Page 40 of The Night Of
Without another word, Wayne climbed in and shut the door. He drove off, his sedan rising out of the garage and disappearing down West Exec for the last time. I stared after him, my mind churning.
Two men inside the Oval Office minutes after Baker had been shot.I can’t find what Steven was working on. It’s like his notes are gone.
Who had access to the White House like that? Who knew, before anything had been announced, before the First Lady had even landed at Bethesda and that photo had hit the internet, that Baker was dead?
The answer was uncomfortably fucking obvious.
What were they after? What did they take?
It’s either what someone was working on, or who someone was fucking.
What were you working, Mr. President? What were you and Rose doing together?
A hidden note. A secret gun.Flowerterrible. Two men in the Oval Office taking files away by flashlight. A CIA officer reporting to the president in secret, hunting down a traitor.
The panic hit me hard, a frantic anxiety that erased every scrap of pain. I needed Jonathan at my side,now. Jesus Christ, he was in there, inside the West Wing, where two Secret Service guys had pilfered the Oval and stolen presidential documents.
Fuck my ribs. I had to get Jonathan. I grabbed the door handle—
The passenger door opened, and I felt the dip of the SUV as someone clambered in. I spun, reaching for the gun on my belt—
“Where are you going?” Jonathan frowned.
“Fuck me.” I slumped forward, my head on the steering wheel as I tried to stop my heart from exploding. “Jesus Christ, Jonathan. I nearly shot you.”
“You look like you saw a ghost.”
I felt clammy, too, like seven years of my life had just been scared out of me. My hands shook. At least I didn’t feel my ribs anymore. “I’ll tell you on the drive,” I grumbled. “You know, you’re really supposed to sit in the back.”
His eyes crinkled. “Is that why you got a new SUV with the front windows blacked out? So I could sit in the back?”
I shook my head, put the SUV in drive, and hit the gas too hard. The tires squealed on the concrete. Jonathan rocked back in his seat, that not-smile lighting up his face. He put his sunglasses on as we drove up the ramp, and after we cleared the guard shack at West Exec and Pennsylvania Ave, he slipped his hand across the dash and rested his palm on my thigh.
I glared at him at the next light, but I couldn’t keep up the facade, and it melted into a soft smile as I laid one hand on top of his. He smiled back, then smoothed his expression and gazed straight ahead. “Tell me what happened in the garage.”
I did, and the peaceful, pleasant moment we’d shared vanished. By the time I pulled into the garage at the Observatory, quiet rage pulsed off of Jonathan.
“We can’t trust anyone,” I said, parking the SUV. “I don’t know how far this goes. I don’t even know my own guys anymore. Who could be capable of something like this?”
“I don’t know.” Jonathan’s voice shook. “I’ve only ever trusted you. You and Steven.”
When the garage door shut, I took his face in my hand and kissed him. Some of the tightness drained from his features, but the darkness, the pain buried in the center of his eyes, stayed.
“Inside,” he said when the pain caught up with me and I hissed. “We need to clean that cut out again.”
He helped me upstairs and steered me to his bedroom at the top of the landing. The house was still a disaster from the midnight security precautions I’d erected—furniture obstacles, piles of dishes and wine glasses stacked up like rudimentary intruder alarms behind all the doors and at the base of every window, the curtains duct-taped together. He took me to his bathroom and sat me down on the edge of the tub, then disappeared while I slowly peeled my shirt and the bandage off. He came back with clean gauze pads, white medical tape, a needle and thread, and a lighter. I sighed.
Jonathan got the shower going as I stepped out of my ruined suit pants and toed off my shoes and socks. All that was left was my briefs, and then I was going to be naked in front of the man I loved. Nerves shot through me, a tangled mess of worms writhing inside my belly. I already had been partially naked in front of him that first time. Knees to nipples—or at least, that’s where the dried come had been when I’d woken up on the beach. But this was different. There wasn’t Jack Daniel’s running through my veins, filling me with false courage.
What if Jonathan didn’t like what he saw? I was a pretty average guy when you got down to the nuts and bolts. What if he wanted… more?
I hooked my thumbs in my briefs and pulled them down. Jonathan watched me, his eyes on mine as he held open the shower door. The water was warm, but it still hit my skin like a thousand knives. I hissed, tried to pull away from the liquid sliding over the gash in my side.
Jonathan’s soap-slick hand landed on my hip. He’d taken off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves, and was standing in the doorway and reaching inside, gently rubbing up and down my skin and moving closer to my wound until he was washing it. Somehow, his touch made it hurt less. Mind tricks, but I’d take it.
Eventually he pulled away, rinsing his pink-tinged soapy hand in the sink as I shut the shower door and palmed water over my side until it ran clear and the gash only looked like sliced lunch meat, not a bloody mess. I turned into the spray and washed the rest of my body, running the soap over as much skin as I could reach. I used Jonathan’s shampoo, something minty and herbal. I rinsed myself as quickly as I could. Things were starting to hurt again now that he wasn’t touching me.
Jonathan passed me a towel as I stepped out. I dried off, then wrapped it around my waist. My nerves warred with the pain that raced through me as I leaned against the counter and he ran the needle through the flame of the lighter. He shook it cool, then threaded it. Pinched the edges of my skin together. “Ready?”
