Page 46

Elliot Crane

Promise me that you’ll be careful.

Seth Mays

I’ll be careful.

If Val is right, there might be others up there.

Noah will be with me.

All the more reason to be careful.

If you’re that worried, come with us.

Can you wait for me?

Sure. How long?

Give me an hour or so?

I was sitting on the hotel bed, my whole leg in a massive immobilizing brace, Sassafras curled up against the side of my other thigh.

I’d had surgery on the knee four days earlier and had been released two days later to finish recovering out of the hospital.

The surgeon had been happy with how things went.

I now had several new tendons, half of my patella was now made of surgical-grade plastic, part of the head of my femur was titanium, and every few hours, I had to put myself through PT exercises that were barely half a step above torture and left me gasping for breath.

In theory, they’d left enough of my own bone for the patella and femur to still be able to shift. I wasn’t excited about testing that, and I was under orders not to even think about it for a full twelve weeks. We’d see how that went later, I guess.

But today was better than yesterday. Yesterday had sucked .

Especially because the pain meds made me feel out of it, and I didn’t want to feel out of it, so I’d stopped taking the hardcore ones.

If the Community was going to come after me or Elliot or Noah, I needed to have my shit together, and tramadol did not let me have my shit together.

So it was me and my reconstructed knee running on Bayer and some steroid whose name I couldn’t remember, but which the surgical nurse had assured me at least five times wouldn’t kill me. It hadn’t, so she’d been correct.

I’d already called Quincy to whine about the pain, and she’d made appropriately sympathetic noises until she’d gotten a call from Detective Maginot and had to go.

I was glad I’d called her the other day—with everything that had been going on, I’d gotten so stuck in my own head that I’d kind of forgotten that there were other people out there, like Quincy, who actually cared about me.

It was a good reminder that there was more to life than the Community and the corruption and religious fanaticism that orbited it, reaching—clearly—as far as Staunton and other parts of Augusta County.

God, it was so easy to fall back into the insular isolation of my childhood. To forget that there was anyone else in the world. Anyone who might not think I was a pathetic and sinful disappointment.

I’d then proceeded to text Lacy with an update, letting her know about my knee surgery and the fact that it was going to take me a bit longer to get back. She’d immediately called.

“Holy shit, Seth. Are you okay?”

I felt my neck flush, even though Lacy wasn’t here to see it. “I’ll be fine, it’s just…”

“Of course you need time to recover,” she interrupted. “Don’t even think about coming back until you’re totally cleared.”

“I’m really sorry,” I told her. “This has just gotten away from me.”

“Seth Mays, someone tried to kill you . You get to take some damn time off.”

I was deeply grateful—so much so that I had to swallow back the tears so that she wouldn’t be able to hear it in my voice. “I really appreciate that,” I told her, when I thought I had myself under control. “And I am sorry. I’d much rather be working, honestly.”

“No shit,” came her reply. “But life doesn’t always work that way. I do have some good news for you, though.”

“Yeah? I could use some of that.”

“Borde is finally gone.”

Douglas Borde, the barely-competent interim medical examiner for Shawano County, was one of the most annoying people I’d ever had the misfortune to work with.

He tromped all over my crime scenes, usually insulted me—which he also did to Lacy and Roger, so I didn’t take it particularly personally—argued with the detectives, and generally made himself abrasive and irritating.

He was also habitually late, forcing all of the rest of us to wait around for him to show up before we could finish our jobs and go home.

“Does that mean we have no ME, or did we get someone who has a basic level of competence this time?” I asked her. “And are they permanent?”

Lacy chuckled. “Fingers crossed, this guy’s supposed to be long-term. His name’s Beaumont and he’s a baby, but so far he’s not stepped on anybody’s toes or pissed in their porridge.” Lacy had some fun turns of phrase occasionally.

“I’m jealous,” I told her.

She laughed. “We’ll try not to scare him off before you get back,” she told me.

“Seriously, Lacy, I really, really appreciate the fact that you’re holding this job for me.”

“Oh, hell, Seth, you’re better than any of the rest of us, with more experience in homicide and crime than most, if not all, of the rest of the department, maybe the chief excepted. We’d be stupid to not wait for you to get back—especially since you are coming back, right?”

“God, yes. I literally can’t get out of here soon enough.” I sighed. “I wish I’d gotten out of here weeks ago, but?—”

“They did let your brother out, right?”

“Yeah, they did,” I confirmed. “And now my father’s dead?—”

“Oh, shit , Seth, I’m so sorry.”

“He’s the one who killed my mother and tried to kill both Elliot and me,” I told her grimly. “I can’t say that I’m all that sorry.”

“ Shit, ” she repeated on a sharp exhale. “I don’t blame you. You really are having a bad couple of weeks, aren’t you?”

“I really want to come home,” I admitted, although I was proud of myself for keeping the quaver out of my voice.

“I would, too,” she told me. “We’ll be here when you do. Promise.”

“Thanks,” I told her, meaning it.

After we hung up, I at least felt a little better about my job security, even if I knew that I’d probably lost another three months of firefighter training and CFI classes.

If I didn’t want to drive down to Milwaukee, that also meant I’d probably have to put off the exam for a whole year…

which made Milwaukee seem like a more attractive option.

I’d figure it out.

Once I got another goddamn car.

I sighed.

It never fucking ended.

Two and a half hours after he’d texted me, Hart dropped Elliot back at the hotel. He’d had to give Hart and Raj his official statement about the day he’d been run off the road by Mosby, as well as his account of what had happened when my father had attacked him.

I was still sitting on the bed—going anywhere, the bathroom included, was an ordeal I was trying to minimize as much as possible—when Elliot came into the room, causing Sassafras to lift her head and let out a mew.

He immediately crossed to sit on the edge of the bed, lifting my hand to his lips. “How are you feeling?”

“About the same as when you left this morning,” I replied, amused by his gallantry.

“Did you do your PT?”

“ Yes .” I really hated my PT. I knew it was necessary, but, God, did I hate it.

I texted Noah that Elliot was back, and we could go up to the house. He sent back a smiley face and a thumb’s up.

I pushed myself to the edge of the bed, and Elliot immediately helped me to lever myself up to my better—notice I did not say good —leg, then handed me my crutches. “Okay?” he asked.

“As I’m going to be,” I replied with a grimace as the blood rushed down into my leg, causing the knee to pulse with a dull throb.

“We don’t have to?—”

“Yeah, unfortunately, we do,” I disagreed. “So let’s do it.”

Lulu drove and Noah sat in the passenger seat so that Elliot could serve as a living cushion for my extended injured leg.

Every bump on the country highways and roads and—especially—the gravel track up to the old house made me grit my teeth.

I could tell from Elliot’s expression that he was imagining the pain of each one.

Even if it didn’t actually do anything to help, I appreciated the sympathy.

When Lulu pulled up to the house, I could see Helen out feeding the chickens, and I had a moment of relief that she, at least, was unharmed.

I knew Ray had helped us, and I’d been worried that he and Helen would face some sort of retribution from the Community.

She walked over to the fence, leaning on it as Lulu and Noah got out of the car.

“Go on and say hi to her,” I told Elliot. “She’ll be happy to see you.”

“You, too,” he replied.

“Yeah, but I’m slow.” I gave him a smile to encourage him to go.

After taking a long look at me, he sighed, then gently eased himself out from under my leg and slid out of the car.

He left the crutches propped up against the door so that I could easily grab them once I managed to lever myself out of the back seat.

By the time I got myself out and on my one foot, crutches painfully propped in my abused armpits, Elliot had gone over to join Helen and waved over both Noah and Lulu to introduce them both.

I made my slow way over to them, noticing as I got closer that there was bruising on one side of Helen’s face and there were noticeable scratches on one arm that looked very much like they’d been made by a wolf. Her expression softened when she saw me. “Hey, darlin’. How are you doin’?”

I gave her a weary smile. “Okay. Better now that this mostly seems to be over.”

She nodded. “I can’t say that I’m upset about it, either,” she said. “I’m sorry it had to get so messy, though.”

“Is Ray okay?” I asked her.

“Oh, sure, darlin’.” She smiled. “He’s just layin’ low for the moment so nobody asks any questions about the chew marks on that one wolf.”

I had a moment of cognitive dissonance in which the horror of that particular sentence met the gratitude I felt at the fact that Ray had done it in order to help us—help me , really.

“I’m not sure anybody’s going to be asking any questions,” Elliot remarked. “Not with the FBI treating the Community like a terrorist group.”

Helen’s eyebrows went up.