Page 2 of Constantly Cotton
It was a basic request—a courtesy, really. Jason, whose real rank was actually heftier than the silver-leaf Lieutenant Colonel insignia he wore on his uniform, had sort of thrown it out there in the name of keeping to protocols in case he ever had to act civilized.
And Collings, one of the coldest fuckers Jason Constance had ever dealt with, including the assassins in his charge, said, “My division is, at this moment, tracking the group trafficking these minors. We need to see where they’re going and follow the money trail. Please put them back on their original transport and designate a soldier to continue to drive them to their original destination.”
Jason remembered a feeling of blankness blowing through him, a cold desert wind scouring the duties and the paperwork and the must-dos and the protocols right out of his blood, like the abrasive cleanser used in plumbing.
Every nerve ending was suddenly pristine and alert and awaiting a different set of orders from Jason’s tattered, thin soul, as opposed to the ones he usually followed from Washington.
“No, sir,” he’d said, his voice sounding tinny, far away, shouted from a mountaintop, even to his own ears. “No, sir. I’m not putting these kids back in that piece-of-shit tin wagon and shipping them back to hell.”
The conversation had devolved from there.
And when it was over, Jason turned to Huntington almost as though he was surfacing from a deep pool—or a deep sleep.
“Sergeant Huntington?”
“Yessir?”
“I’m about to do some things my superiors don’t approve of. Doing what I ask may get you called in on a court-martial. Let me know if that bothers you.”
“You go, I go, sir,” Huntington had replied smartly. He was young—late twenties or so—with thick blond hair, Iowa farm-boy blue eyes, and a chest almost too big to fit behind the helicopter controls. Jason had been nursing a crush—a very, very secret crush—on his transport sergeant almost since Anton had joined covert ops, but since he was pretty sure Anton Hungtington was straight (and even if he wasn’t, Jason wouldn’t hit on someone in his unit, ever), he’d indulged in the crush like other officers indulged in nudie magazines.
He only brought it out at night, when nobody else could see.
But still, it did his heart good to know that he inspired loyalty in somebody.
He’d had Huntington radio for a military transport bus and taken responsibility for the kids, while Jai and Ace had driven off to meet Burton and take out the people on the receiving end of this horror perpetrated against children.
Jason felt like his job was more dangerous.
As soon as the transpo arrived—with cases of water, thank God—Jason had sent the driver back to the base with Anton and hopped behind the wheel.
The trip from the middle of the desert had gone fairly quickly, or as quickly as the old bus could go, given that it overheated if Jason pushed it past fifty miles an hour.
Ernie called him halfway to the I-5 interchange and told him to stop off at a hospital close to the freeway in East Los Angeles. Apparently Jai’s boyfriend worked there, and he’d volunteered to take a look at the kids and make sure nobody was suffering from heatstroke or lingering effects from their imprisonment in the back of the sweltering RV.
Jason had pulled into the ambulance bay and been directed toward the side of the big building that was closest to the parking structure. A small, almost hidden, employee entrance sat there, and Jason turned off the laboring engine while he and the kids waited in the shade.
And then the door had opened, and Jason had gotten a good look at another member of Burton and Ernie’s hidden family.
He had only the occasional glimpse of Jai, the giant Russian who had been helping Ace Atchison tend to the children as they were moved from the horrible, stench-ridden RV to the slower, air-conditioned military transport bus, but he knew the man existed. When he had dinner with Burton and Ernie, Ernie gossiped to him about all of the denizens of Victoriana, and Jason started listening to their stories like some people paid attention to television shows. Jason Constance, covert ops, living in a hole in the world and tracking down people the US government denied creating, had no family. Or at least in his uniform, he pretended he didn’t. His sister was alive and well and living outside of San Diego, teaching, and his parents had retired to Arizona. He texted them from a secure phone reserved for family interactions and exchanged pleasantries because he’d been brought up right and he was loved. But he didn’t talk about them to anybody but Ernie and Burton. Ernie was semiofficially dead, and he liked it that way, so Jason felt safe there, but that was the only place. He hadn’t had a lover since he’d gone into covert ops ten years ago. Back then, the stigma against being gay was such that any contact, any at all, would have compromised him and the people he worked with beyond forgiveness and redemption.
Things were different now, and even if they weren’t, watching Burton and Ernie build their private bastion of tender civilization in the middle of the unforgiving desert would have inspired him to find somebody, anybody, to make the world a warmer, more welcoming place for his stripped-bare, desiccated soul. But his emotional centers felt battered and rusty, like a once-functioning piece of equipment that had been dipped in salt water and left in the sun to rust and gum up with sand.
He wasn’t sure he could even touch a lover right now, not with the reverence and joy he seemed to remember that involved.
So seeing George, Jai’s boyfriend, jumping into the military bus to smile gently at all of the children and tell them that he had meals prepared and was going to take everybody’s temperatures and make sure nobody was sick—that was like watching a movie star walk into his life and invite him to the party.
And to realize that this perfectly average slender blond man with gray eyes and an engaging smile belonged to Jai, the almost terrifying ex-mobster who stayed very intentionally on the periphery of Jason’s vision whenever they met? If Jason hadn’t just flushed his entire career down the toilet, he would have been almost giddy.
As it was, he’d been up since 4:00 a.m., following an op going down in Europe, and it was nearly eight in the evening by the time George and his boss, Amal, managed to sneak Jason and the children onto a medical transport, practically under Barney Talbot’s nose.
He was too tired for giddy. He’d settle for relieved.
Jason pulled out into the thick of Los Angeles weekend traffic, knowing the only way to get the kids away from the military and the mob was to take the 14 through the mountains and then turn back toward I-5 north of Palmdale.
Which would be like a flea taking a tour on a hairless cat. Sure, it could get from nose to tail faster, but it could also get caught and squashed. There wasn’t much up in that area—lots of bare stretches of road with housing developments parked in acres of succulents so the wind didn’t scour the dirt from the mountaintops.
And not a lot of places to stop.
