The night before was already fading away into a memory box I’d have to lock away and protect forever.
I said nothing as Deeks continued to speak. Clint had been found dead the day before—the day we left Babylon to come up to Dallas to see his family and make sure they were safe, just like I’d promised they would be. Twenty-four hours he’d been gone, and I was only just finding out about it.
Cold didn’t describe the temperature of my blood as it struggled to flow through my body. My face paled, I knew that much, and so did Ayda, her smile slipping away as she began to rise and rest on her elbows, looking up at me in confusion.Her intuition on point, as always.
Clint hadn’t fucking made it.
“Tucker?” Deeks said down the phone, his voice full of concern. “You there?”
Swallowing hard, I nodded like he could see me. “Here.”
“You okay?”
I licked my lips to create some moisture and movement, clearing my throat, too, as I tried to act like the king and formulate a plan instead of thinking about another loss we’d have to add to the little book of death that was becoming a thicker and thicker work of non-fiction with every week that passed us by.
“All good,” I croaked, clearing my throat a second time. “Does his family know?”
“They were informed last night. Drew, there’s something not right about all of this. The nurses said that Clint was on his way to recovering. He should have been out in a few weeks if the treatment had continued. Sutton’s over here looking like he gone and seen a damn ghost, looking over his shoulder every minute to make sure that Winnie woman isn’t on his tail. If anyone finds out we know, ATF will know Sutton is still feeding us info. Don’t do anything stupid.”
“Sure,” I answered flatly.
There was another one of those long motherfucking pauses again, followed by some whispering from Sutton I couldn’t make out before I heard Jedd and Slater saying something in the background. Deeks covered the speaker at his end, making all the background noise muffled like trying to see through thick fog or hear underwater. I was too numb to even fucking frown.
When he lifted his hand away, I heard Sutton say threewords. “Tell him now.”
“Tell me what?” I asked, staring into Ayda’s eyes, devoid of emotion.
“Shit, I don’t know how to say this, Tucker. I wish you weren’t up in Dallas, but this can’t wait. Clint wasn’t the only one who didn’t make it.”
That time I did frown, my eyes falling to the floor. “Who else?”
His answer came out in one long stream of air. “Jon Taylor. He’s dead, too.”
My mouth fell open, all of me completely thrown off course, until the reality of those words sank in. All the injustice in the world burned within me until it boiled over, and I found my whole body scrunching up, my fist flying through the air at nothing, and my foot lashing out whatever piece of goddamn furniture it could find.
“FUCK!”I cried out, fury and frustration mingling to make me sound like I was being choked and set free all at once. “Fuck!”
“Drew,” Deeks said as calmly as he could, which wasn’t very calm considering he could hear me lashing the fuck out. “Take a breath, boy. Settle down.”
“How the fuck is Jon Taylor dead already? How? Who the fuck found him? What was his cause of death? Was he strangled? Fucking stabbed in the neck? How is he dead without being dead fromourhands, Deeks? Tell me!”
I couldn’t even bring myself to turn to look at Ayda, not when I was in this headspace—gone again.
“Jon Taylor was meant to die whenIsaid so,” I growled at them. “Me. I was the executioner of that motherfucker.No one else.”
And Clint is still gone.
Dead on my watch.
Another one I let down in the end.
The silence on the other end was followed by more whispering before the phone clearly changed hands and a different voice was talking to me.
“Stop throwing a tantrum, Tucker.”
“Fuck you, Sutton.”
“I’ve told you, I like you, but you’re just not my type. Now calm the hell down, will ya, ya big goddamn baby.”