Long Time Gone (Hell or High Water ) by SE Jakes Read Free Book Online

made.
    But Prophet couldn’t deny that it hurt, so instead he’d denied everything else he felt about the man, so he could steel himself to come to this house. Thought of it like a mission, which helped his focus.
    Finding peace would be considerably harder and not something he planned on trying to do this trip. It was an impossible feat, really, and Prophet figured that he should probably stop trying. But something inside wouldn’t let him, continued to search for it with the rabid intensity of a shark with the scent of blood.
    “You know sharks keep moving, even when they sleep?” John told him.
    “No,” he muttered, refusing to look up to see his personal walking, talking flashback. From the time he’d walked into Sadiq’s trap until this point, he’d kept too busy to have them.
    Guess you don’t need flashbacks if you’re living the real thing.
    “Yeah, you’re peaceful—just like Hal,” John continued.
    “I really don’t need your fucking sarcasm.” Prophet stared at the wall in front of him, watching the patterns change depending on the force of the wind on the raindrops.
    But John was right about Hal—he’d appeared to be a peaceful guy. Even John had been taken in by him, and Prophet hadn’t wanted to give anything away.
    “You really thought I didn’t know?” John asked now, and Prophet still refused to look in the direction of the ghost of his one-time best friend and lover.
    In reality, Hal had been one of the angriest guys on the fucking planet. Prophet couldn’t say if he’d been like that before the CIA and FBI started crawling up his asshole, but Hal Jones was one of the few projects the CIA, FBI, and Homeland Security actually played nicely on together. Hal was a specialist, knew how to build nuclear triggers, and that made him something of an asset—or a liability—everyone had worked hard to control.
    Up until the whole CIA fuckup, and then everything went to shit. There were guys at the Bureau and Homeland who were still pissed at Prophet for choosing the Agency after that whole clusterfuck. Prophet couldn’t tell them that he hadn’t had any other choice if he’d wanted his teammates—the men who’d become his friends—left in one piece.
    As it stood, they all were, albeit scattered around the globe. Last time he’d checked. Which was a few hours ago. And they were all pissed at him.
    So, nothing had really changed, and that in and of itself was comforting. But it wouldn’t stop the flashback from coming. And he hadn’t even been sleeping. Then again, the sleeping flashbacks were the fucking worst, because if he couldn’t control himself when he was awake, he had no hope of it unconscious.
    He put his hands out, like if he could put them on something real and stable in the house—Della’s rounded sofa or her old Victrola—he’d snap out of it and stop seeing the fucking desert in front of him, miles and miles of sand with no end in sight.
    “Four hours,” John called back to him. The ground underneath Prophet’s feet felt like it was moving, and he tried to tell himself it was the wind and not a moving truck, but it was no use.
    He turned his head cautiously and found Hal sitting next to him, his face drawn, obviously done with the entire trip.
    Four hours wasn’t that bad—they’d made good time, until this point. Until 1543. That’s when everything went to complete shit.
    “I don’t want to do this,” Prophet told Hal. “I won’t do it.”
    Hal just stared through him, his eyes watching something in the distance. Gunfire. Cars coming over the rise.
    John, firing wildly. Prophet took position and helped cover them but the car’s radiator was blown. The rest of their SEAL team—their backup—was gone.
    “We lost them,” John said, and they couldn’t go back, couldn’t risk transmitting a signal over the radio.
    It was the last time Prophet saw his team in one place.
    “It’s a setup, Proph,” John told him.
    Hal grabbed for Prophet’s gun,