Loose End

He got the latter message. Touching me wasn't in his brief or his right, under the circumstance. "We just want to talk," he said, taking his hand away and handing out a card. "You can call me and we'll set up an appointment."

Actually, he was a hunk. I would have been happy for him to touch me—and more—but this was not exactly the right circumstance. I hadn't been done by many black guys. Every single one of them who had fucked me, though, had lived up to the "black guys have bigger ones" category.

"I'm sorry. I don't know him, and I am late for a class." I turned and fled up the stairs. He didn't come after me or call anything out. When I hit the top of the stairs, I figured out why. He just had wanted to put me on notification. I'd kept the card, he handed me. That was all the connection he'd been charged to make—for now. I tucked the card in my wallet and kept moving, deep into the library stacks, in search of someplace I could hide completely from the world.

And then, quite involuntarily, my mind started to roll out everything I'd heard in the meeting in my apartment the previous day. I didn't want to remember what I'd heard. But I couldn't keep myself from doing so.

* * * *

Never had I felt more alone and isolated than I did the few moments after the Duxbury Lighthouse keeper, who had brought me and a week's supply of food out to the lighthouse, finished showing me around and giving instructions and was shoving off in his motorboat for the trip back to Duxbury—leaving me nothing other than a row boat that would require an Olympian to get rowed back to civilization. I could see the shore of the peninsula across the mouth of Plymouth Bay from here, but it would be much too far a distance for me to row or swim, and the lighthouse keeper had said, "This stretch of the water is popular with the sharks. You might not want to do much swimming while you're out here."

Ha, ha.

I couldn't complain about the accommodations. It was a surprise to learn that it was built of brick, covered with cement on the outside but with curved red-brick walls on the inside. There were four diminishing-diameter levels going up forty feet to the bedroom level. The compact kitchenette, dining area, and a powder room were on the first, entry level. The second and third levels were sitting areas, with sofa beds, and the fourth level was a bedroom, with a queen-sized bed and a compact, but functional, bathroom, with a shower. Above this was the light, which still functioned to guide ship traffic into and clear of Plymouth Bay.

Most surprising was that the furnishings were luxurious, the cabinetry made of fine woods, the chairs and sofas covered in lush material, Oriental carpets on the floors, and fine, nautical-themed artwork on the walls. The accommodations would have been fine for two. They were more than fine for one.

And I was just one. There was no WiFi and no cable TV. There was no hunk to keep me warm and stuffed. There were DVDs and sound systems, and the cell phone worked, although Bob had told me not to use it.

"You are out there to be off the grid," he said. "I expect you to remain off the grid until after the election. Concentrate on your studies."

The election was in four more weeks. I'd received promises that the lighthouse keeper would be back with more provisions, as needed, without calling him. I was at his mercy on that now, though. Bob had said the lighthouse keeper was a friend and supporter of his. I wasn't sure I found that comforting. The closer we came to the election, the more it seemed that Bob wanted to keep me a secret. I had been getting the feeling that he didn't want me to exist at all anymore.

What about after the election, though, I wondered. What if he won and was off to Washington? Was I a loose end even then? Would the press stop sniffing around us then or would the danger of discovery increase? Why would they stop after he entered the U.S. Senate? Was it just me they were sniffing around about? Was Bob involved in more that would be of interest to them? Did I want to think about what I might know about that?

Why was the FBI interested in him? I needed to quit fooling myself on that, though. I knew several reasons why the FBI would be interested in him. And if Bob thought about it, he'd know I knew a lot.

A lot of questions. Too many questions. I had four weeks of being entirely alone to consider the questions—or not. It turned out I had less than a week.

I had been on the lighthouse for only four days when I was sitting at the dining table, eating my lunch, with the guitar music of Wes Montgomery swirling around in the lighthouse, when I heard a boat bump up against the lighthouse. A man's voice called out something that was muffled by the music and brick walls, and the door opened.

I expected to see the lighthouse keeper, although I didn't expect to see him for three more days and there hadn't been a storm or anything, nor was one expected. I didn't expect to see the dynamic media lawyer, Scott Pawley. But that's who was standing there.

He smiled, lifted a six pack of beer, and said, "I thought you might be getting lonely out here—and needing a liquid boost . . . and someone to share it with."

"What would make you think that?" I asked as I started to strip my shorts off. That was all I'd been wearing.

We didn't get around to starting on the beer until after he'd fucked me for two hours—at first right there on the dining table, with me on my back and my ankles on his shoulders, as he screwed me in a slow and sensual missionary. And then on a sofa in front of the TV with a Johnny Rapid and Colby Keller porno flick running (I was playing Johnny and Scott was doing the honors as Colby), and, finally, as twilight approached, on the queen-sized bed on the forth level. I just lay there, stretched out, legs spread and bent, entirely open and vulnerable, moaning low, as Scott took everything he wanted from me. And he wanted it all. And then he wanted it all again.

Afterward, finally having gotten to the beer, which, thankfully, had gotten into the refrigerator before he started to maul me, we lay next to each other, our backs propped up against the headboard, and spoke.

"How did you—?" I asked.

"You showed me the brochure, remember?" He answered. "I made a note of it."

"But, still. How did you know I'd be out here now?"

"I have my ways."

"Apparently so. You didn't track me down just for another tutorial on dynamic media, did you?"

"So, you want to get right to business, do you?"

"What business?" I asked.

"Maybe it's best we do. We might not have much time."

"You didn't come out here just to keep me company and to get your rocks off, did you?" I asked, turning and sitting up on the side of the bed. Suddenly the turret room was too small. There was no place to go. I had a sinking feeling on what this was really about.

"OK, I'm not out here just for sex—as nice as that is. I'm out here to save your skin."

"How do you figure that?" I asked. "You've done everything to me but flailed my skin off."

"Why do you think you're out here, water all around, all by yourself, with no means of your own to go someplace else?"

"Because I'm studying lighthouses?"

"That's the reason why an isolated, off-shore lighthouse was chosen—was manipulated into your mind—but who chose this for you?"

"I don't know what you're getting at."

"I think you do." He was right, I was pretty sure I did. "Did you track down this lighthouse as someplace you could go to be out of the way for the coming election, or did Senator Robert Bromley pick it out?"

"Bob showed me the brochure and offered to pay for it, yes. But I really am studying lighthouses. There really is a good reason to be here. And what do you know about Senator Bromley?"

"One of the better reasons is to have you out of the way during the election," Scott said, ignoring my question. "And the best reason of all is to have you isolated somewhere where it would be easy to do away with you and just have you float off toward Europe. I'm sorry to be blunt. But there it is. You are a liability to Bromley now that he plans to move up in status and to Washington. You didn't think he'd take you to Washington when he went, did you? He'll need his showcase family there. He certainly won't need a male rent-boy. And when he does need rent-boys, he chooses ones that know their way around the Washington shark pool."

"That's quite a charge," I said. If I'd said it more convincingly, though, I might have convinced myself he couldn't possibly be right. "Even if so, what's it to you?" I asked.

"I'll level with you. I'm working with Julia McVee's campaign against Bromley. We'd like you to come over to us. We wouldn't have to take this public. The mere knowledge that you were with us, being protected by us, would make Bromley back down. He's involved in so much illegal crap, anyway. We could help get you out of this and serve the people of Massachusetts at the same time. We're not just making guesses here. We have informants who say there's a hit out on you. That you know too much that Bromley and his associates don't want known. We could . . . what's that? Did you hear something?"

"Just your boat scraping against the side of the lighthouse. Just the waves—"

"There are no waves. The water out here is calm. There. Hear that?" He was out of the bed like a jackrabbit and pawing around in his clothes. He came up with a handgun.

"Hey what is that—?" But then I saw it just as Scott did. A face appearing at the top of the stairs from the lower levels. A raised handgun. Scott fired a shot and was off toward where the intruder, now disappeared, had gone.

I stayed put, paralyzed and in shock. I heard more shots and then nothing. After a couple of minutes Scott reappeared and I let out a long breath, realizing only then that I hadn't been breathing in the seconds, which I thought were hours, that he was gone.

"He got away, but I think I might have winged him. Who do you think—?" he started to say, but I interrupted him.

"I recognized him. He's Bob's fixer bodyguard, Stan. OK, so I get your point," I answered.

"Did you, really? Did you notice that he came, gun drawn, thinking you were the only one here?"

"Yes. I said that I got your point."

"We'll lock up as well as we can and hole up as best as we can until morning. There are arrangements to meet us—me, if you won't come back with me—in Duxbury tomorrow and then a safehouse from there. I don't want to try to navigate into the harbor in the dark. Will you come with me?"

"What do you think?"

I didn't answer beyond that. I let Scott think what he wanted. We settled in overstuffed chairs on the third level, him with his gun at the ready. But he'd been as tired out by the sex as I was. I outlasted him in staying awake. I wasn't any more happy trying to navigate a boat into Plymouth Bay and the harbor than he was, but I did it, leaving him high and dry unless he was an expert with row boats—and, I hoped, still asleep—in the lighthouse.

As soon as I got into Plymouth Harbor—I didn't go anywhere near Duxbury—I fished the card the FBI guy, Ron Brown, had given me out of my wallet and called the number. If I was going to go over to anyone and away from Bob Bromley, it wasn't going to be to just another Massachusetts politician on the make. I was going to go to the Feds. I wasn't going to be anyone's loose end anymore.