Page 56 of Under Cover
Garcia nodded, not able to turn his back on this. “I know, man.”
“He’s so fuckin’ gentle, Calix. He… didn’t even turn on me, did you hear that? McEnany said he knew I was staying with my girl. Toby covered for us, man. They sent him to get the shit beat out of him, and he kept your name out of it. Said I still lived with him—I was just going to stay with a girl in Flushing. He’s… he’s five three, do you know that? He’s got six kinds of things in his body that try to kill him on the regular, and those assholes gotta put him in with gen pop? Calix, we… wegottaget him out of there. We gotta. There’s no fuckin’ reason for the police toexistif we can’t get Toby the fuck outta there, you hear me?”
Garcia took a stuttering breath and swallowed. “I know, Judson, Iknow.But why can’t you go get him now, and we tell Harding everything and—”
“And someday one of us gets that bullet to the back of the head?” Crosby said, the quiver to his lower lip firming up. “And I’dhopeit was me, you know? But there’s a reason my folks are in New Mexico bitching about the heat. They’d start with Toby, maybe move to Gail, and maybe they’d find out I was banging Iliana back in the day. And then they’d find out you and me spent two days together with nobody watching, and….” His voice clogged. “And God. You’re everything they hate. You’re brown, you’re gay, and you’re mine. I got to go, and you got to get Toby and tell Harding. I’ll get a burner on the way, put your numbers—”
Garcia could do one thing here to help.
“Don’t worry about the burner. I got something better.” He reached into the gun safe and pulled out his old ATF phone, which still held a partial charge. He had a battery on his desk, and he was hooking it up as he pulled Crosby to look over his shoulder. “It’s got two SIM cards,” he said softly, wanting Crosby’s heat at his back always. “See? Hit this—” He hit a spare, almost invisible button on the side. “—and you’re texting one group of people. Hit it again, you’re texting the other. When I worked undercover, I always made Group One my cover group and Group Two my backup. See this light, here?” He showed a tiny green light in the lower corner of the phone. “Green is one, red is two. This way you don’t have to worry about texting the wrong guy with the wrong number. See this app?” He showed Crosby the icon. “This app lets you spoof numbers. So if you want to text someone but make it look like you’re texting someone else? And you can do spoofing presets. So you text me, and it looks like you’re texting Gail. You text Harding, it looks like you’re texting me. That way you can….” He turned to Crosby in agony. “You can keep us posted. We can know where you are.” He swallowed and hit a couple of buttons, sending a text to his own phone. “And I’ve got a tracker on you, because I’ve got the number in my phone. Use Harding’s scrambler when you need to, okay?”
Crosby nodded. “Good. Hold that for a sec. Let me put on my boots.”
He wore lace-up cross-training urban boots—the kind you could run in, but that could take some punishment. Garcia had another thought and ran to the gun safe again, coming back with a tracker and a couple of new batteries.
“Here,” he whispered, bending down to find a place in Crosby’s boot lining. “Another tracker.” He stood so Crosby could put his stockinged foot in the boot and slid the batteries in his back pocket. “I’ve got this one loaded into my phone.”
He went about getting his own boots and his own piece, and silently the two of them finished getting dressed—Kevlar under their sweaters, because they were all business.
Right up until Crosby stood at the door of the darkened house.
“I’ll text you on the way,” Crosby said gruffly. “And you and Harding at least once a day. I….” He squeezed his eyes shut, and Garcia couldn’t help it. He cupped Crosby’s face and pulled his head down, taking Crosby’s hard mouth in a kiss made of desperation and iron.
“Stay safe,” he ordered, trying not to be broken.
“You too,” Crosby rasped.
“And do what you have to,” Garcia said, hating this might have to come up. “I don’t care if you’re faithful, Crosby—I just care if you’re alive.”
Crosby sucked in a tortured breath. “I care if you’re fucking faithful,” he rasped. “I do. So help me, I do. I don’t want you with anyone else, and I don’t want tobewith anybody else. If we gotta to stay safe, we gotta, but I don’t wanna, you hear me?”
Garcia nodded. “I hear.”
For a moment, a heartbeat, Crosby’s face lost its hardness, and his body lost its urgency. He pulled Garcia close in an embrace made of tenderness, like they had all the time in the world.
“This was the best two days of my life,” he said, and Garcia fought the urge to cry. “I want them back. I want them back with you. I’m gonna work real hard to get them back, you hear me?”
“I hear,” Garcia repeated.
In reply, Crosby kissed him on the forehead and ghosted out the door.
Garcia waited ten minutes, so anybody watching Crosby would see him heading for the nearest platform and could follow him there, before going to the side door and sliding out, cutting through the neighbor’s backyard to catch a Lyft halfway down the block.
It would take Crosby about half an hour to get to Bed-Stuy and Garcia a little less time to get to Manhattan. He was taking the Lyft to get there sooner, and he was grateful when the driver stared moodily ahead, speaking tersely in sentences heavy with a Slavic accent when he did talk.
First things first. Harding picked up on the first ring, and Garcia wondered how hyped he had to be to still be awake and ready for bear at this hour.
Or how scared.
Garcia outlined the sitch, using “our boy” and “the good ole boy” for Crosby and McEnany, and “liability package” for Toby.
For a moment, Harding was nonplussed. “Liability package? Who’s our boy’s liability?”
“Same guy we thought two days ago,” Garcia said, thinking about how close they’d come to having Crosby forced into this because he’d been the one arrested.
“Oh dear God.” Harding’s voice pitched. “Seriously? You’re going to collect him now?”
“Yeah. But we’re not sure if there’s a welcome party when he’s released or not.”
