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Man of Honor
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Man of Honor
♥
Maria Albert
H OME . Safe. Dillon. The words repeated over and over in
Detective Gabriel D’Angelo’s brain, a mantra of comfort, as
he rested his forehead on the steering wheel of his silver
pickup in the parking lot behind his apartment building.
Angel almost hadn’t made it. He’d miraculously survived the
three-month deep-cover assignment from hell—three months
that had somehow stretched to six—in the Mexican drug
cartel that had been working its way up California and made
the mistake of thinking they could set up shop here in
Hilldale like they had in San Diego and LA. Survived almost
unscratched, until everything went wrong.
The bust had gone sour at the last moment. The shit
had hit the fan, the bullets flew, half their suspects had
ended up dead or wounded, and Angel himself had barely
made it out of there alive. Not unscathed, but near enough.
Still, his arm burned like a son of a bitch, now that the shot
of painkiller they’d given him had worn off, while he was
being debriefed. Eight freaking hours, on top of the four he’d
spent at the hospital. He wasn’t done with the debriefing
either, not by a long shot, but the captain had seen he was
completely burnt out, used up, running on fumes, when
Angel had slipped into Spanish without realizing it. He’d
spoken far more Spanish than English these past six
months. He might look like an Anglo, with his bristle-blond
hair and piercing blue eyes, but he spoke like a native. He’d
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Man of Honor
♥
Maria Albert
grown up on a ranch in Tolerance, Texas, right on the border
of Mexico.
With a curse, Angel yanked his thoughts away from
those memories, for sanity’s sake. He’d never have gotten
that close to dredging up the past if he weren’t half out of his
mind with exhaustion. Maybe more than half. Angel had had
less than four hours’ sleep in the past ninety-six hours, and
during that time had been flying an adrenaline high and
falling in the crash at least a dozen times, he’d been caught
on the wrong side of the bust. Smack dab in that free-for-all,
the shootout, he’d been shot, for Christ’s sake! Just the
muscle of his bicep, nothing too severe, no nerve or bone
damage, thank God, but still. Then, like an idiot, he hadn’t
accepted the ride he’d been offered, and nearly died a second
time.
He’d wanted to come home in his own truck, on his own
terms. He’d needed to. It was part of the ritual, putting the
deep-cover assignment behind him, changing back from the
twisted, treacherous, coldhearted, vicious bastard he’d been
posing as to the man he really was. It was more than that.
He was coming out of cop mode, too, morphing from
someone who could betray everyone around him in the name
of the job to someone who was trusted but also worthy of
that trust. One of the good guys. A man of honor. The man
Dillon loved. Hopefully.
Six months. God! They’d been together less than three
when he got the assignment. Six months without a word, a
touch between them. Dillon could be dead for all…. Angel
fought down the panic that thought brought. Dillon wasn’t
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Man of Honor
♥
Maria Albert
dead. Angel knew he wasn’t. He’d had some very limited
contact while he was on the inside of the operation, his
partner on this assignment, his backup, Juanita Esperanza.
She’d posed as his on-again, off-again girlfriend so the cartel
wouldn’t get suspicious that he never got laid. She’d been his
link to the good things, his real life, giving him word that
Dillon was okay. Hell, the kid was thriving, in his job in the
Surveillance Unit, in his classes at school. The kid didn’t
need him anymore. He could….
Angel shook his head at his stupidity. Dillon loved him.
Christ, the kid all but worshipped him. It was scary
sometimes, knowing how much Dillon needed him. And he’d
left Dillon alone to fend for himself, abandoned him, just like
his father had when he threw him out onto the streets last
year, fresh out of high school, just like his ex-boyfriend
Connor had when he saw Dillon was broke, that the gravy
train had dried up. No. No, it wasn’t like that. Angel hadn’t
left him. It was his job. Dillon knew that, accepted it. It
wasn’t his fault he was Dillon’s whole world. Dillon had lost
all his so-called friends when he came out, when he was
thrown out of his father’s house, his neighborhood, his social
circle. Angel kept encouraging Dillon to make new friends, at
work, but especially at school, kids his own age, ones he had
something in common with. Dillon couldn’t spend all his
time hanging out with some beaten-up bruiser of a cop twice
his age.
God, he was tired. His mind was whirling in circles—no,
spirals, bad ones, like drilling into an oil well, inky black
viscous gunk. No, not oil. No, he wasn’t going to think of the
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Man of Honor
♥
Maria Albert
oil rig he’d worked on that summer when he was eighteen, or
how the pain in his damn arm felt too much like that rabid
coyote bite he’d gotten when he was sixteen, not fucking
thinking of anything that reminded him of Texas, of the
ranch, of home. Of family, his other family, the one Dillon
didn’t even know about. What was left of it. He swallowed
hard, forcing a sudden flood of tears from his eyes. Christ,
he hadn’t cried since… no! No, he wouldn’t go there.
Exhaustion had weakened all his emotional walls to a
scary degree and everything was roiling right at the surface.
Dillon was his family now, the only family he needed, no
matter what long-lost faces had flashed in front of his mind’s
eye when the bullets were flying, when he was hit, when he
thought he might die.
Angel forced himself away from the one near-death
experience to the slightly more recent one. He’d fallen asleep
at the wheel on the way home. Out cold. He’d jerked back
awake to the blare of the horn from the oncoming taxi and
swerved his truck back over the double yellow line into his
own lane just in time. Although the other driver had
corrected too, he probably wouldn’t have hit him. Angel had
stopped, shaking wildly. He’d nearly thrown up in the cab of
his truck afterward; he’d barely pulled over in time to vomit
on the asphalt instead. Now he was crashing again, the
adrenaline surge long since spent, leaving him weak and
shaky and way too far past exhausted. He just wanted to
crawl into his own bed, wrap his arms around Dillon, and
sleep for a week. He hadn’t seen the kid in six months and
all he wanted to do was sleep. Damn, he was getting old. He
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