by Scott, R. J.
lightweight and to help him upright that easily must mean the doc wasn't entirely past it.
"Where's Dale?"
"Why?"
"I don't mean any disrespect but it's him I need to talk to."
"He isn't here."
"Why?"
"He's on another retrieval."
"What?"
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"A case. He's been reassigned."
Reassigned? Wait. Dale was supposed to be
watching him—looking after him. "No," Beckett said quickly.
"What do you mean no?" Kayden said. He sounded amused.
"He said he'd be here. That he'd protect me. What if my uncles decide to pay me a visit? I can't see. I need Dale here." Panic began to grip him and his throat tightened in fear.
"First things first; they won't find us even if they tried."
Was the Doctor stupid or something? "You don't
know them—"
"Believe me kid, I do. They're not unique. Now
listen to me."
"They could—"
"We are in the middle of nowhere, literally
nowhere. Sanctuary has you now. You're safe. Dale has been reassigned and you have been assigned to me. You're my case now."
"No, that's not—I don't understand what you mean by Sanctuary. Where is the ADA? Did Dale get me out of the mountains?"
Beckett didn't even want to start thinking about
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what the hell some of that meant but he clung tenaciously to the whole reassignment problem. Dale, or someone like Dale, should be here. A doctor wasn't any use against guns and big men who intimidated and threatened. He struggled to move but the drip in his hand and the heaviness in his limbs wouldn't allow it. Between a combination of being held down by his own body's failings and the drugs
coursing through his system fear ran through him like lightening. If Dale had gone, then how could he know that he could trust the doctor left to look after him? Was this a hospital? Alastair would know he had to have been taken to a hospital—he would be easy to track down.
"Stop." Kayden said. His voice was firm and he had a good grip on Beckett's arm.
Just the word 'stop' wasn't enough; Beckett
struggled against the hold. Panic had well and truly taken hold of him.
"Stop struggling, kid," Kayden snapped out.
God. Those words. Stop struggling. Beckett heard them and they were said with such clear anger. Suddenly Beckett needed to get away. Only he couldn't. The doctor had him restrained. Not causing him any pain but the other man's body was flat on his and that was enough to shock the ever living hell out of him.
"Stop. Okay?" Kayden was still trying to get him to
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lie still.
"Dale promised me," Beckett said forcefully. "He told me he'd have ways of looking out for me."
"I'm the one doing the looking now. I'm Doctor
Kayden Summers." Kayden's voice was soft and
persuasive. The soft roll of it made Beckett feel worse.
There would be no arguing against that simple sentence.
Evidently Dale leaving him with who-the-fuck-ever was non-negotiable.
"Shit. He can't do that. He can't just up and leave me with a doctor. I only told him about Elisabeth because they said I would be protected."
"Calm down."
"Gregory has guns and people he pays that will hunt me down. I'm going to need more than a doctor wielding a freaking stethoscope." His head was pounding now and the lack of vision terrified him. He was heading for overload.
He felt ill. Worse than ill. "Does no one want me to provide evidence? If I die…" God. He didn't want to die. Not yet.
"Listen to me. I am a trained Sanctuary operative as much as Dale is," Kayden reassured. "Now. Can I let go so we can get you out of bed and into clothes? You need to eat and we need to talk."
"You don't understand." Beckett was desperate to get an idea of what it was that would stop a bullet from
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finishing him right here and now. "What is stopping them from getting to me? What is between us and them?"
"A secure property, automatic lockdown, security surveillance. And me." Kayden paused and to Beckett it sounded like one of those dramatic planned pauses. Then he caught the absolute flatness in Kayden's voice. The distinct lack of loud confusing passion reassured him more than he thought it would. "But most important of all, between you and them is me." Kayden repeated.
"You're a freaking doctor." He wasn't dangerous like Dale. "I need a gun of my own." Beckett knew he wasn't making sense. He couldn't see for shit. What the hell would he do with a gun?
"We'll talk guns later when you can actually see. I'm letting you go and you are getting out of bed. Deal?"
Stumbling, more like falling, out of bed then being
helped into soft cotton pants and a shirt was all levels of embarrassment and more. Kayden had propped him up
against the bed and moved his hand to touch where the clothes were. Beckett had to admit defeat and could feel himself blushing from his head to his toes. Why was it he couldn't get some damn clothes on? He had gotten dressed in the dark before and surely this was no different. He panicked and that was just freaking stupid. Focusing on the feel of the garments he held them out in one hand and
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muttered "please". Doc took them from him and helped to slide the cool cotton over sore muscles.
"How many others are here?" Beckett finally asked.
He hoped against hell there wasn't a line of people standing quietly and watching him get dressed. He was so far from being an exhibitionist that it was unreal.
"Others?" Kayden questioned. "No others. Just you and me."
"Where are we then? In a hospital? A secure wing?"
Even as he said it he realized he wasn't hearing the usual sounds he would associate with a hospital. But then a secure wing could be quieter, apart from nurses, so that would explain it. Where were the nurses? The meals? The noise?
"You really don't know anything about Sanctuary?
About the kind of protection we offer? Were you not
briefed?"
"Nothing." Beckett couldn't remember Dale saying anything about where he would be taken. He guessed
actually he was lucky to be alive. His stomach churned and bile burned the back of his throat as flashing images of what had happened slammed into his thoughts.
"Come on kid. Soup and then talk."
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CHAPTER 4
Beckett felt Kayden guide his feet into soft slip-on shoes and then gripping onto the doc's arm he allowed himself to be led out of the room and then turned left. He groaned quietly when Kayden helped him sit in a hard chair. Every single nerve and fiber of him ached fiercely but the smell of soup assailed his nostrils and his stomach reminded him it was empty. No wonder he felt sick and dizzy. The last time he'd eaten anything had been breakfast the morning of…
"What day is it?" he asked quickly. He needed to get the computer files to the Feds, or at least pass on what he knew from his mom's letter.
"It's been four days since you were extracted."
Sickness roiled over him again, and the whimper
that left his mouth was involuntary and telling. The sudden realization of just how long it had been since his injuries occurred was suddenly written in black on white in his mind. Four days of unconsciousness. Probably on drips and vulnerable to attack. Four days a
nd he needed to tell Dale about the files and the letter and…
"Did you find a letter? Or a key? I had a key." He remembered picking the key and letter up from the floor.
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His fingers had scrabbled in Gregory Bullen's blood. The same blood, his father's blood, that ran through his own veins. Self-consciously he dropped those same fingers to his sweats and surreptitiously wiped them on the cloth. It didn't matter that he knew the blood would surely be gone; the sense memory of it was enough. He may well have not lost any time over the man who wanted to call himself father, but still, that had been a human being dying on the polished wooden floors.
"Eat your soup kid. Then we'll start from the
beginning." Beckett flinched as the weight of Kayden's hands rested on his shoulders. Not helped when the doc reached over him, took the hands that rested on his thighs and positioned them flat on the table. "Soup in the center, spoon at three o'clock, bread at nine. Got it?"
"No wait. Look, I can't eat, I have to find the letter and the key—"
"Five minutes," Kayden was firm. "Eat to line your stomach. That will work on helping to stop the nausea.
Let's see if you can keep any of it down and then we'll talk about the letter and the key which, incidentally, are safe.
Do you need help?"
"No." Beckett was adamant about that. He could do this. Everything wasn't as completely dark as it had been and he could make out shadowy shapes. It's not as if he
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could see any spills down his front anyway.
Once he had managed his first tentative sip, the
need to talk and to ask questions was firmly held back by the need to eat. He drank the soup and ate a small amount of bread in utter silence and very slowly. He imagined the warmth working its way to his stomach, and hoped to hell four days of not eating wouldn't have him heaving his guts out as soon as it hit the emptiness. In the time it took him to consume half a bowl of soup Doc was clearly finished and if the scraping was anything to go by it was his third bowl.
Being near blind made eating more than a little difficult.
Only by going slow did the small amount of food make it into his mouth and not everywhere else. Kayden didn't talk while Beckett was eating but as soon as he had clearly finished the doc dove in with information overload.
"I need to do a quick debrief. Just tell me if you can't handle the statements or questions."
"Okay," Beckett murmured around a mouthful of bread.
"As I said before the blindness is temporary,"
Kayden said. That was clearly where this chat was starting.
Beckett's medical status. All Beckett knew was that he hurt and ached with every movement. "Your face is pretty badly swollen and in particular around your eyes. Normally when someone is beaten they will raise their hands to protect
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their eyes but…" his voice paused and he coughed.
"Situation report said your hands were tied."
"In front of me." Beckett felt for the edge of the bowl and placed his spoon carefully inside it. He held his hands together and showed an approximation of how they had been tied. "I would have moved them to protect my face if I could. But one of them would hold me when the other beat me." There was silence. Beckett wished he could see Kayden's expression. Maybe he shouldn't have
explained that. He didn't want to make the doc
uncomfortable. "Sorry," he offered lamely. Kayden said nothing in response to what he had just said. Instead he pulled the direction of conversation back to a clinical examination of wounds.
"The ties on your wrists broke the skin but it's…"
Kayden paused briefly and Beckett could imagine him
searching for the right words. "Healing," he finished. "The plaster on your right arm will have to stay a few weeks. It was a clean break and you're young enough to heal quickly.
I'll talk you through whatever exercise you need. Bruised ribs will ache like a bitch and I need you to tell me the instant you feel that breathing is difficult in case the swelling pushes on your lungs. You said you had files?"
The quick change of subject threw Beckett and he realized he was focusing on Kayden's firm voice way too much. The
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tone of it was deep and curiously devoid of any regional accent he could identify. The content was matter of fact and incredibly practical. And sexy. Deep and throaty and sexy.
Where the hell had that thought come from?
Shaking himself mentally he concentrated on what he was being asked. "There are computer files I grabbed hold of.
As much as I could get when my… when Gregory Bullen
was away from the house. It isn't much but I need to give them to the FBI or the ADA or whoever."
"I can do that for you…" Kayden said simply. There was no question the files were going to Sanctuary first. Just statement. "Do you want to give me the details?"
Fear and anger clutched at Beckett in equal
measures. He wasn't turning this over to just anyone. Not least a man he couldn't see.
"I want to talk to Dale." He tried to be firm when he said this. Unspoken was his point that he didn't know Kayden from the next guy. He heard Kayden sigh and he bristled with irritation. Kayden was giving the impression that Beckett was trying his patience. That hurt. Beckett didn't know exactly what was in those files but hell, it had to be important for Alastair to be so angry he had been in Gregory's computer. Trembling with a combination of
being sick and anger Beckett pushed himself to stand. Now if only he could remember the way back to the room then
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he could shut himself in and… do what? He heard a
chuckle and damned Kayden for laughing at him when he was clearly injured.
"I'm guessing no one sat down with you and
explained what the Sanctuary Foundation is?" Kayden finally said.
If Dale wasn't here and the ADA wasn't here then
that really left only one conclusion. "Part of the FBI,"
Beckett snapped. He wasn't stupid and Kayden needed to stop treating him like he was.
Kayden snorted laughter. "Fuck. Don't let Jake hear you say that. He'll freak." He didn't continue to laugh and Beckett refused to let his curiosity get the better of him to ask who the hell Jake was. "Sit down kid." Kayden sounded so damn patient and condescending.
"Stop telling me to sit down," Beckett snapped,
"and stop calling me kid. I'm twenty-one." Anger was building layer by layer and the tension in his chest hurt. He moved his good hand. The pressure of it against his chest helped to focus the breathing.
"I'm sorry ki—Rob—Beckett." Kayden said with sincerity dripping from every syllable. If it had been any other time Beckett may have laughed at the doctor tripping over his words. He didn't sound overly sorry but at the simple words Beckett could feel his anger slipping away a
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layer at a time. "Sit down and we'll talk. Are you in a lot of pain? Are you warm enough?"
Shit. Kayden had slipped back into doctor mode.
Beckett had nothing but respect for doctors and instantly he felt oddly ashamed of his outburst.
"I'm warm enough," he murmured. Quietly he felt behind him for the back of the chair and eased himself down. Finally sitting, he pasted what he hoped was an expectant expression on his face. "And the pain is okay," he added.
"Dale and I work for an organization called
Sanctuary.
It's something my brother Jake and his dad began a while back. Sanctuary goes in when there are reasons why the FBI or any of the other alphabets cannot offer the best protection. Or in some cases when we are asked to."
Beckett wondered if Kayden realized he had
identified Jake as his brother but Jake's dad as Jake's and not his. He listened carefully for any more clues to the man in front of him.
"Sanctuary offers protection that is off the record, off the grid, and is for anyone who needs it. Dale is a Sanctuary operative. I am as well."
"Okay." Beckett had the feeling he wouldn't believe that until he actually spoke to Dale but never mind. He
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continued to listen as politely as he could.
"The problem with you, or rather with your case, is that at face value it is classic FBI organized crime team territory. In normal circumstances the FBI would have been watching you and pulled your ass out except for one
thing…"
"I didn't go to the FBI, I went to the ADA," Beckett finished.
"Exactly. Which means Sanctuary got to you way
before the FBI had a chance of using you as some kind of inside informant. You got involved in something that goes back a while. The witness to the murder of Elisabeth Costain and by default Elisabeth's brother. The witness was in an FBI safe house that was compromised. Someone in the FBI is playing both sides and we think, Sanctuary thinks, that the protection the Feds could give you would be compromised. Now you are way past getting conventional protection whilst you heal."
Beckett listened to it all. The intrigue, hearing
