didn't think I was serious. Even if he deserves it."
"Just being certain." To distract himself from the chagrin of overreacting, Damien recounted and confirmed the trails in his head, the dark ribbons leading under the compound's gates. "There are still four missing. I haven't picked them up anywhere."
The silence might have been uncomfortable or shocked. Damien wasn't the best at gauging these things.
"I hate to ask this." Blaze leaned his head against Damien's knee. "But if the rest of the kids were taken by these cretins and they were dead, but maybe not buried here, would you know?"
"No."
