Page 156 of Whisper

Ryan glared. “We can’t fire you,” he spat. “But Goddamn, if I could.” He shook his head. “You’ve been a Goddamn shitshow since the first moment you stepped foot in Afghanistan. Always overstepping your boundaries, mixing yourself up where you don’t belong. You were never supposed to be here. Never supposed to be a base commander. Never supposed to be in charge of anything. You should have just taken the hint and slinked away, years ago.”

Kris’s jaw dropped. “What the fuck?”

“The CIA doesn’t need people like you.”

Oh. It all clicked. “You meanfaggots? Gays. Say it. Say it to myface. You don’t want the gays in your boys’ club.”

“I don’t give a fuck about that. Imeanbleeding hearts who just want to understand everything. Who want to sit down with our enemy and try to work something out. Who think that we’re not in this fight for the life of our civilization. Our way of life.”

“You don’t have any fucking idea what I think. You reduce the world to black and white and call it a day. You refuse to see the shades of gray, the impossible choices that billions of people have to face. How people pick the best of the worst and hope they survive the night. That everyone just wants to survive.”

“You’re so fucking naïve,” Ryan spat.

“And you’ve never actually looked at the world. Never understood it, not once!”

“I didn’t get sucked into a delusion of Islamic grandeur!” Ryan shouted. “You fell for Haddad, and Haddad’s been on a fuckingroller coasterfor a decade! Ever since nine-eleven, he’s been unstable! Unbalanced. His sympathies, and his loyalty, have been in question.”

“How dare you!” Kris leaped to his feet. The chair he sat in flew backward. “David has only ever been one hundred percent loyal to everyone! He’s done everything, absolutely everything, anyone has ever asked!”

“Sit down. We’re not through here.”

What was the worst that could happen if he just lunged at Ryan? Wrapped his hands around Ryan’s throat until he begged for mercy? Until he gasped and choked and the last thing he saw was Kris’s face?

He grabbed his chair and sat, slowly.

“As I said. You’ve been removed from your command and you’re no longer a part of the CT division. I’ve been given the authority to reassign you within the CIA. I’ve placed you in the Special Activities Division. You’ll begin your training in six weeks, after a month on the bricks.”

Kris threw his head back and howled. SAD. The paramilitary arm of the CIA. Men who hadhatedKris his entire life, who resented him commanding them. Carl had been SAD. Ryan had, too.

“You want me to quit on my own, don’t you? Wash out of SAD training and disappear. You think I can’t cut it there, and so you can get rid of me without having to dirty your hands with a civil rights lawsuit. ’Cause you know you can’t fire a gay.”

“There’s more than enough blood on your hands to fire you. But you seem to have a few friends left in the agency. I know you won’t cut it. I know you’ll fail. And nothing will make me happier than seeing you get cashiered from this agency and spend the rest of your days knowing what a fucking failure you actually are.”

“Fuck you, Ryan. What’s going to happen to you? You losing your command?”

“You were in charge of this, Caldera. Didn’t you say a minute ago this was all your fault?”

It was, he knew it was, all of it, from the moment the planes had hit the towers until he saw David’s body in the trunk. But damn it, he wasn’t going down alone. Not for this. “Your hands are just as bloody as mine.”

Ryan stared. He folded his hands on his desktop. Looked beyond Kris, eyes boring holes into the back wall of his office. “Haddad’s body has been ID’d.”

Kris recoiled, as if shot, as if his heart had been struck with a sledgehammer.

“His remains were too burned for DNA analysis. They used some kind of accelerant. The car, the body, everything, was ash by the time they were able to recover his remains. But there was enough DNA in the rubble to make a determination.”

“Fuck you,” Kris hissed. “You’re just going to say that to me? Throw that in my face? That’s my husband you’re talking about.”

“Your husband’s remains have been sent to his legal next of kin,” Ryan spat, his voice choking.

“I am his legal next of kin.”

“No, Caldera, you’renot. How many times were you told that your marriage didn’t mean anything in the US? Or to the CIA? Just because you had someone give you shared quarters doesn’t mean the law changes for you. Haddad and you aren’t married. Not to the CIA, not to the United States government!”

He hadn’t thought he could feel worse than he did, spying the blackened pieces of the love of his life through the billowing smoke. He had thought that was rock bottom, the very end. There was no further he could fall, no abyss he could plummet into, for he’d reached the end of all things. There was nothing more that could be ripped away from him. His heart and soul were gone.

Hearing Ryan tell him his husband, what was left of David, didn’t belong to him plowed through the bottom of his black hole. Like a plug had been pulled, he felt himself slipping away.

“David is myhusband.” His voice shook. “His body, his memories. His life. Belong with me.”