Page 162 of Hush

“Villegas… Rob.” Barnes kept smiling. “I know you. I’ve worked with you for a few years now. You’re tired of being an inspector. Being stuck in the courts. Don’t you want to get back in on the action?”

Villegas blinked. “What are you offering?”

“You want to be a part of the biggest action on the planet? Make a real difference, all around the globe? I can get you in.”

“Inwhere? Whatexactlyare you saying, Barnes?”

“Money, power, influence… It’s all yours for the taking.”

“Russianmoney?”

“Money is money.”

“What makes an FBI agent like you turn on his country? It’s neverjustabout the money. What is it? What made you turn?”

“Villegas, you don’t have to do this. You don’t have to die today.”

“But he does?” Villegas nodded to Tom.

“He knows too much. But, if you help me, you can walk away from this. And I’ll reward you. My people will reward you.”

Villegas’s eyes narrowed. He seemed to look beyond Barnes, a thousand-yard stare into the middle distance, as if weighing his options, the long path of his life. He nodded, slowly, sighing. Lowered his weapon. “I want double. And I want out of this Goddamn shithole.”

Barnes grinned. Villegas came across the meadow and shook hands with Barnes. God, what was he witnessing? The end of morality? A man’s life—his life—bargained for with treasonous money? If this was the world, he didn’t want to live in it. Especially without Mike. He closed his eyes.

Mike breathed hard, wheezing as he lay on his belly in the tree line next to Willy, overlooking the meadow. Willy’s men were spread out on either side of them, a line of hunters who’d appeared at an abandoned Shawnee cemetery deep in the forest, buried in the dark side of the mountain.

Willy had spoken to the men alone, gesturing to Mike as he told them a fast story about Barnes and Tom and where they were headed. There were only so many routes through the forest on that side of the mountain, and all tracks led to the meadow. A natural flushing point.

They’d ridden in in an ancient pickup truck, more rust than steel, with shotguns and rifles mounted on every spare inch. Flood lights bolted to the truck’s roof had guided their way through the thick forest, and in the truck’s bed, blood-stained tarps had been folded with care.

Willy had given him a shotgun and a worried look, but they’d all piled into the truck, Mike in the back with the others.

Mike’s vision had started going triple again. He’d spat blood every few minutes. Finally, after bouncing over a rough game trail, they appeared at the far side of the meadow he and Tom had explored the day before. They’d set up in a line, hidden in the trees.

They hadn’t had to wait long.

He’d watched Tom burst from the far side, the tree line of oak and sugar maple. He’d tried to run, desperate to get to Tom, rip him from the jaws of danger. Tear into Barnes with his own hands, kill him and then kill him again.

Now, he tried to rise, but Willy grabbed him and pulled him down, shoving him back into the dark dirt. The rest of the guys sighted their rifles on Tom, peering through their scopes. Willy’s hand pushed on the center of Mike’s back when he tried to get up. Blood bloomed across his shirt, stained Willy’s hand. Mike cried out, digging his fingers into the dirt, loose and dark and collecting under his fingernails. A hot iron was stabbing into him, right where Willy’s hand was.

“You’re bleeding out, marshal.”

“Doesn’t matter.” He groaned through gritted teeth. “Have to save Tom.”

“Just who is this Brewer boy to you?”

Mike turned and stared into Willy’s eyes, begging him to understand. Begging him to keep helping him, even thougheverythinghe was—as a person, as a man, as a federal agent—was againsteverythingthat Willy believed in. Willy and his boys would be more likely to shoot him in the back of the head and leave him in the woods than help him, a gay United States deputy marshal who loved a U.S. federal judge. “He’s everything to me,” Mike whispered.

Willy’s eyes narrowed.

A gunshot snapped. The guys tensed, fingers half-squeezing their triggers. Tom went down, screaming, a shower of dirt rising where he landed.

Mike screamed through gritted teeth. He tried to move, but Willy kept him pinned.

“’is shoulder’s shot,” one of the men grunted. “From the tree line. Another one’s coming out.”

“Watch him.” Willy pulled up his own rifle, scooting away from Mike. “He’s our lion.”