Fated (37 page)

“You really have lost it completely, haven’t you?” Hart said, disbelieving. “For a second there, I was ready to give you the benefit of the doubt, but you really are completely, utterly mad.” Beside him Alex made a small sound, but Hart didn’t have a chance to check it out. Conrad hit Hart in the stomach, hard enough to leave him winded and straining against his bonds to curl up on himself.

“Conrad,” Alex said urgently. “We have to get rid of that car. It’s parked right in front of the cabin, and someone might’ve seen me.”

“Then do it,” Conrad snarled, spit flying.

“You promised you wouldn’t kill them,” Alex whispered. When Hart had blinked some of the white pain away, he saw Alex’s eyes flickering nervously.

“No, I said I wouldn’t kill
him
.”

“Please,” Alex tried again. “You never said anything about hurting normal people. And that car is covered in the doctor’s blood. We have to get rid of it.”

Conrad’s gaze remained crazed for a few seconds longer, and then he seemed to calm. He lowered the baton. “Come on. I know a place where we can dump it. I’ll lead in my pickup, and you take the car.” Conrad pressed his boot against the wound in Toby’s stomach, but he didn’t even stir. Hart’s gut clenched, and regret made him burn from the inside. He’d made so many mistakes in this past week but none he regretted more than the way he’d treated Toby. And if he never got out of here alive, he would never make amends with Isaac either. He didn’t take his eyes off Toby until the door fell shut behind Alex, so it was with astonishment he saw Toby struggle to blink.

“Toby,” Hart whispered urgently. “Stay still in case they come back. Don’t move.” Toby’s lips twitched. When Hart heard two cars pull away he sighed in relief. “They’ve gone. Jesus, I thought you were dead.”

Toby opened his eyes, but he didn’t move. “I’m as good as,” he murmured, and Hart’s world lurched.

“Toby? What—”

“Nicked a lung. God knows what else. Let me just—”

“Don’t try to get up, Toby. Just stay—” But Toby wasn’t listening. He heaved himself up on one elbow, on his knees, breathing hard, skin turning gray from the inside out. Droplets of sweat hit the floor as he tried to gather the strength to stand. “Toby, don’t,” Hart pleaded, voice cracking. “Oh my God, please, you’re hurt. Don’t—”

But Toby doggedly rose to his feet, clinging to the rungs of Hart’s ladder. He managed to undo one of Hart’s hands before he collapsed.

By the time Hart had untied his other hand and his feet, Toby was unconscious again. He frantically searched Toby’s clothes, but there was no cell phone on him. Tearing through the cabin, he found a landline in the kitchen, but when he tried it, the fucking thing was dead. With a cry of rage, Hart smashed it against the kitchen wall. There was no computer, nothing else to be found in the cabin, so he hurried back over to Toby, hoping to at least be able to do something to ease his pain.

“I’m sorry,” Toby mumbled when Hart touched his face.

“Don’t. God. What on earth do you have to be sorry for?”

“I should’ve told you the truth sooner. Then none of this would’ve happened.”

“This isn’t your fault. I should never have—” Hart’s throat closed, and he looked Toby in the eye. Still so beautiful was he, even with his skin ashen and his eyes dull, his hair sticking to his skull in sweaty peaks. “Just tell me what I can do, how I can help you.”

“You can’t.” Toby coughed. His eyes glazed over, and Hart didn’t think he could see him anymore, but they focused again. A small trickle of blood bubbled at the corner of his mouth, and Hart wanted to scream. “Listen. I found your phone in the car while that guy thought I was unconscious. I sent a text to… Freddie saying they were taking me up… the Mountain.” Toby’s mouth formed more words, but no sound came out, apart from a wheezing breath.

“Shh,” Hart murmured. “You did good, it’s okay, shh.”

Toby shook his head, frustrated. From somewhere he found the strength to go on. “It died. I don’t know… if the text sent. I managed… to drop it by the stairs… in a bunch of undergrowth. If you go now, you might find it before they return.”

The injustice of it all left Hart shaking. “Toby, I’m so sorry. For—For everything. You were always too good to me.”

Toby’s eyes softened, and he smiled a little. “No, I wasn’t. I’m glad… for what we had.”

“I never meant to hurt you,” Hart whispered, a tear dripping from his face onto Toby’s cheek. He gently wiped it away. “Never. I should’ve treated you better, and I’m so sorry that I didn’t.”

“Don’t, please,” Toby croaked. He was weakening fast, and Hart felt like his insides were being torn to shreds. The helplessness was the worst thing he’d ever felt. “I’m happy to have known you. It was more than I—” Toby grinned, and life flared in his eyes. “You’re prickly.”

“What?” Hart blinked in confusion.

“It’s a self-defense mechanism, I think…. To keep people at a distance. You’re prickly like a hedgehog, but you let me in a little, and that means a lot.” He took a shuddering breath like it cost him, the wheezing breaths turning to rattles. “The problem is… just like a hedgehog, once you get past the defense, you’re… incredibly… cute.” Toby smiled his crooked smile, and it made Hart’s eyes burn. His fingers twitched in Hart’s direction, and he took them gently, trying to warm them at least a little. “It’s okay. I had some extra time I shouldn’t have had. And it brought me you….” Toby gasped for breath, and Hart wanted to tell him to spare it, but who was he to deny anyone their last words. “I never allowed… myself to fall for someone before. Julian’s touch changed me. But then you came along… and it was all worth it. Hart, I—” Toby was too weak now, and his voice gave out.

“You were great,” Hart whispered. He shifted so Toby’s head lay in his lap, and he reached over for a blanket that lay on the couch, tucking it around Toby’s shivering body. Hart felt his suit pants grow wet with blood leaking from the gunshot wound, but he tried to ignore it. Toby’s eyes closed. Gently Hart stroked his hair, always so immaculate and now a sticky mess. “Toby, you were amazing.”

He didn’t know how long he sat like that. Rationally, he should’ve been using the time to find his phone and get away from here, but he couldn’t leave Toby like this. Moving him was out of the question; the corners of his mouth had started to stain red.

When Toby’s ragged breathing abruptly stopped, Hart leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his lips, blood be damned.

Toby opened his eyes again on a gasping inrush of air. They flickered bright and feverish in the firelight, searching back and forth like he couldn’t see. “Hart?”

“I’m here, lover.”

“Will you tell me something?”

“Anything.”

“Will you tell me your name?” Toby asked so softly the crackle of flame almost overcame the words. Hart guffawed and sobbed at the same time.

He’d never know if Toby heard him or not. In his arms Toby died and took a part of Hart with him.

T
HE
PANTS
of Hart’s black funeral suit were stiff with blood. In the adrenaline rush of Toby’s last moments, he hadn’t noticed, but now pain radiating toward his back and rib cage hinted at a cracked rib or two. The reopened burn on his left arm was the most painful but probably the least worrying injury. With the way his head was swimming—hopefully from the concussion and not some kind of internal bleeding—he’d be lucky to get as far as the road. Fighting to stay on his feet, he allowed himself a few seconds of respite and leaned against the cabin wall. A bitter sorrow welled in his chest. He thought of Toby spread out on the rug inside the cabin, arms crossed over his chest underneath the blanket, face as peaceful as Hart had seen it in sleep. He could ill afford the time to grieve. He had minutes if that, but it went against all of his instincts to leave Toby there.

As soon as he made his way to the stairs of the porch, rain soaked through his shirt. It didn’t matter; he felt like a drowned rat already. A steady downpour fell from his hair, hitting his nose on the way down to the forest floor as he reached the bottom of the steps. Hart sniffed and wiped at his face, not making it any drier. If he’d ever felt more miserable than this in his life, he couldn’t recall when. Had he done enough? Had Toby died knowing he meant something to Hart? He’d missed his chance with his father, and Hart didn’t want to die without telling Isaac how he felt. How loved Isaac was.

The suppurating burn on the underside of his wrist stung and bled again. Toby had thought the wound would scar
before
Hart’s arm got mangled, and if it ever got the chance to heal, it certainly would now.

He tried to listen for a car engine, but the waterfall on his head drowned everything out. Hart rummaged through the undergrowth near the stairs, a thick scent of degrading leaves and earth filling his nostrils, reminding him of damp basements and yawning graves. Dirt dug under his nails, and at last his fingers closed around a familiar shape. His hands were so wet and numb his entire body shook with shock and cold, and he nearly dropped it. For a second he thought the thing might be waterlogged, but the screen lit up with a failed message warning. Fuck. Time was running out on him, he could feel it. His heart was beating like a trapped creature trying to leave his rib cage. He had seconds, not minutes now, and Hart dialed.

“Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”

“This is Lieutenant Hart, Riverside police. I have a man down on the m—”

A sharp pain just below his shoulder blade confused him for a moment. Hart stumbled forward, and he tried to catch his weight on his hands against the wooden steps, but his elbows buckled as if he weighed three times as much as he used to. The phone fell between the stairs as it beeped its empty battery warning and died.

“Very inconvenient, Lieutenant,” Conrad said in his ear, sounding mildly reproving. “Now I’ll have to carry you back inside.”

The world narrowed down to the smell of the old, moldy wood splintering under his fingers. Conrad reached for the phone and ground it to pieces. The incessant pain in Hart’s shoulder flared brightly when Conrad put his weight on what he guessed was a knife wedged just below the shoulder blade. Hot, metallic fluid filled his mouth, and this couldn’t be good.
Not good at all
, Hart thought, and as his eyes closed, the last image to fill his barely conscious mind was a lovely head full of wheat-blond curls.

T
HE
NEXT
time he opened his eyes, he was surprised to wake up at all. The pain in his shoulder overcame the throbbing in his head, excruciating beyond endurance. He thought he’d cried out, but the sound that came from his hoarse, dry throat was barely a whimper.

“I’m so sorry,” somebody whispered. Hart blinked, tried to focus, and saw it was Alex. “This wasn’t meant to happen. This wasn’t how it was meant to go. Oh God, I am so sorry.”

“Get me out of here,” Hart croaked, but even speaking seemed too much effort. For a second he wondered if he’d been tied up again, but then he realized it was just his left arm going numb. He just wanted to close his eyes and… forget. It would be laughably easy, actually, to just let go. It didn’t seem like Alex would let him. Something cool pressed to his mouth, and it took Hart far too long to work out it was a glass of water. He drank, if just to make it go away.

“I can’t. Not now. The only hope we have is that Julian turns up and heals you.”

“Or kills me,” Hart whispered. He didn’t have strength for more. He felt nauseated with pain, shivery and awful. Even breathing was too much work to keep up for long. “Where is Conrad?”

“He said he knew where the Predator was, and then left. I don’t know.”

Conrad had let him sit at least, probably because stringing him up would kill him faster. But wasn’t that the goal, in the end? Why keep him alive now? He didn’t have the answers, and he didn’t have the strength to look for them. Alex was still talking, and from some last shred of survival instinct, Hart made himself listen.

“The healing doesn’t fail all that often, you know? When Conrad roped me into this, he told me someone was trying to kill your father. The same someone who had killed his wife and all these other people. But when I got my hands on the laptop, I realized the Phoenix—not a Predator—heals far more than he kills, and the people who die would’ve died much more horrible deaths without his touch.” He trembled slightly, and his face was twisted in desperation. “I’m the one who worked it all out and led Conrad to all of those people. Oh God. I didn’t give him the laptop, though. That’s good, right? I mean, I knew, I think… even then. I was hoping you’d work it out once you had it.”

Hart lifted his head to take a good look at him. Alex looked ashen, like he’d been the one recently stabbed in the back. His eyes darted left and right, sweat pearled on his top lip, and his hands shook incessantly. Hart’s vision swam, and he forced the room into focus with a few slow blinks.

“You can still get us out of here.”

“He’d kill me and go after my family. I have no choice.”

There’s always a choice
, Hart thought, but he didn’t say it. For one he didn’t have spare oxygen left over, and for another he needed Alex on his side. His breaths felt wet in his chest. It hurt like a motherfucker.

“I think I have a punctured lung.”

“Oh jeez,” Alex whispered. “I don’t know what to do.”

Hart mustered a smile from somewhere, lifting his head to where Alex kneeled beside him. “Neither do I, kid.” Alex clamped both his hands in front of his mouth, and fat tears leaked from the corners of both eyes. “Do you have… a phone?” Hart asked mildly, though what he wanted to do was shake Alex. No chance of that now. His breath rattled in his heavy chest. “Any way to… reach someone?”

“He took my phone,” Alex whispered, fear reflecting in his eyes like the bright flash of a camera. “He doesn’t trust me anymore.”

“He’s insane,” Hart told him. “He doesn’t know what trust means.” He blinked against the darkness encroaching on the room. A dark stain on the wooden floor rekindled the fire that scorched him deep in his chest. “What did you do with Toby’s body?”