Chapter 8
Deacon felt the fight leave Rafe as soon as he said the words. He’d known they would have that effect.
“How? They told me he would never get out.”
“He kept on his meds, found Jesus, fooled everyone, and ran.”
“He killed people?” Rafe said, and shivered. “He hurt me.”
“Let’s get you out of the window and talk,” Mac said.
“I’m tired,” Rafe mumbled, and shrugged deeper into Mac’s jacket. He didn’t sound tired – he sounded as if he’d slipped into shock, and Mac made a hand gesture over his head and then melted away into the darkness, Cisco at his side.
Deacon put an arm around Rafe’s shoulder, and he didn’t flinch away, and that wasn’t a good sign, because Deacon had seen the bruising all over his body from the accident. Deacon helped him back into the bedroom and shut the window one-handed. Rafe wobbled, and Deacon scooped him up as best as he could; the idiot was freezing. He carried him out of the bedroom and into the front room, deposited him on the sofa, and stepped back to look down at him. What could he say now? Should he explain about Felix, about the shitfest that meant the psychotic fucker was on the streets? Or the fact that Deacon had seen footage of the accident that had put Rafe in hospital, and there was a very high possibility that it had been Felix behind the wheel?
He went straight to the kitchen, made cocoa, grabbed blankets, and headed back to the sofa, where Rafe hadn’t moved except to strip off Mac’s jacket. Something about Rafe wearing that damn jacket had left Deacon feeling vaguely territorial. Go figure.
His eyes were still closed, and Deacon had a lot to tell him. He pushed blankets over Rafe, noticed his bare feet, wondering how far he’d thought he’d get outside without shoes, then moved a dining room chair to sit in front of him.
“Drink your chocolate,” he said, carefully, quietly, waiting for Rafe to snap and hoping he didn’t.
Rafe opened his eyes and reached for the drink, but his hand caught in the blankets and he stared down at it as though he didn’t know what to do next.
Yep. Shock.
Deacon helped him again, and finally Rafe was sipping the hot, sweet drink and hadn’t closed his eyes again. It didn’t seem as he’d be receptive to talking, so Deacon waited a little longer.
Finally, the drink gone, Rafe looked up at him. Gone was the fear in Rafe’s eyes, and instead there was the same steely focus he’d seen years ago back at his uncle’s place.
“I drew a picture of you,” Rafe announced. “I mean, not me really, but I gave your details to the police and they sat with me and we created this picture. I told them you shot me, that you tried to kill me, and they took me seriously.”
“I know they did.”
“But they didn’t mean it, right? They were humoring me, keeping your cover intact.”
What did Rafe want him to say? Did he want Deacon to deny everything at this point? What would make Rafe feel better?
“My cover was important.”
Rafe huffed noisily. “I never saw daylight after they pulled me from the water; they had me in a hospital and Evie told me you’d gone. I guess she lied. Right?”
That wasn’t so much a question as a statement of fact. Still, Deacon nodded. “Evie was my partner, my backup in this case, and she protected you from knowing it all.”
“Protection? More like deception.”
“Sides of the same coin,” Deacon defended her, although Rafe’s huff made him think that he wasn’t agreeing with that statement
“How did Felix get out…when…why didn’t Evie…or anyone tell me?” Rafe’s words were a jumbled mess.
“I don’t have the full details of what happened.”
“Then tell me what you do know.”
“All I know, all that Evie told me, is that he was in for an evaluation, he was determined, and he got out. He headed straight for you.”
“How did he know…” Rafe looked confused, then the confusion cleared. “That article,” he said. “I’m so fucking stupid.”
“You should have been warned to keep your head down,” Deacon reassured him. “Evie should have said.”
“She did. I got the lecture, and the training, but this was important to me, and everyone who might have wanted to hurt me, they were all dead or locked away… Shit, I fucked everything up.” Rafe sat quietly, then he stiffened, and that was the moment when Deacon could see it hit him what had happened.
“The accident?” he asked in a careful tone.
“I think it was Felix.”
“He wants to kill me. Why? What’s the point now?”
Deacon imagined that in Rafe’s world, the bad guys stayed in prison, and the good guys got to live their happily ever after. Then it hit him how wrong he was. Rafe had seen his father killed, had never known his mother, and had deliberately thrown himself on his uncle’s charity to find evidence to put his remaining family in jail.
“He is a murderer…”
“Okay,” Rafe said, and pushed off the blankets holding him tight, standing up with the help of the sofa arm.
Deacon got up immediately, with a hand out to help him. “You need to take it easy.”
Rafe ignored the hand and stood, albeit shakily, leaning to one side. “I’m going home.”
“No.”
“Call me a cab. I’m going home.”
“What? No.”
“Then give me a phone and I’ll call a cab myself.”
Deacon moved bodily to stop Rafe going anywhere, holding his upper arms, feeling the warmth of his skin under his touch. “Sleep now. We’ll talk in the morning. Yeah?” He rubbed the warm skin, and Rafe’s posture loosened a little.
“How did I even get wherever this is?”
“I brought you, as soon as I knew you were hurt and Felix was out there somewhere. I came and found you.”
“Out of the hospital. What if you shouldn’t have moved me? What if you’d killed me?” He looked right at Deacon. “Again,” he added softly.
“You weren’t in medical danger post-op and once they put a cast on your leg.”
“I want to go home,” Rafe said, his voice softer. “I already gave up everything once; I won’t let it happen again. I have friends, I teach at a good school. I won’t let my family take that from me again.”
“You can’t go home, Rafe – your identity is blown to hell.”
All the fight seemed to leave Rafe, and he slumped.
“Get some sleep; we’ll talk in the morning.”
Rafe shrugged off his hold and used the sofa to aid him walking around Deacon, then with his back straight he limped to his room, the wall the only thing holding him up. The door closed behind him, and Deacon fought the instinct to go in and check if he was okay.
Deacon had shot Rafe, and lost the right to be that person who could follow him into a bedroom.
Mac cleared his throat from behind Deacon. “Was it the right thing to do telling him?”
Deacon sighed noisily and fussed Cisco. “Did you hear what he was saying?”
“He wants to go home. I get that; I would want to go home as well.”
Deacon faced his old friend, the big, scarred man whose bravery had no limits, the one who’d seen and done so much. “He’s not like you or me – he’s a teacher, for god’s sake.”
Mac took a seat on the huge sofa and sprawled out, Cisco jumping up and curling next to him, and Deacon sat opposite. He had so many conflicting issues in his head, and he had to fix them, so maybe he needed to talk, and possibly the man he’d grown up with was the best choice.
Mac scratched Cisco’s head. “One idea is you take him home and wait for this guy Felix to take another shot at him, and we take him out.”
Horrified didn’t cut it. “I’m not deliberately putting a civilian in harm’s way.”
Another door in the long corridor opened, and Sam came out, yawning. He stopped by the sofa. “What’s wrong?” he asked, and didn’t argue when Mac tugged at him and Sam ended up on his lap, Cisco shifting along as if this was a nightly ritual.
Something sharp poked Deacon’s heart. He wanted that easy relationship, that simple, uncomplicated connection, and for a short time he’d wildly considered it with Rafe.
Rafe with his soft kisses and his plea that Deacon wasn’t like the rest of them in that house.
Sam turned in Mac’s arms and burrowed his head into Mac’s neck, murmuring something and making strong, silent, angsty hard-man Mac laugh.
Seemed like tonight wasn’t a talking kind of night.
“I’ll leave you to it,” Deacon said as he stood and stretched.
“We can still talk,” Mac said, rubbing small circles into Sam’s back.
“It’s late, the security is up, but I’m thinking Rafe will stay in his room. Catch you on the flipside.”
He bumped fists with Mac as he passed, and paused outside Rafe’s door for a moment. He couldn’t hear any movement, but he didn’t need to worry about where Rafe was at any given time; the security in this house was at some crazy-extreme waiting-for-the-zombie-apocalypse level courtesy of Mac and his need to protect everything precious in his life.
In his room, Deacon undressed and lay back on his bed in his shorts. With his hands pillowing his head, he stared up at the ceiling. Tomorrow he had to make Rafe see that he was the one who would keep him safe; the one person who would risk everything to keep him alive. He didn’t imagine for one minute it would be easy.
Nothing good in life ever was.
He must have slept, because when he opened his eyes again, there was faint dawn light coming through the windows. His first instinct was to check on Rafe, and he pulled on jeans and a T-shirt and padded down the stairs to Rafe’s room. The door was ajar, and he looked in, pleased to see Rafe on the bed, curled into the covers, his face to the door, sound asleep. The painkillers were open on the bedside cabinet, and it seemed he had given in and taken some.
Deacon had coffee on pretty much immediately, Sam yawning widely and joining him a little after six.
“Couldn’t sleep?” he asked, and took a mug of coffee with a grateful smile.
Deacon had a lot of answers for that one, reasons why it was important he didn’t sleep, but in the end, all he did was nod. “You?” he asked.
“Dreams,” Sam explained briefly. Deacon didn’t push for more; Sam had seen some things in his time, traumatic incidents that he didn’t talk about but that Mac had alluded to. “Mac is in the shower. How’s Rafe – Craig – doing?”
“Sleeping.”
Sam sat on one of the stools at the counter. “So what now?”
“We won’t be here long,” Deacon began, but Sam held up a hand to stop him.
“I didn’t mean that – you can stay as long as you need to. I mean what now with the guy who wants to kill him? What do you and Mac have planned?”
“He has this insane idea about Rafe going back to his new life and waiting it out until Felix tries again.” He still couldn’t get his head around that suggestion. He was going to keep Rafe safe if it killed him, and keeping him safe meant hiding him away somewhere.
But Sam didn’t immediately agree that it was an insane idea. He didn’t jump in and point out that Mac was putting a civilian at risk and that there was no way Mac should even think that way.
Nope, he just sat there looking as if he was considering the concept.
“What the hell, Sam?” Deacon snapped. “You can’t think it’s a good idea to put Rafe out there as bait? He’s a fucking teacher, for god’s sake, not some undercover special forces guy with Mac’s skills. Two minutes with Felix and a gun, and Rafe is dead.”
Sam glanced past Deacon, but he didn’t have to tell him that Rafe was standing there. Deacon just knew.
“Better dead than running away all the time,” Rafe murmured, and brushed past Deacon, heading for the coffee. His gait was awkward with the cast and the crutch that Deacon had found him from somewhere, and the fact that he’d likely hurt himself the night before climbing out that damn window.
“I’ll deal with Felix,” Deacon said.
Rafe’s shoulders sagged, and he turned to face Deacon. “Like you already did? Good job, by the way, on letting him get away with pleading insanity.”
“You don’t understand—”
“I don’t?” Rafe cut him dead, looking stronger than he had the day before. His skin was pale, shadows under his eyes, and he was bent at the waist a little, like it hurt to stand upright, but he looked determined.
“Rafe, I just want to keep you safe.”
Rafe hobbled over to him and poked him in the chest. Hard. “You don’t get to decide what I do. Consider yourself off this case.”
“This isn’t a case,” Deacon said helplessly.
“Then call it getting the fuck away from me and out of my life. As soon as I can, I’m going home, and you can’t stop me.” He poked at Deacon again, but Deacon grabbed his hand and held on.
“I’m not letting you go.”
Rafe attempted to yank his hand from his grip, and only succeeded in losing his balance, stepping back to steady himself and catching his hip on the counter. He cursed and tugged again, and this time Deacon let him go, knowing the counter would hold him up.
“You,” Rafe snarled, “don’t let me do anything.”
Rafe was fire and passion, and Deacon fought the instinctive need to pull him into his arms and hold on tight. He’d thought he’d never see Rafe again, had imagined that there would never be a point when they would need to meet.
But this?
This was touching, and feeling, and the lid that he’d put on his dangerous attraction to Rafe had slipped too far. He moved closer, saw the flash of fear on Rafe’s face, the subtle tension in each line of him. Rafe was scared of him.
He backed away immediately, and ruthlessly pushed down any escalating affection he’d allowed himself to feel.
“I’ll keep you safe from Felix,” he said after a short pause during which Rafe stared at him with that same fear in his eyes.
Rafe’s expression changed, then, from fear to disbelief. He shook his head in denial.
“It’s not Felix who’s worrying me. Who the fuck is going to keep me safe from you?”
He crutched his way out of the kitchen, mug in his other hand, coffee sloshing over the side and onto the floor. Deacon grabbed napkins and wiped it up, aware that sometime during that awkward exchange with Rafe, Sam had left the room.
Who could blame him?
Mac walked in, Cisco at his side, “Sam said—”
“Yeah,” Deacon interrupted.
“What will you do?”
“Try to get him to see that he should stay here while I find Felix.”
“He won’t go for it,” Mac said, helping himself to coffee and then filling Cisco’s water bowl and weighing out kibble. Deacon watched his movements and waited until he was done before starting to talk again.
“He has to stay here. You didn’t see what I saw at the end.”
“Like what?”
“Three bodies in a back room, all shot point-blank.” One of them Bryan, a kid with a stutter who tended bar. Arlo had killed them, or ordered it. Probably the latter, because Arlo never got his own hands dirty. From the violence done to Bryan, someone Felix liked to bully almost as much as he bullied Rafe, Deacon had always thought it was Felix who had been the blunt instrument that killed anyone in Arlo’s way.
In his gut, Deacon knew it had been Felix; he’d seen the madness in the man, the willingness to hurt others.
“They were clearing up after themselves.”
“Yeah.”
Mac hoisted himself up onto the counter. “Your man won’t stay here. He’s got that look about him, as if he wants to face whatever he has to. I don’t blame him, if this fucker tried to kill him.”
Guilt pricked at Deacon. Rafe probably put him squarely in the camp of people who’d tried to kill him. Nah, there was no probably about it.
He sighed heavily and looked pointedly at Mac, wondering where this was going. “So what do I do?”
“Negotiate. Let us work on finding Felix first. Step back from the situation and understand what he wants and try to keep him safe while he’s doing what he needs to do.”
Deacon huffed. “Who died and made you clever?”
Deacon was the cautious one; Mac was a guy who lived on the edge, the one to start the trouble, and the one who never ran from the consequences. Mac lived and breathed trouble with a frightening control, which made him the perfect Marine.
“Sam insisted on climbing the damn mountain with me.”
That wasn’t a good comparison. “He was trained to climb mountains.”
Mac frowned. “No, he wasn’t, not as I was. But he was fucking brave, right by my side through everything.”
“And you think the same thing about Rafe? It’s not brave if it’s stupid.”
Mac hopped off the counter and stood really close to Deacon, tapping him on the forehead. “They’re different sides of the same coin,” he said as he tapped.
Irritability snagged at Deacon, and he caught Mac’s hand, bending the finger back and shoving at him.
“Get out of my face, asshole.”
Mac grinned at him. “Negotiate,” he said one last time. “Now, if you’re done with your angsting and shit, I have a wet, naked Sam to find.”
He sauntered out of the kitchen, and Deacon couldn’t even raise a sarcastic comment about not wanting to picture his best friend buck-naked in a shower. His brain capacity was too full of what the hell to do with Rafe.
Negotiate? He didn’t want to be in a position of taking Rafe anywhere near a place where Felix could get to him. So maybe Mac meant stall him. He’d said to give him a chance to find Felix, so all Deacon needed to do was stall him long enough to give them the time they needed.
How hard could that be?