Will glanced at the official buzz of cars and personnel, radios squawking and people talking. “Are we going back to LA tonight?”
“Eventually.” Taylor said, “Is Sugimori under arrest?”
“Yes.”
Will watched him brace to ask, “She said Varga was dead.”
Will nodded. “I’m sorry.”
Taylor’s eyes shut. He opened them and said, “Yeah. If you don’t mind, I’m going to sit in your car and wait for them to clear us to leave.”
“I don’t mind.”
A faint smile touched Taylor’s colorless mouth. “Not yet, you don’t. You will.”
But Will didn’t. Not all the long drive back to LA. Taylor slept, mouth ajar and face lined and unlovely with strain and exhaustion. Will drove and used his cell phone to fill in Lt. Wray and Assistant Director Cooper. He talked while he kept one eye on his partner. Despite efforts to clean himself off in at a rest-stop men’s room, Taylor was indeed more than a little on the pungent side, but Will had no complaint.
* * * * *
Taylor woke when Will stopped for coffee, and he explained in what was clearly the abridged version how he had managed to get free.
“It was like those convoluted schemes the villains in Batman came up with.” He was trying to joke, but it wasn’t quite coming off.
“She’s insane,” Will said. “I don’t know about the legal definition, but she’s deranged.”
Taylor nodded without energy. He described knocking Sugimori Junior. into the ocean.
“They haven’t found him yet,” Will replied in answer to the question Taylor hadn’t asked.
“Good,” Taylor replied. “I hope the fish are having him for supper.” He told Will about leaving the wrecked and derelict house on the cliff, hot-wiring Sugimori’s car and driving into Casmalia to phone the cops and Will. “That’s pretty much it.”
He made it sound simple. Will tried to keep it low-key too. “Lucky you found it. You could have blinked and missed it. Population less than two hundred. The town’s a toxic dump,” he said. “I mean literally.”
“No wonder I headed straight for it.”
They both smiled, but it took effort.
* * * * *
Taylor sat grimly through the medical exam and brusquely declined the amenities of an overnight hospital stay. Will couldn’t argue, since he’d done the same thing the day before — was it only the day before?
The doctor and Will exchanged a look, and then the doctor gave Will a list of signs and symptoms to look for in case of concussion and sent them on their way — which was straight to a debriefing with Cooper.
When Cooper had finally tired of the pleasure of their company, or maybe just the sound of his own voice, Will had driven home — to Taylor’s house — and Taylor had showered and was dressed in the softest, most comfortable jeans and T-shirt he owned, resting on the sofa in the den drinking the hot coffee Will had prepared. His head still hurt, his ribs ached, but he felt okay. Wrung out but okay. He was alive, and that counted for a lot.
Will sat down on the sofa and put an arm around him. Taylor relaxed, closed his eyes, and let his head fall back against Will’s shoulder, relinquishing himself to Will’s care. “I guess you have a few questions.”
“If you want to tell me.”
“No.” Taylor smiled faintly. “Yeah.”
Will kissed his forehead and didn’t say anything.
Taylor opened his eyes and watched Will’s three-quarter profile as he said, “He wasn’t my first or anything.” Taylor had been fourteen the first time he and Bobby Machek had jacked off together behind the broken-down concession stand at Sandoval Baseball Field. He could still remember the ghostly silhouettes of the painted players on the peeling red wood wall. Those guilty, giddy minutes with Bobby had been the launch of a long and occasionally wild journey of sexual exploration that had really only ended when he found harbor with Will.
He closed his eyes and admitted, “But it was the first time I thought maybe I was in love.”
In the silence that followed, Taylor raised his lashes. There was so much affection and understanding in Will’s blue eyes, he had to close his own again.
“Not like us,” he clarified, although he was sure Will already understood that. “We had to be careful, obviously. It would have meant the end of both our careers. You know how it was back then.” Eight years. Amazing what a difference a decade — or near decade — could make.
“I know,” Will said, and he seemed to be speaking about more than the State Department’s historic attitude regarding same-sex relations.
“Inori was married. Separated, I thought. That’s what he told me, and I had no reason to believe otherwise. Even so, he was — it was hard for him. After the first rush of finding each other, he was terrified all the time that we were being watched, that we would be discovered. The idea of failing, of disgrace, was unthinkable. His family — his father — was old-school. Samurai. We’re talking something straight out of a Kurosawa film. Inori already felt like an outcast because his mother was Caucasian. There was always this standard he was trying to live up to. Being gay just made it worse for him.”
“How was it for you?”
Taylor grimaced. “I took my career just as seriously, but being younger, I didn’t think we’d get caught. You know how it is. I felt bulletproof back then. Anyway.” Taylor swallowed hard. “Anyway, after about ten months he…broke it off with me. Said that as much as he loved me, the risk to both of us was too great.” He could still taste the bitterness of that, knew Will could read it in his face. “So I requested a transfer, and I got one. Faster than I expected.” Taylor opened his eyes, his expression wry. “They sent me to Afghanistan.”
“Hell.”
“It was, yeah. Anyway, at least I knew I wouldn’t have time to brood.
