Sanctuary 02 - The Only Easy Day (CMS) (MM) (5 page)

"He won't find out about Morgan. Sanctuary ops have cleared up any connection Morgan had to the case." 

Nik sounded confident, but even Dale could hear a slight note of hesitation in Nik's voice. "There's no mention of him now in any public information." Clearly Nik was talking himself out of worrying.

Dale considered what Nik was saying. "Finding the witness would be his next logical step. It's what I would do first."

"The reports said a witness; nowhere is Morgan actually named. Do you think he has the resources to find the intel he needs?"

"You mean apart from the entire gamut of Navy intelligence at his disposal?"

"What do you think he wants out of this?"

"Shit, Nikolai. Besides closure, like talking to the witness, how the hell can I tell what he wants?" Dale wasn't above snapping at his friend. "Maybe he'll plan some raid on the prison and shoot Headley in the head. Fuck knows, but he's a SEAL, for God's sake. He probably wants to start a war." He knew he was being irrational. SEALs didn't start wars. They often ended them using their skills, and hell, he should know, he had received all the same training.

This whole situation was wearing him down a day at a time. His role at Sanctuary was to protect those people who needed help, in situations where institutional protection from people like the FBI was compromised. He helped the innocent in danger. It was what he did, and damn it, he did it well. Agreeing to help Nik and Morgan take down a creep of a senator whose tendrils of corruption extended towards him from his less-than-innocent family was not really on his bucket list. Even for a friend. Add in World War Three and this use of his break between cases was looking more and more torturous.

"Dale. You're an ex-SEAL. You know what kind of skills he has. What can we expect?" Nik said calmly. There was a definite note of apology in the tone. Dale held his tongue with his instant reaction. He was only helping as a favor to Morgan and Nik; it wasn't as if he gave a shit why Elisabeth had been killed. Except, he sighed inwardly.

Seeing Robert at the café and being part of Elisabeth's case had actually gotten under his skin. He wanted answers.

"I don't know," he finally managed to say. "I'm an ex-SEAL for a reason, and it's enough we've been forced off the Sanctuary grid with this private investigation shit let alone us adding experienced Navy into the mix. We have no backup as it is to pull our asses out of the fire if things hit the fan. He's a freaking US-sanctioned one-man army, and he could create trouble where we don't need it."

"Dale." Great. Nik was using his patient tone. Dale hated Nik's patient tone with a vengeance. "Not only is he Elisabeth's brother, he is highly specialized Navy. You've said yourself we could probably use another person watching our backs. If Robert comes good with the evidence—"

"You want an armed SEAL to get involved? Nik, what are you on? Damned idiot could murder someone on US soil. Not to mention he'll have his freaking team backing his every play at the snap of his frog fingers."

"If he's going to get involved anyway—"

"Lissa just said he was utterly determined to find out why his stepsister died. Doesn't mean he'll get any further."

"Look… imagine it was Lissa who had been

murdered; you would want to know the truth." Nik hit far too close to home with that one. Dale's sister might be some kickass ADA, but she was the only family Dale had.

It was a low blow bringing her back into this fucked-up situation. She was already helping them too much as it was.

He suddenly realized Nik was still talking. "…does he strike Lissa as the kind of person who will back off from this?"

No, Dale thought, Lissa said that he'd struck her as being, in her words, tall dark and dangerous. They really didn't need Elisabeth's brother putting two and two together with Bullen. The law was what Bullen played; it should be the law that dealt the blow to the smug bastard. Dale deflected the momentary flash of apprehension that washed over him at the thought of what Joseph Kinnon was probably more than capable of. Black ops. He was a member of a SEAL team that disappeared for months at a time doing God knows what in protection of their country.

Hell, just thinking about what he himself had undergone in his BUD/s training and the things he knew about the type of teams who work black ops made Joseph dangerous. If Joseph decided he was seeking revenge for his stepsister's murder, Dale had no doubt that revenge is what he would get. What happened when other people got caught up in the revenge? Like Lissa for example? No one survived the kind of things SEALs went through and came out the other side intact.

Just look at himself.

"If he doesn't believe the press about why his stepsister was shot? Or why the cop pulled the trigger? If he tracks back and connects Headley to Bullen like we did?

Nik, I didn't sign up to get involved in starting a freaking war. Neither did you and Morgan," he said firmly. "Quietly find out information you said. Quietly take down Bullen you said. Getting sailor boy involved is throwing fuel on the flames and is a no."

"Are you able to keep your eyes on Lissa in case he takes matters into his own hands?" Nik's tone was a curious mix of in-charge and worried. Dale inhaled deeply and pushed down his concern at Joseph Kinnon being in the same country, let alone the same city as this whole Bullen thing or Lissa.

"Of course I can."

"Watch your back, okay?"

"You worrying about me, Nikolai?" he said simply.

He had to change the subject before his worries manifested in grabbing Lissa and hiding in a Sanctuary cabin until the whole Bullen mess was over and done with.

"Not me, asshole. Morgan worries. For some fucked-up reason, he likes you."

Affection for the man Nik loved, the witness who'd seen the cop kill Elisabeth, stole over Dale in a wave.

Getting involved with finding out why Elisabeth had died was something he had agreed to only because Morgan had asked him to.

"Yeah, well, I like Morgan, though why he wants to stay with your sorry ass—"

"Morgan said dinner. Ours. Twenty." 

"I can't. I—"

"Twenty." Nik dropped the call on that single word, and frustratingly, Dale was left with silence. He hated it when Nik played the Morgan card. Morgan wanted everyone to be in a settled relationship. Having to keep his wits about him after the attempt on his life, which had left him scarred and Nik unconscious in hospital, gave the younger man a clear appreciation of the shortness of forever.

"We can have normal," he had said last time Dale had been left with no choice but to attend a formal meal situation with his friends. Dale had to stop himself from smacking the smaller guy round the head. It was only Nik's glare that had stopped him. Dale wanted to say that normal wasn't being gay or an ex SEAL. Or indeed, for him, being a gay cop, now without a badge. Certainly, normal wasn't working for Sanctuary. The covert protection organization that worked outside the remit of the police, FBI, or even the military, wasn't conducive to lasting relationships.

Sometimes he watched Nik and Morgan. They had found something special in amongst all this shit. Mixed feelings pushed for attention inside him. Jealousy was there alongside a healthy dose of "not in this lifetime". 

* * * *

"Hey," Dale said as he entered the kitchen, a beer-carrying Nik following him a pace behind. Morgan pushed his dark hair away from his eyes and smiled hello then looked back at the stove. He was gazing mournfully at whatever was in the pot.

Nik moved past him, and standing behind Morgan, he wrapped his long arms around his lover.

"Oh," Nik said gently as he too examined the pot.

Dale moved closer and joined in the wake for the rather gray looking gunk at the bottom of bubbling water, which he assumed should have been pasta.

"Someone needs to order Chinese," Morgan said disconsolately. "I followed the instructions. It was this new way of doing the pasta." He sounded a little distracted. "But I was in the middle of painting, and I forgot."

"I got it," Dale offered. He was relieved to leave the kitchen to order a delivery after Nik turned Morgan around in his arms and was teasing him out of his funk. There was gentle kissing and hugging and so much love it made Dale ache. For two gay men to find each other in the midst of adversity and to actually make something of what they were was astounding to him. His longest relationship had been three months, and he had been on a Sanctuary mission for ten weeks of that. In fact, it had been one long hot week of sex, eight weeks of the mission, and then one week of avoiding phone calls, so it probably didn't actually count as a whole ten weeks. He wasn't interested in what Nik had.

Being in any kind of partnership was fraught with problems. It would only be a matter of time and Morgan would get tired of the enforced absences. He didn't wish it on Nik, but the inevitable was just waiting to spring itself on them.

Call made and Chinese ordered, he sank into the large comfy sofa opposite the TV and wondered idly if he should actually stand up to turn the damn thing on. His cell vibrating in his pocket made the decision easy for him.

With a smile on his face, he answered the call.

"Lissa," he said immediately.

"Hiya, bro," his sister said quickly. "I thought we could meet up?"

Instantly Dale sat upright in his seat. He wished she meant she wanted to meet for coffee, but the way she worded it could only mean one thing; his sister had more information she had dug up for them. If people—and by people he was thinking her boss, the District Attorney himself—got wind she was passing them sensitive information, her job and his neck were on the line. Dale didn't even want to think about someone tracking what his sister gave him.

"I'm at Nik's; we've called in Chinese. You want some?"

"Give me ten."

He slumped back into the sofa as the call finished, and two pairs of curious eyes turned his way.

"Lissa is coming for dinner," he explained.

"She has more information?" Morgan stepped into the room fully.

"Says she does." Dale shrugged. He didn't want to think of Lissa being involved any more.

Morgan immediately disappeared into the spare room with Nik close behind. On a sigh, Dale followed, and all three men stood in front of the huge board Morgan had set up to track any and all information he had regarding Bullen, Headley, and Elisabeth.

The pictures and the lines that connected them ranged from harrowing to the smiling poster images of Thomas Bullen, the senator who wanted to be governor.

"Do you have anything to add before she arrives?"

"Thomas Bullen's brother called him today," Nik offered in summary of today's surveillance. Dale waited for more. While he thought this board was a realistic way of portraying the web of intrigue and murder Morgan had found himself in the middle of, it didn't mean he enjoyed staring at photos of the dead girl. It was all too easy to imagine his own sister dead.

"And?" he prompted when Nik didn't immediately launch into a full explanation of what he had taped.

"As usual, it was only one side; he took it off speakerphone. I don't know which brother it was, but Bullen wasn't happy." Dale wished the senator had used helpful words such as shipment or money laundering or murder or freaking anything that made him something other than the oily politician he was. No. All he had was some normal conversation based around an elderly relative's eightieth birthday. "Something about a Nonna Grande, or thereabouts, a dinner and a fundraiser. I'm guessing for the campaign pot."

"So another indication that the brothers are assisting in funding the run for governor." Morgan scribbled yet another date next to the word "funding" then stood back to consider the board. "Maybe Lissa can shed some light on it all."

"I'm not happy about using my sister," Dale blurted out. Both men turned to face him. Nik looked confused, but Morgan appeared sympathetic. What was it that had pushed him to actually say that out loud? He didn't want his sister anywhere near the Bullens. She worked daily with criminals and might be the up-and-coming mover and shaker in the DA's office, but she was still the little sister he'd looked after when he was growing up.

"It's okay," Morgan began with sympathy in his voice. "We'll talk to her when she gets here. I'm not that comfortable with the information coming through Lissa either."

"So tonight we stop," he said simply, and tried to ignore the way Morgan worried at his lower lip with his teeth. Working side by side with the guys on this, he was growing more and more convinced Bullen was somehow involved with the death of Kinnon's stepsister. He opened his mouth to explain why he was scared for his own sister, but thank God, the doorbell sounded and it was every bit the best distraction he had ever had.

He answered the door, paid for the Chinese, and let in Lissa as she arrived a few seconds later.

"Is it going to cause a problem?" Lissa said as she removed her jacket. She had evidently started that particular question in her head, as it didn't make a whole lot of sense. 

"What?" Dale decided acting innocent might distract her. It didn't.

"He's a SEAL, Dale. An honest-to-goodness kickass-for-his-country SEAL."

"I know he is." Avoiding the implication in his sister's question was Dale's best line of defense.

"Then I say again, is it going to be a problem to you, an ex-SEAL, that an active SEAL is somehow involved in this?" She stepped closer and pulled him in for a hug. She knew better than most what he had gone through when he handed in his Trident and left the SEALs before even his first deployment.

"He won't be involved." Dale was adamant about that. Having Joseph Kinnon anywhere near this was asking for trouble. "We can keep him away from this and finish it quickly and quietly."

"Okay," Lissa answered softly. "Love you, big brother."

"Love you too, sis."

Finally, with the door shut behind him, he could think more on what was driving him to be so convinced the small group in the sitting room would succeed. Nik was the best at what he did; Morgan was intelligent and utterly passionate about putting Elisabeth's memory to rest.