Page 28 of Constantly Cotton
Cotton looked at him expectantly.
“The job didn’t look legit,” Jason admitted. “Ernie…. Nothing about Ernie’s life said ‘threat to national security,’ so I told Burton to use his discretion. If he thought there was something wrong with the job, I gave him permission to walk away.”
“You didn’t walk away?” Cotton asked, enthralled.
“I wasn’t the only assassin on his tail,” Burton said, shaking his head. “There were three other guys about ready to take him out, and he killed two of them on his own. Self-sufficient and fearless. But innocent. He had to be self-sufficient because he really was that fucking innocent.”
“Oh wow.” Cotton wanted to meet him now. “But why? Why would you be told to hurt him?”
They both let out long breaths of air almost identically, through the nose. It was like watching twins, although they looked nothing alike.
“That’s a long story,” Jason said at last. “And it’s how we met your friend Rivers. But… but it gave us both a taste for distrusting the orders we get. I mean, most of the men I’d recruited were recruited because they could think for themselves and because their moral centers were stronger than ‘I was following orders.’”
Cotton was quiet for a moment. “Is that how you ended up driving the bus?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Jason agreed. “And why we’re running from mobsters without asking the military for help. Although….” He cleared his throat. “Burton, youaregoing to leave me some info on the people chasing us, right? Because it would be spectacular if we knew who to look for while we’re hiding in the woods.”
“I’ve got Henry and Jackson looking into the ID of the guy who broke ranks and tried to kill you,” Burton told him, and even Cotton could recognize his “reporting” voice. “But we’re going to need to talk more about what happened the night before you showed up so spectacularly in Sacramento. Anton is listening to pick up on who was buying and selling weapons on the inside. We need to see if it was someone buyingforour guys, so, you know, getting a discount and pocketing the money, or if it was someone buying and trading and working the market. Owens is manning the coms, and we’ve got a couple of mics trained on command in Washington, and a few of them trained on San Diego to see if it was a local operation with someone who’s got pull. Either way, we should have a list of enemies and potential antagonists by tomorrow evening, sir.”
“Good job,” Jason said. And his next words held the smile in them that Cotton recognized as a man talking to a brother, not a superior to his junior. “Think it’s enough info to keep us alive for another couple of days?”
“Yessir,” Burton replied. “Although if I could leave you up here and know you were safe while I used all our resources back at the base….”
“We might spend a little less time in danger. Understood.”
“Seriously, Jason, show the kid back there how to throw a knife and hold a gun. I bet it would make you both feel better if he could do more than bounce a chef’s knife off a bad guy’s nose.”
“What do you think, Cotton? Would it?” Jason was asking seriously—and respectfully—and Cotton felt like he had to give a respectful answer back.
“The knife,” he said. “Not a gun. I… guns scare me. If I slip with a knife, I need stitches. If I slip up with a gun, I don’t need anything.”
There was a shocked silence, and then Jason laughed weakly. “D’you hear that, Lee? I think he fits right in.”
William Tell Overture, Introit
JASON KNEWtwo things.
One was that he was warm and cozy under the covers, and the other was that it was ungodly cold out of them.
There was movement under the covers with him, and suddenly he knewthreethings.
Cotton was there with him on the bed. Shivering.
His eyes flew open, and he tried to shake off the lassitude of sleep. Cotton had fallen asleep on him as they’d traveled up the hill toward Tahoe, only to wake up when they’d arrived. Jason had been stiff, feverish, and sick again. He’d sat on a recliner in the small, admittedly cozy living room as Cotton and Burton had hustled around making the beds and turning up the heat. Gah! After two years of living in the desert, he’d thought he’d be more than ready to face the mountains, but even in early September, it got cold up there at night. Cotton had wrapped one of the new fleece blankets—it had something colorful and absurd on it that made Jason smile—around him, and by the time he’d spirited Jason to bed, Jason had no choice but to take his painkiller and his sedative and to fall almost immediately asleep.
He didn’t remember much after that, but apparently the heat had gone off sometime in the night, and Cotton had ended up sharing the queen-sized mattress with him.
They weren’t small men.
“Jesus,” he mumbled. “Cotton, are you literally hanging off the mattress to not touch me?”
“I-I-I didn’t want to p-p-presume….”
Oh dear God.
Jason reached out one arm and hauled him in, making sure he was covered by the three layers of blankets over them and flush against Jason’s body, which was apparently still throwing off heat. Together, they gave one big collective shudder, and Jason had a rather dreamy moment to appreciate that muscular male body up against his.
“Presume away,” he murmured, falling into sync with Cotton’s breathing. “When do we need to wake up?”