Destinations
MARCUS’S FLIGHT suit was attached to the frame by the bay door, which was why he was the one to lean out of the airplane and watch as Bailey—and the crate holding the cat and supplies—landed.
Dean’s heart didn’t beat normally until Marcus gave him the thumbs-up.
“Val?” he heard himself asking as Marcus slammed the bay door shut.
“About a mile away,” Marcus confirmed. “Could spot that purple rig from space!”
Dean’s knees went a little wobbly. He wasn’t sure why it hadn’t occurred to him that kicking his lover out of an airplane at 8,000 feet might be a risky proposition for romance, but until Bailey had regarded him with enormous eyes—and enormous faith behind them—he wasn’t sure if he’d ever known fear before.
“Good,” he said weakly. “Now for phase two.”
“And phase two would be?” As they spoke, both of them were slipping out of their flight suits and donning faded khaki cargo pants, ribbed tanks, and battered madras shirts.
They wore socks, because trekking through the desert without them wasn’t fun, but the kind that were hidden under the edges of their walking boots.
Their casual rucksacks carried two changes of clothes—one of them black microfiber for nightwork—extra batteries for their communication devices, protein bars, water, and, hey, their service weapons and enough C-4 to take out… .
Well, Dean’s brain kind of skittered around that last one.
It was one thing to talk about “bringing a cartel down” or “bringing the mob members to justice,” but it was another to contemplate mass murder in order to assure his boyfriend’s survival.
But then after seeing what these two gangs had been doing to each other over the last year, Dean wasn’t sure he wanted to contemplate what they’d do to his sweet little Bailey for just finding the wrong body.
“I’m on board,” Marcus said softly, and in his eyes, Dean could see it.
The weariness that had been edging in on both of them.
The discomfort that came with knowing they were fighting a losing war in which the only people who were ever brought to justice were the small fish who’d never had a chance to be anything bigger than fry.
“We have to survive getting to the compound first,” Dean told him.
There was a small airstrip outside of Sangrino del Corazón, the compound that featured a military barracks surrounding a villa that housed the cartel leader’s family.
Gael Barrera was known for being absolutely ruthless, creatively bloody, and horny as a goat.
The villa had grown so large in order to house his wife, two mistresses, and the knot of little Gaels, many of whom were at the preteen age, ready to join their father’s ranks to serve as his lieutenants.
“What’s the plan?” Marcus asked, and Dean glanced at him, the telepathy of a nearly six-year working relationship in fully functional order.
“Of course,” Marcus replied after a moment.
The secret, Dean thought with satisfaction, was that he and Marcus were such sticklers for order on the bureaucratic scale.
Dean’s genius IQ added to his obsession over details, and Marcus’s ability to smooth talk the powers that be gave them the illusion that they never walked into a situation without a firm objective to justify what came next.
The secret, the real secret, was that Dean and Marcus had survived for six years on luck and quick thinking.
The cold truth was that there wasn’t a plan. There was never a plan. There was an objective , and there were hard limits. As the plane buzzcut through the arid heavens, Dean and Marcus outlined their objectives and their limits and where they saw the mission beginning and how they saw it ending.
And figured they’d fill in the blanks when they walked into the void.
BIRDIE WAS aiming the plane about a mile from the small village.
It had sprung up the way a lot of small towns in Mexico had—people were going across the land and needed a fueling place to get them from point A, which was a hundred miles that way, and point B, which was two hundred in the other direction.
Because it was so much the middle of nowhere, other amenities had sprung up: hotels, a few small bodegas, a couple of bars.
It would never be a vacation spot, but it was big enough that a couple of gringos riding the all-terrain motorcycles stashed in the tail section of the plane wouldn’t really be noticed.
It was not unheard of for Americans to get lost in the desert, and Dean and Marcus both had leathers and bandanas to cover up their Bureau-length hair until it grew out, which it had done a couple of times when they’d been undercover down south trying to figure out what was coming up north that they could bust.
Technically speaking—or nontechnically speaking—they were US Feds. They weren’t supposed to even be south of the border.
Practically speaking, as long as they didn’t act on any of their intel unless they were north of the border, nobody in their division asked any questions.
And their division was so grateful for the wins Dean and Marcus had been giving them that they pretended they didn’t know the answers anyway.
Vlade had been a godsend , because they could legitimately say they got all their info from a CI in Austin, and besides being more worried for Bailey than he knew what to do with, Dean was also irritated that his one excuse for staying in Austin was no longer going to be his excuse, because he was dead .
“What are you thinking?” Marcus shouted after Birdie started their descent.
“Fuckin’ Vlade,” Dean said honestly. “Life was a lot easier when that asshole was still alive.”
Marcus grunted. “Think our two hitters know who saw them?”
Dean shrugged, unsettled. “I think Bailey’s nurse is going to cover for him, smooth as silk. That woman does not look like she could lie to save her life, but boy did she get some determination in her spine when it came to lying to save Bailey’s.”
Marcus frowned. “Friends?” he asked uncertainly.
But Dean had done his research on Bailey’s life before Dean had powered into it, and he’d pulled up death statistics in Outskirts General, and the unsupervised death statistics as well.
Many states had been told to “lie with the truth” during the pandemic by not mentioning COVID on the death statistics if no tests had been run, even when the virus had clearly been responsible for the illness that killed the victim.
The numbers for Outskirts General had been devastating, and the numbers of staff and frontline workers who’d died in the course of those dreadful two years must have felt like severed limbs to the survivors left to fight another day.
“Brothers in arms,” Dean told him shortly. “They both lost people during the pandemic, and there was nobody else to come in. You don’t rat out your foxhole buddy, you know?”
Marcus’s eyes widened. “Ouch,” he said softly. “Your boy okay after that?”
Dean shook his head. “His boyfriend died,” he said baldly.
Because yeah, he’d seen that. People in the Bureau didn’t date people who hadn’t been vetted.
And while Dean and Marcus had both had their share of fly-by-night lovers, when Dean had made the decision to show up on Bailey’s doorstep, it hadn’t been impulsively or recklessly done.
It had been because he’d been thinking of Bailey nonstop since he’d left the man sleeping, exhaustion written all over his appealing features, and he wanted to know if Bailey would welcome him into his life.
And, yeah, to make sure Bailey wasn’t part of the many drug pipelines that ventured across the border.
Of course if Dean had thought for a moment he was on the take, he wouldn’t have even indulged in that rather magical moment in the crib, but once he’d been officially cleared, Dean had been able to barge into the man’s life and force him to allow Dean to stay with a completely clear conscience.
“Oh wow,” Marcus said, so softly Dean had to read his lips over the engine noise. “Has he recovered yet?”
Dean gnawed his lip, uncharacteristically worried about another person’s feelings.
“Not entirely,” he said after a moment. “Or he would have told me about the man before now. But enough, I think. He was worried this morning because he felt like I didn’t”—Dean wrinkled his nose in distaste—“ share enough.”
Marcus’s eyebrows—perfectly plucked to accentuate his liquid brown trust-me eyes—went up to the shaved edge of his corkscrew hair. “Did you… what did you…?” He squeezed his eyes nearly shut and squinted at Dean. “Good God, Dean, I have no idea what kind of sharing you would even do.”
Dean shrugged. “It was no big deal. He wanted to know about my family. What’s not to tell?”
Marcus shrugged in honest bemusement. “Got me there. Your family is about as transparent as Baja gulf, but was it, you know….” His voice dropped, and Dean knew he had his own demons and secrets. They both did, but not from each other. “Hard?”
Dean thought about it. “It was weird,” he said frankly. “It felt like he should have known already. They’re, you know, a part of me. How could he know me and not know them?”
Saying it out loud made him blink.
“Which is why,” he said, filling in the blanks, “he wanted me to meet his father. Oh! I totally get it now.”
Marcus slow-blinked at him. “Dean Royal, ladies and gentlemen, super genius.”
“Shut up,” Dean retorted. Unlike Marcus, who was an only child, he’d had brothers growing up. He knew how these fights were won.
“No, seriously, Dean. How could you not think he’d need you to open up?”
Dean scowled and was about to reply that he had too little experience “opening up” to even know what the signs in a relationship were for that sort of thing when the engine noise changed and the plane suddenly went diving for the ground at an angle not conducive to good health and a long life.
“Bird!” Dean cried. “Birdie, the fuck?”
“We’re taking fire!” Birdie retorted from the cockpit. “Somebody knows my usual spot with the fuel line. Gonna have to go farther south and land, but first….”
Dean could feel the engines screaming and the plane’s structure groaning under his feet as Birdie pulled out of the dive and slid left then right in what had to be an attempt to dodge antiaircraft fire.
“First we have to avoid getting shot out of the sky!” Marcus hollered to him and threw him a parachute while Dean scrambled for his flight suit.
Dean slid the chute over his shoulders and then leaned back as far as the pack would allow and buckled in.
“C’mon, Birdie!” he shouted in encouragement.
Marcus, in the meantime, had managed his flight suit and was double-checking the cargo chutes on their small motorcycles and the supply trailer, both boxed in a large cargo container that dominated the rest of the hold.
Birdie—small, weathered, and as unaware of gender as a cactus—had flown them on more assignments than they could count.
This wasn’t the first time they’d thought they were going to die, but as the plane started to climb in a way that defied both gravity and engine strength, he met Marcus’s eyes grimly.
Wasn’t the first time, but a little prayer that it wouldn’t be the last time wouldn’t hurt either.