38
You’re My Friend
Kyle.
Hearing the words from Beckett had provided little comfort. Cole needed to see her. He needed to touch her sweet face without the duct tape. The chemical the mercenaries had used against him wafted up nauseatingly, burning his throat. The white button-down shirt he’d thrown on to make a snack for Kyle at the church had been through much more than he’d intended. He had to be rid of the smell. It was awful.
Kyle. He twisted the handle of Eve’s ridiculously fast motorcycle. It responded willingly. Cole took one hand off the controls and ripped his shirt open. He let the wind take it off his body. He looked quickly to see it flutter behind him like a flag of surrender before it deflated on the asphalt.
Kyle. Now clad only in his jeans and socks, he leaned into turns and took the sidewalk when the traffic impeded his forward motion. The blue signs with the H guided him toward the hospital and called to him like sea nymphs. As he rolled over a bridge, he tossed the gun Eve had given him. When he finally saw the building that held Kyle towering formidably in front of him, he took a deep breath. Channeling Beckett, Cole aimed the motorcycle straight at the ER’s automatic doors.
He filled the waiting room to the brim with the engine’s growl, but after a quick glance at the shocked people in carefully lined chairs, Cole moved the motorcycle forward.
When he got to the curtained maze that kept the sick from having to look at one another, he cut the engine and laid the bike on its side. The hospital personnel looked mildly surprised and curious to see a shirtless, shoeless man and a motorcycle. Anything could happen in an ER and often did. Calmly and without moving too quickly, one of the nurses paged security over the intercom.
“Kyle?” Cole looked around wildly. He was beyond functioning as a rational human being.
“Kyle!” His need for her strangled him.
“KYLE!” Cole beat his chest with his fist, bending at the waist with the force of his cry. His head snapped up. He’d heard her soft, sleepy voice.
“Cole? Cole? Please, Cole?”
All the people who should spring into action in the presence of a screaming, half-naked man in a hospital now started in his direction. The door to his left was open. He darted in and pulled back the privacy curtain.
Kyle. There she was, propped up in a hospital bed. Only one of her eyes was completely open, but she smiled and held her arms out to him. Cole crawled onto her bed, right over the footboard and up to her arms.
“Kyle, I was so afraid.” Cole lifted his head from the comfort of her bosom to see her face again.
She smoothed back his wild, knotted hair. “It’s you. It’s you. It’s you.”
A crowd in the doorway interrupted their loving revelation. Nurse Susan stormed into the room.
Cole ignored them all and kissed Kyle’s sleepy lips. “I love you, Kyle. Thank you for being alive. They didn’t hurt you, did they?”
Kyle sighed. “They hurt me so much when they took you, Cole. That’s the worst pain on earth. The worst.” Kyle kissed his forehead and ran her hands over his back. “I’m your shadow. I love you too.”
“I take it you’re the Cole she wanted so badly we needed to sedate her?” Susan ran a quick visual check on him while he took inventory of her official patient. “You have a nasty head contusion, young man.”
Cole nodded, touching Kyle’s cheek.
“What the hell is this?” John bellowed, pushing his way in roughly. “What’s going on?”
Susan stepped in front of him. “This gentleman is your daughter’s best sedative,” she said. “I suggest a gentle approach.”
John met Susan’s eyes. “Fine.”
Susan bustled off, mumbling about ice, and chased away the security personnel and other employees who came to help after the commotion.
Cole noticed Kyle could open both eyes now.
“Daddy, this is Cole Bridge,” she said. “He’ll never be far from my side.”
Cole shook off the magic of her touch and stood to greet her father. “Sir, I’m sorry to meet you under these circumstances. This is all my fault. I didn’t protect your daughter.”
Kyle tried to get up immediately.
“Stay in bed.” John pointed to the crumpled blankets she nested in.
She reclined, but remained as focused as it seemed she could in her groggy state.
John sighed as he looked Cole up and down. “Cole, is it? Do you have a good goddamn reason for screaming and climbing into my daughter’s bed with no shirt? What the hell do you do for a living?”
Cole fidgeted and tried to look more clothed. “Sir, I’ve been working at the church. But…” He turned and smiled at Kyle. “That situation may be changing.”
John rubbed his eyes. “This has been the weirdest goddamn night.”
Kathy, the receptionist from the precinct, tentatively knocked on the door. “Excuse me, John? I just wanted to drop by and make sure you guys didn’t need anything. I heard from the boys what was going on.” When one of their own was in trouble, the wall of blue tightened up around him.
“Kathy. Hey, thanks. Yeah, I made a lot of calls trying to figure things out. Could you grab Livia for me? I’m sure she’ll want to see her sister now that she’s awake.”
John turned to face Kyle and her half-naked, half-holy boyfriend. Then he froze. He held up a finger as if to stop someone from talking, but the room was silent.
“Where’s Livia?” he asked.
John turned back to Kathy. He had the panicked look of a parent whose toddler has wandered off.
Kathy held up her hands. “I didn’t pass her on the way in.”
“Can you stay with these two? I’ll tell security to keep close.”
With a nod, Kathy stepped into the room and set her purse on the chair.
John soared through the door, but returned just a few minutes later—before anyone left in Kyle’s room had thought of what to say to one another. They’d watched silently as Nurse Susan brought Cole a scrub shirt and an ice pack.
“The cruiser is gone,” John announced. “And not just because Livia thoughtfully parked it somewhere. I gotta reach the station.”
He opened his cell phone and dialed. “Burt? We need an APB out on my daughter, Livia. I think she took my cruiser. No, she’s not dangerous! But she’s in danger—I just know it.”
Returning his attention to the room, John asked, “Cole, what do you know about Livia?”
Cole stood again, though he kept hold of Kyle’s hand. “Beckett told me Livia was here at the hospital with Kyle. He was going off to find Blake and protect him from the mercenaries that are left. We believe there are three still looking to harm him.”
John had visibly tensed at Beckett’s name and clenched his teeth at the word mercenaries. After a couple of false starts, he finally asked, “Is there a way Livia could’ve known Blake needed protecting?”
Cole didn’t bother to explain. “It’s possible.”
John grabbed his jacket and looked at Kathy, who nodded. He looked out the doorway just as an orderly attempted to lift Cole’s abandoned motorcycle. He struggled with its weight in the lacquered hallway.
“I’ll take that, son,” John said as he exited the room.
Cole and Kyle looked at each other with wide eyes as the bike roared to life just outside the door. It seemed Kyle’s father had decided to leave the way Cole came in.
It didn’t take Beckett a long fucking time to figure out that whatever was going down with Blake was not at the train station. Eve pointed toward Firefly Park, where there were way too many vehicles for this time of night. At quick glance they ID-ed Mouse’s hearse and AssFuck’s ridiculous truck in the parking lot, and most surprisingly, a police cruiser parked on a nearby hill.
They changed course immediately, and when they drew close, Eve hopped out of the Hummer while it was still moving. She used her elbow to crack the top left corner of Mouse’s driver’s side window. Beckett threw the Hummer in park and trotted up next to her, scanning the parking lot for any movement. Eve retrieved Mouse’s laptop, and after some quick typing into the GPS program, she looked up at the stars and back at the forest.
“Mouse should be in the forest just a little way ahead.” She went back to the Hummer and pulled out a gun. She tossed Beckett a flashlight.
“Eve?” Beckett had a million questions and suspicions. Something was wrong.
She shook her head quickly, and they walked carefully into the woods on full alert. Eve lifted the screen on the laptop and reoriented herself every few feet. They walked steadily forward until, despite his light, Beckett kicked something. He trained the flashlight on the obstacle. A leg.
He turned the beam on the body—a mercenary, or former mercenary, actually. Eve noted his discovery with wary eyes. Beckett swung the flashlight even with the ground and picked up a second massacred mercenary. Good ol’ Mouse.
Eve now used the light of the laptop like a glowing torch. Beckett registered two more bodies in the blue haze offered by the screen. Two more. Two?
Eve snapped the laptop shut and walked back toward him.
“Eve?” he questioned, forgetting to be quiet.
“Beck, let’s get back to the Hummer.” She stepped in front of him and tried to turn his massive body around.
“Tell me, Eve. Tell me.” Beckett had done the math. Only three were supposed to be dead. Only three.
Eve took a deep breath. “Mouse didn’t make it.” She stood next to Beckett, looking up at the canopy of dark leaves.
“I don’t believe you. Fuck that shit! He’s bulletproof. He’s fucking bulletproof. Let me see him.” Beckett hadn’t moved.
Eve shook her head. “Don’t. It’s too much…” Her tears were silver on her cheeks in the moonlight.
Beckett stepped around her toward the bodies. He swung the flashlight and found the third mercenary with a knitting needle sticking out of his eye socket.
Then Beckett knew. He knew deep inside that his friend was dead. No. Fucking no.
He tried to put the flashlight on Mouse gently, reverently, but it was still too harsh. Mouse’s eyes were open, like haphazard shades on a vacant house.
Beckett fell to his knees. “Ahh…I never thought they’d get you. Never. Fuck.”
He dropped the light and balled his fists, jamming them into his eyes. Pain seared from his head to his heart. He took another look, putting one fist in his mouth. His breath came in loud, shaky gasps. It was the sound of someone coming apart at the seams.
“Fuck it, Mouse. No fucking way. Not tonight. I even fucking prayed tonight!”
Beckett gathered his courage and closed his friend’s eyes. He put one giant hand across Mouse’s chest, just to make sure there was no heartbeat. Mouse’s skin was cold and clammy. The discarded flashlight illuminated the darkened, bloody pine needles around Mouse.
“Ah, son of a bitch. Mouse, you fucking deserved more than this. More than dying in the goddamn dirt. You’re more than this to me. You’re my friend.” Beckett’s emotions got him again, and he sobbed deeply into the dark.
He felt Eve’s hand on his shoulder. “We have to make sure Blake is okay. I have no idea why Chris Simmer’s truck is here.” Her voice was hushed and sad.
“I can’t leave him here. Not with them. Not in the fucking dirt.” Beckett grabbed his flashlight with every intention of handing it to Eve so he could carry his friend—no matter how fucking big he was—to someplace better, when the light landed on Mouse’s bare chest.
“What the hell?” Beckett touched Mouse’s chest again, and Eve took the light and centered it on the tattoo in question.
Beckett traced it for a moment, his finger lingering on the knitting needles that set it apart from his own, and bowed his head. “Now that’s too fucking much,” he said softly. “That hurts too fucking much. Eve, not Mouse. He can’t be gone.”
“Wait.” Eve stopped Beckett from scooping Mouse into his arms. She positioned herself at Mouse’s head.
She gently touched Mouse’s arm. “Beck, I think he’s pointing.” She stood up and tracked the path Mouse’s finger had given them. “We need to head that way.”
Beckett saw what she saw. Mouse had died working. Working for him. And not for the fucking money—Mouse’s tat proved that. Beckett longed to get Mouse off the fucking dirt, but he needed to find Blake.
“Listen, Mouse wants us to find Blake,” Eve pleaded. “That’s why he’s pointing. That’s why he took out three assholes on his own like a gladiator. I want to sit and cry. I want to get him in the back of his own hearse and treat him like a goddamn king. But right now, we’re going to finish what he started.”
Beckett stood and nodded. As wrong as it felt, he needed to leave his friend—no, my brother—lying dead here. At least for now.
John used the handbrake to stop the wickedly fast motorcycle at the light. He was pleased that his old motocross skills seemed to have resurfaced. He was less pleased because he knew he was a sight to see: still in his uniform and disobeying the law by going helmetless. But Livia was out in town somewhere involved in who the hell knew what. He braced the bike with his legs and did something he told the girls never to do while they were on the road: he took out his phone.
He dialed Kathy’s number and waited. “Hey, Kath. How’s Kyle?”
He could hear the smirk in Kathy’s voice when she replied. “Kyle’s definitely fine. I was about to call you. I spoke with the station—someone spotted your cruiser at Firefly Park. It was abandoned on a hill with the door open.”
The light in front of John changed to green. The honks of frustrated drivers behind him just added to the urgency of his thoughts. Livia, baby, what have you gotten into?
“Kathy, I want you to send an ambulance, an advanced life team, SWAT, and anything else you can think of to Firefly Park.” John stared at the green circle beckoning him to go.
He whipped his badge out of his pocket and held it up for the irate drivers behind him to see. The honking ceased.
“John, are you sure?” Kathy asked.
“She’s my daughter. I need everything. Everything. Please?” John watched as the light flicked to yellow.
“Consider it done. Go get her, cowboy.” Kathy hung up, and John could picture her fingers already placing the next call.
He hung up and slipped the phone into his pocket. The light turned red, but John used the heartbeat before the opposing light turned green to rocket the bike through the intersection. Oh God oh God oh God. Livia, be okay. I’ll give anything. Just please, Livia, be okay.