Identity Zero novel · Chapter 14 of 32

Chapter 14: The Lookout

Jesse folded the bag along its old creases.

Then he put it inside his shirt, flat against his chest, where he'd carried Luke's photo.

"That's mine now," he said.

Gideon watched him do it.

"It's a dead man's paper."

"Then whatever's left is mine too."

Gideon didn't answer.

He got up out of the ferns and pulled Jesse up after him by the wrist, and he didn't let go of it.

They went up the slope together like that, Gideon's hand around Jesse's wrist, neither of them saying anything.

At the top of the ridge the clearing was empty.

Tire ruts full of water. A spent smoke canister. A torn red ribbon on the stair rail where Ollie had ripped the flag down.

The lookout stood over all of it on its four wooden legs, black against the cloud.

"Trucks are gone," Jesse said.

"I told them to go."

"So we're walking two miles back in this."

Gideon looked up at the cab.

"Not tonight," he said.

The stairs switched back and forth up the inside of the legs, slick with rain.

Gideon went first.

The door at the top wasn't locked. Nothing out there was.

Inside, it was one square room made of windows.

Glass on every side, streaming. An old brass fire finder on a pedestal in the middle.

A narrow iron cot against the north wall with a grey wool blanket folded on it.

A little cast-iron stove in the corner with a stack of split cedar beside it that somebody had left years ago.

Gideon knelt and built a fire without a word.

He did it well. Kindling in a square, a strip of logbook paper, one match.

Jesse would have hired him.

The cedar caught, and the room filled with the smell of it.

Orange light came up on the glass and turned the rain gold.

Gideon stayed crouched there with his back to Jesse, feeding it.

"You're going to freeze in those," he said.

"So are you."

"I've been colder."

"In Texas?"

Gideon's hands stopped on the wood.

"In a lot of places."

Jesse pulled his grey shirt over his head.

It was so wet it came off heavy, and he dropped it on the floor by the stove, and the 17 on it steamed.

Gideon heard it hit.

He didn't turn around.

"Jesse."

"You said not while you hold my file."

"I still hold it."

"You hold a dead man's file. You told me so. Seventeen's buried in Tacoma, and Gideon Strake is buried in Kalispell."

Jesse came up behind him.

He put his hand on the back of Gideon's neck, the way Gideon had held his in the drying room.

Gideon shuddered all the way down his spine.

"So who's going to write it down?" Jesse said.

Gideon stood up slowly.

He turned around, and the fire was behind him, and Jesse couldn't see his face, only the shape of him blocking out the light.

He was so much bigger than Jesse.

Jesse took one step closer, into his heat, and put his palm on Gideon's wet shirt.

He wasn't scared of him at all.

"Once I start," Gideon said, low and rough, "I'm not going to stop for Gorham, or the file, or anything."

"Good."

"You don't know what you're asking for."

"I know exactly." Jesse hooked two fingers in Gideon's belt and pulled. "I've been asking for it since the drying room. You keep walking away."

"I'm not walking now."

"Then prove it."

Gideon unbuckled his plate carrier and let it fall.

It hit the floorboards.

Then he put his hand flat on Jesse's bare chest, over his heart.

He walked Jesse backward across the room until Jesse's legs hit the cot.

Gideon's hand spread flat over Jesse's heart.

He held Jesse there against the cot, not pushing yet, just feeling it pound.

"You're shaking."

"I'm wet and it's cold."

"No." Gideon leaned in until his mouth was at Jesse's ear. "That's not why."

He was right.

Jesse grabbed the front of Gideon's jacket and pulled.

The cot hit the backs of Jesse's knees.

He sat down hard, and Gideon came with him, one knee between his legs, one hand braced on the wall behind his head.

"Look at you," Gideon said.

His voice had that low rough edge from the Box, from the ring, from every time he'd had Jesse under him.

"Flat on your back with your heart punching my palm."

"Then do something about it."

Conal kissed him.

Not like the range.

That had been a warning.

This was a claim.

Conal's mouth came down hard, and his tongue pushed in, and he tasted like rain and blood and cedar smoke.

Jesse bit his split lip just to hear him grunt.

Conal pulled back an inch, his breath hot on Jesse's mouth.

"You want it rough."

"I want you to stop holding back."

Conal's hand slid up from Jesse's chest to his throat.

Not squeezing.

Just resting there, his thumb along Jesse's jaw, tipping his head back.

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