Darker Than Any Shadow

Chapter Forty-three

Rico charmed the ward nurse into letting him lie down in the unoccupied bed in my room. Trey refused to sleep, or even put his head down. He sat in the green chair, elbows to knees, all right angles and straight lines. Only his eyes gave him away, like they’d been washed and wrung out too many times.

I looked over at Rico, curled on his side. “C’mon, Trey, you don’t buy that poetry stalker nonsense, do you?”

“There’s evidence for it.”

“But it makes no sense.”

“Most murders make no sense.”

He had a point. No wonder the press was all over the Dead Poet Killer. It had a narrative.

“So until we know for sure, we need to keep our options open, right? Even if that means making you and Rico do things neither of you wants to do.”

“I agree. But this rule applies to you as well.”

Damn it. Leave it to Trey to turn my lecture back so neatly on me, like a Krav Maga move.

I leaned back against the pillows. “What do I have to do?”

“First of all, you have to let me make the decisions about what I do and when I do it, and not argue with me.”

Not fighting when he had to make a decision. Simple enough.

“Fine. What else?”

“You have to tell me every piece of information that comes your way, even if you’d rather I didn’t know about it because you suspect I’ll make a decision you don’t like or because you got this information through questionable means.”

Sharing my goodies, even the illicit ones. “Okay. No problem.”

“And you have to stay in a secure location for the rest of the competition.”

“What!” I popped back up. “Like hell I’m missing the finals!”

“The doctor said you have to stay off your foot.”

“I’ll get crutches.”

“And you’re on narcotics.”

“I’ll chew aspirin and go cold turkey. All I need is—”

“No!”

His voice was sharp. I stopped talking, a little stunned at the outburst. I got that feeling of standing on the edge of something again, my toes over thin air, pebbles tumbling into the abyss.

Trey leaned forward, eyes unwavering. “You wanted to know what I need to keep Rico safe tonight. I told you. There’s a reason I don’t do personal protection anymore. It’s a complex system, non-sequential and tightly correlated.”

I recognized the terms. He was telling me it was unpredictable, with multiple ways that things could go wrong, and that the tiniest wrong thing had a tendency to spiral into a huge wrong thing.

“You know I don’t perform well in non-linear systems, not anymore. Yesterday’s events prove it. I can protect Rico, or I can protect you. I can’t do both. And if I’m forced to choose…” His voice trailed off, and he sat back in the chair, flinging his gaze at the far wall. “You can’t ask that of me.”

My stomach hurt. Hell, everything hurt. I wanted to argue, but Trey wasn’t telling me about my character flaws, or making excuses for his. He was handing me reality in a plain brown wrapper, not a single pretty bow in sight.

“I understand everything you’re saying, Trey. But I can’t miss the biggest moment of my best friend’s life. And you can’t ask that of me.”

We stared at each other, a canyon of compromise between us. In the next bed, Rico stretched and rolled over. His eyes snapped with annoyance.

“If you two will quit all this angst-riddled explaining about what you can and can’t possibly do…I have an idea.”

***

The doctor listened to my chest one more time before signing my orders. “You’re good to go, Ms. Randolph. I’ll put in the release papers.” He made markings on a clipboard. “Do you have somebody here with you?”

A voice from the hall interrupted my reply. “Don’t worry, Doc. She’s covered.”

It was Garrity. He grinned. “Trey called. He said he and Rico are reviewing the protocol for this evening. So he sent me to fetch you and take you to his place before I head into work, a plan he said you were not going to argue with. Is that so?”

I exhaled deliberately. “Yes. That is so.”

Garrity popped his hands on his hips. “Well, that’s a sweet surprise, you being all docile.”

I set my jaw. “Don’t get used to it. Once the finals are over, it’s business as usual.”

***

When the elevator finally reached Trey’s floor, Garrity shouldered my bag while I maneuvered the crutches. It was harder than it looked, but Garrity was patient. At the door, he pulled a key from his pocket. He looked at me expectantly, then his eyes skipped sideways, then back to me, still smiling. It was a fake smile.

I frowned. “What’s going on?”

The door swung open. And then I smelled it.

Ham.

And there Rico stood, surrounded by the team, holding a platter of biscuits. There was a smattering of applause from the dozen or so people crowded into Trey’s living room. I saw Frankie and Padre within their own separate knots of supporters, Vigil with a sleek dark-skinned Amazon on his arm. Even the media had a presence, including Sloane with her reporter’s bag and one Hollywood chap with a camera on his shoulder and an entourage of underlings.

Trey himself stood in his corner by the window, arms folded tight. Uh oh, I thought. But then he looked my way, and if the wrinkle between his eyes didn’t disappear, it did soften.

“Don’t just stand there, hobble on in,” Rico said.