Ben dug his grip into Jacob’s arm, begging with his eyes.
“No.” Jacob pushed back the locks of Ben’s matted hair. “You’re not going to die.”
Tears squeezed from Ben’s clenched eyes.
“I won’t let you, okay? I will not let you.” Jacob didn’t think Ben heard until he nodded. Several people in scrubs descended, and Jacob was pulled back while they moved Ben to a gurney and wheeled him beyond a set of double doors.
Jacob could only hope those weren’t the last words he’d ever get to say to Ben.
4
A woman wearing a pink scrub top pressed her thumb against Ben’s wrist below the plastic bracelet he wore.
An IV line sprouted from the crook of his arm.
Metal rails caged him on both sides.
“You gave your friend quite a scare yesterday.” She smiled, and her dark eyes sparkled.
Yesterday?
Lost hours swam behind a fog scented with cheap cologne.
She stepped back to a cart a few feet away and opened a drawer. “I’m going to give him one more injection, then come back in a couple hours and take another blood sample.”
Ben squinted at the woman. What was she talking about?
“Will he be able to leave today?” Jacob stood on the other side of the room under a TV mounted to the wall.
Ben had no idea how he’d missed him.
Other details about the room, the white tile, the sterile air, the beep of a heart monitor trickled in.
“Hospital?” Ben croaked out.
Jacob stepped close enough to rest his hands on the foot of the bed. “You had an overdose.” He flicked his gaze to the nurse, then back to Ben. Tension tightened Jacob’s features.
“Overdose.” Ben repeated the word in the same matter-of-fact tone Jacob spoke with.
The smile on the nurse’s face saddened. “I have someone you can talk to if you want? They have a very good treatment program.”
Her words tripped through Ben’s head. “Treatment?”
She injected the contents of the syringe into the IV port. “It’s all right, honey. No one will judge you. If you’re not ready to talk to someone, that’s okay.” She capped the needle and dropped the syringe in a sharps box on the wall beside the bed. “But I want you to think about it, okay? You might not be so lucky next time.” She glanced at Jacob as if waiting for him to say something, then dropped her attention back to Ben. “Get some rest, Mr. Corbin. That goes for you too, Mr. Moser.” She guided the cart out of the room and shut the door.
Ben tried to push himself upright, but exhaustion weighed too much.
“Hang on.” Jacob came around to the side. “There’s a controller over here.” He picked it up, and the bed hummed, the upper half lifting and putting Ben into a seated position.
Jacob rested his hands on the railings. “That better?” Dark smudges shadowed his blotched eyes.
“You’ve been crying.”
Jacob laughed and slapped a hand over his mouth. He moved like he was about to step away and tilted to the side.
Ben grabbed his wrist. “Sit down before you fall.”
Jacob nodded.
He pulled, but Ben wouldn’t let go. “Here, just sit here.” Ben wiggled the railing, trying to get it to drop.
“There’s a lock.” Jacob turned a lever at the edge. The railing fell away. First, the right half, then the left. He propped his hip on the mattress.
Ben still held Jacob’s wrist.
For a very long time, he sat there with his eyes closed. Long enough that Ben started to wonder if he’d fallen asleep.
“Warfarin,” Jacob said. “Logan used it to cut the heroin.”
“That’s an anticoagulant.”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
Jacob leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Fillers stretch out the amount, and they make more money.”
“But Warfarin?”
Jacob laughed a little. “You have just as many shitty people selling cutting agents as you do the drugs. Knowing Logan, he probably went to the cheapest source he could find, and they sold him rat poison.”
Ben licked his lips. No more copper.
“The doctor gave you vitamin K, but you’d already started hemorrhaging. You lost too much blood, they had to give you a transfusion.” And Jacob sounded so pained. “I’m sorry.”
“This isn’t your fault.”
He nodded. “If you hadn’t—”
“Shut up.”
Jacob looked at Ben.
“This wasn’t your fault. It was Logan’s.”
Jacob started to say something.
Ben tightened his hold on his wrist. “I mean it. Don’t you dare try to take the blame for this.”
Jacob swallowed several times. “What if you’d gone through that window and gotten cut.”
It took Ben a minute to realize what Jacob meant. “I didn’t go through the window, and I didn’t get cut.”
“I didn’t even stop to think he might have…”
“Jacob—”
He nodded.
Disjointed voices came and went outside the door. Footsteps slapped against the tile, and a child laughed. An intercom clicked on, paging a doctor. The minutes continued to tick by. No matter how hard sleep pulled at Ben, he forced his eyes to remain open, his hold firm around Jacob’s wrist.
Jacob swayed, then jerked upright.
“Why don’t you go back home and get some sleep?”
Jacob’s fuzzy gaze focused. “I don’t want to leave you by yourself.”
“I’m in a hospital. I don’t think I can get much safer than this.”
“Then, no. I just don’t want to leave you.” The edge to Jacob’s tone sounded like a challenge.
Ben scooted over. “Then lay down. There’s room.”
“I’m fine.”
“Jacob, please.”
He moved farther up on the bed and laid his head on Ben’s pillow. He combed his fingers through Jacob’s hair.
“Go to sleep.”
He might have nodded.
“You’re safe. I’m safe.”
The tension in Jacob’s muscles eased, and the weight of his body pressed against Ben’s side. He maneuvered his IV arm around Jacob until Jacob’s head rested on his shoulder.
In spite of the circumstances, it felt so right. Like Jacob had always belonged there. Like he would always belong there.
A ridiculous thought, yet Ben let it carry him along the edge of sleep where anything was imaginable.
It wasn’t so much a sound as a feeling. An approaching storm. A hidden danger. Ben opened his eyes.
The door to the room was no longer closed.
Marcel held his cane, not a knife. His blue shirt crisp and unstained.
He wore the same expression he’d had while he slit a man’s throat.
Ben clenched his eyes shut for a moment, but it gave color to the image, sound to the hiss of air as it bubbled from the gaping wound in the gunman’s throat.
All the while, Marcel watched as the life slipped from his bodies.
Marcel shut the door and planted his cane in front of his feet like an ordinary old man who needed it to keep his balance.
But Ben knew better, now.
Jacob shifted in his sleep, burrowing closer to Ben. He held Jacob tighter and hoped he wouldn’t wake up.
Marcel tipped his head as if examining them both. When he spoke, his voice was soft, yet no less imposing. “How do you feel?”
“Better.” But that didn’t say much compared to lying on the emergency room floor with his insides on fire while he gagged on bloody saliva.
Marcel walked over.
“That is not what I asked.” Still nothing in the man’s gaze. Even his good eye remained as dead as the one clouded over.
No, not dead. It was far too empty for even that. More of a window into somewhere Ben didn’t want to see.
Marcel cupped Ben’s jaw. There was nothing sens
ual or even aggressive, yet he strained not to shrink away.
“How do you feel, Ben Corbin?”
No. Nothing pleasing or displeasing in the man’s touch, yet Ben’s skin tingled from the contact. A sensation that wound down through his core, speeding up his heart, making him pant.
The corner of Marcel’s mouth turned up. “I’m waiting, Ben.”
“I don’t understand what you’re—”
Marcel dug his thumb into the underside of Ben’s jaw. The sharp bite of pain did nothing to dampen the ache twisting in his groin. “Scared.” Ben hissed the answer from behind clenched teeth.
The pressure eased and returned to a gentle caress. “Of who?”
Who. Ben didn’t know why it surprised him Marcel knew, or why the man wanted to hear him say it.
“You.”
Marcel pulled away, and Ben almost whimpered. “Because I killed those men.” Another statement.
Ben nodded.
“I took what they owed for the indiscretion they committed.”
Indiscretion wasn’t the word Ben would use, but he didn’t know what else to call being taken at gunpoint, jacked up on heroin, and nearly forced to watch the sexual assault on someone he cared about.
Marcel petted Jacob’s head, and he muttered in his sleep. The tenderness was somehow obscene. Probably because it didn’t belong because people like Marcel weren’t capable of it.
“He always sleeps heavy when his body has given out.”
When he had sex with Jacob. When he used him. When he left him unfinished and begging. The knowledge made Ben hate Marcel. The fact that witnessing it, thinking about it, made Ben hard, left him disgusted with himself even more.
“But even then, there are nightmares. Yet he is quiet with you.” Marcel dropped his hand back to his side. “Have they told you when you can check out?”
Jacob stirred but didn’t wake up.
“No,” Ben said.
Marcel nodded. “If they want you to stay, then you will stay, so they can make sure you are well before you leave.”
“I don’t have any insurance, so I doubt they’ll want me to stay.” Ben didn’t have enough in savings to cover an emergency room Band-Aid let alone multiple nights.
And he couldn’t use the money in the duffle bag.
“The bill will be taken care of. I have made sure the doctors are aware.”
How would Ben repay him? The answer was simple, he couldn’t. But since money didn’t seem to matter to Marcel, Ben doubted that’s what he’d want to cover the debt.
Ben shivered.
“I will not ask you to repay me.”
“Wh—why not?”
Marcel slid his attention from Jacob to Ben, and he was blanketed by the overwhelming sense of having his soul dissected. He fought the urge to try and hide. As if hiding would do any good. Marcel probably saw through walls.
“There will be many days for you and Jacob. I will not request your company. And it is important you do not come to the house. I will contact you when I return.”
“Where are you going?”
“There are Rules, Ben. Rules I must abide by. Rules that some feel I have broken.”
Ben shook his head because he didn’t understand.
Marcel lifted his chin, and the sensation of being dissected with a look turned into an all-out evisceration. “Except for a few instances, the Justices decide the lives that are mine. But you have nothing to worry about. You will be taken care of, and my House will respect my mark and protect you.”
“Wait…what are you saying?”
“If the Justices should rule in favor of the complainant, you will receive a letter. It will have numbers to accounts. You and Jacob may use the money as you wish. To pay for your school. Or to travel. Whatever brings you happiness.”
Ben started to sit up, but the weight of Jacob’s body kept him pinned. Jacob mumbled again as he slid an arm around Ben’s chest.
Marcel shushed him. “Sleep. Do not wake.” Again he petted Jacob’s head, and once more, he settled as if Marcel could even command his dreams. When Jacob was still, he returned his attention to Ben. “I should know in a few days. A week. Ten at the most.” Marcel turned.
“Are you saying these people—”
“The Justices.”
Who cared what they called themselves. “You make it sound like they may kill you.”
“It is possible.”
“Like how possible?” Ben never thought he could fear Marcel dying, and he wasn’t sure if that’s what he felt then. Rather a fear for Jacob.
“They will most likely find in my favor, but if they do not—” He shrugged.
“And if you don’t…” come back. Saying the words cemented the possibility, and while some small part celebrated the thought, the rest feared Jacob would blame him.
Marcel stood straighter. “He will not.”
There was no reason to even ask. “What am I supposed to tell him?”
“You will tell him nothing.”
“He’s going to want to know where you are.”
“I have taken a flight overseas. That is all he needs to know. The rest I will leave for him on his voicemail.”
Ben wanted to argue.
Marcel straightened, expanded, transforming into the killer. “That is all you will tell him, Ben. Nothing else.”
Ben shivered. “Okay.”
Marcel relaxed, his intimidating presence withdrawing into a scarred body, hindered by age, needing a cane to walk. He limped in a stiff gait to the door and left.
Sam stopped at the mailbox to retrieve the letters from inside. A Post-It Note on the front read:
Sam Waters
I have favor to ask.
Come talk.
Marcel
Sam slid his backpack off his shoulder and left it and the mail next to the end of the fence separating his yard from Marcel’s. He walked over.
The garage door was up.
“Mr. Serghi?”
The door leading into the house sat half-ajar.
“Mr. Serghi?”
He hoped Marcel could hear him. The last thing Sam wanted to do was sneak up on him.
Sam climbed the short flight of steps and pushed open the door enough to peek inside.
“Mr. Serghi? It’s Sam. I got your note.”
The grandfather clock ticked.
Worry needled Sam’s insides. The man was old. It was possible he’d gotten hurt. Or worse.
He pushed the door a little wider.
“I am here.” His voice traveled from beyond the foyer with its washer and dryer and from somewhere past the kitchen.
At least the old man was alive.
Sam went in.
Shuffling came from around the wall. Marcel hobbled with his cane in one hand, luggage in the other.
“Hang on. Let me get that.” Sam rushed over and took the suitcase.
Marcel opened his hand without argument. “You got my note.” He smiled, but somehow his eyes remained cold. Well, the one eye, the clouded one was always cold, but the other?
“Yeah.” Sam hefted the suitcase high enough to put the strap over his shoulder. It wasn’t as heavy as his bookbag, but it was heavy enough to make him huff with effort. “Are you going somewhere?”
“I am.”
“Where to?”
“England.”
“Are you going to visit someone?” Not that it was any of Sam’s business.
Marcel grunted with each step to the garage. “I will go see others of my House.”
Sam followed. “I thought you were an orphan?”
“My House did not make me, they simply made me who I am.”
A killer.
Or so he claimed.
Marcel gripped the railing taking each step with care. At the bottom, he turned and waved for Sam to follow.
“How long will you be gone?”
Marcel stopped at his car. “For a few days, perhaps, or I may stay.”
“Stay, like,
forever, stay?”
“I do not think so, but if I am wrong, then yes, it will be forever.” Marcel opened the trunk, and Sam set the bag inside.
“Oh.”
“But if it is not, I will need someone to water my plants, so when I return, they will still be green and not shriveled.” Marcel closed the trunk. “I want to give you ten dollars a day to water my flowers and the plants inside.”
Sam lifted a shoulder. “You don’t have to pay me to water your plants.”
“It takes time. And it must be done correctly. Too much water can be as bad as too little.” Marcel rested his weight against the car. “Is ten dollars fair enough? I am not sure what people charge for things these days.”
“Yeah, sure. But I promise, you don’t have to—”
Marcel took a fifty dollar bill out of his pocket and held it out. “That is for five days. If I am longer, there are several tens in the cookie jar on the counter. You may take what I owe you. If I stay, people will come to clean out my house. Then you do not need to worry about the plants anymore.”
And why did it feel like there was so much more in those words? Why did lead fill Sam’s stomach?
Marcel stared down at him, so still he might as well have been a statue void of life. Then he blinked, and once again, he was made of flesh. “School.”
“Huh?”
“You still do not know what to do about your issue with the other boys?”
“Uh, not really.”
“They have left you alone.” A statement, not a question.
Sam toed the concrete. “They probably just got bored and gave up.”
“You are not foolish, Sam Waters.”
He deflated. “Can’t I at least hope?”
“You can. But it will not change what will happen.”
Again his words held an impossible weight as if they hid a message Sam needed to know even though he didn’t want to.
For some reason, he asked anyhow. “And what will happen?”
“They will do what scavengers always do. Wait for opportunity.”
“Scavengers normally eat things that’re already dead.” So far, Sam wasn’t. He really wanted it to stay that way.
“Unless they perceive helplessness.”
Sam was pretty sure he fit that bill. “Great.”
Marcel titled his head. “Always remember, anything can be made a weapon. Even weakness.”
Sicarii 3 Page 8
