Chapter 27

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Sam woke Justin up with a morning blowjob, which morphed into shower sex, which led nicely to breakfast, and all before seven o'clock, because he had a restaurant to open up and a breakfast meeting to cater for. The details of it were sketchy, some group of businessmen or something, and they were probably riding later.

Sam went down to begin prep, and Justin followed a little after seven. His new lover looked good, even in last night's clothes. They kissed as Sam chopped mushrooms.

Finally, Justin pulled away. "I'll be back soon," he whispered and went over to a table.

"I'll be here."

Sam checked the clock, eight o'clock and everything was ready to go. As the door opened, he turned to smile at the first person to enter.

Sam's smile dipped a little when he saw Aaron looking around the room as if he was expecting to see someone.

"Hey," Aaron said and crossed to Sam. "Where's breakfast? Is it here? Ethan said to meet for breakfast, he didn't say where."

Sam didn't have time to answer because Adam and Ethan pushed inside, followed by Marcus… hell, the entire extended family was there. There was no sign of businessmen, so Sam guessed this was the breakfast meeting he'd be catering for. He got to cooking, and then placed bowls of steaming eggs, bacon, and biscuits in the middle of the table, and the hordes jumped on it.

When the door opened again and Sheriff Carter walked in, looking mighty fine in his uniform, Sam wasn't even a little bit surprised, unlike the rest of the table, who went quiet, including Aaron.

"What?" Ryan asked, looking at his brother with a frown, and then checking around the table.

Justin pushed in, his face serious and he came to a stop next to a gaping Ryan. "Sheriff." He extended a hand.

"Fuck, Justin, you're alive," Ryan cursed, then drew Justin in for a quick hug. "What the hell?"

"Sit, and I'll explain." Justin gestured to an empty seat. "Sam?"

Sam had yet to sit, and finally Justin took his hand and led him to the table, taking a seat and tugging Sam to sit next to him.

"I wanted to explain," Justin began. "As much as I can, anyway."

"What is this?" Ryan asked.

"Will this be too much?" Ethan asked at the same time, pulling Adam close to him.

Justin hesitated, looking around the table; he grasped Sam's hand.

"In short, back when we disappeared, Adam and I stumbled onto something we shouldn't have. A group of home-grown terrorists emptying a storage locker on the edge of Crooked Tree land. At first we thought it was a meth lab, in fact, that was what the authorities told everyone, but it was worse." He stopped. Ethan looked skeptical, like there could be nothing worse than a meth lab on the mountain.

"They were far-right activists who believed the only way to incite change was to encourage terror. Domestic terrorism. Five men—well, four men and one boy younger than us. I won't tell you what happened, that's a story for Adam and me." He looked at Adam and thin-lipped he nodded slightly. "I swear to you, Adam, every day you don't remember what happened is another day of peace."

Adam didn't answer, just leaned against Ethan.

Ethan looked torn; he must want Adam to remember everything, but at the same time he loved Adam, so he would want to spare him the pain of those memories returning. "Your back…."

"What about his back?" Ryan asked, still in confused mode.

"Scarred," Gabe said. "Burned."

Ryan nodded as if he understood.

"They were psychos," Justin continued. "I don't have another word for it. They didn't want to leave evidence. We got out, but not before the fire caught us. I thought Adam was dead. The last thing I saw was him staring at me, lying so still. He had blood all over his face. There was an explosion, and I thought he'd been hit."

Ethan closed his eyes briefly. "Where was this? If it was on Crooked Tree land, we'd have known."

"What the hell?" Ryan said what most people at the table were thinking.

"No, it was a long way from here, Flathead way. They took us there, had arguments about what to do with us. A couple of them wanted to kill us there and then, but the kid there, Jamie Crane, he wanted to use us, turn us so he'd not be alone. Maybe, in his own way, he was protecting us… I don't know." Justin stared right at Adam. "We were kids, and we were scared."

When Justin fell silent for a while, Marcus prompted. "What happened then?"

"DOJ, DEA, CIA, all the alphabets. Covert shit, joint jurisdiction. I woke up in a military hospital. They told me Adam was dead, and then made me into something else. I let them make me what they wanted me to be."

Ethan shook his head. "Who are they ? And what kind of something else ?"

"A guy you know, Saunders, he visited pretending to be DOJ."

"He wasn't DOJ?" Ryan asked. He looked confused.

"Saunders told me my family was in danger, that the country was in danger, that Adam had been murdered. And I wanted to be someone else because I was consumed with pain and guilt, so I let them change me. Hell, I was a teenager still."

Justin glanced at his dad, who held his fists in his lap, sitting on the hard chair. His face was pale and tears coursed down his cheeks.

"You let them change you into what? Or who?" Ryan asked. He seemed overwhelmed with all the information thrown at him.

"Someone who would work inside those kinds of organizations, undercover, integrated, a blunt instrument for them to use with no comebacks. I killed everyone who hurt Adam and me. All of them except Jamie Crane, the kid who ultimately saved us."

Marcus pressed a hand to his chest, with a shocked expression. Adam didn't move a muscle.

Ethan swallowed and then nodded slowly, as if coming to some kind of realization. "The ones who hurt you, and who you thought had killed Adam."

"Xander Walden committed suicide, ate a bullet when I was just a minute away from him. I never got to look in his eyes as he died."

Next to Justin, Sam was restless, clenching and unclenching fists.

"Dillon Naves and David Crane," Justin continued. "I shot them both. Dillon had moved south, back to his girlfriend, distributing meth as a way to finance domestic attacks. I infiltrated the cell that protected him, took it all down, and put a bullet in Dillon's left knee. I watched him thrashing on the floor, and then I shot him in the stomach. Part of me wanted to leave him to bleed out there in the middle of the fucking forest, his confederates dead around him, but then I couldn't have been sure he was dead. I waited, watched him writhe, and told him all about who I was, so he knew he was going to die. After he knew who was killing him, I shot him."

"You don't have to tell us this," Ethan said softly. He laced his fingers with Justin's. "Not if it hurts."

Justin considered that, but he'd come this far. "That was six people I killed. Five if you exclude Dillon. Then there was David Crane. He'd gone legit, set himself up as a mechanic in San Antonio, turned out he'd thought running that far would mean no one would know. I found him, one bullet to his brain. I had to be quick because it wasn't a remote location. You know what I found when he was dead? A PC full of plans and enough C4 to take down a building, along with schematics for a Cowboys' game. I stopped that, saved all those lives, but that was one more man dead. That is what I did, you see? I'd become nothing more than checks and balances."

Sam rested a hand on Justin's thigh, a reassuring weight there. Marcus looked shell-shocked, and pale, clutching his chest.

Ethan nodded. "Maybe you should go, Dad."

Marcus looked at him directly, and then shook his head. "My son is a hero. I want to hear it all."

Justin snorted, "Jeez, I'm no hero, Dad."

Marcus stubbornly didn't answer that.

"Carry on," Ethan prompted.

Justin continued. "Travis Graham? He was the worst one, the last one I found. He'd integrated into some kind of end-of-the-world cult shit, a front for drug distribution on the East Coast. That took the longest. I wanted to kill him on day one, but he had these kids as prisoners, a whole slew of them, some as young as twelve, and he was selling them, fuck, anything to get money. That was when I began using, because… fuck."

"You had to," Ethan said, "to keep cover. To save the children he had."

Justin looked at his brother with new eyes. Ethan wasn't judging him; he understood.

"Holy shit," Ryan muttered near Sam.

"You got him, though?" Ashley asked.

"Yeah, I did. Chased him up an apartment block, missed a shot." He paused, because what he said next would be raw and uncompromising and show him for the man he truly was. He expected everyone to turn from him in disgust. "He fell, was gripping the side of the building. I leaned over to help him, but I could have done more. He was staring up at me, pleading, and all I could hear was Adam's voice in my head, saying near enough the same words back in the bunker. I let him fall to his death."

He paused. He didn't deserve anyone to listen to him, and expected everyone to call him on it, to tell him to leave and never come back. No one said a thing, not even Ryan moved, so Justin pressed on to finish his fucked up list of people he'd killed. "The last one of the five, Jamie Crane? He was David's son, a kid, younger than Adam and me, and a victim as much as we were. He's doing well, learning to live his life."

"So you're done now," Ryan said. He looked a little pale, but to give him his due he didn't look like he was going to arrest Justin anytime soon. "You killed him as well?"

Justin wasn't ready to face that question, though, and he changed the subject. "When I found out Adam was still alive, I realized all those years I'd been paying for getting him killed. They were my lost years."

"Okay, so now you can stop running," Ethan said.

"We need to get ahead of this," Ryan said at the same time.

Justin nodded. "I want to stop running, right here, and come to some kind of peace over what I did, what I was. And maybe ask you to help me with that." He paused. "If you feel like you can, that you don't see me as… too lost. And yes, Ryan, we can talk, and if you need to arrest me…"

"The AT we could learn to be friends all over again."

"I want that," Justin murmured, and for the first time in a long time he realized he was speaking the truth. He needed family, he wanted friends, and he had to be with Sam.

He just had to be.

The only one who hadn't said anything, and the most important of all, was Adam.

"Adam?" Justin asked, uncertainly.

"I don't hate you," Adam said. They weren't much in the way of words but the tone he used, and the emotion that was in every syllable had Justin relaxing a little.

"Thank you," Justin whispered.

Then everyone seemed to feel like talking was done, and everyone was silent.

Until Luke broke the tension. "Does anyone want the last of the bacon?"

Sam watched Justin and Ryan talking. Everyone else had left Branches, heading to work or home, but Ryan had stayed. Justin and the sheriff were deep in discussion. Sam took them coffee but didn't interrupt; instead he cleaned counters as he waited for them to finish.

When Ryan left, calling goodbye as he went out into the daylight, Justin came to sit on one of the stools in the kitchen area.

"Okay?" Sam asked.

"Yeah. Ryan just needed all the minute detail."

"Why? Is that a good thing? What if you told him too much?"

Justin tugged him close to stand between his legs, holding him still. Sam held his hands up and out of the way because they were wet.

"He has my back, although I think Aaron's in shit for not telling his brother what was going on in the cabin."

Sam sank into Justin's hold, placing his wet hands on Justin's T-shirt and not regretting it for a minute.

"I need to talk to you."

"Okay."

Justin sounded like he was facing the end of the world, but Sam was quick to reassure. "I'm falling in love with you." He put the words together as coherently as he could. "I tried to get over you when you left; thought the connection we had might have just been nothing. But I didn't manage to do it, and I wanted you back, and I hated every day I didn't know where you were or what you were doing."

Then he stopped talking, because Justin stared at him, his gray gaze searching Sam's expression. Finally, Justin sighed, then cradled Sam's face and kissed him.

They stood like that for a while, but it was Justin who pulled out of the kiss, with a smile.

"I want to be here with you all the time, but the words aren't quite so easy for me to say. I've spent too long never falling in love that I can't… God, Sam, I need you to kiss me already."

And Sam was happy to help.