by Amy Faye
"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 penalt
ies 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."
No, never joke like that. Certainly not when your head's on the chopping block. Of course not. "And what's going on with your little… say, excursion on my side of the law, Maguire? They going to charge you with something?"
"It's a little late to say that I hope they overlook it, but… I'm confident that I'll get away fine."
"Well as far as I'm concerned, you were coerced. I can be very… coercive."
She rolls her eyes, but I can see the smile on her face. I like it better when she smiles. Like it better than the alternative, anyways.
Nobody talks for a while. A nurse comes in, apparently aware with their strange sorcery that I had woken, and introduces herself. She asks what I want for lunch, from a long list of unappetizing choices.
I would rather just head down to the kitchen myself, but the pain that explodes in my side every time I put any weight down on my right side pretty much excludes that as an option.
So instead, I give her a choice that I don't expect anything from, and whenever they get it to me, we'll see. Maybe it'll be edible, or maybe I won't be eating for the next 'several days, or maybe two weeks.'
I'm not really sure what to do with myself any more. The day passes slow. The food is crap, which is what I expected more or less. I don't start feeling better any time soon, but I guess I didn't expect to.
So instead, I haven't got much to do. Just a long damn day to pass with little more than a flat-screen T.V. hanging from the ceiling, showing soap operas I don't want to watch and no remote in easy reach.
I hate having nothing to do. It reminds me of prison. Reminds me every little bit of what prison was like. Nothing to do, nowhere to be, and nowhere to go. I guess that's fine, in a sense. I don't expect anything else.
It's not until a few long hours have passed that I run into my next problem.
"Ah, Maguire?"
She looks up from her lap. She might have been dozing, in which case I feel bad for waking her, but I would've done it either way, feel bad or not.
"Sorry? What's up?"
"I don't mean to make this too, ah, personal, but I gotta go. You don't happen to have a key, or somethin', do you?"
She looks at me slant-ways, and then calls out for 'Danny.' Agent Ball comes in. Danny, I guess.
"Prisoner needs to use the lavatory."
"Sure thing," he says. Big motherfucker like that, I don't think I'm in a position to try to attempt an escape. But then I don't know that I blame him for doubting me as he follows me into the bathroom.
I do my business and head back, but now the thought of escape has run through my mind, and I don't think it's going to be the last time.
Going to jail was a given from the beginning of this, except for a little promise of immunity right in the beginning, and I know no lawyer signed off on that.
Which means that from the very beginning, there was no way out of this thing without seeing a judge, at the very least. But I have to say—I don't want to go back to no God damned prison. Not even a real cushy one for rich guys.
'Resort prison,' my ass. Give me my bike, give me long roads in front of me, and let me go. I don't want to be cooped up, regardless of how nice the damn prison they have around me is. Never mind that I have a real suspicion that they aren't all they're cracked up to be.
But I have a strong suspicion it won't be no 'resort prison.' It'll be a big fuckin' thing and I'm not going to like it.
And, for the next several days, that was about all I thought about. How I'm going to get out of here. The thing that upsets me, as my side stops screaming out in agony every time I lean wrong and my need for the painkillers continues to go down, is that I ain't got a plan.
There's really no chance. I could do it on a bathroom break, maybe. But I'd have to get gone, and get gone fast. I don't have a ride out, so I'd have to steal something. I've done a lot of shit in my day, but wouldn't you know… never stole a car.
It's not that I'm above it, but in a real hurry like running from the cops, I don't know that I would manage it. Which worries me a whole hell of a lot, frankly. I don't know if there's a way out of this for me. I can feel it tightening around my neck, like a noose, and there's not a god damn thing I can do about it.
Even in the moment, I can feel my hands getting a little sweaty, can feel the panic starting to rise. I just want to get the hell out of here. I want to get the fuck out of here, and I want to do it now. Nobody's going to convince me to do anything else.
Her hand reaches over and touches my arm, and suddenly I don't feel so bad any more.
"You alright?"
I'm anything but alright.
"Sure."
She knows exactly how panicked I am. I can see it right there in her eyes, but she doesn't argue with me either way. I like that. It's sweet. But sweet, in spite of my hopes, doesn't get me out of these handcuffs.
A few minutes pass. My heart starts to feel a little more under control. "You know, Maguire?"
"Huh?"
"I'm sorry we got you wrapped up in this shit."
She doesn't say anything. Her hand squeezes mine for a second, and then she lets go.
That's about all I hoped for, so I guess, if I'm going to prison, I got something I can be happy about.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
MAGUIRE
Ryan Beauchamp was never one to give up. At least, I never got that impression. Not in all the time I tracked him, not in all the time that I've spent with him, not in his official file. He's a fighter, through and through.
But I can see it in his eyes. This time, for some reason or another, he's giving up pretty completely. Getting out of here, getting out of a long prison sentence, none of that's on his mind. Which hurts a little, I got to admit.
There's more to it, though.
Something's making him think that it's smarter to just let us take him in. I try to think about the future I'm going to have when this is all over with. Some day, I think, I'll be able to look back on all this and not feel anything.
Is that what I want? I've given a God damned lot to be in the position I'm in right now, but if I could just get Ryan Beauchamp to pick his God damn head up and start acting like he's not already a dead man, I'd do it in a second.
The time crunch had felt so big, and yet now that it's gone, everything feels strange. Why the hell am I doing any of this? Why am I so worried about him?
He's a criminal, and I'm a federal agent. I worked my ass off to get where I am today, but all I want is just… I don't know, but I don't want to think about it. I can't afford to think about it.
The idea's a hell of a lot more insidious than I thought, though, because now I can't kick it. How hard would it be to fix this little problem of Ryan's?
About impossible, is what I'm thinking. I don't know of a way I could get him out of this trouble. He's got himself in deep enough that he's never gonna get himself back out again.
At least, he won't on his own. That doesn't mean that he'll never get out, though, not by a long shot. Because someone else could get him out.
I swallow hard at the thought. Am I
seriously considering this?
No. Of course I'm not. That would, after all, be a crime. Since I'm not a criminal, I wouldn't consider it for even a moment. Not even for Ryan Beauchamp. I'm a respected member of my work, and I do important work, keeping bad people behind bars.
That's who I am, and that's what I do, and I would never even think of trying to break him out.
Never, and definitely not now.
It wouldn't be too hard, though, would it? I mean, the hardest part would be getting him out of the hospital. The handcuffs are easy. The escape is easy once you get him into a car.
Getting across the Mexican border is pretty much all you'd need, and he's been doing that for two years. I can't imagine that he'd suddenly have trouble sneaking across now.
But between the bed and the exit, you'd have to get past Danny, and you'd have to hope that none of the security staff happens to see him. If they see him, you have to hope they haven't been briefed on his situation, which they almost certainly have.
So the hard part, the hardest part by far, is getting him out of there, since it's so reliant on luck.
But otherwise, it'd be easy.
That is, of course, if I were to try something like that, and if I was thinking about it.
Which I'm not doing, and I won't be doing. Because I'm a law enforcement officer, and we don't release criminals, we catch them. We don't let people go because they're… mostly good on the inside.
We catch them because they're mostly bad on the outside.
I tap my fingers on my leg. I don't know when I started doing it, but now it's hard to stop. I feel like I'm coming apart at the seams, here.
Ryan's napping on the bed. I should have gone. I haven't showered in days, I've barely eaten. But I just... can't. Every time I leave, it just sets me on edge. What if something were to happen? What if he were hurt? What if—
