Chapter Fifty-Nine

 

DAVIS

 

Ryan Beauchamp was never one to give up. At least, I never got that impression. Not in all the time I tracked him, not in all the time that I've spent with him, not in his official file. He's a fighter, through and through.

But I can see it in his eyes. This time, for some reason or another, he's giving up pretty completely. Getting out of here, getting out of a long prison sentence, none of that's on his mind. Which hurts a little, I got to admit.

There's more to it, though.

Something's making him think that it's smarter to just let us take him in. I try to think about the future I'm going to have when this is all over with. Some day, I think, I'll be able to look back on all this and not feel anything.

Is that what I want? I've given a God damned lot to be in the position I'm in right now, but if I could just get Ryan Beauchamp to pick his God damn head up and start acting like he's not already a dead man, I'd do it in a second.

The time crunch had felt so big, and yet now that it's gone, everything feels strange. Why the hell am I doing any of this? Why am I so worried about him?

He's a criminal, and I'm a federal agent. I worked my ass off to get where I am today, but all I want is just… I don't know, but I don't want to think about it. I can't afford to think about it.

The idea's a hell of a lot more insidious than I thought, though, because now I can't kick it. How hard would it be to fix this little problem of Ryan's?

About impossible, is what I'm thinking. I don't know of a way I could get him out of this trouble. He's got himself in deep enough that he's never gonna get himself back out again.

At least, he won't on his own. That doesn't mean that he'll never get out, though, not by a long shot. Because someone else could get him out.

I swallow hard at the thought. Am I seriously considering this?

No. Of course I'm not. That would, after all, be a crime. Since I'm not a criminal, I wouldn't consider it for even a moment. Not even for Ryan Beauchamp. I'm a respected member of my work, and I do important work, keeping bad people behind bars.

That's who I am, and that's what I do, and I would never even think of trying to break him out.

Never, and definitely not now.

It wouldn't be too hard, though, would it? I mean, the hardest part would be getting him out of the hospital. The handcuffs are easy. The escape is easy once you get him into a car.

Getting across the Mexican border is pretty much all you'd need, and he's been doing that for two years. I can't imagine that he'd suddenly have trouble sneaking across now.

But between the bed and the exit, you'd have to get past Danny, and you'd have to hope that none of the security staff happens to see him. If they see him, you have to hope they haven't been briefed on his situation, which they almost certainly have.

So the hard part, the hardest part by far, is getting him out of there, since it's so reliant on luck.

But otherwise, it'd be easy.

That is, of course, if I were to try something like that, and if I was thinking about it.

Which I'm not doing, and I won't be doing. Because I'm a law enforcement officer, and we don't release criminals, we catch them. We don't let people go because they're… mostly good on the inside.

We catch them because they're mostly bad on the outside.

I tap my fingers on my leg. I don't know when I started doing it, but now it's hard to stop. I feel like I'm coming apart at the seams, here.

Ryan's napping on the bed. I should have gone. I haven't showered in days, I've barely eaten. But I just... can't. Every time I leave, it just sets me on edge. What if something were to happen? What if he were hurt? What if—

A thousand questions, and at the top of the list was 'how do I get past Danny?'

I wasn't thinking about doing it, of course. I wouldn't, not for a second. Helping a known criminal to escape, that's a felony. I'm not responsible for catching that sort of person, but I know enough about the law to know, you don't do that kind of thing.

It takes me from the department considering the option of looking the other way, to committing a big felony. So I'd be an idiot to consider trying to get Ryan past Danny, because that would make what little future I have, extremely short.

It would make my future extremely limited, as well. It'd be, well… I'd have to go with Ryan. More or less like he wanted, I think.

I'd have to jump the border along with him. At some point, of course, we'd both have to find places to settle down. They could be separate, but I don't speak Spanish, and I suppose, if you know someone already, you might as well stick with who you know, right?

So, I mean, it's not that we have a future together, but we could at least stay near each other.

If I were to break him out, which of course I wouldn't.

But I mean, maybe we would have a future together, too? Maybe that's not out of the question? It would probably be cheaper to get one house than two, for example. That would be, I think, totally reasonable. We could be like, room mates.

I mean, one of us could handle that. I don't know if Ryan could keep his hands off me, and I guess I wouldn't mind if that happened, every so often.

But I mean, I'm not really looking forward to it, or anything.

And that's only if I break him out, which I won't.

Or maybe, you know, we'll see how things go. Maybe we live together, maybe there's some kind of ongoing relationship, even.

Maybe we get married. I can't imagine that it's too hard to get married, even in Mexico. Maybe we have a couple of kids. Maybe Ryan teaches them to ride, maybe he teaches them how to shoot. Maybe we have a little family, down there.

Away from all the trouble. I don't know. That would all be in the future, and I'm not thinking about it at all.

Because first, I'd have to break him out of this hospital, and out of Federal custody, and that would be a Federal crime. I would be a fugitive from the law, and I'd be throwing away a very promising career as a law enforcement agent.

But then again, I guess I am thinking about it, because I just found myself wondering whether or not Brian still has those handcuff keys or not, or maybe Logan does as well.

But the handcuffs were always the easy part, because if I'm going to do it—and I'm going to, I know—then I'm still going to have to get him past Danny.

I don't know how I'm going to do it, not yet. But I have to figure out a plan, and I don't have a lot of time or many resources. So I'd better figure it out in a God damned hurry, because otherwise I'm pretty much out of luck.