Driftwood (22 page)

Tom put a restraining hand on Flynn's chest. But to his surprise, when Flynn turned to him, his face was calm. The terrible sea-green fury had evaporated from his eyes. He said softly, “It's all right, love. Let me go for a second.”

Tom obeyed, falling back against the rail. He was absolutely, terminally exhausted, but he thought that it was over now. That he could lower his guard. Suddenly the rifle in his hand weighed a ton, and he cracked on its safety and let it down onto the deck. He watched while Flynn went to crouch by Rob Tremaine, staring into his face. “Rob.
You
were my nightmare, you arsehole. You were the only hurt. You don't know what love is, and…nor did I, until a couple of weeks ago.” He glanced up at Tom, tired face softening. “I'm all right, Tom. Just gonna go find some rope to tie up this sucker. And hopefully some gaffer tape for his mouth.”

Tom felt a grin starting, in spite of the dizzying spin the world was beginning around him. He stood, clutching the rail, while Flynn went aft. He was vaguely aware of Victor, on his other side, hauling off the Sunseeker's pilot into her wheelhouse.
Over
, he thought.
All over. Nothing's gonna spoil if I drop now.

On the deck, Rob Tremaine groaned. Tom watched detachedly. He probably was in a lot of pain. Well, couldn't happen to a nicer man. Victor was shouting to Flynn from the cabin, indicating that he'd found a length of cable twine and had some to spare after tying up his own man. There was a massive grin in Victor's voice, as if he hadn't enjoyed himself so much in ages. Tom supposed all kinds of demons had been cast overboard on this long night.

Tremaine convulsed. His head jerked back, banging off the deck. His groan pitched into a raw yell of agony—and Tom, who was tired, stupid, and a healer by instinct as well as by trade, shoved off the rail and went to kneel beside him.

Tremaine had a snub-nosed pistol holstered up in a harness at his back.
Of course he has
, Tom thought, sitting up with the muzzle of it buried in his chest. His seizure had allowed him to reach round under his oilskin and grab it.
He wasn't gonna be the west coast's first unarmed bloody arms dealer, was he?
Distantly he heard Flynn's cry. He was in the doorway to the wheelhouse—frozen, his face a blank. Behind him, Tom could see Victor glancing up, turning too slowly. Both too far away, too slow, to help.

Tom found that he didn't mind. All that bothered him was his own utter stupidity in losing this game for them both, after all that they had done. So much passion and courage, and he had screwed it all on the last roll of the dice. He said harshly, “I'm sorry, Flynn.”

Flynn did not move. “Okay,” he whispered. “Okay, love. Just stay still.”

Tremaine had coiled up with horrible virility. He sat on the deck, regarding Tom calmly. His eyes were utterly cold. Tom knew that there was no possibility of bluff, no chance that this was an empty threat. That he was probably counting down the last seconds of his life. He thought of everything he ought to say to Flynn, and realised he wasn't about to reveal one word of it to this monster. He prayed—he believed—that Flynn knew. He closed his eyes.

“Robert.”

Christ, that voice would melt stone. Tom's eyes flew open. He saw Tremaine helplessly glance towards it too, breaking their deadlock. Flynn was emerging—slowly, slowly—from the cabin. His hands were up, palms out. The morning light, brilliant now, painted him in bronze and gold. His movements were quiet, serene. He took one step out from the wheelhouse and onto the desk, and Tremaine didn't move. “Rob,” he said. “Okay. Okay, what would it take?”

Tremaine frowned. Tom, drawing one careful breath after another, wondered if he, too, were utterly distracted by the sight of Flynn—salt-rimed and weary, but somehow blazing out a charm Tom had never seen turned up to full and now could not tear his gaze from. “What… What would what take?”

“For you to let Tom go. Come on, Robbie, darlin'. You're right, okay?” One more step, a cat deciding where to plant its next pad. Tom's throat dried out, but the pressure of the gun muzzle at his chest didn't alter. “You're right. I've been a thankless little shit, haven't I? But Tom's not what you want. You
know
what you want, and I'm right here.”

A silence extended itself. Tom listened to it carefully. All his life he had loved the music of this world—had grown up with it interwoven with his thoughts, the rhythms of his day. Wind song, lifting from the south as the sun touched the water. The soft slap of waves on a harbour wall or hull. And always, like bright silver stitches in the tapestry, seagull cries, lifting up the sky from the earth, creating wild free space for thought to take flight. He found it hard to believe that he had ever chosen to exchange it for the clatter of desert gunfire. He would have liked to hear it for many years more. For a lifetime, with Flynn…

Too late for everything now. But he would not let Robert take him. Wouldn't be his price. Flynn was still approaching, one gentle step at a time. Bracing, Tom got ready to make the move that would force Tremaine's hand—by which he would transform himself from hostage to worthless vacant flesh. He raised his head and met Flynn's eyes. “Flynn, stay away from him.”

Flynn ignored him. He came and crouched down a yard or so from Tremaine, just out of arm's reach. He said quietly, “Are you gonna let him go, Rob?”

Tremaine swallowed, the sound of it a gravelly scrape. “What—for you?” he choked out. “I told you already, sweetheart. Your gold plate's worn off. I know you now.”

Smiling, Flynn shrugged. “Well, I know you too, don't I? Come on. You don't care if I'm solid. Let's put Tom and Vic back on the raft—your mates too—and take this boat and go. We can have the life you want.”

Oh God. It was going to work. Tom saw, through a veil of nightmare, that something in Robert Tremaine was lost enough, damaged enough, to reach out for the broken-glass future Flynn was offering. To his astonishment, he heard the ratchet of the safety going on. He felt a diminution of the pistol's pressure at his chest, then a cessation, leaving a numb patch behind it.

Flynn's hand was out. Tremaine eased back a little way on his haunches. His free hand began its journey to meet Flynn's, a brutal, meaty shape that eclipsed the morning sun. For a moment Tom saw him, vision knocked back by shock to a child's unprejudiced simplicity, as the monster from the deeps—the undying beast of closet and bedroom shadows. Flynn would vanish whole into his maw. Tom hauled a breath, whispered, to God and the wild clear sky,
no!
—and lunged to dive between them.

Tremaine's eyes snapped to frozen steel. For an instant, Tom had an impression of looking at the tips of a pair of ice picks. The pistol made the first sound of its safety-catch release, muzzle swinging back towards Tom's heart. Flynn yelled, “Robert!”—gave Tremaine one instant to look up, to understand—unshipped Victor's service Browning from his belt, and shot Tremaine squarely between the eyes.

Vic stumbled out of the cabin. He was sheet white. Tom saw Flynn nod at him and hold out the Browning towards him in a trembling fist. He said, “Ta, Victor. Nice pass,” and dropped to his knees on the deck.

Chapter Ten: Harbour

Two helicopters descended on their shocked little scene barely ten minutes after its ending, one to commandeer the traffickers and their boat, the other to airlift survivors. Victor declined the ride—a sailor to the end, he couldn't bear the abandonment even of the ASaC raft—and volunteered to sail her home.

Tom did not want to be airlifted, not as a patient. He was fine. He did not want to let Flynn out of his sight, even as far as the cockpit of the Devon chopper that had come to their rescue, not if he himself was going to be dragged off to the cabin and mollycoddled by large, determined military airmen. Flynn had calmly hailed their leader and requested radio access to begin his report, but he was grey with shock, going through the motions. Tom did not want to be admitted to the Hawke hospital wing on their arrival—he was a civilian, and, as he had already explained to the ASaC crew, he was fine.

Further, Tom disagreed passionately with Flynn's commanding officer's idea that an immediate debriefing was necessary. It would wait a few bloody hours, wouldn't it? While Tom was shouting about his own rights and Flynn's, and Commander Hughes looking on in bemusement at being confronted like this on his own airbase—by the mild-mannered, reclusive village doctor from Sankerris, at that—Flynn briefly disappeared. Came back, and when Hughes left the room to take a phone call, laid a hand to Tom's arm. “Come with me.”

The Mazda was parked outside a loading bay, whose open doors, and the chaos of an early-morning delivery coming through them, provided a neat exit. The guard on the west gate gave Flynn a conspiratorial smile and waved them through. Flynn took them home.

They were on the run, Tom supposed. The watchtower was bitterly cold, dank air catching in his lungs as Flynn pushed open the door. He had never really registered how cold the place could get, but he seemed to be feeling everything now, and gasped and shivered as Flynn led him into the living room. Flynn stood for a minute, distractedly propping him, rubbing warmth into his shoulders and arms. “Hang on a bit, love,” he said. “I saw a scorch mark on the outside wall the other day. There's got to be an old chimney flue. Sit down while I work out where it is.”

There, behind a panel Tom had never noticed. It was only lightly screwed into place—Flynn's first good tug pulled it back, revealing a hearth which, although filled with soot and the remains of jackdaws' nests, looked functional. Tom supposed he might have assumed the building had one somewhere, from the supply of neatly stacked firewood in a shed out the back, but it hadn't occurred. Flynn brought in armfuls of it. He rumpled up sheets of newspapers and set a flame beneath these and the jackdaws' twigs, watching carefully for signs that the chimney was blocked. When the kindling took and began cleanly to draw, he built the new blaze up with a few logs, got up and went to switch the heating on for water. To boil a kettle for tea.

Firelight on curving walls. Tom could not get used to it, to the shadow-dance cavern it made of his front room. Flynn had tried to persuade him to bed, or at least to the sofa, but he could not draw away from it yet. He sat curled up on the rug, looking into the flames. Flynn, who hadn't stopped since their arrival, continued his anxious pacing back and forth in search of domestic comforts.

On his next pass, Tom grabbed his wrist. “Flynn.”

“Yes. You all right? I'm just gonna go—”

“You had to kill him. God, love. I'm so sorry.”

Flynn's legs buckled. He fell to his knees on the flagstones. For a moment, he looked bitterly angry, and Tom could see that he had pulled him down mid-flight. “Don't,” he said hoarsely. “I've already mourned him, as far as he was worth it.”

“I know. That's different from having to shoot him.”

“A technicality. Victor would've done it, if he'd had an angle. He just slipped me the gun.” Flynn shook his head, smiling weakly at the memory. “A cool hand, your Vic.”

“Yeah. Yeah, he is.” Tom reached up. “I've had two good mates tonight, haven't I? Come here, love.”

Tom laid him gently out on the rug. He was still wearing his flight suit, for God's sake. Neither of them had noticed, as if it had become a part of him. It had dried on him in places, but his chest and stomach, as Tom unzipped it, ran a hand up under the T-shirt beneath, were clammy cold.

“Get you out of this,” he murmured, and between them, awkwardly, they removed the heavy garment, with its straps, radio, integral torch, signalling gear. The sight of the navy-issue thermal leggings thus revealed cracked them both to laughter, then Flynn raised a hand to cover his eyes.

Tom held him. He warmed him as best he could with his body, lay over him and shielded him. It was a long time before Flynn could speak, and when he did, his voice was a faint rasp. “I want to tell you I loved him. But I didn't. Not ever. Not even at the beginning, before he…”

“Doesn't make it any easier, for you to do what you did.”

“No. But what was I doing with him? Why did I stay?”

Tom knew that these questions, though urgent, were not ones he was meant to answer. They were things for Flynn to work out over time. Easing back far enough to see him, he smiled, and Flynn seemed to find that enough of an answer for now—put a hand round the back of Tom's neck and drew him down. “Oh, Tom. Make me forget him.”

Can't do that either, not for long. But maybe for a while
. Kissing him, Tom obeyed the guiding grip on his wrist. He slid a hand into the awful thermal underwear, which didn't seem to be doing him much good—he was even cold there, and he remained soft beneath Tom's caress. Hardly surprising…

Tom ignored his moan of distress and embarrassment, got stiffly to his feet and went to fetch the blanket from the sofa. “Come on, you. Get those hideous pants off and wrap yourself in this. And sit down in the armchair.”

“No. I'm okay. I'll get there in a minute. Don't stop what you were doing.”

“Not about to. Just don't think I can suck you off from ground level tonight.”

Flynn looked at him, wide-eyed. Then he took Tom's hand and scrambled upright. “Christ almighty,” he whispered. “What is it about hearing you talk like that, my nice-mannered doctor?”

“Did the trick, did it?” Tom helped him strip out of the rest of his clothes, then gently pressed him down into the chair. He knelt between his thighs.

“Oh. See for yourself.”

Tom drew a breath of admiration. He passed the blanket blindly up to him, unable to take his eyes off his cock, which had lifted in sudden splendour and was still filling now, casting rose-gold shadows in the firelight.

“What brought that on?” he whispered, flickering him one dark-eyed, teasing glance. “Just me saying that I want to suck you off? Just…” He paused long enough to push his hands up the back of Flynn's thighs, grasping tight when he gasped and arched to make room. “Hearing that I want you to shove that down my throat, all the way down?”