Buying Love (Marriage of Convenience With Twins Romance)

by Faye, Amy

  I don't know if they'll be in here, looking for me. I know that there's going to be trouble, sooner or later. I just don't know how bad yet, and I don't know where it's coming from.

  Part of me frustratedly wonders which will show up first—a real doctor, or someone planning to have me shot or arrested. Cops will only shoot you if you resist, after all. Very different.

  I haven't even seen Maguire in a little while. Then again, she was asleep in the lobby when the nurse came to take me away. Let her sleep. She looked like hell. Like she was only half-way in the living world.

  A nice long nap will do her a lot of good. Once she wakes up, things will hopefully turn around.

  I hope to hell she gave them a false name. I reach down to try to grab my own chart, read the name off of it. It's not there. The bin, where I'd expect a chart to be, it's just empty.

  How wonderfully typical. I have always hated hospitals, hated staying in them, and this only proves that I was right not to like them. Well, nothing I can do now. I'm already inside, already too deep to do anything to change my situation.

  I'd like to have a gun. I know damn well that there's nobody in here checking for them. Maybe if you blocked really badly, and a security guard saw. You could get checked for them. Could even get ejected from the building.

  As far as metal detectors? Nah. So someone clever just carries something small, keeps it in someplace where it won't show too bad. Small of their back, maybe. Then they walk right in.

  The call with Scheck ended quite abruptly. I don't think he got the chance to hang up before the crash, which means she'll have heard it. I don't know how good she is at figuring things out from sound alone, but putting the pieces together won't be hard.

  She just has to turn on the damn television and see the news. Big old crash on the I-10. It'll have coverage across Arizona. Anywhere she goes, it'll be on the news, at least every few minutes.

  If I'm not there, and I'm not, then the questions start piling up, and the answers aren't hard to figure out. Not for anyone smart enough to run their own damned drug empire.

  Which means that it's a matter of time before someone figures out where I am. It's only a matter of time, and I'm going to have to hope to hell that I'm out of here before that time comes. It's feeling unlikely.

  I lay my head back against the starchy pillow and try to relax. One of three things has to happen. A man in a white coat walks in, Maguire walks in, or trouble starts. In a god damned hospital gown, I'm in poor condition to deal with any of them.

  But there's nothing I can do about that. My gun is still in the trunk of Donaldsen's car. Evidence transfer, in theory. I never used it for anything criminal, but it sure would be nice for them if I had.

  What that means is that I might as well rest until something happens, because no matter what it is, I'm not going to stop it now.

  I don't know how much later it is, when something finally does happen. It could have been a very long sixty seconds, or an hour, or more. I just don't know. But eventually, a doctor walks in, carrying a manila folder and flipping through papers.

  "Good afternoon, Mr. Blake." I silently thank Maguire for having the forethought to bother with fake names. "It says here you were in a car accident. Can you tell me about it?"

  "Guy driving wasn't looking at the road. I hit my head, uh… I was holding on pretty tight to the, you know, the overhead handle? And we spun pretty bad, so… my shoulder hurts pretty bad."

  He nods. He's got a look on his face like he's pretty impressed with himself, but he's putting on a solemn expression purely for my benefit. As if, the son of a bitch.

  He drops the chart into the space at the foot of my bed, and then comes on over.

  "Tell me if this hurts." He rubs at my elbow. Nothing much. Then he moves up a little, a little more. The minute he hits the shoulder, though—

  "Ah!"

  "Okay, we'll have to get an X-ray on that. Could be a strained muscle, could be a fracture. Now, look into this light for me?"

  He pulls out a light. Hard to look right at it. I try my best, but…

  "How are you feeling?"

  "I dunno. Tired, I guess. Long day." I hadn't really thought about it.

  "Can you stand up?"

  I haven't tried. I tell him so.

  "Alright, then. Give it a shot now. I'll be right here, I won't let you fall and hurt yourself."

  I don't need his assurances of that. I'm not going to hurt myself trying to stand up.

  I come up to my feet. It's a little hard to stay up. My legs still feel like jelly underneath me. As if I'm trying to stand on the deck of a ship, rather than a solid floor.

  The doctor frowns. "Okay, you can lay back down."

  I do as I'm told. I'm already in this mess, no reason to cause trouble now.

  "Yeah, possible concussion. Hm. Okay. Well, we'll get you into an X-ray as soon as we can."

  "Wait—doc, how's my brother? He came in at the same time as me, lost a lot of blood."

  He blinks. I don't like it. He's hiding something, but it might just be surprise, since the next words out of his mouth were, "I'm sorry? I don't have anyone like that on my rounds. Might be we have another doctor handling him."

  "Could you have a nurse check on it for me?"

  "Of course. Lay down, you need your rest. We'll get you into an X-ray as soon as we can for that shoulder, and then you can get some food."

  "Alright."

  "Good?"

  "Good."

  He stands off to the side of the entrance on the way out the door. Someone else is coming in, and he's going to let them. I'm more than a little relieved to see a breathless Sara Maguire at the door.

  "Are you alright?"

  I smile at her, and I hope to hell that I don't look half as bad as I feel. I wouldn't want to worry her.

  "The doctor just came in, told me I'm as healthy as a horse."

  He's not there to correct me, and that's about how I'd hoped for it to go.

  She settles into one of the chairs beside the bed. She looks more worried than I think she'll admit to me, or anyone else, for that matter.

  "Healthy as a horse, huh?"

  "Sure."

  "Good, cause you look like you got kicked by one."

  "Now hey, that's not fair." I can't get the smile off my face, not even to look pouty. Something about her being there just forces the smile on. "That's got nothing to do with the way I look, I was born this way."

  "Do you need me to get you anything?"

  I lay my head back. "Don't you go babying me, Maguire. I don't need that kind of shit."

  "I talked to the nurse. Your brother's in surgery. I couldn't get anyone to give me anything more than that, but he's going to be fine. Okay?"

  "When you say it like that, makes me nervous."

  "Well," Maguire says, letting out a long breath. "Don't be."

  "You're right. How could I have been so foolish?"

  For a minute, joking with Sara, I almost forget that any time now someone looking to kill me is going to come through that door and make an attempt at it.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  MAGUIRE

  There's not a lot to talk about right now. Nothing changing. There's a lot I want to avoid talking about, and a lot that Ryan wants to avoid, I'd bet. He fades in and out. He smiles at me.

  I don't know how to feel about the way that it makes my stomach get all fluttery. I haven't ever been that kind of girl. The kind to get weird around a boy. Maybe I should have been. Maybe it would have saved me a lot of trouble.

  I feel like I just woke up, partly because I did. But it doesn't make me less tired. Just woke up, and I'm already more than ready to join Ryan in the world of sleep.

  Some time, we'll need to get back into town and deal with Scheck and her guys. But that's far away, now. We're near a two-hour drive out of town, and under false names.

  The odds of anyone looking for us are pretty slim. The odds of them finding us, slimmer. In all the rooms in al
l the hospitals in Tucson, I can't imagine that they'll find us easy.

  Ryan needs time, to recover. I need time. And his brother… well, I just have to hope that he gets out of surgery soon. For Ryan's sake, for mine.

  Part of me wants to figure out what happened to Logan. I haven't heard from him. Then again, I never have before, neither. I add that to the list of things I don't want to talk to Ryan about.

  If he was shot, I'd have heard about it, right? There'd be something on the police scanner about it. Probably on the regular radio about it.

  If I didn't hear about it, then he's probably alright. Probably. The word rolls around in my head and doesn't sit right wherever it falls. Probably fine, but not definitely. Not 'he's fine,' but 'he might be alright, depending.'

  I don't like it. Don't like it one bit. Especially if it turns out that Donaldsen shot him. Sure, trying to break out of your cuffs and escape is illegal. "Resisting arrest," I suppose.

  But on the other hand, so too is taking a suspect to a god damned private hotel room. He should've been in the holding cell, or the interrogation room, or perhaps the Sheriff's office.

  Which begs the real question; why was he in that room?

  The minute they got Ryan, they were heading to Tulsa International Airport. The very second.

  Yet, they get Logan, and he stays in the hotel room. I thought it was so that they could question him about something. Where Ryan was. Or perhaps they could hope to use him as bait, to bring Ryan in.

  Instead, they'd used him as bait for me, maybe, but there were no guarantees with that. They did little more than guess that I might come in and try to help him.

  That's not a sure thing, and sure as hell not enough to risk what it might look like if they got caught and I slipped the trap.

  As for bait for Beauchamp, they already had the Crazy Horses on top of it. So why was he in that room? If you're picking up crooks, why not arrest him and send him on to D.C.? If you're looking to bait Beauchamp, why split your forces?

  None of it makes any sense, and it's starting to sit wrong. There has to be some explanation. Why in that hotel room? Why didn't he have time to call his brother before Mitch caught him by surprise?

  The pieces didn't fit. None of them did. And the more that I looked at the picture, at the ways that they did fit, the less that I liked the way that it looked.

  Because the only answer I kept coming around to was that none of it made any sense. The only reason that they would put him in that room was so that they could bring me into the room with him.

  If they were doing that, then they were doing it to bait me into showing my hand too early. But the reasons for using Logan? There aren't any. I can't think of a single one.

  The more that I try to think of one, the less that I can. There's no reason that they would have picked him up. They wanted to see something, but I can't figure out what the hell it is.

  There's one thing that doesn't fit with the rest of the picture. The wedge that keeps coming in between me and a good idea. Pollack and Donaldsen had to have been gone from that room for a good thirty minutes. I was in the car with them for fifteen minutes alone. If they'd come straight there, picked me up, and driven straight back, fifteen minutes. No less.

  Thirty minutes is a god damned long time. Long enough to get into a lot of trouble, if you're trying to. Long enough to cause a lot of trouble.

  Logan was trapped in a position where it would take a while to get yourself out. A good, long while. But that's a while in terms of minutes. Anyone watching would be able to see you do it.

  If you had thirty minutes to yourself, it might hurt like hell, but you could be out the door inside of ten minutes, with twenty more to get real gone.

  So why the hell was Logan Beauchamp there when I showed up with Donaldsen?

  The answers seem to all lead in about the same direction, and it's a direction I don't even want to think about for a single second. Not until I can talk to Ryan about it, talk him through everything that's happened since we last met up.

  There's been a lot to discuss. Some of it, at least on my end, is going to be a little hard to believe. Scheck just let me walk right the hell out of there? Never in a million years. But it happened.

  As I slowly wake up from my cat-nap, a lot of questions are starting to boil in my head. Questions I should have been asking at the time, but I was too God damned tired to think straight.

  Well, now I'm thinking straight, and a hell of a lot about the past couple of days has been fishy as all hell. I don't like it one bit, and I'm going to have to get to the bottom of it.

  Still, some of the things I'm thinking aren't going to be solved by just me alone. I need some kind of outside confirmation. Ryan's asleep, but he's restless. If I woke him now, he'd think he was awake the whole time.

  I start to reach for him, but a noise at the door stops me. My hand jerks for my weapon on reflex, purely from being startled alone.

  "How is he?" I turn. My hand goes back to the arm of the chair, real slow and real easy to see. I'm not causing any trouble, and I don't know anything. I try to look relieved.

  "He's alright."

  Logan Beauchamp pulls up a chair next to me and sits back in it. He looks good, considering that three hours ago he might have been dead man.

  "What about you? You hurt? I know on that escape, things coulda gotten pretty hairy."

  "I'm fine."

  I don't like it. I don't like any of it one God damn bit, and now I've got a real good reason not to.

  Chapter Fifty

  RYAN

  I don't know how long my eyes have been open for when I realize that I'm seeing the inside of the room, but it's been a little while.

  I push myself higher in the bed. Sara and Logan are both sitting there. Both silent, watching me get up.

  "How long have I been out?"

  "A little while," Maguire tells me. Her voice is soft.

  "You aren't careful, I'll think you were worried about me."

  "Watch yourself, Beauchamp. They let me keep the gun just in case any dangerous criminals come around."

  I can't help smiling at that.

  "Logan," I say. My head feels pretty heavy. My whole body does, really. Feels like rubber or lead or something in between them. "You're alright."

  "Sure I am. Can't kill me that easy, can they?"

  "Naw, I figure not."

  "You look like you got hit by a truck, man."

  "No," I tell him. I wait a minute, lay my head back and can't stop myself cracking a little smile. "We hit the truck, actually."

  "Why, you smart-alack—"

  "What happened after the accident? I remember… bits and pieces, but nothing much."

  "Uh. Pollack is… probably alive. Haven't heard anything, but he's not in my unit. I wouldn't hear anything. Donaldsen wasn't moving when I pulled you out of the car. I think he's—"

  "He's dead," I tell her. I don't know what caused the reaction she gives me, but it's not the one I would expect from a cop who I just confessed murder to. She looks happy, of all things.

  "Okay, that's… what it is. So I drove you here, and got you into the room."

  "Anything else? You didn't see anyone tailing you, nothing like that?"

  "Nope. Nothing like that far as I could see. I was watching you and your brother, though." She turns to Logan. "I don't know where he is, but he should be out of surgery by now. They said he was pretty rough when I brought him in. If you wanted to check on him, I gave the name… Mitchell Blake, I think. Hell."

  I don't need to say anything, the look I gave her says what it needs to say. She shrugs and make a face that says she doesn't have a good excuse for the name choice.

  "Go on, Logan, have a check on him. I'll be fine in here."

  "No way. I'm staying here. Bet you dollars to donuts that there's going to be some Crazy Horse bastard walking through that door any minute, and I'm going to be here when it happens."

  "That's awful sweet of you, but I need a few
minutes to myself, man. Go on out, stretch your legs." He doesn't look like he wants to, but I don't know why. "Go on, go find me a bag of M&Ms if you're so worried about it."

  "That damn sweet tooth of yours," he growls.

  "Yeah, that too."

  Logan pushes himself up.

  "You too, Maguire. I don't care if it's just down the hall and back, get out of here a minute. I just want a few minutes without someone starin' at me like I'm liable to croak any second!"

  She pushes herself up, too. She's about as reluctant as Logan was. Something about the whole thing puts me on edge. I don't like any of this shit, but I like it least of all when both the people who say they're here to keep me safe are afraid to leave me alone for ten goddamn seconds.

  Logan leaves with Sara in tow, and for about three seconds I get a moment of real peace. Then, like it was some kind of God damn comedy record, she comes back in a second later in a real hurry.

  "Ryan."

  "I told you to get out of here, Maguire, now get!"

  "You gotta listen to me, Beauchamp. I don't know the details, just yet. But you have to keep an eye on your brother. Something fishy's up."

  Then, again, she's gone. Now that I'd like to hear more about whatever suspicions she's got. I don't know any damn reason to be suspicious of Logan, nor of Brian.

  But I know that Maguire wouldn't say it if she wasn't serious, and that makes me uncomfortable. Damned nervous, in fact. I lay my head back and turn towards the television.

  It's showing some daytime television garbage. I don't recognize it, but I recognize the over saturated colors, the too-sharp lines of cheap digital cameras.

  There's something that's always been distinctly off-putting to me about seeing those shows, and seeing the way that they set up their video. Like there's something wrong with it.

  Still, it's not my place. Not my show, not my video. So I guess they've got the right to do whatever the fuck they want. I want to change the channel, but if there was a remote in here, I never saw it. I'm sure they've got it hidden in a drawer somewhere.

  I take a deep breath. Keep an eye on my brother? What the hell is that supposed to mean? He's always been reliable. The immediate-follow-through kind of guy. I don't trust anyone the way I trust him, or that's how I thought.