Page 81 of Hush

He was going to be sick. Reporters were outside his house and Mike was in his bed. He could see it now:Judge in DC Sniper Case Hiding Gay Affair, Sleeping with U.S. Marshal.

Tom scrambled, fell to his knees, and dragged the black plastic trash bin out from under his desk. He hurled, coughing as he spat into the bin.

His cell phone, on the carpet by his knee, rang. It was Mike.

“Mike?” God, his voice was wrecked, thin and cracked through the middle. He coughed again.

“Tom… Jesus Christ…” Mike sounded no better. “Shit.”

“What do we do?”

Mike took a breath, and then another. “I’m going to stay here for a little while. You stay at the courthouse. I’ll leave, and I’ll act like I was here in an official capacity. Securing your premises. And I will. I’ll lock everything up, shutter the windows. Keep them from getting in, or seeing in.”

“Okay.” What then? Was he never going to see Mike again? Would they have to stop this, stop dating before they’d even really begun? For how long? Who knew how long a case like this would last? It could drag on for months and months. Or, go very quickly, depending on how hard Ballard pressed. “Mike… What happens now?”

“I need to make some calls. Winters, Villegas… Headquarters.”Mike was spinning through his options, Tom could tell. He could practically see Mike in his own mind, imagine him thinking out loud. Was he sitting on the edge of Tom’s bed? Was his hair rumpled, sticking up on one side? What was he wearing?

He wished, more than anything else, that he was there, right beside Mike, and all of this was just a nightmare he was going to wake up from.

Mike kept talking. “We need to go into emergency operations. Provide personal protection for you. Maybe even relocate you for a little while. Get the media off your back. And we need to do a threat assessment. This is a terrorism trial, and we haven’t found everyone in the cell. What about retribution? What about—”

He was going to be sick again. Tom dropped the phone and clutched the trash bin, coughing up nothing but bile. He heard Mike shouting his name from the phone, small and tinny, like he was a million miles away.

“I’m okay.” He coughed.

“Tom…”

“Are you coming to the courthouse?”

“Yes. Stay there. I’ll call Winters and we’ll both come in. I’ll find you.”

He nodded, swallowing. “Mike… Do you think… Do you think anyone will find out about Friday?” The volleyball game, his kiss to Mike’s lips in public. The bar afterward, so many men saying hello to him. Him being shown off like a gaydebutantebeing introduced to the world.

Mike sighed. “I don’t know,” he whispered. “I… don’t think so. We protect our own. You’re not the only closeted politician in this town.”

He closed his eyes. “I need you.”

“I’m here. I’m here for you. I’ll always be here for you, Tom.” Mike sniffed.“Let me make some calls. I’ll get there as soon as I can.”

Mike practically vibrated as he blew into Winters’s command office on the first floor of the old courthouse. He and Villegas had offices in the Annex, and Winters officed in the marshals’ command post in the Prettyman Courthouse proper, between the FISA courtrooms and the grand opulence of the main justice hall.

Villegas had beaten him in, and he sat in one of the leather club chairs before Winters’s desk, leaning back in jeans and his polo with his legs crossed like he didn’t have a care in the world.

Mike, fresh from Tom’s shower, wearing clothes he thought he would be wearing with Tom on a hike around Teddy Roosevelt Island, went from zero to sixty in a half-heartbeat. “What thefuckare you so chill about, Villegas?”

Villegas scowled, his eyebrows shooting sky-high. “What the fuck?”

Winters eyeballed them both, his deep eyes glaring holes in both men. Winters was a big man, tall and powerfully built. He was a man of a thousand words ever spoken in his life, someone who said as much with his weighty silence as he did with his deep, rumbling voice. He was one of the first black men to lead a team of judicial security inspectors, and rumor put him as being the next name on the list for being the head of their agency. “Lucciano. Take a seat.”

“We need to get To—Judge Brewer into personal protection right away.”

Winters’s eyebrows rose, slowly.

“Tom? Are you on a first name basis with this guy now?” Villegas sneered.

“His name is all over the internet. The media is camping outside his house already.” Mike ignored Villegas. “We don’t even have the full cell captured. The fucking media is throwing his name around. Goddamn irresponsibleassholes.”

“You’re pretty worked up about this—”