Chapter Thirty Four

Icy rain peppered the window. Art paused to watch it for a few seconds before he turned and started pacing across the room, every step stiff with frustrated anger. Raylan watched him walk for a few more trips before he spoke.

"I want my gun," the younger man said flatly, as if he'd been saying the same thing for hours.

His throat felt as if he had. The drug from the night before had left his throat sore and scratchy. His arm ached where he had been injected. The bruise almost wrapped around his whole arm, spreading in strange and mottled shades of blue and dark green.

Art stopped walking in the middle of the room and turned to face the bed. His shoes squeaked on the tile floor. "No, Raylan." He shook his head for extra effect "You're injured. It's not a good idea."

Raylan let out a breath, careful not to irritate his sore lungs. His chest ached, vaguely, though he could hardly tell it apart from all the other aches and pains. "You've seen me take down a man in worse shape than this."

The other man sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "That was a long time ago, Raylan."

Raylan closed his eyes for a beat, opening them again when the darkness behind his eyelids threatened to swallow him whole. "Art, please," he said, eyes fixed on his hands. It was the closest he'd ever came to begging, and both of them knew it.

Art's footsteps echoed lightly on the walls as he started pacing again. Raylan counted twenty trips between door and window before his boss spoke again.

"It's just one more day, right?" Art asked. "Twenty four more hours until they'll let you leave?"

"Yes." Raylan glanced ruefully at his IV line. "One more day of antibiotics. Plus a week of steroids for my lungs," he said, and stifled a cough as the dry air caught the back of his throat. He reached for the cup of water on the side table, wishing it was something much stronger.

"I should put a guard outside of your door," Art muttered.

Raylan shook his head, sickness rolling thorough his gut. "After what happened to the last one?" He shook his head again, more forcefully, ignoring the way it made the room spin. "That man will ever walk again because he was outside of my door."

Art turned his back towards the window, studying Raylan.

The younger man was slumped against the flat hospital pillows, a thin sheet and blanket covering his body to his lower chest. His eyes held an air of wildness that his exhaustion couldn't quite hide. Every noise brought a flicker of motion over his skin as his muscles, flexed, tensing for danger.

It was as close to broken as Art had ever seen the other man, and it was as close to it as he ever wanted to see. Anyone else, and I wouldn't even consider giving them a gun, Art thought. He wasn't sure why, but Raylan was different. He always had been.

"Your back-up gun is in my car safe. I'll get it for you before I leave," Art said, finally.

Profound relief flickered through Raylan's eyes and vanished as it if had never been there. Some of the tension drained from his body. "Thank you."

"I'm also putting two guards outside of this door." He held up a hand to stop Raylan's protest before it could start. "That's the deal. Take it or leave it."

Raylan nodded tiredly. "Fine." He bit the inside of his lip, thinking. "Any word on Hope?"

Art pulled his phone out of his pocket and checked the screen before he answered the question. "Nothing yet." He rubbed his forehead with the side of his thumb. "The security cameras show her leaving with a man who looks like her father. Her mother doesn't know where either of them are. It's being treated as a suspected abduction. Everyone is looking for her."

Raylan nodded, gut telling him this would not have a good outcome. The thought sent a wash of cold through him, making the hairs on his arms stand on end. Happy endings are just for fairy tales, right? He mocked himself.

"What about the other girls? Did they give us anything useful?" he asked, shoving the dark thoughts to the back of his mind.

"They seem to be recovering well. We're going through their statements now."

A ghost of a smile touched Raylan's lips. "That's good. How is the old woman?"

Art sucked in a breath. "She died. the doctor think the stress was too much for her heart."

The nagging feeling that things were going to go bad deepened. "Her daughter was the coroner. They snatched her to make her daughter work with them." Raylan shook his head, "There's too many people dying because of this."

Art held his silence for the moment, letting Raylan talk, knowing that the younger man needed to vent his anger before it consumed him. "Christ, Art. What happens if we can't stop this?"

The older man dropped into a chair, stretching his legs out and eyed the other man carefully. This self doubt wasn't like Raylan. Art figured it was the pain or the exhaustion or the sheer damned stress talking. The last week had been tough, by anyone's standards.

"It's falling apart at the seams now." He shrugged. "There's not that many of them left. One of them will break and start talking to us. We just have to keep pressing them until it happens."

Raylan nodded, eyes still shadowed with doubt. "Yeah," he said quietly, gaze trailing towards the window. "I just hope it happens before anyone else gets killed."