Page 190 of Whisper

“It wasn’t me they burned,” David said softly. “Al Jabal took me—”

“Were thereno fucking cell phoneswhere you were?” Kris bellowed. “Have you been living on the surface of fuckingMars? You’ve got both legs! Both feet! Two hands! Was there no possible fucking way you could pick up a phone, or send an email, or walk to the nearest embassy? Crawl to a fucking military base?”

David stayed silent.

“It’s been almost a decade,” he hissed. “And you never said a word? And now you’re here? How the fuck did you appear here?”

“I looked you up. When I arrived. I had to know if you died that day. I never saw you move after the blast.”

“I wish I’d died that day!” Kris whirled, his fingers clawing at the tiles. “I was the only one who lived! Do you have any idea how many nights I laid awake begging to die? Because of that day?”

“I thought you were dead,” David repeated. A tear slid from the corner of one eye. “I—”

Kris’s hands trembled off the walls. He folded into himself, dug his fingers into his arms, the bunched sleeves of his trench. “How did you get here? This isn’t some fucking sci-fi show where you can just transport down from your spaceship in the sky! How did you get here?”

David looked away, to the side.

“Answer me!” Kris shrieked. “Are you here forme? Did you claw your way back from the dead, across the entire world, to come back to me? I fucking would have for you!”

Slowly, Kris pitched forward, drawn to David. One hand reached for him, shaking like he’d frozen from the inside out. His fingers whispered over David’s shirt, closed around the fabric. Grabbed, and pulled.

David fell toward him, falling as if he were crashing down to earth, a fallen angel who had lived on the dark side of the moon for the last ten years. He crashed into Kris, arms wrapping around him, so familiar, as if it had only been a moment and not a decade. His face buried in Kris’s neck, and Kris felt, God, hefelt, David’s breath, the physical evidence of his life. Heard the beat of David’s heart.

David wasalive.

Kris grabbed him, held on. Ran his palms over David’s back and his chest, trying to touch everywhere. He couldn’t get to David’s skin, not through the jacket, not through the shirt. His hand rose, over David’s neck, into his hair.

Their eyes met.Why?screamed from every pore in Kris’s body, from every shattered remnant of his soul. Why here? Why now? Why for so long? Why hadn’t David saidanything?

He didn’t care, though, about the answers, not when David looked at him like that. Not when he was falling into the event horizons in David’s eyes, trapped, never able to be free, and not when David leaned in, closed his lips over Kris’s. Kissed him like he thought he’d never be kissed again.

It was every one of their kisses, from the first to the last—that Kris neverknewwas going to be the last they’d ever have, through the window of a busted Afghan sedan on the way to pick up Hamid—all wrapped in one. David’s hesitancy mixed with his urgency, his need tempered by his love. Power, the depths of David’s soul, opening beyond their kiss.

Kris tried to climb his body, tried to disappear into David’s arms. He reached for David’s waistband, his jeans—

David pushed him away.

Kris’s back hit the far wall of the cramped bathroom, next to the urinal.

“I can’t,” David stuttered. “I’m sorry.”

Turning, he fled.

Chapter 29

CIA Headquarters

Langley, Virginia

September 8

0645 hours

“Caldera? What the fuck?” Wallace’s confused voice broke through Kris’s haze, shattered his ironclad concentration. “Fuck have you been doing in here?”

Exhaling, Kris sat back from his workstation. Coffee cups littered the floor, beside a thousand sheets of paper, printouts from the CIA archives, records, reports, after-action reviews. Anything he could access from his workstation, pore through and dissect in minutiae.

David’s autopsy, such that it was, lay open on the desk.Burned bone fragments recovered from the trunk of unidentified vehicle parked inside mosque. Incomplete skeletal remains. X-ray imaging inconclusive. DNA dental or bone marrow recovery impossible.They’d decided it was David because of David’s blood on the outside of the car, in the back seat, and on the trunk lid. The bumper.Evidence suggests drag patterns and blood spatter. Overwhelmingly, the evidence points to DAVID HADDAD as the deceased.