Dan & Tyler 2 - Wintergreen (19 page)

For Dan to be dragged into Tyler's world, though, held hostage, terrified, bewildered, alone, and then killed without emotion or hesitation, disposed of like the trash from a take-out meal -- Tyler felt his hand clench as if it held a gun again.

He wasn't safe to be around like this. His hand was rock-steady, but that brought him no comfort; he hadn't come down from his combat high. When he did, he'd be a mess, shaking, lost, with no Dan to curl around, holding onto him.

Tyler wanted to be with Dan; he needed to guard Dan on some level that couldn't be appeased with logic or rationality. There was no threat to Dan from his wound. The doctor who'd examined him had been reassuringly casual about Dan's assorted injuries, promising no longterm effects with a casual flip of her hand. Tyler didn't think that Paula would trouble them from beyond the grave, although he was sure that if she could have done, she would. Any associates she might have had -- and Tyler doubted that there were many -- would scurry back under their rocks once word of her death leaked out.

No, he had to face it. At the moment, the only problem that Dan had was Tyler.

 

Maybe he should fade out of Dan's life quietly. Leave, the way Dan was so fond of doing. Except that didn't feel like the right thing to do, the way resigning had been.

Tyler stared at the screen and realized that he'd written a paragraph that made no sense whatsoever. He deleted it and tried to focus. Get this done and sent off and then he could go back to Dan's side; wanted there or not, it was where he belonged. He'd turned his back on Cole once and walked away from his job, but he didn't intend to do either to Dan.

***

"Who's paying for all of this?" Dan gestured at the room, dimly lit since the late afternoon sun had been shining in his eyes and Tyler had closed the white blinds, hoping that Dan would fall asleep. He hadn't. "I don't have insurance, you know."

"You're covered," Tyler said shortly. If Cole didn't pick up the tab on behalf of Uncle Sam, Tyler would, and Dan knew it, so this was probably leading up to Dan launching another attack on him. When Tyler had finished his report the night before and returned to Dan's room, Dan had refused to talk to him and slipped into an uneasy doze, interrupted by frequent visits from the nurse on the floor. Tyler had tried to stay awake to stave off nightmares and succeeded more or less. He'd cat-napped from time to time, no more than that, and his eyes felt sand-scoured as a result, but he hadn't woken Dan up by screaming, which was all that mattered. The morning had brought a fleeting, pro-forma visit from Dan's doctor, breakfast, a sponge bath, lunch -- the chance to talk to Dan about the events of yesterday hadn't materialized. Tyler wasn't sure if that was cause for relief or not.

"Yeah?" Dan didn't sound too surprised -- or pleased -- which confirmed Tyler's suspicion that he already knew he wasn't going to get handed an itemized bill when he left. "So, if it's my room, I can tell you to get out of it, right?"

Hurt feelings weren't something that Tyler was used to feeling, but Dan was bringing all kinds of new experiences with him, wasn't he? "You can try. If I do go, it won't be far, though."

Dan rolled his eyes. "I'm not kicking you out because I'm still freaked out about what you did. I am, but it's not that. You've been in that chair for hours. Days. Weeks. Forever. Why don't you go out and get some fresh air? Take a walk. If we're near a store, get me something to read or some candy."

"Gimme, gimme never gets," Tyler said mildly, hiding his pleasure that Dan was back to normal enough to tease him, though true normal was a mirage at the moment.

 

Dan pouted. "Hey, flowers and such are traditional, you know. Just don't take that literally. I don't want vegetation, I want something unhealthy and an inch deep in chocolate."

Tyler eyed him thoughtfully. A fever spike had kept Dan from being discharged that morning, but he looked better now, and his cheeks had lost their dry, hectic flush. The livid bruise on his cheek stood out sharply. Tyler didn't want to talk about killing Paula, but he really wanted to tell Dan that he was sorry for hitting him. The perfect words to smooth things over eluded him, though.

Maybe Dan would get discharged after the doctor had finished her evening rounds. Tyler was used to being patched up and sent home without ever seeing a bed, but civilians seemed to get coddled, and when Dan was the civilian in question, Tyler had no beef with that. Dan's arm was in a sling, and he'd have physio in his future, but the bullet wound was healing well even in the twenty-four hours since it'd been inflicted. There was a lot to be said for being young and healthy.

A walk wasn't a bad idea in theory, but if he got back to find Dan's bed empty, it would be a terrible one in practice.

 

"You'll be here when I get back?" he said bluntly, refusing to sugarcoat his concerns.

Dan gave him a level stare. "Only one of us in this room is an asshole and it isn't me. I
said
I wouldn't run away, and I meant it. Stop pushing me.
I
haven't done anything to make you not trust me."
"Fine," Tyler said, already heading for the door because he wasn't sure how much more of this he could take. "Candy and a comic. Got it. And I promise I won't kill anyone today unless they really ask for it."

It was a shame that the hospital doors were designed not to slam; it would've made him feel a whole lot better to have made some noise.
Chapter Twelve

As soon as Dan was sure that Tyler had gone, probably to stay away for a while until the desire to punch Dan had been reduced to manageable levels, he slid out of bed. He couldn't get dressed
-- something Tyler should have realized would make walking out difficult -- because of the sling and the fact that everything he'd been wearing the day before had been blood soaked and was, presumably, in a trash bin somewhere. Or did they wash them and hand them back to you solemnly, blood stains gone, bullet holes mended? Somehow, Dan didn't think so. The contents of his jacket pockets were in the drawer of the cabinet by his bed, and his sneakers were in the cupboard beneath it, but the rest of his clothes were still in the truck.

It didn't matter. A hospital was one place where a man could wander around in a nightdress without raising eyebrows, and Dan had a thin cotton robe and slippers, too, both stamped with the hospital name in indelible ink.

He got one arm in the sleeve and managed to sling the robe around his shoulders, the effort and pain involved enough to leave his back and forehead sweat-prickled and clammy. Dan gave his bed a longing look, but attractive though the idea of lying back down and taking the painkillers he should have swallowed an hour ago was, he had things to do, places to go.

Corpses to see.

Dan knew that if he'd asked to see Paula Ryan's body, he'd have been told to forget it. Rules, regulations, hygiene, mental trauma… the hospital and Tyler would have come up with a dozen reasons why he couldn't go to the morgue.

Hell, he could have come up with a few of his own if they'd wanted him to -- but overriding all of them was his need to see her one last time. He knew that Tyler was bemused, even irritated by his reaction to Paula's death. She'd tried to kidnap them both, she was, apparently, one of the people responsible for killing God knows how many agents, and she'd pretty much pushed Tyler over the edge by putting a bullet in Dan's arm. Dan
knew
all that. He got all that, for fuck's sake, he wasn't stupid -- but he wasn't a trained assassin, either, and the visceral punch of seeing a woman in agony, screaming, writhing around because he'd shot her, had left more of a mark than Tyler's fist in his face.

She could have been brought in alive. She
should
have been. Cole didn't seem to care; he'd slapped Tyler down, sure, but that had seemed to end it. No prison sentence for Tyler, no blot on his record, nothing -- but Paula had gotten a death sentence, no trial, no jury, just bam! Dead.

What had gone down the day before freaked Dan out. A few miles away from the cabin, Anne would've been listening to someone tell her about their in-grown toenail, maybe wondering if Tyler would remember to send her a postcard, already missing them both a little, the cabin key in her pocket -- while Tyler, her friend, the man she'd hugged goodbye and waved off, was standing over a body, gun in his hand. Dan couldn't wrap his head around it at all. Dan had thought he knew Tyler; had even, smugly, patted himself on the back for knowing all Tyler's secrets, while Anne, who'd known him longer, only had a few scraps of the puzzle in her grasp.

And now Dan knew all of it, firsthand. The broken, fragmented memories that Tyler had shared in the aftermath of a nightmare had been horrific, but in a distant, sanitized way, filtered by distance and Dan's inability to really grasp the reality of a bullet exploding flesh and bone and death taking the light from someone's eyes.

What had happened at the cabin had been real, sickeningly, uncompromisingly real. Dan was used to movies where bullets inconvenienced heroes about as much as a hangnail would -- and none of them told you how fresh blood and recent death stank. The cloying, organic reek had clogged up his nose and made him gag, and lying in blood-soaked clothes for hours hadn't helped. Dying was messy and undignified and bullets fucking hurt; so endeth yesterday's lesson.

Dan made it past the door of his room by telling an instantly attentive and suspicious nurse that he'd been told to exercise, which had the benefit of being true. He walked up and down the corridor a few times and then ducked into an elevator when her attention was distracted by a querulous patient who had problems with everything from the temperature of the water in his bedside jug to the color of his curtains. Once inside the elevator, Dan pressed the down button, working on the assumption that the morgue was on the lowest level possible because it always was on TV. It made sense; easier to keep cool, and you could have a separate entrance to avoid wheeling bodies around the place and spooking people.

Unfortunately for him, the lowest level serviced by the elevator he'd chosen turned out to be the lobby, and when the elevator doors opened, Tyler, hands full of candy bars and a rolled sheaf of magazines under one arm, was twenty feet away. Shit. From the look of it, the hospital had a small complex of stores inside it, like an airport. A Starbucks, a flower shop -

Tyler's head turned, his mouth went thin, and Dan took a deep breath and stepped out of the elevator just as the doors began to close. Too many witnesses for Tyler to yell really loud -- in theory, anyway.

"What the hell are you doing out of bed?" Tyler demanded, striding over toward Dan, his body stiff with disapproval. "Where do you think you're going?"

Defiance came too easily to Dan for him to even think about trying to calm Tyler down. You did that when someone bullied you and they poured it on; fight back and sometimes they backed off. Tyler wasn't a bully, Dan would never have fallen for him if he was, but he did have this whole take-charge thing going on, and Dan didn't mind -- sometimes got off on it in bed -- but there were limits.

"I'm wearing slippers and a robe, where do you think I'm going? Dinner and a movie?" Dan waved his good hand around with an impatient flap of his fingers. "I'm taking a walk the way you were supposed to be. Exploring. It's boring in that room, and they won't let me have my laptop."

They were getting some curious glances from a woman at the reception desk and a security guard at the entrance, and a man in a wheelchair a few yards away was shamelessly eavesdropping. Tyler glanced around as if he could feel their interested stares, swore under his breath, and grabbed Dan's hand, pulling him to a group of chairs screened by a lot of greenery in pots.

Sitting down was a relief as the room was wavering a little for some reason, but the chairs were low enough that Dan's gown rode up, exposing more of his legs than he wanted to share with the world. He tugged at the hem. "How do women deal with skirts?"

"I don't know and I don't care," Tyler said, which took care of that attempt to lighten the mood. Tyler dumped the candy and magazines he was carrying onto a low, glass-topped table. Dan could see a Snickers bar peeking out from under the latest edition of
Time
-- okay, that had better be for Tyler -- but his sweet tooth had been soured by Tyler's disapproval, and he didn't reach out to snag it. "I accept that you weren't trying to leave, but you weren't just wandering around, Dan. You were going somewhere. To the truck? Did you want something from there?"

Dan considered that. If he said 'yes,' it was a nicely plausible destination, and Tyler would buy it since it'd been his own suggestion. On the other hand, Tyler knew that Dan didn't have a key for the truck and, more importantly, Dan had never lied to Tyler after his futile attempt at giving Tyler a false name the day they'd met.

"No, not the truck."

 

Tyler's mouth went thin again, his lips pressed tightly together for a moment, but when he spoke, his voice was level and quiet. "Don't make me guess."

 

Of course, level and quiet from Tyler wasn't fluffy kittens and rainbows. Dan would have preferred it if Tyler had yelled at him. Then he could have yelled back.

 

"I was going to the morgue, okay? And you know what I wanted to see."

 

Shock and then disgust passed over Tyler's face, like cloud shadow over grass. "I never figured you for the kind who liked gawking at car crashes."

 

"What?" Insulted, Dan sat up straight, jarring his arm. "Ow! Fuck, now look what you -
ow
. You really think that's why I want to see her? Do you?"

"I don't have a fucking clue why you'd want to look at a chopped-up, sewn back together corpse of a murderer if it isn't for kicks and thrills," Tyler said with a cool deliberation lacking even a hint of an apology. "Enlighten me."
"I just--" Dan floundered. His sudden need to see the body had been so overwhelming that he hadn't bothered to think it through, any more than he examined the urge to breathe. "It felt right. Closure, maybe. I wanted to -- shit, Tyler, I killed her. I need to see -- say that I'm -- say--"