Buying Love (Marriage of Convenience With Twins Romance)

by Faye, Amy

  Rosen doesn't show himself, or move much. I don't like his silence. I don't like him being on the other side of that car. I don't like any of it one damn bit. My grip tightens on the rifle as I start to circle around.

  The rifle moves into line as I come around the other side. Nothing. I crouch down. He's not underneath. Checking inside the car, he's not inside. I can't tell where the hell he is, but he's gone.

  "Logan! Get moving!"

  I keep an eye on any place I can find for Rosen to be hiding. Any place that would provide a good shot on someone coming out. He might not waste it on me, but he would spend a shot destroying what little remains of Ryan Beauchamp's gang.

  I have to stay vigilant. Have to watch. Logan picks his way over the bodies blocking the front door open. He's got Ryan over his shoulder, fireman's carry style. He stands still at the doorway, for what feels like eternity but might have been one second in reality, and then starts moving hard and fast.

  I keep the rifle up. Can't risk it. But, as Logan gets to the car and yanks the rear door open, nothing's happening. Silence. I don't know where Rosen's gone, and I don't want to admit it to myself but I don't care. As long as it's finally over.

  I book it for the passenger side and slide in. "You know the way?"

  Logan slides in the other side and turns the key. He's panicking and I can see it in the way he's moving. He's rushing. I don't know if I'm any better. I can feel the giddy rush of adrenaline as I sit. Nervous energy. I start tapping my fingers on my knees hard enough that it hurts, but I don't stop.

  The trip only takes seven minutes. I hope that it's not too much time. Logan pulls him back up into his arms. This time he leaves it that way and I rush inside. The car just stays in the turnaround, three doors standing open. I hit the front desk running. It's late in the evening, and there are only a few others in Emergency.

  "We've got a victim, male, late twenties, gunshot wound near the liver. I'm A.T.F. Special Agent Sara Maguire, I need you on this right, right now."

  The woman's eyes get wide. "Oh, okay. I'll—"

  Her hands move to the phone and she calls for a gurney to be brought down for surgery. I let out a long breath. I don't know what to do next, for what feels like the hundredth time today. The way my gut twists up, though… that's new for this one.

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  RYAN

  I have vague flashes of memory. I remember waking up and being surrounded by people I didn't know. Wearing masks. Might have been doctors, but I really don't know and I really don't care.

  I remember waking up someplace else. The ceiling was white, the room was white, and I remember hearing someone shouting that I was awake, but I wasn't. I was still asleep. Mostly.

  Then it was back to sleep, back to darkness, back to not really remembering who or where I am. All I know is, I'm so tired.

  The third time, I had a minute or two. Not just a brief glimpse, not just a moment between dreams, but enough time to really feel awake. To feel like I knew what was going on. Enough time to notice the handcuff around my wrist.

  It's night time. I can see out the window that the sky is dark. Sara's sitting by the bed. She's asleep, and I don't want to wake her up. I want her to stay asleep.

  Is she the one who locked me up like this? How should I feel about anything? I don't know. I'm not sure I want to know, to be honest. But I know that it's late, and everyone else is asleep, and the truth is, I'm still so tired.

  I don't know what they've got me on, but my head feels loopy. Everything feels far away, foreign. And I must have been sleeping for a very long time, but… I'm so tired.

  It was nice seeing Sara again, though, even if it wasn't under the best circumstances. I suppose I always knew that it would happen eventually, but I wish I'd been able to talk to her a little.

  The fourth time, I woke up for real. Well. Not totally for real, of course. I was still high as a son of a bitch. Ironic that in all the years I've done this, since I was fifteen practically, I've never wanted to sample any of the stuff I've been moving.

  Well, thanks to the perfectly legal prescriptions they've apparently got me on, I've got a pretty good sense for what it must be like, and boy—is it a real dream.

  My body feels like someone else's body entirely, but somehow in a good way. I don't know how else to explain it. Like everything is being relayed to me, but it's being re-routed through something else. Through another structure.

  That's the best I can explain it. I like it more than I want to. I should be out of here, popping a few Ibuprofen and hoping that the pain stops screaming in my ears for a few seconds, but instead it's someone else's pain. I'm not the one feeling it.

  I push myself up as high as I can in the bed. The other side of the wrist restraints click up against the plastic hand rail and stop me from getting as comfortable as I'd like.

  I'm surprised how many people are in the room. Looking around, Logan's there. Sara's there, still in that same chair. It's funny that I saw her sleeping, because otherwise I wouldn't believe she'd slept a wink from the stress lines carved into her face.

  I know the big guy, too. Big guy in a white shirt. Cop. I don't remember his name, but I remember he can hit like a son of a bitch when he needs to.

  "Hi," I say. I sound like a damn pussycat. Can't stand that. I shouldn't be so out of it. I am in control of myself.

  The big bruiser rolls his eyes and turns around. He doesn't leave, but he turns his back. I guess that's his idea of privacy, and I'll take it.

  Logan comes up and around the bed. "Hey, man. How are you feeling? Y'in any pain?"

  I laugh a little. That hurts, and it might even be touching me through the thick layer of pain medicine. "What's pain?"

  He rolls his eyes. "Doctors say you're going to be just fine. You'll be up and moving in no time."

  "What's this?" I yank on my arm. The handcuffs make a rattling noise, as if they're trying to draw attention to themselves just as much as I am.

  "I'm sorry, man. I don't know what else I can do to get you out of that one. But I'm doing my best, and Maguire—"

  He shuts up. I look over at her just in time to catch the tail end of a hard look. She sits forward in the chair. "You alright, Beauchamp?"

  "I guess so. How's Brian?"

  Sara looks up at Logan. I look over to him, and he's looking back at her. Finally Sara answers me.

  "He's going to be fine, but they're keeping him another couple of days."

  "Am I going to be able to see him again, before… you know?" I raise my hand again, and the handcuffs rattle again for me, right on cue.

  "I don't know."

  I take a deep breath. "How'd it end up? Did we get 'em?"

  The big son of a bitch turns around. Ball! Agent Ball. That's his name.

  "Oh, you sure as hell got 'em, all right, Beauchamp. You should have seen the God damn mess we had to wade through in your place—"

  A look from Sara shuts him up. I like the looks she gives people. I like the way she can tell someone to go fuck themselves without opening her mouth. It's a real nice trait in a woman, if you think about it.

  "So what's the charges?"

  "Well, you got a few."

  "Sure, sure. Just run me through them, and I'll tell you which ones I didn't do."

  "Trafficking of automatic firearms without a class-3 license, sale of said firearms to unlicensed individuals, illicit trade across national borders… smuggling, in other words, for the first portion."

  "Okay, now, I didn't do that."

  "Of course you didn't."

  I hold my hands up as best I can with one of them tied to the bed. "Think what you want, but I didn't do any of that."

  "Secondly, you murdered a dozen people."

  "Okay, now, I might've did that, but one, those people had it coming, and two, they were going to kill me, so it was self defense."

  Agent Ball frowns and looks over to Maguire for guidance. She's not looking at him, though. She's looking at me, and I'm
looking at her, which is pretty much the best I can ask for under the circumstances.

  Maybe we can get Logan and Agent Ball to step outside, and then we'll have a party on our hands. But somehow, I don't think that's going to happen.

  After a long pause, finally Ball answers me. "Be that as it may, you're going to have to stand trial."

  "Sure, but who in the world would convict me for destroying a drug running ring in self-defense?"

  "No, I get you. But you're still going to have to face trial, whether anyone would convict you or not."

  "Imagine the headlines. 'Man cleans up streets; hauled into court with a bullet hole in his belly.' God. I wonder if they'll want pictures?"

  Maguire rolls her eyes at me. I can only imagine the look that Ball must be giving me. I'm getting tired again. Too tired. I don't know if I like this medicine very much. Sure, it keeps me from being in pain, but… my head's all fuzzy all the time.

  And I can't seem to think real clearly, about much of anything. Maybe, just maybe, I'll feel a little better after a nap. I have to hope, because otherwise, I'm going to be real tired for a good long while.

  "We can talk more about this in the morning," I tell Sara. The others can hear it, too, though, just in case they need to know. I like that. It's efficient. People should always be able to hear what I'm saying when it's in the room with them. Unless I don't want them to. Then they shouldn't listen because that would be

  The world goes dark again.

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  MAGUIRE

  I settle down into the uncomfortable hospital chairs. Everything about hospitals is uncomfortable. It's not as bad as hotel rooms, thankfully. I wonder what would have happened if I'd had to wait in a hotel room, instead of a hospital room.

  Would I have stayed the way I had so far? I don't know, and that upsets me. I should be in control of my own actions. I should be able to control myself. But instead, I've got myself all fucked up.

  I suck in a breath. I don't like one bit how good it felt to talk to Ryan. How much I liked seeing him, hearing him talk. Seeing that he was alright, that he wasn't going to die on me at any second.

  I should be detached. I should be keeping myself separate from the situation. I should be a cop, but I can't just turn it off, regardless of what I know I should do. It's pissing me off. But I can't afford to let it get to me, not really.

  It's not anyone's fault that it's happening, least of all Ryan's. I had a rough couple of days, and it's that simple. I just had a rough couple of days, and now I'm a little over-emotional because of how hard it all was. Because of how hard I had to push myself to get everything to come together.

  Maybe it'll go away. I hope it will. I tell myself that I hope so, anyways. I can't make myself feel it, though. I can think it all I want, that I want him to get out of my head. That I want to avoid entanglements. That I want to go back to the way things were.

  But that's just what I think I should want, and the worst part is that I know it. I can't make myself want it, in spite of my best efforts. I can't make myself feel any way at all about it.

  Instead, I've got a chill running down my spine just looking at Ryan. This is a side of him that you never saw in the photos. It's a side of him I never saw as I was getting to know him the past couple weeks.

  Seeing him there on that bed, in that back seat, bleeding all over my cloth seats… the whole car will need to be reupholstered. It was something that I never saw in him, not one time before that. Never when he was awake. Vulnerability. Like he could be hurt.

  Something in me wants to make sure it doesn't happen again. Something that can't be a cop any more. I should kill that voice, and with it I might be able to really keep moving up.

  After all, I was the one who destroyed the Crazy Horses. That's always going to be a feather in my cap, no matter how I did it. I could get myself a nice cushy position. The one I always wanted.

  I could lord myself over the others, like Donaldsen did. Like I'd always wanted to be able to do. To call it a dream come true is cliche, but not inaccurate. It took a hell of a lot, but it all came together.

  Now all I have to do is get rid of Ryan Beauchamp and quiet the little voice inside myself that says I need to protect him. That he's important to me, to who I am.

  I've been trying to three days, now. Trying to get the hell out of that hospital bedroom. Trying to get out of this chair that hurts my ass because it's cushioned like a monastery. They could only get more appropriate if they had little spikes in the seat, I think.

  I try again. My weight goes onto my hands. My butt starts to feel a whole hell of a lot better as the weight comes off it, as I stop having to cope with that awful cushion. Something in the world changes and shifts, and I can't help myself.

  My weight goes back down, and my ass hurts a hell of a lot. I look outside. It's late. The sun's been down for a while, and I should've been asleep. I should've asked someone to at least bring me a book. Even a trashy romance will do.

  But I haven't. I can't bring myself to do it. So I take my hands back off the arms of the chairs, fold them in my lap, and watch Ryan Beauchamp, the man who made my future and the man who's taking it all away, in his fitful, vulnerable sleep.

  He rolls over and his eyes flutter open a minute.

  "Hey, beautiful."

  His words are slurred. I didn't expect any different, with the number of painkillers he's taking.

  "Hey yourself."

  "Can I ask you a question?"

  I lean in against the bed railing. "Shoot."

  "Why don't you like it when people say, y'know?"

  I don't really want to talk about it. He knows I don't. But I'm going to have to trust someone, some time, I guess.

  "I don't know," I tell him. It's a lie, and he knows it. But when I try to find the words, they just slip through my fingers. Nothing sounds right, nothing really explains it.

  His free hand comes up to trace the line of my cheek. "You gonna be alright, Maguire?"

  Fuck him, I think. He's sitting there, barely alive. One foot stuck firmly in the grave, and he's worried about me? What gives him the right? What gives him the right to think that he's got any room to worry about anyone? My stomach twists up.

  "What the hell kind of question is that?"

  He lays his head back. "I don't know. I just thought you looked like you got hurt. And I was worried about you."

  "I'm fine." I am fine. I got through that whole thing without a scratch on me. It's amazing, frankly. All the carnage that came down on Ryan's head, on that whole house, and I came out if it without a single bump, a single bruise. I don't know how anyone could have managed it.

  "Not like—aw, never mind. Don't worry about it." He smiles weakly.

  I smile at him as best as I can. It's all I can do, after all. "You should go back to sleep."

  He rolls himself a little more, until his arm starts to pull against the handcuff. "Fuck that. I've been sleeping for, what? At least a day or two."

  "Two," I say absently. The first day was real damn scary. Just seeing him sleeping there, the whole day. Seeing his weak pulse, his heart barely keeping him going.

  I don't know what I would have done if he'd been really hurt. If he hadn't made it. Just imagining it makes my chest hurt, even now that it's all past.

  "Ryan?"

  He looks up at me. His eyes are still glassy as can be, and in spite of what he says, he looks real tired. "Yeah?"

  "Why did you insist I'd come with you? I might not have wanted to, you know."

  He smiles as best he can smile, but it's almost a pathetic thing. It hurts a little to see how far he's fallen from the confident, beaming grins that he gave me when we were hatching this whole plan together.

  "I knew better than that, though, didn't I?"

  It hurts to smile. Hurts to have this conversation with him, because I know what it means to me, and I know what it means to my career, and I know that doesn't change a whole hell of a lot about what I'm going
to do.

  "Yeah, I guess you did." I press my lips into his hand. "Go to sleep, okay? You've got to get plenty of rest. You'll have to, to get better, you got that?"

  He smiles and rolls back onto his back. "I don't wanna," he says, but he closes his eyes anyways, and then a minute later his breaths get a little shallower, a little more even, and then he's asleep.

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  RYAN

  By the time I wake up again, I'm already tired of sleeping. My body's starting to hurt. It feels like it's eating itself, and my muscles protest every time I try to move. My head still feels fuzzy, and memories still come at a premium.

  The past few days build themselves out behind me in the moments after I awaken. This time, there's less commotion around me waking up, I guess. I don't know where Agent Ball is, but I can't imagine that he's gone far if he's waiting on me.

  I look over at Maguire. She still looks like she hasn't moved. The thought occurs to me finally that she may not be allowed to; she did, after all, aid a wanted fugitive from the law. For several days, for that matter.

  I don't know what kind of penalties that might carry with it. Maybe I can make that easier on her somehow, but not before they tell me anything.

  "Good morning," Logan says. His voice is rough in my ears.

  "Howdy." I try to blink the sleep out of my eyes. The meds are killing me, I think. But I'm less tired than I was yesterday, less tired than I've been since as long as I can remember.

  "How you feeling?"

  "Better."

  "Yeah?"

  "Yeah."

  The room goes quiet.

  "What's the story with the handcuffs? Am I being moved? When?"

  Maguire speaks up this time. "You're being moved, what I hear, as soon as you safely can be. They've been asking every day, what's the expectation. You've got a few days, at least. They seem to think two weeks at the outside."

  "The headsman's delayed once more, then."

  A scowl twists across both their faces. "Don't joke like that."