The Bureau, page 18
“I’m not entirely like Wilde,” he murmured.
“What?”
“It’s a poem in one of the books you gave me. A poem about a prisoner.”
Powell shook his head. “I don’t know any poetry.” He didn’t move his hands away when Des moved almost close enough to touch. “It’s cold in here,” he said instead.
“Not what you’d expect in the desert, yeah? I suppose I ought to be grateful I don’t roast in here during the summer.”
“Heat can be as bad as cold. Worse, maybe. It makes things rot.” Then Powell shook himself and his gaze sharpened. “We need your help with those boxes.”
“I’ve told you everything I know. Can tell you again if you want, but I don’t have anything new for you.”
Powell nodded as if expecting this. “The cities you and Krane stayed in during the months before you were caught... if you were there right now, do you think you could find the precise locations? The exact houses or rooms?”
“Are you going to try one of those guided imagery things?” He’d seen that on a television show once. He didn’t know if it was a real thing but thought it might be related to hypnosis. “I don’t fancy the idea of someone digging about in my head, but I’ll do it if you want.” At least it would add some variety to his life.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Powell raised a hand to stop Des from saying more. “Shut up and listen, okay?”
Des nodded.
After a brief pause, maybe to see if Des would stay quiet, Powell heaved a noisy sigh. “I’ve been authorized to offer you a deal. It goes like this. I accompany you on a retrospective tour of your old hangouts. You put all possible efforts into looking for those goddamn boxes. You’ll have a tracking device on you, so don’t get any ideas about making a run for it. If you try, the Bureau will find you and make your existence such a living hell that you’ll remember this cell as the Taj Mahal in comparison. Ditto if you attempt any violence against me or anyone else. Ditto if you dick around and waste my time. But if you follow the rules and we find those boxes, you’ll be returned to this prison with an upgrade. Bigger cell, bigger exercise yard and more time to use it, plus an assortment of other small privileges. You’ll still spend the rest of your life here, but you’ll be more comfortable. Agreed?”
The words went into Des’s ears, and at some level his brain processed them, but he couldn’t respond. Couldn’t do much of anything, actually: his lungs seized, static filled his head, and his knees gave out. He collapsed to the floor and clutched the bars as if they’d save him from drowning.
Powell didn’t react—not even now that Des was inches from touching him—and Des was incredibly grateful for that. Once Des’s harsh panting evened out, Powell dropped into a crouch to meet his gaze. “You back?” he asked gently.
“Y-yeah.” Des’s legs remained weak and his head swam, but he managed to get to his feet again, and Powell rose too, the distance between them only as wide as the bars.
“I can….” Des took a steadying breath. “I can leave this place?”
“For a while. You’ll have to come back.”
“Right. But for a while anyway.”
“Yes.”
At the confirmation, Des almost collapsed again. His hands gripped the bars so tightly that his knuckles went white. “Yes,” he rasped. “Yes, please. Please.”
“You understand the conditions of my offer?”
Conditions. Des would have done anything—almost anything at all—for ten minutes out in the open. For a fleeting reminder that he was something other than a caged animal. “I understand. I accept. Please.”
Powell nodded slowly. “All right then.”
“When will we go?”
“Now.”
Des fell to his knees again.
* * *
His preparations to leave took longer than he hoped, mostly because his hands shook so much that dressing was difficult. It might have been difficult even with steady fingers, since it had been nearly half his lifetime since he’d worn underwear and jeans or had tied shoelaces. The fabric of a gray T-shirt felt heavenly soft against his skin—nothing like the stiff, scratchy jumpsuits—and his shoulders were blessedly uncramped.
Despite his urgency to get the fuck out of this place, he hesitated before approaching the cell bars. “Can I take a book with me?”
“I’ll make sure they save your books for when you return,” Powell replied.
“Thank you. But can I take one with?”
After a pause, Powell twitched a shoulder. “Guess so.”
Des grabbed the small Reading Gaol volume from his shelf and tucked it in a back pocket. He couldn’t have explained why he wanted it. It was almost as if he were giving Wilde a bit of the freedom the man had yearned for. “Don’t be daft. He’s been dead nearly a century.”
“What’s that?” Powell asked.
Des blushed. “Nothing.” Dammit. He was going to have to stop talking to himself, at least for now.
Before Powell ordered the bars opened, he told Des to stick his right hand through one of the spaces. Des complied, watching with interest as Powell locked a thin metal band around Des’s wrist. It resembled an ornamental bracelet more than a manacle. “You can track me with that?”
“The Bureau can, yes. Anywhere in the world. And by the way, I have no means to remove it. So don’t get any ideas about murdering me and finding the key. Someone else is going to have to take it off you once you’re back here.”
“Fine.”
Des wasn’t thinking about escape. The notion might get more attractive after he’d been out for a while, especially when the time to return to prison drew near. He hoped he’d have the sense to not do anything stupid.
Finally—dear God, finally—the guards returned to open the gate, and Des walked into the corridor with no chains to hobble his stride or jangle as he walked. Powell had a long, swift gait that required Des and the unhappy guards to hurry to keep up. Jesus, it felt bloody good to be moving, even if he was still within the confines of the prison.
They passed through a series of doors that had to be unlocked, finally ending up in an ugly reception area. The room didn’t look familiar. Perhaps Des had entered the prison somewhere else, or maybe they’d changed the place in the last seventeen years. Didn’t much matter, because a final set of doors opened and then… he was outside.
He came to a halt on the sidewalk several yards from the entrance, stunned at how big the sky was. Same sky he’d been looking at all along, he knew that, but this was daytime, the blue so pure and bright that his eyes watered.
“Let’s go,” Powell said. He led them to a lot filled with cars and stopped at the closest one, a frost-colored sedan that gleamed in the sunlight.
“Nice car.”
Powell gave the shoulder twitch that Des was already becoming accustomed to. “Bureau’s. Needed something unobtrusive.” He unlocked the doors and slid into the driver’s seat. After a moment, Des got in beside him.
He’d known cars had changed since he was incarcerated; he’d seen them on TV. But he hadn’t realized how different they were now. Sleeker, with mysterious buttons and knobs. When Powell turned on the engine and a chime began to urgently ding, Des jumped in alarm. Had he already done something wrong?
“Put your seatbelt on,” Powell ordered.
Oh. Des clicked the belt latch and the ringing stopped.
He held his breath as they rolled through the gate in the prison walls, but nobody stopped them. Then Powell turned onto the road and gunned the accelerator, and Des almost whooped with joy.
* * *
They’d driven through the desert without speaking for nearly an hour. The shadows were growing long and the sun had almost dipped behind the distant mountains. Des was intent on soaking up every detail of their surroundings, hoping to file away everything for later. Once he was back in prison, he’d recall all the shades of olive and sage green and the way rocks created sculptural shapes against the sand. He’d remember the music Powell played on the radio—most of the songs familiar from Des’s youth—and the scent of new car and something slightly woodsy that might have been Powell’s soap or shampoo.
But that last thought was dangerous, because it suddenly made Des realize that another person—another man—sat only inches away, with no chains or barriers between them. And the more time he spent with Powell, the more Des came to like his looks. He wasn’t stunningly handsome in a standard fashion-model way, but his face was attractive: sensuous lips, a strong broad nose, heavy brows, and a sprinkling of dark freckles across the tawny skin of his cheeks. And those hazel eyes, of course. They sparked with intelligence and emotion.
Powell had nice hands too, his long, slender fingers wrapped loosely around the steering wheel. Des found himself wondering how those fingers would feel—smooth or callused?—as they traced over Des’s body. “Stop it, Hughes,” he chided himself.
“Stop what?” asked Powell.
“Nothing. Sorry.”
“Not thinking of doing anything foolish, are you?” Powell didn’t sound alarmed.
“No.” Which was a lie, but surely Powell imagined Des might be considering violence or escape, not… something equally dangerous. “Where are we going?”
“We’re going to work our way back. Everyone’s gone over that farm in Kansas about a thousand times, so we’re skipping that.”
“Good,” Des said without thinking.
Powell gave him a quick glance. “Good? Why?”
“Not one of my favorite memories.”
“I guess not.” Powell huffed something that was almost a sigh. “Where was the next place you headed after Boise?”
That question wasn’t hard since Des had so recently recounted the entire itinerary. “Florida.”
“So that’s where we’re going.”
“That’s far.”
Powell didn’t bother responding, but Des was secretly gleeful. He’d assumed they’d go first to the locations closer to the prison. But he and Larry had covered a lot of miles. If he and Powell followed that route, it could be weeks before they were finished. Or longer. Jesus Christ, weeks of freedom.
“Agent Powell?”
“Kurt. We’re going for unobtrusive, remember? And you’re Desmond.”
“Des. Please.”
“Fine. Des.”
The last person to call him that was Larry. It was lovely to hear his name from someone else’s lips. “Kurt, then. When we stop, do you suppose I could have a proper shower? With decent soap and shampoo?”
Powell grunted something that might have been affirmative, and Des leaned back in his seat with a smile.
Chapter Ten
They stopped for dinner at a Burger King in Elko. Kurt was no fan of fast food, but he wanted to get back on the road quickly. Hughes—or Des, as he apparently preferred—attacked his meal with the type of orgasmic enthusiasm usually reserved for meals at four-star restaurants. “Jesus Christ, this is good,” he said for the fifth or sixth time as he tore into a second Whopper.
Kurt wasn’t inclined to make fun of him. He remembered the first time he’d had pizza after returning from Vietnam and how he’d made a fool of himself over it. So now he simply dabbed his lips with a paper napkin while calculating how soon they could get to Florida. Conclusion: not soon enough.
After Elko, Kurt drove far into the night. He expected Des to drop into sleep—the road was especially monotonous in the dark—but instead he stared avidly through the windshield and hummed along with the radio. They continued all the way past Salt Lake City, by which time Kurt’s eyelids were rebelling against his authority and trying to slide closed. He finally exited the freeway and parked in front of a lonely-looking old motel.
“Come with me.” He turned off the engine.
“You’re taking me with when you check in?”
“I don’t plan to leave you alone.”
Des gave him a teasing grin. “I thought you could track me down anywhere.”
“We can. But I don’t want my boss pissed at me because he had to waste manpower chasing after your ass on day one. Believe me, you don’t want that either.” Kurt didn’t really think Des would run, at least not yet, but he didn’t want to provide any temptation.
“Aren’t you afraid the desk clerk will think we’re a pair of faggots?”
“Gonna ask for two beds. And I don’t give a shit what the desk clerk thinks.”
Des trailed him into a tiny lobby that smelled of cigarettes and onions, and he remained silent while Kurt rented a room from a woman who seemed as if she wouldn’t care if they were gay purple aliens, as long as they stayed quiet and didn’t trash the place. Kurt retrieved luggage from the car trunk and let them into their ground-floor room. It smelled of cigarettes but not onions.
“This is yours.” Kurt dumped a small black duffel bag on one bed. “Spare clothes, razor, toothbrush… all that crap.”
“Mine,” Des murmured, stroking the black fabric of the bag. He appeared slightly dazed, like a man just awakening from a deep sleep. He’d been that way most of the day, actually, and Kurt couldn’t blame him.
Kurt sat at the desk, took out a notebook, and began recording the events of the day. He would have preferred to go straight to sleep, but experience had taught him that taking notes now, with everything fresh in his mind, would make his life easier later when he had to type up his report. He’d filled an entire page and was about to begin another when he glanced up and discovered Des standing uncertainly beside the bed.
“What?” Kurt demanded.
“Can I shower?”
Dammit. “You don’t have to ask permission for everything, man. Just follow the basic rules, okay? Stick close to me, keep your mouth shut around everyone else, and follow orders when I give ’em.”
“So after I bathe I can watch the telly? Whatever I want?”
“Just keep the volume down.”
Des’s wide smile was free of artifice or irony. “Thanks.” He looked as if he were going to say something more, but then he shut his mouth and ducked his head before hurrying into the bathroom.
He sang in the shower, badly. It was distracting. And he was in there for such a long time that Kurt grew worried. Kurt was about to break down the bathroom door when the water stopped. A variety of clanks and rattles came from the room after that, and Kurt tried to return his attention to his notes, but the words swam in front of him. He probably needed reading glasses. Fuck.
Kurt was rubbing his eyes when the bathroom door opened and Des stepped out—completely naked. “Forgot my kit.” Des didn’t seem to be in any hurry as he sorted through his suitcase and chose clothing. He must have been used to nudity after years of prison searches. Kurt had been nonchalant about it too, during his time in the Army, but that was years ago. And yes, there was the locker room at work, where he and other agents frequently chatted as they showered and dressed, but that wasn’t the same as being in a small motel room with someone. With a murderer he barely knew.
But Des seemed oblivious, clutching a pair of tighty-whities and petting them as if they were precious, then setting them aside and choosing an identical pair instead. He had a magnificent body, with a washboard stomach and bulky chest and arms. No sign of impending middle-age spread, which made sense for a man who’d had no access to junk food and all the time in the world to exercise. He must have been gifted with lucky genetics as well. He had exactly the type of meaty ass that Kurt favored, with thick thighs to match, and his cock—
Was not something Kurt should be thinking about, let alone looking at.
“I’m getting ready for bed.” He lurched into the steam-damp bathroom and slammed the door.
* * *
Kurt—in flannel sleep pants and an old T-shirt— fell asleep quickly despite the television and the man in the other bed, and only one nightmare disturbed him. When he woke up, early sunlight was stealing in around the edges of the drapes. Des was already sitting on the edge of his mattress, fully dressed.
“I’m not usually allowed to sleep so late.” He looked pleased.
“Why do they make you get up early in the prison?”
“I haven’t any idea.”
Prison administrators, Kurt figured, were probably a lot like military officers: eager to impose a bevy of rules ostensibly intended to improve their charges but more likely meant to simply make people miserable. He got out of bed and stretched. He wished he had time for a run, but they had a long drive ahead and needed to hit the road.
“I thought maybe you’d cuff me to the bed last night.” Des sounded light and conversational, but his eyes looked serious. “Not that I minded a bit of that when I was a free man, but that was just for play.”
Resolutely pushing aside the image of Des splayed naked on a bed, limbs chained to the posts, Kurt grunted. “I’m not going to waste time like that. I told you—if you run, we’ll find you.”
“But aren’t you afraid I’ll do something to you in your sleep?”
Kurt barked a laugh. “No. I’m not afraid of that.”
“You don’t think I’m capable of it?”
“Every human is capable of killing. Every damn one.” Not wanting to pursue the subject, Kurt marched into the bathroom.
It wasn’t long before they were ready to leave. Des packed their bags in the trunk while Kurt went to the office and checked out. After they were back on the freeway, Kurt stopped briefly for coffee and fast-food breakfast sandwiches, which Des rhapsodized over, and then neither of them spoke as they ascended mountains and crossed into Wyoming. Kurt kept his eyes on the road and his thoughts on work—mostly—while Des took in their surroundings. The views were pretty enough, Kurt thought, and he even smiled when Des grew excited over seeing pronghorn antelope.
“Wonder what it would be like to live somewhere like this,” Des mused at long last. No houses in view, just rocky hillsides and vast ranches. “I grew up in Belfast and outside of Chicago… well, you knew that already, didn’t you? How about you? City boy or country?”
