Page 46 of Constantly Cotton
“He saved my life—a couple of times,” Jason said, bumping Cotton’s leg.
“I threw a chef’s knife at a bad guy,” Cotton told them, wanting them to know who they were working with. “It bounced off his nose.”
“Killing me!” Daniels choked, head in his arms. “Love this guy!”
Briggs patted him a few more times between the shoulder blades. “That’s the spirit. Tell you what, if Colonel Constance is resting and you’re bored, you give us a holler and we’ll have some weapons training. I love your energy. Throwing a chef’s knife is using what’s at hand, but let’s see if we can make it stick, okay?”
Cotton smiled at Jason. “That way I can defend you for real.”
Jason nodded. “You were doing pretty good on your own, but yeah, I think lessons would help.”
Cotton’s shyness had dissipated, and he finished off the rest of his yogurt while the guys completed the briefing. Burton had said this would be like a vacation for Jason, and Cotton was all for that. It occurred to him that this was like a vacation forCottonas well, and he realized he hadn’t so much as gone out of town with friends since he’d left home.
He got to have a vacation too—reading, hiking, swimming, and self-defense. It was like the day camp he’d always wanted but hadn’t known how to ask for.
But mostly he was glad because Jason would be there with him.
Briggs, Daniels, and Medina all left shortly thereafter, but not before hooking their handheld monitors to the same feed that Jason was connected to. As they were walking out the door, Cotton asked them if Jason was needed to monitor the screen all night or if one of them could do it.
“He almost died of infection,” he said seriously. “He’s going to need his sleep or he’ll never recover.”
“Well, probably keep it in his room,” Briggs said, thinking, “but one of us should be watching it at all times. If it’s in the room, he can sleep and ignore it but wake up as soon as one of us buzzes him. He can also check it to ease his own paranoia.”
Jason caught Cotton’s eye and nodded to confirm.
“Because careful people are careful,” Cotton acknowledged. “I get that. I just need to know he can sleep.”
“Fair enough,” Briggs said respectfully. “Go ahead and put it in the next room for a few more days—if he knows we’re monitoring too, he might be able to get some real rest, as you said. Are you sure you’re not a real nurse? I know Captain Burton said you’d been sort of roped into this whole thing, but you take this shit seriously.”
Cotton rolled his eyes, feeling inadequate. “I’m sort of scraping the barrel,” he admitted. “But if I’m what he’s got, I’m what he’s got, and I need to do my best.”
Briggs’s apple-cheeked face fell into sober lines. “We all work for Colonel Constance because we believe in him and what he’s doing. You may not believe this, but I’m pretty sure he does. Your competence and hard work might be the things that get him through. Stay strong. Don’t let him bully you into going back too quickly. We can’t keep doing good work if he comes back only to get sick.”
Cotton agreed. “Yeah, well, this is officially the most important thing I’ll ever do. I need to do it right.”
“You sell yourself short! You’re what? Twenty?”
“Twenty-two.”
“Go back to school. You could be something amazing!” And with that, Briggs turned toward his teammates, who were already walking, loose-limbed in the sunshine, toward the driveway that led down to the edge of the lake and their cabin complex. Cotton leaned against the doorframe and watched them go. They’d promised to give him a wave when they hit the dock so he could see what a signal looked like and knew to look out for one.
When Medina hit the dock, he tore off his T-shirt and waved it wildly in the air, making Cotton laugh a little before giving a brief gesture with his hand and moving inside. Burton was cleaning up breakfast, and he gestured for Cotton to take a seat.
“So…,” Burton said, his voice leading.
“We’re in good hands,” Jason told him, sounding amused.
“Which means…,” he prompted.
“That Cotton and I can relax a little, and I can rest and get better,” Jason agreed.
“Good.” Lee finished wiping down the counter and then turned to them both. “And it also means I’m going to leave. There is some snooping I need to do and may need some help, and I can’t do it here. I’m driving down to Sac this afternoon, crashing at Cramer’s place, I hope, and then continuing down to LA in the morning.”
“Why crash at Cramer’s—oh.”
Cotton glanced up to see them having an eyeball agreement.
“Ellery Cramer?” he said. “Jackson’s boyfriend?”