CHAPTER FIVE The Water Between Them #5
Gideon looked at the badge pinned to the wet coat lying near the spring.
“The second.”
Jude followed his gaze.
“You think the irons make every answer I give uncertain.”
“Yes.”
“Even after I established the rule?”
“Rules do not erase power.”
“No.”
Jude lifted their connected wrists.
Steel shone between them.
“But power noticed is safer than power denied.”
“That doesn’t make it equal.”
“It makes you different from Rusk.”
Gideon’s eyes returned to him.
Jude’s expression had become serious.
“Rusk touched because he could,” Jude said. “Harrow watched because nobody could stop him. You ask. You wait. You stopped when I had not answered.”
“That is the smallest decency.”
“Small decencies become large things to men who have been denied them.”
Gideon looked at the scar through Jude’s eyebrow, the bruises, the raw marks beneath the cuff.
“Did you want me to kiss you?” he asked.
Jude’s breath changed.
The question stood naked between them.
Jude could answer.
Instead, he moved closer just enough that Gideon felt his warmth again.
“You didn’t ask until after you stopped,” Jude said.
“That is not an answer.”
“No.” The faintest hint of his old smile returned. “It isn’t.”
Gideon should have been frustrated.
Instead, relief moved through him.
Jude had not rewarded restraint by surrendering the boundary it protected.
He had preserved the rule.
“When I ask again,” Gideon said, “I will ask before moving.”
Jude’s gaze settled on his mouth.
“Then be certain you want my answer.”
Neither spoke after that.
They finished washing.
Jude turned while Gideon removed his soaked trousers and rinsed the mud from his legs. Gideon did the same for Jude, maintaining the small privacy the wrist chain allowed. Their movements remained intimate but no longer accidental in disguise.
When Gideon needed to steady Jude while he stepped from the pool, he asked.
When Jude needed to place both hands on Gideon’s shoulders to climb onto the stone shelf, he asked.
Each answer became another piece of trust.
Yes.
You may.
Here.
Not there.
Hold tighter.
That hurts.
Stop.
Continue.
They spread their clothing across sun-warmed rocks. The hidden chamber trapped the morning heat, drying fabric quickly.
Gideon examined Jude’s wounds once more before rebandaging them. Jude returned the care without teasing.
The other trackers did not find the spring.
Their voices passed through the basin beyond the hidden cleft twice, close enough that Gideon and Jude heard one man curse the captives they had left tied in the mud. Neither tracker discovered the crack behind the vines.
By midday, the voices had faded.
Gideon recovered the kill order from his coat and read it again.
TRANSFER COMPROMISED.SHAW AND CALDER ARE NOT TO REACH SANTA REINA.RECOVER ALL DOCUMENTS. LEAVE NO PRISONERS.AUTHORIZATION C-17.
Jude stood behind him, buttoning the dry shirt over his fresh bandage.
“What now?” he asked.
Gideon folded the order.
“Santa Reina.”
“You still intend to deliver me?”
“I intend to reach the federal judge.”
“In irons?”
Gideon looked at their connected wrists.
The cuff around Jude’s right wrist remained necessary. That was what Gideon had told himself since Salt Knife Canyon.
Necessary for custody.
Necessary for safety.
Necessary to prevent escape.
But Jude had stood armed beside him twice. He had led Gideon to water. He had kept watch while Gideon slept and held him through a nightmare without demanding the name Gideon had cried.
He could have escaped.
He had not.
“Not yet,” Gideon said.
Jude’s expression revealed neither disappointment nor surprise.
Gideon dressed.
He buckled on the gun belt, slid the kill order inside his coat, and checked the revolver. Jude collected the captured rifle and remaining ammunition.
They returned through the hidden passage in silence.
The two trackers remained bound in the basin. The wounded man had awakened. The other sat beside him, glaring.
Gideon left them another drink of water in a discarded cartridge tin.
“You won’t make Santa Reina,” the wounded tracker said.
Gideon looked at him. “Then you should pray I’m not the most dangerous man using Cutter’s cipher.”
He and Jude entered the narrow canyon.
At first Gideon held the connecting chain as he always did, wrapping the slack once around his left fist. It gave him control of Jude’s movements and prevented the links from catching on stone.
They walked several hundred yards that way.
Then Jude stepped over a fallen branch.
The chain tightened.
Gideon felt the pull pass through both wrists.
He opened his hand.
The wrapped links fell free.
The chain dropped into a shallow curve between them.
Jude looked down.
He said nothing.
They continued walking.
For the first time since Red Mesa, Gideon did not use the steel to guide, restrain, or remind Jude which man held the key.
The chain swung loosely between their wrists, catching the sun whenever they moved.
It no longer resembled a leash.
Not quite.
And although Gideon was not ready to name what it had become, he allowed it to hang untouched between them as they left the water and walked together toward Santa Reina.