Page 214 of Whisper

Langley, Virginia

September 10

0400 hours

“Kris?”

Someone was shaking him. He moaned, pressed his face into the throw pillow. Tried to pull the blanket higher.

“Kris, we should get you out of here.” A hand cupped his cheek, thumb stroking softly down his skin.

Dan’s concerned face swam into focus, shadowed by the fluorescent lights of the interview room. Dan looked like shit. Haggard, exhausted, like he’d run two marathons back to back.

“What time is it?” he groaned.

“Zero four hundred.”

“Have you been up all night? Again?”

Dan nodded. “We’re trying to find Haddad. The FBI has mobilized and they’re working with local police. We’ve got an APB out, and we put out the images from the bar and your building. The FBI is getting tips but most of them are junk. Wherever he’s hiding, he’s staying low and out of sight.”

Kris pushed himself up and blinked, hard. His eyes felt rubbed raw with sandpaper. He’d finally cried himself to sleep sometime the night before, locked alone in the interview room while the rest of the CIA looked for his husband before Dawood launched some kind of attack against the homeland.

Kris had been up with profilers for most of the previous afternoon and evening, trawling through Dawood’s service record, both in the Army and the CIA. Dawood knew enough, between the two units he’d served in, to be deadly, dangerous, devastating. Especially operating on his home turf, able to blend into American society and hide in plain sight.

Some things had been revelatory. Kris had never known Dawood was an expert in explosives. Or that he’d earned the expert marksmanship award in the Army and was practically a sniper.

No one knew what he was planning. Analysts dissected his past, his service record, his childhood, as narrated by Kris. Picked apart the audio file, his statement to al-Qaeda.

“‘To have your life dictated by others’,” one of the junior analysts had recited earlier. “Could that be rage directed at the institutions he’s served? The military? The CIA?”

“We should definitely consider the CIA a target,” Dan had said.

Under the table, he’d squeezed Kris’s hand.

They all took what they needed from him and left, and Kris had wallowed in his memories and his fears until he’d sobbed, curled up in a ball on the stiff couch, and finally passed out.

Kris tried to shake the sleep away. “Where do I go?” His apartment was a crime scene. Had it been cleared? Was he allowed back? Was he allowed to be anywhere without Dan’s supervision? Or was he off to jail, Ryan’s eternal Christmas wish come true?

“Do you still have my key?”

Kris nodded. It was still in the pocket of his trench he’d grabbed on the way to the hospital the day before.

“I think you should go to my place. Not… for anything. But you’ll be safe there.”

“And out of the way.”

Dan looked down. Pursed his lips.

“I know. The CIA can’t babysit me.” Kris heaved himself to his feet. Everything ached. The sobs the night before, the hard, tiny couch. Dawood, around him and in him. His body wanted to quit, wanted to give up and give in. “I’ll crash in your spare bedroom.”

“I’ve got to be here for a while longer, but I’ll come home this afternoon. At least for a bit.”

Kris looked away. He couldn’t tell Dan not to come to his own house, couldn’t say he’d rather be alone, would rather sit in the dark and mourn for Dawood, for David, for everything they’d had. Try and trace back through the strands of their entwined lives until he could find the place where everything went wrong, where their paths diverged and they’d ended uphere.

Dan pulled his car keys from his pocket and handed them to Kris. “I’ll get a ride home later.

“From Ryan?” Kris snorted. Ryan lived near Dan, was almost a neighbor. As much as they bickered at work, Ryan and Dan were friends. They hit the golf course together, played the back nine and had a few drinks at the clubhouse in their upscale suburban community.