Dan & Tyler 2 - Wintergreen (18 page)

"She chatted to me," Dan said. "She seemed nice, but I didn't -- I didn't like her. She wanted water, but I said the house was locked up. Then she -- God, she pulled a gun on me and said I had to come with her. Bait. I was bait. And I knew she wanted to kill Tyler and I knew she'd kill me and I--"

Cole was closer, but it was Tyler who moved swiftly to his side, Tyler's hand that gripped his, Tyler's presence, solid, strong, that blocked the memories. Dan swallowed dryly, clutching at Tyler's fingers with a desperation that he knew was pathetic. "I'm sorry. God."

"It's difficult for us," Cole said, his voice a deep rumble. "What you went through is, well, it's something that the average person would experience only through the medium of a book or a movie; perhaps, sanitized, on the news. For us, for Tyler, it's his life, or it was. The need to think and react quickly and in a way that seems overly violent, shockingly so -- it's what's kept him alive."

"I get that," Dan said. "I just -- she had a freaking
gun
, you know? I thought it was a water bottle and it was a gun."

 

"Sig Sauer P220 Compact," Tyler said unexpectedly.

 

"What?"

 

"Her gun. I thought…" A muscle in Tyler's cheek jumped, but his hand lay quietly in Dan's. "If you know about something, sometimes it's not so scary."

 

"Right," Dan said ungraciously under his breath. "I nearly got shot in the head by a Ziggy. What
ever
."

 

That cost him Tyler's hand, moved away a moment later, and he felt a definite chill from Cole. Fuck.

 

"Sorry," he said, glancing at them both in turn. "I'm being a jerk."

 

"Yeah, you are," Tyler said, not under his breath, but loud and clear. His hand ruffled Dan's hair, a more tentative touch than usual. "You've earned it, though."

Dan snorted. "Right. I let myself get knocked out by a woman who was smaller than me." He touched his fingers to his throbbing temple. "I jumped her, but I fucked it up, and she punched me in the throat and then kicked me in the head. Lights out."

"You did what?" Tyler's voice was strangled. "She had a gun on you, boy! You should have just gone along with whatever she told you to do; you knew I'd be back soon."
"That was why! And she'd been listening to us for days, she said. Spying on us -- and there was this bird she was gonna shoot to show me she could -- and she was telling me how she'd shoot you in the head and fuck, Tyler, I just couldn't let her do it."

They were both looking at him now as if he was insane.

 

"You were trying to save the bird?" Tyler asked, his voice so carefully casual that it rasped over Dan's nerves like sandpaper.

 

"No! Well, maybe. She just wasn't looking at me, you know, and I heard the truck, so I saw a chance and I took it." He folded his lips together to stop them from quivering. "Didn't work."

 

"So when did you come around?" Tyler asked him. "You can't have been out long."

 

"I lay there for a bit pretending I was still unconscious," Dan admitted.

 

"Smart of you," Cole said, and Tyler nodded.

 

"No, I was just scared spitless. I heard you throw your gun over to me, but I was still pretty out of it."

 

"You gave up your gun?" Cole said to Tyler. "Why didn't you just shoot her?"

 

"One, she had a gun pointed at Dan, and two, I needed to know what was going on."

 

"And three, we don't say hello by maiming people," Dan said, which didn't go down well, judging by the pointed way he was ignored.

"She got me cuffed to the door," Tyler said, "and I found out that she was behind the Sturgis deal, working with him. I'll give you a full report, but for now, all you need to know is that she wanted me to do a hit for her -- Liam Derry, of all people -- with Dan a hostage to make sure I behaved."

"A hostage who, like you, would have been eliminated once the task was complete," Cole said.

 

Tyler nodded. "That was a given. I couldn't let him be taken away. I knew that I'd never see him again."

 

"So there are some differences between me and the bad guys," Cole said dryly. "I took your resignation much better than that."

 

"You did not, sir," Tyler said with a grin. "You threatened to tear me apart."

"And yet you're still in one piece. Continue." "Not much to it. I got one hand free and made her drop her gun, Dan brought me my gun, and I killed her when she told me the name of the next compromised hit. It didn't seem worth keeping her alive after that; I'd gotten all I could without going further than you'd have liked."

Dan shivered at the idea of torturing information out of someone. It went on, of course it did, but still... And that had to be the patchiest description of a fight ever, even if Tyler hadn't technically lied.

"And Dan's wound?"

 

"Oh, she managed to retrieve her gun and shot him," Tyler said indifferently. "I made sure that she didn't get a second shot off."

"There's a lot missing from your verbal report," Cole said, when the silence had stretched like taffy to the point where Dan's nerve was about to break. "I trust that your written report, for my eyes only, of course, will be a little less concise, admirable though brevity is?"

Tyler nodded. "One of the reports I give you will be," he said, his meaning plain to a child of three.

It was the perfect opportunity for Dan to burst out with a confession of his own shot, the one that had brought Paula to her knees, and a denunciation of Tyler, who hadn't needed to kill her when she was wounded, helpless, but the words clustered and jammed in Dan's throat and no amount of sips would clear a way for them to be spoken.

Cole held out his hand to Dan to be shaken, something that had the flavor of a medal being pinned on him, though God alone knew that he didn't deserve it. "I hope to speak with you again one day, Mr. Seaton, under less fraught conditions."

"Dan." Dan released Cole's hand. "I wish you'd call me Dan, sir."

 

"Daniel," Cole said reflectively. "He was put into the lions' den and survived. Very apt."

 

When they were alone again, Tyler sat in Cole's chair and raised his eyebrows. "I didn't think you'd manage to do it; congratulations."

 

"Do what?"

 

"Keep quiet at the right moments," Tyler said succinctly. "I know you, boy. You wanted to confess your sins and get it all off your chest."

 

"Well, I'll have to when he gets your proper report," Dan snapped. "God, Tyler, am I -- am I going to get arrested?"

"He already knows what happened, more or less," Tyler said. "He doesn't really care. I got the job done and you're alive. Sure, he might have preferred a chance to interrogate Paula, but once she was in the system, protected by it, any chance we had to get something useful out of her was gone. She'd have killed herself before helping us more than she did, and I wouldn't have put it past her to leak us data that would fuck us up one way or another. Bottom line: I took care of the woman who killed his people and you helped. Arrest you? No." Tyler grinned. "Don't expect a thank you card, though; not his style."

Dan stared at the weave in the white sheet covering him until the threads blurred. "I don't want to be thanked," he said. "I shot her. I
shot
her."

 

"After she'd shot you," Tyler pointed out. "She wasn't aiming at your arm, you know. She wanted that bullet to go through your heart."

 

"That's not the fucking point!" Dan's hands were shaking. He clenched them to hide it and glared at Tyler, stupid, blind Tyler. "I shot her for you. I had to; you were tied up and helpless --"

 

"Thanks," Tyler said dryly.

 

"She needed you alive; it's all that saved you from a bullet."

 

"And you."

"And me," Dan agreed. "So why did you have to do that, man? She was down, she was screaming. No way was she a danger after that. You -- I crossed a line for you, and I did it because I wanted to, no regrets about saving you -- us -- but I could have shot her in the head, you know? That close? Hell, I could have put a bullet anywhere you wanted me to. I wounded her on purpose, and you just -- you killed her. Like what I'd decided didn't matter."

"I should have asked you first or something?" Tyler demanded. "Fuck that! And wounding her was
stupid
. Would you have wounded a bear?"

"She wasn’t an animal," Dan said softly. He had to get that through to Tyler, but he wasn't sure he could. How many people had Tyler killed? Twenty plus hits, more when he was a soldier… Adding another to the list didn't seem to be bothering him, but Dan had lain beside Tyler when the nightmares came, and he couldn't see this day's events doing anything but pushing Tyler back into the cold emptiness he'd been living in when Dan met him.

Therapy wasn't an option. He'd heard Tyler's views on that. They would have to work this through together, and right now Dan was so damn pissed off that it was difficult to be sympathetic about the trauma Tyler would be going through, when all that Dan could hear was bullets hitting flesh and Tyler saying sorry to the wrong person.

"She shot you," Tyler said, matching Dan for softness and managing to make three words sound like a death sentence. "And she would have seen to it that you died, no matter what happened, just to get even for what you did to her."

"Your world is a fucking freaky one," Dan said, the words needing to be said. "It sucks." "Why do you think I walked away?"

 

"It didn't take much to get you to walk back."
Away from me
, but Dan didn't say that aloud.

 

"No. Just a few people dying."

 

"People die all the time," Dan said. "You can't save them all."

"Put it in a fortune cookie and shove it up your ass," Tyler said, and oh, yeah, Dan had done it now, hadn't he? Gotten Tyler angry, looming over him, gray eyes coldly furious. "The ones who were dead -- no, I couldn't save them, but I could stop more agents dying, and I did. No regrets."

"Is that why you looked so fucking happy to kill her?"

"Happy? I wasn't --" Tyler wiped his mouth with the back of his hand as if he'd tasted something bitter. "Relieved. I was relieved. You were safe, and I could see about getting you looked after. I've never been happy to kill anyone, ever."

"You didn't see your face," Dan told him.

 

"I know how I felt."

 

"And I know how
I
feel."

 

"About what?" Tyler's mouth was a thin slash across a pale face. "About me? About the bloodsoaked, psychotic killer you've been fucking? Is that how you see me?"

"No," Dan said, forcing the words out of a tight, tear-closed throat. "Not like that. Fuck, I don't know, Tyler! Give me a break, won't you?" He stared up at Tyler, wishing they could solve this the way they usually did, because that was easy, that was fun. Fuck the bad temper out of them and settle back down -- but enough of him knew that it wouldn't have been an option even if he wasn't shot up and bruised.

"I love you," Tyler said, and that was so out there that Dan just gaped at him for a moment.

 

"Yeah," he said. "I know. You'd kill for me." Tyler nodded, his eyes watchful now, not angry. "But would you die for me?"

Tyler shook his head, smiling without much humor evident. "Boy, I've been ready to do that all my adult life for people I cared about a whole lot less than you. Yeah, I would. Ask me something harder."

Dan turned his head away. "You know, I think I'm done talking."

"Fine by me," Tyler said. "Okay if I borrow your laptop to do this report for Cole?" The flip from the dramatic to the mundane was a jolt, but Dan just nodded and let the tiredness coaxing his eyes to close have its way.

***

Sometimes, Tyler didn't think he understood Dan. It wasn't the difference in their ages; fourteen, fifteen years or so, yeah, it was a gap, but one they could bridge easily enough. He didn't feel in the least bit paternal when it came to Dan, no matter how strong the urge to protect him was. What put them on different planets was the simple fact that Dan didn't truly believe that bad things happened to good people.

Oh, sure, Dan knew vaguely about wars and atrocities, but Tyler had never seen Dan read a newspaper headline or mention politics; their TV didn't get turned to a news channel often, and Dan's home page on his laptop changed frequently, but was usually connected with music or sports.

At times like this, Tyler wondered if Dan's easy acceptance of his past was rooted in a lack of understanding rather than an excess of it. Faced with the reality of Tyler's former life, Dan had backed away rapidly, shocked, disgusted. It wasn't a good sign.

Tyler stabbed at the enter key and began a new paragraph, refusing to allow himself to dwell on Dan's reaction. The boy had been through hell; he was entitled to his emotions.

 

I saved his fucking life and he wants me to be sorry about that?

 

He shook his head. No. He wasn't going to continue the argument with Dan in his head. It wouldn't go any better than it had in Dan's room.

The report was taking shape on the screen, the format Cole preferred coming easily to Tyler even after a gap of a couple of years. Cole liked a judicious mix of clarity, detail, and brevity, and agents soon learned how to balance the necessary elements.

He had to include Dan's part in the fight; Cole could smell an evasion, and since Tyler couldn't have been in two places at once, any attempt to write Dan out would have stuck out. If Tyler hadn't been utterly certain that there would be no adverse consequences for Dan, he'd have refused to expand on his verbal report, but he knew Cole. He'd approve of Dan's actions. Maybe even agree that Tyler should have brought Paula in alive after she'd given him the name he'd demanded.

Tyler sighed and sat back in the waiting room chair, hearing the fake leather squeak a protest. Somewhere in the building, Paula's body lay cooling in a morgue drawer or illuminated under a light as she was sliced open for the inevitable autopsy. Cole would know how many bullets Tyler had pumped into her, would know how much damage Dan's single shot had inflicted. Cole wouldn't know how it had felt to come that close to losing Dan. Tyler couldn't think about it without feeling a simmering rage boil up. If Dan decided to walk away, well, that was part of life. People did that. Relationships didn't always last, and Tyler didn't consider himself much of a catch. He'd understand if Dan called it quits.