Ten

TEN

H e wasn’t conscious by the time Conrad and I got to the hospital twenty minutes later. He still wasn’t conscious when everyone else made it. Five hours after that, he was still out. The doctor said we just had to wait.

Landry had sustained a blow to the back of the head that had caused a minor concussion. He was also banged up and bruised and suffering from mild hypothermia and dehydration. His physical injuries, all in all, were not bad; they would heal. What had gone on in the cabin, the psychological trauma, was harder to gauge.

“He’s going to hate me,” I told Conrad. “He’s going to think I should have fought him and made him go home with me. He’ll never forgive me.”

Conrad looked at me like I was insane. “There’s no way.”

But he didn’t know Landry.

The nurse told me that he had been yelling and screaming at me, not for me. He had been enraged that I was not the one to find him. It confirmed my very worst fears. My life, on the cusp of beginning, had just ended, because the man I loved hated me.

As I stood outside his room, I let my head hit the wall hard.

“Don’t do that,” Conrad growled at me, his hand sliding around the nape of my neck so he could look into my face. “You don’t know shit about anything yet. Now if you go in there once he wakes up and he’s pissed at you and he hates you, then we’ll know that he actually is all kinds of crazy and there’s nothing, really, for you to hold on to anyway.”

My eyes flicked to his face.

“I like Landry, I do, but he is volatile, and sometimes I worry. But you’re not going to listen to me about what I think he needs and?—”

“There’s nothing wrong with him.”

“Maybe not, but when he’s with you, it doesn’t matter. When you two are together, he’s different. Now, if he’s given up on that, if his anger is misdirected, you have to get used to him being gone. I will not allow you to go crazy trying to win him back. There are people beyond Landry Carter who are counting on you and who need you. And maybe right now you think he’s the only one that matters, but bigger picture, he’s not.”

I took a shuddering breath.

“When Landry wakes up, you’ll see what he says and we’ll go from there. Do not stand out in this hall and try and figure out your whole life when you don’t even know what the fuck is going on with it yet.”

It was good advice.

Detective Baylor told us honestly that he was really glad we had found Landry so quickly. He felt that Brendon not making the ransom call said a lot about his state of mind.

“Meaning he wanted to kill Landry to hurt Neil Carter more than he wanted the money,” Conrad surmised and my heart hurt just hearing the words.

“I believe so, yes,” Baylor admitted. “To go that long without the ransom call means that there probably wasn’t going to be one.”

At the eight-hour mark, after Conrad made me eat a granola bar and Jocelyn watched me drink water, after Scott showed up at the hospital and said that his father had broken down sobbing, and after Chris went out and got us all burgers, finally, Landry woke up.

I heard him scream from the hall where I had gone to stretch my legs. Staring at his face, seeing the marks, the bruises, the yellow that his eye would turn as it healed, had made my stomach roll, and I had needed to move.

I bolted back into the room and stood still at the doorway, terrified and hopeful all at the same time.

For once , I prayed, let me be wrong about Landry Carter .

I swallowed hard, frozen there, and my stomach twisted into a knot with sharp edges and thorns.

“Trevan!” He shrieked my name, high and wailing as he flung his arms out to me, for me.

I ran.

“Ohmygod, I knew you’d come.” He sucked in his breath as I grabbed him and hugged him and kissed his face, his eyes, his nose, his cheeks, and then his mouth. I slanted my mouth down over his, the kiss demanding and deep, tasting him, devouring him. He was shivering in my arms when I stopped sucking on his bottom lip and leaned back to look at his face.

“Baby.” My voice broke as I choked on the words. “I know you blame me, but please don’t send me away. I’m so?—”

“Blame you?” he almost shrieked at me, hands on my hoodie, holding tight, not letting me go. “Why in the hell would I blame you? I wanted to stay, and even if it hadn’t been today or now, that crazy fuck Brendon was going to get me.”

I took his beautiful face in my hands and stared into the eyes I adored, that were everything when he looked at me. “You still want me? You’re not sending me away?”

“What the fuck?” He scowled at me. “You came right back the second you knew I was gone, and I’ll bet that somehow you saved me. I don’t know how yet, but I know that’s true. I know if you hadn’t come, I’d be dead.”

My knees almost buckled at his faith as doctors and nurses streamed into the room.

“I love you. I will always love you. Don’t ever fuckin’ leave me.”

“No,” I promised him, holding his hand tight even as medical staff tried to move me away, push me back. “Never.”

And he took a breath as the deluge began.

“Those two guys getting shot,” Detective Baylor said after the second hour of us all being in Landry’s room. “That’s what broke this case. Mr. Carter lost it when he heard about that. I shudder to think what might have happened had they not been killed.”

My eyes flicked to Conrad’s.

“And it’s such a waste that they had to die, but when you involve yourself in a crime, eventually you will pay for that.”

Conrad grunted.

“You disagree, Mr. Moss?” Baylor asked him.

“I do, Detective. I think if people were as choosy with their friends as they were about their cars, a lot less criminals would ever be caught. You have to be smart.”

“Are you speaking from experience?”

Conrad had told me he had ten friends in the whole world. I was guessing that along with loving him, they were all careful as well. “I’m speaking common sense,” he said flatly. “How many cases like this one have you seen cracked because someone was stupid?”

He shrugged before turning to me. “You know, Trevan, you and Mr. Moss would have passed right by those two men on your way to the Carter home. Are you sure you don’t remember anything out of the ordinary, seeing a car stopped on the side of the parkway?”

“I wasn’t looking,” I assured him. “The only thing I was thinking about was getting to Landry.”

He nodded. “Understandable.”

“And if I’m being honest, Terrence was driving really fast because I was yelling at him.”

The detective nodded, glanced at Conrad, and then back to me.

“Neither one of us was looking around, checking things out. I was freaking out and Terrence was trying to keep me calm, you know?”

“I understand,” he said with a sigh.

The story made sense and the time we made from when our plane landed to when we showed up at the house, more than likely, we hadn’t stopped to kill anyone in that window.

“I still need ID from both of you, for the report.”

I passed him mine, and Conrad gave him one that had the name Terrence Moss right there in black and white. Crazy to think that he had a false ID just ready to go. But maybe he had a Conrad Harris one as well and maybe there were others. Who knew? I certainly didn’t know the full story on my friend. I would bet money though that when the detective ran the name Terrence Moss, it would come back cleaner than mine.

“You told Mr. Carter they were shot in the head,” I said to the detective as he returned my ID, and then Conrad’s, after taking pictures of both front and back.

“Yes. It was very clean, quick. One bullet apiece,” he said. “Mr. Reed, the passenger, was shot from outside the car, and once the door was open, Mr. Beatty, who was driving, was killed as well. There was a bullet in the back driver’s side tire which blew it out. That’s why they had to pull over.”

And people said it was hard to hit a moving target. Apparently not for Conrad Harris.

“So they weren’t hurt when they pulled off the parkway?” Chris asked.

The detective shook his head. “No. The only damage to the car was the broken right passenger side window and the blown tire.”

“Then I don’t understand, why let someone just come up to the car and kill them?”

“These were not professionals. I imagine after being forced off the road that they were both stunned.”

“That’s crazy,” Chris murmured.

“Putting it all together now from emails and phone records, we know that those two were friends of Brendon’s from school. After Mr. Carter texted Brendon that you were returning, Trevan, Brendon sent them to intercept you. It’s fortunate that for whatever reason, they missed seeing you.”

“Yes, it is,” I agreed.

“It’s also fortunate that Mr. Carter was so horrified when he heard that Mr. Reed and Mr. Beatty had been killed. He felt that he sent them into the path of whoever killed them by notifying Brendon. That sense of responsibility broke this case.”

“And who do you think killed them?” Chris asked him.

“Right now we have no suspects, but whoever did it, it was a clean, professional hit. Someone was very precise, and that just doesn’t happen for no good reason. They were dirty beyond trying to intercept you two,” he said to Conrad and me. “They both had rap sheets and were tangled up with some scary people, but who precisely wanted them dead, we simply can’t say at this moment.”

I nodded.

“It might even have been the person or persons to whom Brendon owed his gambling debts. Believe me, we’ll figure it out.”

But they wouldn’t. All roads would lead to dead ends, and even if he and his team ever landed back on me and Conrad, where in the world would we have gotten a gun? We couldn’t have smuggled it on the airplane and there was no time for us to have stopped and picked one up, that just didn’t logically make sense. The deaths of the two men would remain unsolved becoming yet another cold case in Las Vegas.

Landry tugged on my hand, and I leaned close so he could press into my chest and inhale me but also whisper, “Who’s Mr. Moss?”

“Conrad,” I replied under my breath, even though with the detective still talking, no one was paying any attention to us.

“Because of….” He trailed off, knowing I would understand him.

“Yeah.”

“First name?” Landry asked me, as in Conrad’s alias.

“Terrence.”

He took a breath and said, “Terrence.”

“Yes?” Conrad answered, looking at Landry.

“Thank you for taking care of Trev and for being his guardian angel.”

“You’re welcome. I promise to always do so.”

“That will help me sleep well for the rest of my life.” He exhaled.

“Good,” Conrad told him, and then I felt his hand on the back of my neck, squeezing gently. “So, I have things to do. You think you can manage to get him home without me?”

I squinted at him, and his smile was huge.

“I guess that answered my question,” he said, and then he turned and walked out the door.

“Is he just leaving?” Jocelyn asked.

Yes, he was, and I was torn, because our relationship was based on specific parameters that I was not supposed to violate. Like when the man wanted to leave, let him. But there had to be more.

“I’ll be right back,” I told Landry and ran after him.

He was almost to the stairwell, and why he was going to walk down sixteen flights, I had no idea.

“Do you need to be away from me?” I asked instead of hailing him.

He turned and looked at me. “Not yet.”

“So can I hug you, or is that too much contact for you?”

“No,” he acceded. “It’s okay.”

I shot forward into his arms and hit him hard and hugged him so he could really feel it, using more force than was necessary.

“Okay,” he muttered under his breath. “I get it, I’m important, now let me go.”

I stepped back fast because it had been an order.

“I’m going to your place when I get home to take back the gun. You don’t need it, not anymore. My reputation, your new status, it’ll be enough.”

I nodded. I didn’t ask if he knew where the spare key was to get into our apartment; the man had never needed it before. He got in and out all the time without it.

“I was thinking, at least you don’t have to worry about Kady getting what was coming to him anymore. Benji was avenged. Your new boss took care of that.”

“Yes, he did,” I agreed.

“Going forward, you don’t get to think about that kind of stuff anymore. That’s my department alone.”

I nodded.

“Call me when you’re home so I can walk beside you when you go in places.”

“I will.”

Quick nod and he was gone, the door to the stairs closing behind him.

The thing about Conrad Harris was that he knew his limits. Knew them like most people didn’t. He could tell the exact moment when you needing him became cloying, when you wanting to show your respect for him became unnecessary, when love tipped to hate and he just had to kill you because he needed the quiet. And he didn’t scare me because I absolutely respected his boundaries, and even though his patience with me seemed boundless, I knew it was not. But still, whenever I needed him, he was there. So who was to say what I could and could not ask of him? The thing was, he was important enough to me not to push, and I think most people did. It was important to actually listen to your friends as well as love them.

When I got back to the room, Landry was talking. And I understood, as I listened, as I took my place back beside the bed and he reached for me, that yes, the man sounded manic. But it was just him hyped up, and really, what had he eaten?

His doctor loved his chatter, liked seeing him animated and alert. The nurses were charmed, and the detective, when he stepped up, just wanted my boyfriend to hit the highlights for him if he could.

It was, in the end, anticlimactic.

After dinner, Landry had been walking back to the guesthouse he had shared with me and been jumped and hit on the back of the head. One moment Landry was awake, the next he was knocked out. Detective Baylor filled in the blanks with chloroform—they had found it in Brendon’s car, and he had used it to keep Landry under during the long car ride. Once in the hunting cabin, he’d been placed in a room with a chain soldered to the wall attached to a shackle around his right ankle. He had access to a bucket on one side of the room, and gallons of water on the other. Where the cuff had been was now scraped and bruised.

“When can I go home?” Landry wanted to know, and I could see the panic start to settle in. He needed quiet; he needed all of it—his family, the lights, the hospital, the questions, the fear, and the movement—to simply stop. He needed to be in bed with me staring at the ceiling in our bedroom. It was all that would give him peace.

“Not for at least a couple of days,” his doctor informed him. “We need to be certain that the concussion is indeed mild, make sure you have enough fluids, check to?—”

“Fine,” Landry almost whimpered, the tremor in his voice hard for me to hear.

I squeezed the hand that I was holding before I lifted it, brushing my lips over his knuckles. He turned, and I put my arm around him as he pressed his face into my throat, trembling hard. My eyes flicked to the doctor.

“Maybe just overnight,” he recanted.

“Overnight he can do,” I said with a smile. Sometimes medical science had nothing on going home and getting under the covers in your own bed.

Once everyone was gone and we were alone, Landry begged me to get up on the bed with him. And even though it was bigger than most, easily a twin—he was in the fancy wing of the hospital after all as he was a VIP—I was still not sure it was possible.

“Babe, I can’t fit up there.” Looking at it again. the bed was definitely not quite the size of a twin.

But his face, his eyes, the need welling up in them, I had to make it work. Off came my shoes and sweater, and in just jeans, socks, and a T-shirt, I climbed in beside him.

“Oh God.” His moan was soft and hoarse. “If you weren’t here…. I mean, I’m fine when you’re around, I am.”

I kissed his temple gently, careful of the golf ball-sized lump there.

“I just fray some when you’re not.”

“Me too,” I told him as he moved until I was basically under him and he was lying on top of me.

“Start talking, tell me everything. Start at the beginning.”

“I think you should sleep,” I suggested.

“Did you call Gabriel?” he asked me, licking the side of my neck, nuzzling before I finally felt his teeth.

“Yeah, a little while ago,” I told him.

“Was he glad I wasn’t dead?”

“When you’re well, I will beat you for that.”

“Promise?” He sounded way too excited.

“Go to sleep or I’m getting up.”

“Oh?” He chuckled, hands sliding up under my T-shirt, smoothing over my abdomen. “You think you can do that considering that your eyes aren’t even open?”

The man was like a drug. I was warm, and his kisses, his mouth slipping over my skin, felt so good. I just wanted to be wrapped in him.

“What about my new job?” I offered. “I should sit up and tell you all about it.”

“You can tell me about it later.”

“But I need to get up so you can sleep.”

“Shhh,” he hushed me, kissing over my jaw. “Just give yourself to me, baby.”

I didn’t remember drifting off.

I was jostled, and when I opened my eyes, Landry was pulling a blanket up around us.

“What’re you doing?” I asked, not really awake.

“Nothing,” he said, moving half on and half off me. “Go back to sleep.”

“I need to get out of your bed,” I told him, my eyes refusing to stay open.

“Nuh-uh,” he muttered, nestling into my side, his leg between mine, head down on my shoulder. “I won’t feel safe if you move.”

“Bullshit, I’ll be right there in the chair, and the nurses are gonna make me get up when they come in anyway.”

“They’ve already been in. They didn’t care. They both said how pretty you were and how much better I looked.”

“Lan—”

“They put me in this private room, and the bed is bigger than the usual ones, as you can see.”

It was, I hadn’t missed that. He was being given lots of preferential treatment that normally, on our budget, wouldn’t have happened.

“I need you right here, Trev. Once we get home, you can sleep without a Landry blanket, okay? But for now… I need you.”

I wrapped my arms around him, nuzzled my face against his neck, and kissed the smooth, warm skin. “I love you.”

Small whimper from him as I felt him shiver. “I love you too.”

“Go to sleep.”

“Okay.”

And there was silence for at least three whole seconds.

“Am I bugging you?” Landry whispered.

I squeezed him tighter and smiled into his hair.