Chapter 23

In retrospect, maybe lying to Sawyer hadn't been such a good idea.

Bashir and Nan—they were on a first-name basis now—had convened outside Sawyer's room on day one and agreed that they needed to keep as much as possible out of his sight. Everything was need-to-know, they decided, and a battered, hospitalized cop didn't need to know a damn thing. The less he knew, the less he'd try to claw his way back to work when he needed to be resting and recovering. And he was on just enough painkillers that he readily accepted the stories they fed him, especially while that infection had been kicking his ass.

So Sawyer believed that Tami was effectively on house arrest—that she'd agreed to stay in town and was being heavily surveilled—because that raised fewer questions than telling him she'd been booked and denied bail. She was currently sitting in the county jail, having been charged with accessory to murder and obstruction of justice.

Withholding those details meant not having to explain the reason she'd been charged with accessory and obstruction rather than murder, which further meant not having to explain that she'd saved her own ass by pointing the finger at… Bashir.

He was the one who'd blackmailed her. He was the one who'd put her up to ordering and receiving the snake venom. He was the one who'd tasked her with stashing bodies and weapons and victims' cars.

Her story sounded incredibly convincing even to his ears, but she couldn't back it up with anything concrete. At the moment, her statement was the only thing connecting Bashir to any of the murders, and the D.A. had made it abundantly clear that he was not to leave town while the investigation was underway. He'd had to surrender his passport, and every Consulate General of Canada in the U.S. had been notified that he was a person of interest in a string of murders, just in case he tried to use those channels to get his home country.

And Sawyer was doped up and concussed enough that he didn't question how Bashir was able to take vacation time right in the middle of all this chaos. That saved Bashir from explaining that he was suspended from his duties as Medical Examiner until the investigation was complete, that all of his autopsies in this case were now under severe scrutiny, and that his license was on the line.

Bashir didn't feel too bad about keeping all of that off Sawyer's radar. The sleight of hand was deceptive and dishonest, but it kept Sawyer from wasting energy stressing about the situation when he needed to focus on healing. And he couldn't lie—it bruised the shit out of his ego to be under this microscope. He wasn't even sure what rankled more: the part where they thought he was a murderer, or the part where they were questioning his work ethic. Let Sawyer in on that if he didn't absolutely have to? Fuck that. Fuck this entire shitshow.

So, no, he generally felt okay about feeding Sawyer some heavily modified versions of what was going on.

The one place where he worried now that he'd misjudged the play, though, was when it came to Boyce.

Believing Boyce was on vacation had allowed Sawyer to sleep last night. Okay, so had the hefty dose of Percocet, but believing the man who'd likely tried to kill him was out of state probably helped, too. If nothing else, it would keep the nightmares at bay; painkillers caused vivid dreams under the best of circumstances, and believing there was a murderer lurking just outside could only make that worse.

"Sawyer." Bashir sat down at his kitchen table and pushed one of two cups of coffee toward him. "There's… I need to level with you about something."

Sawyer wrapped his good hand around the mug but didn't drink. "Do I want to know?"

"Probably not, but you didn't become a cop to only hear things you wanted to hear."

His lips quirked. "I can't argue with that." He brought up the coffee for a cautious sip. "Go on."

Bashir drummed his nails beside his own untouched coffee. "I already texted Nan, and she's on top of it. But, um…" He swallowed. "The person who caused the carbon monoxide leak in your apartment is probably the same person who tried to run you off the road."

Sawyer's eyebrow rose. "So… Dr. Boyce."

"Yeah."

"Great." Sawyer made a face and sat back. "He's back in town, then."

"Well…" Bashir chewed his lip.

Sawyer inclined his head. "What?" Then he narrowed his eyes. "Wait, you needed to level with me? Are you—what's going on?"

"What's going on is that Dr. Boyce never went on vacation. As far as we know, he never left town." He exhaled. "To tell you the truth, no one's been able to get eyes on him since the night you got hurt."

Sawyer's lips parted. "Wait, so he's just—he's been running loose here in town this whole time? Why the fuck did you tell me he was on vacation?"

"So you wouldn't worry." Bashir shrugged apologetically. "Would you have been able to sleep knowing he was—"

"You can't just keep me in the dark!" Sawyer snapped. "What if he'd—"

"We had your hospital room under guard around the clock," Bashir said as evenly as he could. "And there's cops outside my place, too."

That wasn't a lie, but it was somewhat of a half-truth. They were partly there to monitor anyone coming and going in case someone made a move on Sawyer… but also to monitor Bashir and make sure he didn't try anything cute.

Sawyer rubbed his hand over his face and sighed. "God, what a shitshow."

"I know. And I'm sorry. Nan and I—we've just been trying to let you heal without freaking out. We made sure you weren't vulnerable, though. I promise."

"I know," Sawyer whispered. "I just hate feeling…" He chewed his lip.

Bashir could imagine what he was trying to say. It sucked, being scared. Being targeted.

Being lied to.

His own thought made him wince. Maybe Sawyer deserved some more honesty .

"They're, um…" Bashir cleared his throat. "The cops outside—they're not just there to keep an eye out for Dr. Boyce and protect you."

Sawyer's eyebrows climbed.

Bashir squirmed uncomfortably. "They're also keeping an eye on me."

"What? Has he threatened you, too?"

"No." Bashir scratched the back of his neck. "No, it's, um…" He sighed heavily and dropped his hand to the table. "Tami's pointing the finger at me."

Sawyer straightened. "She what? "

"She's claiming everything that—she says I put her up to it all to help hide the fact that I was killing people." He filled Sawyer in on that part, including the parts where she claimed he was choosing increasingly elaborate ways of killing people in order to make himself look like the hero at the autopsy table.

"That…" Sawyer furrowed his brow, which seemed to hurt. "That doesn't even make sense. After all the noise she made about how I was trying to make it sound like you did it? And… It…" He exhaled. "Am I just really badly concussed, or does this make zero sense?"

"It makes zero sense," Bashir admitted. "I have no idea why she's suddenly pointing the finger at me."

"Unless she's being compelled to by an outside source."

Bashir tilted his head. "Go on."

"I mean, she knows something ." Sawyer sat back against his chair, idly tapping his fingers on the side of his coffee cup. "Whether she actually killed anyone or even knew what was happening, she's involved somehow. And she knows we know that."

"So… what? She's trying to do damage control?"

Gazing at the table between them, Sawyer pursed his lips. After a moment, he shook his head. "Not in the way you're thinking. Like I don't think she's trying to take the heat off herself." He flicked his eyes up to meet Bashir's. "I think she's covering for whoever's had her doing the dirty work."

"And you think that's Dr. Boyce."

Sawyer's shrug was slight, as if the movement hurt. "I know you don't like the idea, but all roads keep leading back to him."

"No, I don't like the idea, but I'm hard-pressed to think you're wrong." Bashir sighed. "The problem now is that we can't find him."

Sawyer shuddered, then winced. He shifted again in his chair.

"Do you want to move to the couch?" Bashir asked softly. "Might be a little more comfortable."

A mix of stubbornness and pride clearly tried to keep Sawyer where he was, but then he sighed and nodded. "Yeah. Good idea." Pushing himself to his feet, he groaned. "God, I don't know what I'm more sore from—the crash or that fucking hospital bed."

Bashir laughed softly. "They still haven't installed those Sleep Number things, have they?"

Sawyer made an unhappy sound, and he shuffled into the living room with Bashir on his heels. After they'd settled onto the couch with a pillow under Sawyer's broken arm for some extra support, he exhaled. "Ugh. This is some bullshit. The pain, and your colleague trying to fucking murder me. Again. "

"I know. But you're safe, okay?" Bashir gently encouraged Sawyer to rest his feet across his lap. "We've got cops outside. Everyone and their mother is looking for Boyce." He patted Sawyer's ankle. "All we have to do is lay low and wait for them to find him."

"Assuming he hasn't already skipped town," Sawyer muttered into his coffee cup. "Dude's obviously got some serious money." He peered at Bashir. "How the fuck does he afford all that, anyway? Are they paying you guys in the seven figures or something?"

Bashir barked a laugh. "Yeah, right. It's not a bad living, don't get me wrong, but there's no way in hell I could afford a Porsche, a Navigator, a country club membership, or any of the other shiny toys he's always showing off. Not even if his parents paid for medical school, which they did."

Sawyer cocked a brow. "So are Mom and Dad loaded? Or did they just save a fuckload of money to send him to school?"

"I'm… I don't actually know, to be honest. He doesn't talk about them much, and I don't exactly ask. I, um… haven't made much of an effort to socialize with him. At work or otherwise."

Sawyer's focus seemed to sharpen a bit, as if he'd caught a scent. "Is that just you with coworkers? Or you with Boyce specifically?"

"Boyce specifically." Bashir twisted toward Sawyer and draped his arm across the back of the couch. "I've been friendly with most of my colleagues, but he and I…" Bashir shook his head. "We never clicked."

"Why not?"

Bashir tried not to squirm. Sawyer wasn't interrogating him. Digging for something, yes, and Bashir could guess what it was, but it wasn't suspicion of Bashir himself. Holding Sawyer's gaze, he said, "He didn't like me from day one. He hated that I was brought in to be the county medical examiner even though he was right there. "

"Right, right, you told me about that." Sawyer wiped his uninjured hand over his face. "So he started before you. In this county."

Bashir nodded. "About eight years. Fifteen since he'd finished medical school. And then here I come, five years out of medical school and already stepping into that position over his head. He's never let me forget that."

"Sounds like someone who's highly motivated to discredit you, ruin your career and your reputation, and get you sent to prison. Probably so he can ‘I told you so' everyone who made him subordinate to you. And make a play for your job."

A chill ran through Bashir. That thought had been floating closer and closer to the surface in his mind for a while now, ever since they'd figured out the killer was likely fucking with him specifically. "He has to know we're on to him now, though. Otherwise he wouldn't have gone to ground."

Sawyer nodded slowly. "And if he knows I survived his attack, he's going to do everything he can to shut me up." He paused. "Does he know where you live?"

The chill turned even colder. Bashir's first instinct was to say no, because God knew he'd never had any reason to give Boyce that information, but the man wasn't stupid. He was probably smart enough to access county employee data.

"I, um…" Bashir swallowed. "Maybe we'd be better off staying in a hotel. Or a safehouse.'

Sawyer's eyebrows climbed. "Wait, so he does know where you live? And we've just been sitting here the whole—"

"He shouldn't know." Bashir gently nudged Sawyer's legs off his lap and rose. "And like I said—we've got cops outside. But if he's that motivated to shut you up—or both of us—then maybe we should find a more secure location."

"Good idea." Sawyer pushed himself to his feet with a wince. "I'm still mostly packed." He gestured toward the front of the house. "You want to let the patrol officers know?"

"Will do."

As Sawyer went down the hall toward the bedroom, Bashir started toward the front door. He stopped with his fingers on the deadbolt, though.

What if Boyce had figured out where he lived? Was it really a good idea to go sauntering out into the open? Even pulling the car out of the garage would be a risk, but it seemed safer than walking into plain sight.

He took his hand off the door and instead sent a text to the officer outside.

We need to move someplace safer, he wrote . We'll let you know when we're ready to roll out.

Then he called Nan and passed the information on to her.

"Good idea," she said. "I'll have an officer set something up at a secure location, and we'll text you with an address. Give me about ten minutes."

"Thanks." Ten minutes seemed like a painfully long time, but that was just how these things worked sometimes. It was better to be cautious and methodical while things were still reasonably calm and non-emergent. If shit hit the fan… Well, then they could make decisions on the fly.

As he started toward the bedroom, he checked his text messages. No response from the officer outside.

And the message hadn't been read, either.

That seemed… off.

He called the number he'd texted. It rang several times, then kicked over to voicemail. Then he tried the other officer. No answer.

Okay, not good.

He switched to the feed from his Ring camera.

In an instant, his heart dropped into his feet, and he sprinted up the hall to the bedroom.

"Get away from the windows!" he called out to Sawyer.

"Get—what?"

Bashir whipped into the bedroom, and though Sawyer was clearly confused, he'd taken Bashir's warning to heart. He'd pressed himself against the wall beside one of the windows, even pushing his injured arm back as much as he could to be as flat as possible.

"What's going on?" he asked.

Bashir beckoned him out into the hall, where there were no windows at all, and he spoke fast. "The officers aren't responding to calls or texts, and my Ring camera's feed has been cut off."

Sawyer blanched. "Are you serious?"

"Uh-huh. So we need to get the fuck out of here."

"Agreed." Sawyer took out his phone. "I'm going to have dispatch send some units out here. Do you have a gun?"

"Yeah. Let me grab it." Bashir'd had mixed feelings about obtaining a firearm, but a previous mentor had said it wasn't a bad idea.

"There are some messed-up people out there," she'd told him. "And you're going to be the reason a lot of them end up in prison. You don't want to be unprotected if one of them comes looking for you."

Words to live by, it turned out.

Staying low as he passed by the windows, he moved to his bedside. There, he retrieved the .45 from his nightstand drawer along with a pair of spare magazines. Between those and the mag in the gun, that gave them twenty-four rounds to work with. Bashir's experience as a medical examiner said that would be more than sufficient to neutralize Boyce as a threat. His growing fear of his deranged colleague made him wonder if it was enough.

"Thanks, Nan," Sawyer was saying as Bashir returned to the hall. "Let me know if you get anything from them." He ended the call and faced Bashir. "She's sending more units our way, and she's going to do a radio check with the patrols outside."

Bashir nodded. Being thorough made sense, but his gut told him the radio check wouldn't result in any news, never mind good news. The patrol officers outside were, more than likely, dead.

"So what do we do now?" he asked Sawyer.

"Well…" Sawyer thought for a moment. His eyes flicked to the gun. "You can shoot that, right? You've trained with it?"

"Of course."

"Good. Good. You'd be surprised how many gun owners don't— anyway . I can still use my dominant hand, so I can shoot in a pinch, but with my left arm out of commission…" He shook his head.

"Got it."

"Two hands on the weapon!" his instructor had barked. "This isn't Hollywood, folks!"

Sawyer was again quiet. Then, "Do you have Boyce's cell number?"

Bashir nodded as he took out his phone. "Yeah, I've got it."

"Okay. I'm going to have Nan try to ping the GPS data and get a location on him."

"Is that, uh… "

"Legal?" Sawyer shrugged as he sent the call. "I'll take that up with a judge when we're not dead after this is over."

"Fair enough."

"Hey, it's me again. I've got Dr. Boyce's cell number. Can you try to ping his location and see if he's near here?" Pause. "Okay, here's the number." Bashir showed him the screen, and Sawyer read the number out to Nan. After they'd hung up, he blew out a breath. "We should move toward the garage. If he makes a move, that'll be our best chance of escaping. Assuming he hasn't barricaded the door or something."

"Christ," Bashir whispered. "Being a criminal sounds exhausting. Way too many logistics to consider."

Sawyer laughed as they started up the hall. "Most get around it by being stupid, lazy, or both."

"Isn't that how they get caught?"

"It's exactly how most of them get caught."

Bashir chuckled, but then muttered, "Too bad Boyce is too smart to slip up like that."

"Not necessarily." Sawyer halted at the end of the hall and scanned the living room. "Stupid and lazy are only two of the reasons criminals fuck up. Panicked or pissed off are two of the other big ones. And I don't know about you, but I think Dr. DoEvil is at least one of those things right now."

Bashir couldn't argue with that. He knew Boyce well enough to believe he was thoroughly pissed off, and it was possible—if they were lucky—he was also panicking.

One of the smaller windows in Bashir's living room had a decent view of the driveway and the garage door, but it was impossible to get a good look without making themselves visible through the other windows.

Bashir had an idea, though. He handed the gun off to Sawyer, then crawled across the floor to the window. He turned on his phone's camera, poked it up above the sill, and snapped a photo of the driveway. Then he returned to where Sawyer was waiting in the arch between the living room and dining room.

The photo wouldn't win any photography awards, but it showed them what they needed to see: a clear driveway and an unobstructed garage door.

"What do you think?" Bashir asked. "Take the car and bolt?"

Sawyer chewed his lip. "I… My instincts say yes. It's our best bet to get out of here. But if he's waiting outside, then…"

Bashir chafed his arms. "So we either stick our necks out, or we stay in here and hope he doesn't try to burn the place down with us in it."

"Basically, yeah."

"Well, fuck. My vote is for the car, then." He'd autopsied enough people who'd died in housefires that there was no way in hell he was staying inside a potential deathtrap. "Let's get—"

Glass shattered.

It was somewhere else in the house—maybe even in the basement—but Bashir and Sawyer both dropped as if a window in the living room had blown out.

"Car!" Sawyer herded Bashir toward the garage. "You have the keys?"

A bolt of panic made Bashir stumble. Then he doubled back, snatched his keys off the ring in the kitchen, and rejoined Sawyer. " Now I have the keys."

Sawyer nodded sharply, and they continued toward the garage.

Once they'd slipped through the door, Bashir locked it behind them, but before he could hit the garage door opener, Sawyer stopped him. "Get the engine running first. I'll keep an eye out for Boyce."

Bashir hesitated. "Maybe you should be the one to drive. Then I can…" He held up the pistol.

Sawyer nodded, and Bashir handed over his keys. He wasn't thrilled about Sawyer driving under the influence of painkillers, but right now, that seemed like the least of their concerns. Once they were away from the house, they could switch.

Right then, Sawyer's text tone chirped. He glanced at the screen and laughed humorlessly before shoving it back into his pocket. "Boyce's phone pinged as being near this location. Nooo shit."

"Thanks for the info," Bashir muttered.

"Right? All right. Let's do this."

Bashir gave Sawyer a head start while he hung back to listen in case any noise came from inside the house. Not that he could hear much over his own pounding heart. Sawyer at least had training for scenarios like this. Becoming a forensic pathologist didn't include courses on escaping hostile forces inside one's own home, though he was starting to think maybe that should be at least offered as an elective.

Sawyer carefully moved between Bashir's car and workbench. He peered down as he walked, and Bashir realized he was checking the tires.

Jesus. It hadn't even crossed his mind that Boyce might slash the tires or something. What else could he have done? Cut the brake lines? Put sugar in the gas tank?

Oh, fuck. They weren't getting out of here in his car, were they?

Unaware of Bashir's mind spinning out, Sawyer opened the driver side door and got in. With the door still open, he started the engine. It came to life as normal. No sputtering. No exploding. No—

Someone tried the doorknob.

Sawyer revved the engine. "Let's go!"

Bashir started toward the car, but then something slammed into the door. Something hard and solid. A chair, maybe. The door was, like most of the house, well-constructed, but it was only going to be able to withstand so much. And Boyce was a big dude with an even bigger temper; he was the reason one of the morgue drawers had a dent in its stainless steel front.

Bashir glanced back and forth between the car and the door.

His fingers curled around the gun in his hand.

He could end this now. All of it. Boyce probably wouldn't even know what hit him.

"Bashir!" Sawyer called. "Come on!"

Bashir swallowed. Then he hit the button for the garage door opener and leveled the gun at the door Boyce was trying to break down.

Two things registered at once:

First, the garage door opener's motor was still dead silent.

Second… the doorframe was dangerously close to giving way.

"The garage door isn't opening!" he called over his shoulder. "You're going to have to ram through it!"

Would that even work? Or would the car hit it and—

The middle of the door to the house burst open, sending splinters flying in all directions.

Bashir squeezed off a shot, firing blindly, but he didn't realize until too late that Boyce had used a kettle ball to smash through the door… and that he'd thrown it through th e gaping hole. It was a big one—probably the thirty-five pounder Bashir's trainer made him use for some of his more diabolical workouts—and it collided with Bashir's chest. He staggered back, clipped his shoulder on a post, and then stumbled over his lawnmower, momentum sending him sprawling onto his back on the concrete.

The gun clattered across the floor.

The rest of the door shattered off its frame and hinges.

And just like that, Boyce had them trapped and unarmed in the garage.