*
The next time I wake, I bolt up like an alarm is screeching in my ear. Which it is—the screech of my inner voice telling me to get up, Benjamin’s on the run, and what the hell am I doing, lying here— Pain. Blinding, gasp-inducing pain blasts through my shoulder. Hands grab me. Hands lower me back to bed. Push me back to bed. Dalton’s voice saying, “Relax. Just relax. You’re okay. Everything’s okay.”
I blink hard to clear my vision. I’m in his bed. He’s there, over me, fussing with my pillow and saying, “You’ve been shot. You’re okay, but you’ve been shot.”
He’s measuring out painkillers. I say, “Not that.”
“Yes, this. You’re in a lot of pain—”
“I can’t think on meds.”
“You can’t think if you’re in pain, either.”
“Eric, please. You know I hate taking—”
He shakes the bottle and says, “Tylenol three. Yeah, Will gave you morphine at first, but now it’s just these, which you are taking. You’ve been shot in the shoulder.”
“You got Benjamin?”
He hands me the pills and busies himself pouring water.
I lift my head. “Eric? If you’re here, that means you got him, right?”
“It was chaos. Fucking chaos. He shot you, and—”
“And that’s why he shot me. Because he knew you’d help me rather than run after him. Tell me Will ran after him.”
“You’d been shot, Casey. Then you fell and hit your head, and yeah, we did exactly what he wanted, but I’m not going to apologize for that. Will got the militia on him right away. I went to try to find his trail, but it was a mess. Tracks everywhere, from everyone running around, thinking they saw him here or there, but it was just another damned militia guy. Will’s out there now with the whole team.”
I wait a moment. Then I say, “Eric?”
He pretends not to hear. He knows what I’m going to say.
“Eric?”
“Yeah, I fucked up in the clinic,” he says. “When he took you captive, I froze. If Will hadn’t been there … You were more useful than I was, and you’d been drugged and had a gun at your head. I just seized up. I couldn’t figure out what to do, so I didn’t do a goddamned thing, and you got shot, and he got away.”
“The point isn’t what you did then, Eric. It’s what you’re doing right now.”
“Someone has to stay with you.”
“And that someone shouldn’t be the best tracker in this town. Anyone can play nursemaid.”
He shakes his head. “Will didn’t know how the painkillers might react with whatever Sutherland—Benjamin—gave you. He said I should stay with you.”
I don’t respond. His jaw works, and he says, “Yeah, he was telling me what I wanted to hear. Letting me do what I wanted to do.”
Which is true, and I could give Anders crap for that, but the truth is, if Dalton was freaked out over me, I’m not sure he’d have been much good out there anyway.
“You need to go,” I say.
“I know.” He exhales. “I’m fucking up in every direction tonight, aren’t I?”
“I wouldn’t have done any different if the situation was reversed.”
“Yeah, you would have.”
He’s wrong. If Benjamin had been holding the gun on Dalton, I would not have been able to see it as a regular hostage situation and react accordingly. That’s a huge problem, professionally. I can’t let my emotions get in the way of my job. But personally?
Personally, I think maybe it’s not such a bad thing if I’ve reached the place in my life where I have enough emotion to let it get in the way of my job. Where I care enough about someone that I could lose my cool at the thought of losing him. And to have someone feel that way about me? As much as I know Dalton made a mistake, it’s not a mistake I ever expected anyone would make for me.
I catch his hand. “No, I wouldn’t have done any different.” I bring him down into a kiss. “We’ll need to work on it.”
“Randomly put ourselves in death-defying situations to inoculate the other to the danger of our imminent death?”
“Others put us there often enough that we’ll be immune any day now.”
He snorts a laugh. “No shit, huh?” He kisses my forehead. “I’ll go. Get some sleep. I’ll bring him back for you.”
*
I drift in and out of fitful sleep. Petra’s there at one point. When I wake again, it’s Diana.
“Where’s Petra?” I ask, and as soon as I do, I regret it, seeing Diana’s expression, my words a slap I didn’t intend.
“I thought she should get some rest,” she says. “Others volunteered. I can go grab Brian.”
“No, no. I was just confused. It seemed like I closed my eyes for a second and she turned into you. Damned drugs.”
I’m not sure she buys the excuse, but she gives an awkward smile and says, “You’re due for more Tylenols soon.”
“Has it been that long?”
“It’s technically morning.” She waves at the darkened window. “As you can tell.”
I groan and slowly pull myself up to a sitting position. It hurts, but it’s manageable. My actual gunshot wound isn’t that bad.
“Is anyone back?” I ask.
“No.”
When I frown, she says, “What’s up?”