Under the Surface (32 page)

He said something she couldn't understand over the wail of another police cruiser pulling into the already cramped space. The ambulance driver leaned out his door, gave a piercing whistle even Natalie would envy and shouted, “Move! We gotta go!”

“This isn't real, Eve,” he finished, picking bits of gravel out of her knees like each one was a tiny bomb requiring precision handling.

“Last night was as real as you've ever been with me, Matt,” she said bluntly. “I can handle that. I can handle more.”

“It's not real,” he said, as if she hadn't spoken. “You can't trust your feelings in a situation like this. Close proximity, stressful circumstances, and sex all combine to create an unreal environment. You can't trust it.”

“How do you know whether or not you can trust your feelings if you don't let yourself feel anything at all? You use protecting as a way to push people away. You wall us off, say you're keeping us safe, but you're really keeping yourself safe from the messy emotional reality of life and love.” When he didn't respond she slapped his hands away from her abused knees. “Stop taking care of me! Stop hiding behind duty and honor and feel what's between us!”

At that urgent command he looked up and met her eyes. She saw the implacable wall going back up, shutting her out, then he said the word he'd never, ever used before.

“No.”

She blinked at him, not believing her ears, but just then Lieutenant Hawthorn and Officer McCormick strode up. “Jesus, Eve,” Ian said. “Are you all right?”

“Ian,” she replied, just as formal if a little more hysterical, “I'm fine.”

“She's not fine. She needs x-rays and maybe an MRI,” Matt said as he flung another bit of gravel to the side.

“And you, Detective Dorchester, need to go with Officer McCormick and report in to Captain Whitmore,” Hawthorn said implacably.

Eve followed his glance to a group of uniformed officers, clustered around Sorenson and Carlucci, all watching Matt as he knelt in front of her. He dropped the tweezers on the ambulance floor and stood up. Her face throbbed as she tilted her head back to look up into his eyes. “Don't go to work for Lancaster Life. You are right where you're supposed to be. You are who you're supposed to be. Without you, Lyle sets up shop on the East Side, the neighborhood loses the business park, and the bad guys win. No one else could have done what you've done over the last few weeks. Don't let anyone tell you different, and don't let anyone guilt or bully or pressure you into becoming anyone else.”

Then he turned and walked away.

*   *   *

Eve woke up in a hospital bed. A pair of sneaker-clad feet rested near her own, covered by a white sheet and blanket. Very, very carefully, because her head felt like it had been split in two, she turned and looked up the long, denim-clad legs to Caleb's solemn face.

“Hello, sister mine,” he said, relief flashing in his green eyes.

“Hey,” she said, but her throat was too dry and tight to get the words out. Caleb sat up and poured a glass of water, competently folding a bendy straw and dropping it in the glass, then offering it to her.

“Nice technique,” she complimented after she drank. They'd spent more than their share of time in hospital rooms.

He leaned an elbow on the bed and considered her. “How are you feeling?”

“My cheek hurts,” she said. The throbbing worsened as her attention found it, like a bad-tempered troll and his rough-hewn club had taken up residence, lumbering and grumbling under her eye.

“I'm not surprised,” Caleb replied. “From what I gathered from Detective Sorenson's terse yet colorful description, Lyle hit you so hard you went airborne.”

“I … I vaguely remember that.” All she really remembered was the explosion of light and pain, then lying in the dirt next to her father. She listened to the silence in the corridor, looked at the old-fashioned clock, then the window. “It's the middle of the night. What are you doing here?”

“Sitting with the sick, comforting the afflicted,” he said casually. “It's better than my other option, which is to find Ian Hawthorn and beat the shit out of him.”

She laughed, then regretted it when the troll took a big swing at her cheekbone with his club. “It's not Ian's fault. I went into this with my eyes wide open.”

Caleb was silent. Eve figured Ian could hold his own. “I have good news,” he said.

“I could use some good news.”

“Nobody showed up to make payment for the property behind Eye Candy. It's yours.”

“That
is
good news,” she said, but really, she couldn't feel much of anything. In a day or two she'd get excited about it. “How's Dad?”

“Down the hall and scheduled for bypass surgery,” Caleb said.

“What?” she exclaimed, regretting it as the troll added a vicious kick.

“I guess one side benefit from all of this is that the doctors took a really good look at his arteries. They've been clogging faster than expected. You make an impact, no doubt about it.”

She lay back and closed her eyes. “I work with the cops for three months and I get Dad and me kidnapped, and a man is dead, and now Dad has another heart attack.”

“Don't forget Travis getting shot.”

She'd never forget Travis's silence as he drove her through the East Side, to the warehouse. Forgiveness felt very far away. “How is Travis?” she asked, trying for Christian charity.

“Two doors down from Dad, recovering from a gunshot wound to the shoulder, with an extremely bored uniformed cop sitting outside his door.”

She couldn't laugh, but she did muster a weak smile.

“Sorenson and Hawthorn were both here, but one cop, however, is conspicuous in his absence. Where's Dorchester? I figured he'd have to be pried from your side with a crowbar.”

“He's gone.” At Caleb's single raised eyebrow, she added, “Between the siren and the ice pack crackling I was a little distracted, but I put the pieces together in the ambulance. He said something about Stockholm, and this isn't real.”

Clearly mystified, Caleb blinked, then gave a sharp bark of laughter that reverberated in Eve's cheek. “Stockholm syndrome, or a variation thereof. Under considerable emotional stress some hostages form attachments to their captors, although the analogy doesn't hold in your situation.”

“He thinks what I feel for him isn't real.”

Her brother sat forward, elbows on knees. “Maybe he's right.”

The apocalypse must be on its way if Caleb was agreeing with a cop, even a cop who saved two members of his family from certain death. “Who are you, and what have you done with my brother?” she asked.

“He's right. It's not real, Eve, what happened over the last few weeks. It's a bizarre interlude in your life.”

“I know that, Caleb, but that doesn't make the feelings any less real,” she said evenly. “I love him. He feels something too, but he won't admit it. I think I scare him.”

“You scare the hell out of me,” her brother said, then the smile disappeared. “Oh, Eve.”

Hot tears trickled into the bandage on her cheek, and her sinuses swelled and throbbed under her bruised cheek. “It hurts when I cry,” she said shakily.

“I don't doubt it,” he said. “You've got one hell of a shiner. The doctor said you're lucky you don't have a fractured eye socket.”

“That's not what I mean,” she said, and reached for the box of tissues on the nightstand.

Caleb shut his mouth, shifted onto the bed, and held her while she cried.

*   *   *

Matt stood in the basement, sunlight filtering through the dirty casement windows onto the dusty pile of stereo equipment. He had a decision to make. To do that he had to get very clear about who he was and what he wanted. Boxing no longer brought clarity, and only a fool continued to use ineffective tactics. So the first step was to bring speakers, tuner, and disc changer up from the basement.

It took two trips, but eventually the relics from an archeological dig into the late twentieth century sat on the floor in the corner by the entertainment center. The cables were still attached to the components. He plugged them in, pushed the main power button, inserted a disc at random, and pressed play. Nothing. He pulled all the cords out and licked them—a trick he'd learned wiring radios on patrol—plugged them in again. The slow guitar chords from Foreigner's “I Want to Know What Love Is” blasted out into the living room. Matt put his hands on his hips and let the music wash over muscle and bone held too tight for too long. When the song ended and the disc spun to the Violent Femmes he opened his laptop, grabbed a CD at random from the shelves behind the television, and inserted it into the disc drive to import. It would take a while, but he had time. He was on desk duty until the department cleared his role in the shooting death of Lyle Murphy, and he'd used the time wisely. A new AC unit would go in next week.

He was sitting with his back to the wall, watching the sun set and listening to Pearl Jam's “Given to Fly” when he saw Luke roll up the ramp. His brother opened the door and braked to a stop by the recliner, a pile of mail on his lap.

“I heard music when I pulled into the driveway and thought I had the wrong house,” Luke said, looking around at the controlled chaos spread over the living and dining rooms. “Damn, Matt. I haven't seen you like this since you were in high school and Dad was riding your ass, and you'd shut yourself in your room for hours. Remember?”

One corner of his mouth lifted in a smile. Luke had been a scrawny little squirt, eight, maybe nine years old, completely unable to sit still for more than fifteen seconds at a stretch. He'd try to play it cool, study the album artwork or read the lyrics like Matt did, but after a while he'd just wriggle under Matt's arm and listen. There was no physical affection in the house; his father said it would weaken the boys, and his mother never disobeyed his father. Matt learned not to care, but Luke was wired differently. He'd been starving for cuddles, hugs, anything. Luke soaked up the simple comfort of sitting on the floor together as much as he'd soaked up Matt's taste in music.

“Yeah,” Matt said. “You'd come in and we'd share the headphones. You'd pick a song, then I'd pick a song.” Luke always picked songs he knew Matt liked.

“You always picked songs you knew I liked,” Luke said, echoing Matt's thoughts. They'd been so close as kids, despite their age difference. “Those were my best memories from childhood. I've missed that, you know. You've been here every day, doing the right thing, but I've missed my brother.”

At Luke's words, a boulder swelled in his rib cage, crushing heart, lungs, forcing rock into his throat. He breathed against it, waited it out, and slowly the weight rolled back.

Jesus.
He'd survived eighteen months in a war zone and two shootouts in two weeks, and the intensity of the emotion swamping him might kill him.

“Yeah,” he said. “I can see how you'd feel that way.” He'd been so focused on being strong for everyone around him he'd never given people what they needed most. Emotion. Affection. Love.

“What brought this on?” Luke said, idly rubbing his shoulder.

“After what happened, I thought it would help,” he said. This was true. Music was a way to express emotion, desire, and maybe if he let the music do his feeling for him, he'd find a way through the persistent, unrelenting ache in his heart.

The process was still somewhat automatic, his hands pulling out a CD he hadn't listened to in years, only to find that some song, even a phrase in a song, a guitar riff, something about the singer's breathing on a live recording, even, would ease some of the tightness in his chest.

He missed Eve. He'd counted on the memories associated with her receding by now, but instead he saw her everywhere, in the kitchen, on the sofa, at the dining room table.

In his bed.

“You mean the shootout?” Luke asked. His voice was tentative, flashing Matt back to childhood. Luke was using the same tone of voice they used with their father, hesitant, probing for the signs of a good day, a good conversation, a chance to be a normal family. Luke was using that voice on him.

“Among other things,” Matt hedged. Early morning shadows on the pillows became a black spill of hair. The breeze in the trees in his peripheral vision transformed shifting contours into a soft, slender body, tantalizingly just out of sight. He no longer had to layer identities when he woke up, but now he would swear he felt her right beside him, heat and softness, breathing deep.

The music helped deal with the day-to-day strain of the job, but the wild creature still lurked inside the prison of his rib cage. Sometimes he put in a two-hour workout to wear out the frantic thing, but at least now he knew what he was fighting.

He was fighting loneliness. But the weakness of feeling lonely only jeopardized him. All the risk was his. No one else got hurt.

“Just get off work?” Matt asked absently, ejecting Paul Simon's
Graceland
and sliding in
They Might Be Giants
. The disc spun, giving off a high-pitched whir as the tracks began to import.

“Yeah. My last day. I gave them my notice and told them to give my scheduled hours to the other tech.” Matt must have looked completely sandbagged because Luke couldn't keep a smile from spreading across his face. “My chemistry professor left teaching at the end of the year for fulltime research with Genedac Pharmaceuticals. He needed a research assistant and asked me if I wanted the job. I did.”

“In Chicago?” Matt asked.

“Their R&D facility in Austin. The pay's good. Really good. Good benefits and the temperature rarely drops below forty in Austin. After I get settled I'm going to help pay off the medical bills.”

“No, you're not,” Matt said automatically. “The accident wasn't your fault. There's no reason for you to pay off those bills.”