I hated sitting across from him more than anything in the entire world in that moment. It was taking everything within me from pulling out my Sig Sauer pistol and knocking that smug look off of his face. After everything Wesley Gilmore had put me through, he still held a bit of leverage over me and even though it was only for that moment, I hated it. I hated it with every fiber of my being. If he weren't about to tell me details I needed to know about the bigoted murderous network, I would've happily stood up and canceled the deal I'd worked out for his sorry ass. However, he knew things I needed to know. He knew things we all needed to know.
"It was all supplied to us by someone anonymous," he finally told me while staring into my eyes.
"I told you not to fuck with me, Wesley," I said angrily as I slammed my fists down on the table. "You tell me right now who the fuck..."
"Me and my people only met with his people and they didn't use many names. I am being one hundred percent straight with you right now, Cameron."
"Do you have a description of any of his people?"
"Yes, they were always men and they were always different men each time they met up with me and my people to exchange info or to give us products to use. These were tech guys. I sent two of them to your apartment to bug your computer that night back in Calhoun Heights."
"You said those were your guys."
"I lied."
"How the fuck am I supposed to believe you now? You could be tricking me."
"Do you think I want to die, Cameron? You're giving me an opportunity to get life in prison instead of the death penalty and you better believe me when I say I am taking that opportunity. Those were his guys."
"I need something stronger than this, Wesley. If not, then our little deal is off the table. Who is this person you're referring to? Is he the mastermind?"
"He has to be. And I know it goes deeper because I overheard three of his guys talking one night at the compound. You were right when you said this thing reaches into the government. As a matter of fact, it reaches into the same sector of government you work in."
"The FBI?"
"Yes. I heard those men specifically mention that there is a mole in the FBI and that person has a connection in the CIA as well as many other connections in the Departments of Justice and Defense. There are private sectors in those departments that are the backbone of the operation."
I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Yes, I knew that the government did shady things but I had no idea there were private sectors and back channels that operated without the knowledge of our superiors. Not only was I now paranoid, I had no idea who I could even trust to take this information to. Would I be believed even if I do find the right person to take the information to? The thought of yet more unknowns regarding this situation was shaking me to the core.
I stood up and began pacing back and forth before asking, "Can you think of anything else those men might have said during the conversation you eavesdropped on?"
"They mentioned something about some CEOs. Well, they referred to them as the five CEOs. I honestly don't know how it fits into anything but I distinctly remember them bringing that up during the conversation. When they noticed me standing there, they began talking in code again."
"Code?"
"Yeah, they say these random phrases to each other whenever I or my men were around. It was as if they were carefully trained to do it, too. I could never crack the code."
"Give me an example."
He closed his eyes for a second before slowly stating, "Many lonely nights ahead. Nights like this bring me dread." He reopened his eyes and said, "They'd say stuff like that. Sometimes it would rhyme like the one I just repeated and sometimes it just didn't make any sense."
The moment he said those rhyming phrases, I froze up. My mind immediately went back to the night Tommy woke up from his coma and then died mere seconds later. Every time I heard the words night or nights, I thought about Tommy because it was his final word. Thinking of Tommy put my mind on another track and I found myself wanting to know more about why the fraternity chose him. What made them go after Tommy?
"Wesley, I know this might have nothing to do with what we're talking about in this moment, but I need to know. Why Tommy? Why did you target my best friend? Of all the black gay men at Calhoun University at that time, why Tommy?"
He smirked immediately and replied, "He should've never began digging into the disappearances of those missing men. Calvin saw that shit and we did what we had to do. The way I see it, Tommy put himself in our crosshairs."
"You bastard."
"Oh, come on. I know you're not getting upset about that after all these years. Cameron, that shit is just as dead as Tommy."
"You shut the fuck up!"
"Had your friend not gotten himself into that shit, he would be alive today. We had no idea he was with that basketball player until you got caught up in the shit, too. Maybe we would've gotten Tommy by coincidence but most likely, we wouldn't have."
"Bullshit. I'm not buying any of this."
"Quite frankly, I don't give a fuck what you want to believe or not believe. It is irrelevant at this point. If you want any chance at shutting down the entire network then you better listen to what I have to say."
"So far, you haven't told me shit other than I can't trust anyone at the bureau."
"The trail has gone cold, hasn't it?" When I didn't answer, he shook his head and folded his arms before saying, "It's gone cold because you've obviously spooked one of the moles in your department. I suggest you keep quiet until you can find a way into the network. You have all of my men in custody, the ones that are alive anyway. Talk to them because they may know things that I don't about his men."
"I feel like you're still deceiving me about Tommy. I'm warning you, Wesley, don't push me to do something I can't take back. Because once I leave this room without a deal, that's it." I stared into his eyes and asked him again, "Why Tommy?"
He lounged back in his chair and looked down at the table for a while without saying anything. Finally, after a lengthy period of silence, he looked back into my eyes and told me, "We did kill Tommy to silence him about the fraternity's secret but that was after we'd already been given orders to kill him. Calvin wasn't the head of the school paper when we got the order to kill Tommy because we got that order when Tommy was a freshman."
His revelation made my heart stop for a second. I kept myself together as I asked him, "Why?"
"Cameron, I need you to listen to me. I know this sounds crazy but I guess it has to be said in order for you to cut me the deal." He took a deep breath and revealed, "Even before I was working at Calhoun University, I was coordinating the killings after my brother's suicide. I was working with the network and they had their eyes set on Tommy before he arrived on campus. To you, Tommy was your best friend since childhood. But to them, he was an enormous threat."
"I don't understand."
"You didn't know your friend as well as you thought you did."
"You're making it sound like he was some alien or something. There was nothing wrong with him. He didn't deserve what happened to him."
"Well, maybe he should have stopped communicating with COWO. If you want to blame anyone for your friend's death then you should blame that group. I mean, the fraternity killed Tommy when he became an upperclassman because it was our ritual but we were ordered to kill him a couple of years before that because of his association with COWO."
"What the hell is COWO?"
"It stands for Changing Our World Order. It's a secret organization that's responsible for the increase of LGBTQ alphabet bullshit we've all had forced on us in recent years. I know you don't think all that shit came from real people wanting to accept your kind all of a sudden, do you?" He laughed and added, "It's all smoke and mirrors, Cameron. It's money and political influence. Each and every mainstream politician is recruited, bought and sold to the public as accepting of all under the guise of progressiveness. It's a shame Tommy got caught up in that shit. They probably lured him in with lies and then gathered all kinds of shit they could later use to keep him from revealing their secrets once he ran for office later in life. Too bad me and my boys took care of him before he could become the next Barack Obama, huh?"
"You sick son of a bitch. You're lying!"
"Do you honestly think I would make this shit up? I may not have the connections to point you in the right direction but if you look hard enough and use your brain, you'll find every piece of evidence to corroborate what I'm saying to you. COWO chose Tommy to be their future black gay governor, senator or whatever the fuck they had planned for him and he came under the radar of men who wanted to shut that shit down before it could happen. The fraternity was given the task since he was heading to Calhoun after high school, but it could have easily been carried out by someone other than us."
I continued to stare into his eyes as I asked, "What does nights mean?"
"What?"
"Tommy's last word to me was nights. What did he mean? Was he talking about the fraternity? Was he saying Knights, like what the fraternity brothers called themselves?"
"I have no idea. I didn't even know he had a last word. I thought his brains had been turned to mush and he just died while in the coma. Now, do we have a deal?"
"No. I don't believe anything you've said."
"Cameron, I swear to you that I have been fully honest. You owe me..."
"I don't owe you shit! Now give me some names of your collaborators or there will not be a deal."
"I already told you, they used nicknames and..."
"I don't believe you, damnit! Now you have one last chance before I end this!"
"This is crazy! I gave you very helpful information and..."
We were interrupted by the sound of gunshots going off outside of the door. Immediately, I drew my pistol and asked aloud, "What the hell is going on out there?" When there was no answer, I pulled out my handcuffs and handcuffed Wesley to the table. I looked at him and told him, "I know your wrist is handcuffed to the side but get under this table as much as you can. I'll be right back."
"Wait, don't leave me," he pleaded. "Cameron, don't leave me in here!"
"I'll be right back."
Carefully, I opened the door and stepped out of the interrogation room. I quickly noticed Wesley's defense attorney Lenny Kassovitz was dead on the floor. Before I could notice anything else, a can of tear gas hit the wall beside me and the gas began filling the area quickly. I covered my mouth and nose with one hand and aimed my gun out in front of me with the other. Out of nowhere, someone tried to put an arm around me. When I noticed they were holding a knife, I pulled away from them and shot at them as accurately as I could. I heard a thud and then the sound of more gunfire. I tried to make out what was going on but couldn't.
"Freeze," I called out when I noticed a shadowy figure run by me and enter the interrogation room. "Freeze, you son of a bitch!"
I ran in after whoever the person was and tried to see through all the gas. When I heard grunting and gurgling noises, I aimed my gun in the direction of the sounds and the moment a small clearing appeared in all the gas, I took my shot. I suddenly broke out into a coughing fit just as the water sprinklers began streaming water down all over the room. Slowly, the gas began to disperse and I noticed I'd killed two of the masked men causing the trouble. However, one of them had stabbed Wesley multiple times, including in the neck.
"Oh my God," I called out as I got down and applied pressure to his severe neck wound. "Wesley, stay with me, damnit! Don't you do this to me! I need to know the answers! Don't you fucking die on me, you son of a bitch!"
"Cameron," he managed to say in between gasps for air, "you have to...find out who he is. It's the only...way."
"Wesley, you have to tell me something more helpful. Please!"
"It's the only..."
He coughed up a large amount of blood and then died immediately after. I removed my hand from his neck and blood heavily poured from it and onto the floor. I stood back up and walked out of the room just as correctional officers were entering the sector of the prison I was in. It took them a while to help me secure the perimeter, but we managed to make sure there was no longer a threat. I'd killed two of the perpetrators but there were clearly more that had escaped. A total of fifteen correctional officers had been murdered, six of whom were found in a janitor's station stripped of their uniforms. The prison had been successfully infiltrated with one goal and one goal only: to kill Wesley Gilmore. It wasn't long before my colleagues and superiors were at the prison helping investigate exactly what happened and how it happened.
"Rowell," said Chief Robert Cunningham, Agent-in-Charge of my unit, as he approached me. "Initial identification results show the two men you neutralized are Edward Holland and Horace Brown, two men who owned a gym in Richmond."
"Sir, why would two gym owners do this?" I asked. "How do they know Gilmore?"
"That's what we're going to have to find out. Well, at least what I'm going to have to find out."
"What do you mean?"
"I'm sending you home, Rowell. I can tell this has been a lot for you to deal with."
"No, I can't go home. Someone has ordered a hit on Gilmore and the hit was successful. I have to find out who did this. Those bastards came at me, too, sir."
"You're shaken up, Rowell."
"Anyone would be shaken up after what happened today in this prison. Sir, I need to continue working this case."
"Chief," called out Agent Fairbanks, one of my colleagues, from the prison interrogation room. "You and Special Agent Rowell need to see this."
Chief Cunningham and I looked at one another for a second before hurrying into the interrogation room. Wesley Gilmore's dead body was still in the room, only now he'd been unhandcuffed and covered with a white sheet. I took my focus off of his covered dead body and asked my colleague, "What is it, Fairbanks?"
"Your recording is gone," he informed me. "I popped open the deck on your sound recorder and noticed the tape is gone."
"Damn," I said angrily. "There were six officers found dead without their uniforms on which means six men infiltrated this prison. I killed two of them, so one of the four perps who got away must have snatched it while the tear gas was thick. Everything Gilmore told me was recorded on that tape."
"Do you remember what he said?" Chief Cunningham asked me.
"I remember everything he said and I will be writing it down in my notes. However, I can't share them with you without a court order, sir."
"What? Why the hell not?"
"I'm not at liberty to say at this moment, sir."
"Rowell, I am your superior and I order you to tell me right now what was said in this room."
"I'll have to follow protocol and report my findings to both the Inspector General and the Deputy Attorney General of the Justice Department at this point."
"That's only protocol if you can't trust me. Are you saying you don't trust me?"
"That is exactly what I am saying, sir. I cannot without a doubt trust you or anyone else at the bureau. You will be briefed the moment you're cleared by the Justice Department."
"I know the damn protocol, Rowell." He chuckled as he said, "I'd be angry with you for pulling this if I weren't so damn proud. I can assure you that you can trust me but I'll wait to be cleared. Good work."
"Thank you, sir."
It took a few more hours to locate and secure every ounce of evidence and finish processing the scene at the prison. When I was finally able to go back to my car, I pulled my iPhone from my blazer pocket and hooked it up to my car charger because it had died by then. After turning it on, I opened my recent sound recordings and found that the backup recording of my conversation with Wesley was safely stored. I uploaded it to my private cloud and then erased it from my phone. Whoever killed Wesley had the physical copy of the recording but I had the only other copy that was recorded on my phone. I made sure that no one else would know that secret as I drove away from the prison.
"I can't believe Gilmore is dead," Byron said to me while setting the table. "He obviously knows a lot for someone to orchestrate a plot to kill him."
"Yeah," I agreed. "I know it may sound wrong but I don't care that the motherfucker is dead. I hope he burns in hell. But the bastards that killed him have made it that much harder for me to take down the network."
"I know we're not supposed to discuss investigations but..."
"No buts, Byron. I can't talk to you about any sensitive information. I vowed to keep no personal secrets from you. This is about work."
He laughed a little and said, "Damn, I understand. Just answer one thing for me. Are you really going around our superiors to give information to the Inspector General and the Deputy Attorney General?"
"Who told you that?"
"It was word around the office by the end of the workday."
"You shouldn't believe every rumor you hear, baby."
He laughed again and asked, "You're not gonna give me a yes or no answer, are you?"
"Would you confirm or deny something like that if I asked?" When he smiled and didn't answer, I smiled back and said, "Hmm, I thought so."
"This is the part where I can't stand being married to a fellow agent. You'd think that since we both work for the bureau then we can share everything with each other."
"Working in different departments means no sharing." I finished sautéing the chicken I was cooking and poured it onto a dish. I brought it, along with everything else, to the table and said, "Bon appétit!"
"Merci, mon mari."
I laughed while asking, "I thought Spanish was your second language?"
"It is but since French and German are your second and third, I figured I might as well start learning one of them so we could have another in common besides English."
"Aw, baby."
"I told you back when you were a rookie that the day to day would be so boring that you'd find yourself learning new languages to pass the time."
"Yeah, you did. But hey, you never know when we'll get assigned to investigate a matter overseas so learning different languages might come in handy."
"True." He picked up the bottle of wine and poured some into our glasses. "Mmm, this all looks delicious. I'm surprised you didn't want to have something delivered here after the day you had."
"I'm not going to let a bad day keep me from cooking for my husband. Food from a restaurant isn't made with the love I have for you."
"See, you say things like that knowing damn well it's gonna lead to some wild butt naked sex later in the evening. You know it will."
I burst out in laughter and agreed, "Yeah, it will."
He began eating and after chasing his food down with some wine, asked, "So, when are we gonna finish moving everything in here?"
I paused from eating to reply, "I guess over the weekend, baby. I'm just happy today is Friday."
"Me, too."
After dinner, we got a fire going in the fireplace and cuddled together on the hardwood living room floor. Although that day had gone to hell for me due to that prison infiltration, I was happy to be with Byron in our new home for a second night. We ended up getting into some foreplay downstairs and after a little cleaning, made love throughout the house. His day must have been rougher than mine because immediately after our lovemaking, he was in a deep sleep. Quietly, I climbed out of bed and put on a pair of pajama bottoms, some sandals and a robe. I left our bedroom and then went downstairs and out of the house. I needed a little fresh air and also space to think about Tommy.
Was everything that Wesley told me true? Had Tommy become associated with a secret society that served as the backbone of all politics in the country? I wasn't sure if I could even begin searching for something so outlandish without ruffling some feathers. My heart didn't want to believe that Tommy would keep something so serious from me, but my mind knew different. As I walked around the block, I came to the conclusion that I had to assume Wesley was telling me the truth. With all of the gay black men on-campus at Calhoun University back then, including myself, why else would the fraternity choose Tommy? And what made him look into the missing gay black men's cases in the first place?
Not wanting to worsen my emotional wounds and the lingering pain associated with them, I decided to give it all a rest and return to it with a fresh mindset after the weekend. I walked back home and once inside, relocked the door and reset the alarm system. I headed back upstairs into the bedroom I shared with my husband and got naked before climbing back into bed with him. He'd turned over on his stomach so I lied halfway on his backside with my arm around him. Silently in my head, I told him I loved him.
"I...love...you, Cam," he murmured aloud in his sleep before sighing and relaxing back into his deep sleep.
I kissed the back of his head as tears began to build in my eyes. There was something about the way he said those three words in his sleep that reminded me of the last time Marlon told me he loved me while he was dying in my arms. He'd used his very last breaths to tell me he loved me. I'd moved on and had made my peace with losing Marlon, but that didn't stop me from crying myself to sleep that chilly mid-March night.