21
Drew woke up groggy and disoriented, and he didn’t open his eyes at first. He thought he was home, and he stretched out his arm to see if Finn was there, but the other side of the bed was cold. The pillow didn’t smell like the lavender fabric softener he’d picked up by mistake, either.
Finally he opened his eyes, and reality came flooding back. He was in Pakistan, and Finn was in a hospital room on the other side of the world. With a grumbling sigh, he pushed back the covers and rolled out of bed. He needed to see if Joe was up so they could make a plan for going after Abassi—and see what frame of mind Joe was in. He’d thought they were making some progress. Joe had seemed to relax a little in response to Drew opening up. Or, maybe it was the bourbon. Either way, things had been going well until Drew made the mistake of bringing up Finn.
Finn trusted him to look after Joe, and hewantedto. The fragility he sensed behind all of Joe’s bluster was mashing all of his protective hot buttons, but sometimes he couldn’t tell if he was doing more harm than good.
Scrubbing his fingers through his short hair, he made his way out of the bedroom and into the spacious living area of their suite, which was more like an apartment than a hotel room. Everything was quiet, and the door of Joe’s bedroom stood open. Drew approached and knocked as he peeked inside.
“Joe?”
The room was empty, and Drew didn’t hear any sounds coming from the adjoining bathroom. A flare of panic shot through him, and he entered the bedroom and looked around as if that would somehow make Joe materialize out of thin air.
“Joe!”
But there wasn’t an answer, and the stillness in the suite let him know he was, indeed, alone.
“Motherfucker….” Drew blew out a sharp breath, his mind racing. Had Joe gone after Abassi alone? Of course he had. What other reason would he have for sneaking out while Drew was asleep? It wasn’t like he had family and friends in the area to pay a friendly visit.
He strode back into his bedroom to grab his phone and call Herc. Maybe there was a way Pixel could track down Joe before he got in over his head with Abassi.
While he was dialing, he heard the door to the suite open and then close, followed by Joe’s voice. “Hey, are you up? I got breakfast.”
Drew canceled the call and hurried out of the bedroom, a mix of relief and irritation washing over him when he saw Joe. “Where were you? I thought you’d gone off and left me.”
Joe looked up from where he’d been unloading the contents of a tray onto the table. He frowned and then shrugged. “Why would you think that? I left you a note next to the coffee pot. Go check if you don’t believe me.”
Drew glanced over at the coffee maker on the little kitchenette counter, and sure enough, he spotted a piece of paper propped up against it.
“Sorry,” he said with a sheepish smile. “I didn’t think to look for a note.”
Joe gave a grunt, continuing to offload the tray. There were two covered plates, as well as a cloth-covered basket and a bowl of fruit, along with two glasses of orange juice. “Of course you didn’t.” He glanced up at Joe, his expression wary. “I know you don’t trust me, but if you don’t mind, I’m hungry. Can we at least eat before arguing again?”
“I was worried about you, that’s all.” Drew released a long breath. Last night had definitely been the product of alcohol, not progress.
Joe sighed, dropping into one of the chairs. He scrubbed his face with his hands and then looked at Drew again.
“You don’t have to worry. I’m not going to do anything stupid.” He picked up a fork, toying with it for a moment. “Thanks for giving a damn. I didn’t sleep much last night, so I did a lot of thinking. I’m tired of being at odds with you. I accept you and Finn are together, okay? I don’t want anything bad to happen to you, and I’m willing to try to be friends. It’s just going to take time. You seem to be a decent guy, and maybe if we’d met before you got involved with Finn, I’d’ve been better about it. But I couldn’t help feeling like you were taking away what bit of Finn I actually had. You don’t know what it’s like to love someone for years and know that they’ll never be yours. Not really. Not fully.”
Drew sat down across from Joe and leaned forward on his elbows. “No, I don’t,” he said. “I can only guess how difficult it is. How much it hurts. But I don’t want to be at odds with you, either.” He paused and then decided to take a risk. He stretched his hand across the table and touched Joe’s arm lightly. “I want to help. In whatever ways you’ll let me.”
Joe didn’t flinch, but he wouldn’t meet Drew’s eyes, either. “I don’t know what you can do to help. I just have to learn to be more accepting, I guess.”
“Take your time,” Drew said, keeping his hand in place. “This is a big change, and you’ve had a lot to deal with lately on top of your relationship with Finn. I’ve got your back with Abassi, and I’m willing to listen if there’s anything you want to talk about. No judgment.”
“Sure. Thanks.” Joe drew in a deep breath and then lifted the lid off his plate. “Let’s eat, and we can discuss what to do about Abassi. I didn’t know how you liked your eggs, or if, so I went for scrambled. Plus bacon and sausage. Do you want coffee?”
“Scrambled eggs are fine, and bacon’s even better.” Drew squeezed Joe’s arm lightly, and then he pushed back his chair and stood up. “You got breakfast, so I’ll make the coffee. I hope you like it strong.”
“Strong is good with me,” Joe replied. He glanced up, and for the first time he offered Drew a slight smile—small and rather sad, but a smile nonetheless.
Heartened by the sight, Drew grinned. “You got it,” he said as he headed over to the coffeemaker. “So did you have any ideas about how to get to Abassi?” he asked, deciding it might be easier if they focused on less emotionally fraught topics for now.
“First we have to find the right one. There are at least seven of them here in Islamabad. What makes it harder is that Abassi wasn’t one of the names on the list of targets from my previous mission, but he would have to be pretty high up to have the authority to order the kind of attack we faced—especially stateside. There are another ten men with that name in Karachi, but Pixel had tracked Emani back to Islamabad, so we’re probably safe starting here. If we rule out men under thirty, who wouldn’t be old enough to have an eighteen-year-old son, that leaves five men we need to find. Two of them run family-owned markets, one is a retired businessman, one is a taxi driver, and the last works for a tech firm. My bet is on the retired businessman or the tech, but we can’t rule any of them out immediately.”
“So step one is gathering information.” Drew retrieved two coffee cups from the cabinet and started looking around for sugar. “Can we get Pixel to help with that?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder at Joe.
“He’s done all the preliminary legwork. He’s even looked on the dark web for information.” Joe grimaced. “These guys are tricky. We thought we’d gotten to the upper levels and eliminated them, but apparently there are more layers than we knew about. They’re like roaches—hard to kill, always coming out of the woodwork, and they reproduce so fast it’s hard to be sure you’ve gotten them all. At this point, I think we just need to see each of these guys, see which one of them lost a son recently, and go from there.”
