Haven 1: How to Save a Life (33 page)

“You can give it to the police when they get here. Just try touching it as little as you can.”

“Okay.” He slipped the key chain into his pocket.

“We should make some calls,” Kevin said.

Vargas kept his gaze locked on the floor before him. “I called the emergency number I had on file for him at the club. A friend named Toby, but I couldn’t get ahold of him. I left a message.”

“We’ve met Toby,” Walter said. “I can try him again.”

Kevin tapped the side of Walter’s knee with his own. “Ryder.”

“Yeah.” Walter got out his phone.

“Ryder?” Vargas asked.

“Seth’s neighbor. The kid’s been worried about him.”

Vargas went back to intently observing the floor before his chair.

Walter didn’t want to make this call. He should probably wait until he had more information, but he’d made a promise. He gestured to the other side of the room where fewer people waited. “I’ll be right back. Stay with him?”

Kevin nodded. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Walter rose and gave a last look at Vargas, then crossed the room, hitting the speed dial he’d programmed for Ryder when he’d met the kid.

Ryder answered on the first ring. “Did you find him?”

* * * *

Walter parked himself against the wall, folded his arms across his chest, and stared at the closed curtain surrounding Seth’s surgical ICU bed.

He had tried not looking at it, hoping the five minutes the others were inside would go by faster if he focused on the activity at the nursing station, the cop standing guard a few feet to the right, or Kevin’s pacing. None of it had distracted Walter from that stupid orange curtain.

Kevin halted the pacing and came to stand beside him. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Great. I’m having the best damn day of my life.” Walter laughed like it had been a good joke.

“Don’t do that.”

“What?”

“Pretend you aren’t upset. Or that I don’t get it.”

He was right about that. No one had really understood Walter, knew the grief and guilt he’d been living with until Kevin had tripped right into his life.

And since then Walter had spent too much time fixated on what he’d been feeling for Kevin, and not enough on Seth Fisher and the others. He stared down the curtain again. “His chances aren’t good.”

“But there’s still a chance.”

Walter would believe it when Seth Fisher walked into his apartment to pick up Charlie.

“He’s made it this far,” Kevin added. “We can’t give up on him now.”

Finally the curtain slid to the side. Toby, Ryder, and his grandmother exited, pulling the curtain shut behind them before Walter could catch a glimpse of Seth.

If the looks on their faces were anything to go by, Seth’s condition was even worse than Vargas had made it sound. Ryder’s grandmother had tears in her eyes, so did Toby, and Ryder’s face showed the telltale signs of shock.

When Seth had gotten out of surgery and been moved to a bed in the ICU, the nurse on duty had given them the okay to visit in two groups, each for five minutes, before they headed home.

Vargas had stayed behind in the waiting area, not saying a word when Walter asked if he wanted to go see Seth. Vargas had given a slight shake of his head and continued staring across the room. The fact that Seth and the others had been taken in his club, that he’d been the one to find Seth nearly dead in the dining room, might destroy a decent guy like Vargas.

Walter gave a nod to Ryder as the group walked by. Ryder’s grandmother stopped to thank Kevin for the coffee and food he’d scrounged up earlier. Walter couldn’t wait one more minute. He shoved aside the curtain and stepped inside.

The cordoned-off area was larger than he expected. It needed to be, what with how many machines they had Seth hooked up to, how many tubes ran in and out of his body. Under the thin blanket and with all the equipment surrounding him, he looked small, fragile, and alone.

The lights in the room were on low. Other than the machines, the space included the hospital bed, a sink, and a chair in the corner. Walter knew all too well how uncomfortable a chair in a room like that could be.

He wouldn’t sit there, couldn’t even give the chair another thought. It reminded him of the months he’d spent in a similar room. Watching, waiting, not able to keep one more man from dying before his eyes.

And here he was again. With yet another man he couldn’t protect.

He squeezed his eyes shut and fended off the sting of tears. It wasn’t like he’d ever met Seth Fisher. Wasn’t like he knew the man. Everything he did know about him he’d learned over the last few weeks.

Secondhand information.

And yet…

Why did he want to stand guard beside the hospital bed, protecting Seth until they caught the bastard who’d put him in it?

Kevin gasped from behind him and followed it with, “Oh God.”

Yeah, that about summed it up.

Seth looked like someone had run him over, then backed up over him for good measure. Both eyes were bruised, swollen shut. In fact, there wasn’t much of his face that wasn’t purple and swollen. One arm had a cast, the fingers on that hand—and the other—discolored with black-and-blue striations like they’d been squeezed in a vise. The arm without the cast had long, stitched cuts. And all that was just what was visible above the blanket.

Walter took another step toward the bed, Kevin’s hand sliding off his arm in the process. He hadn’t even felt that touch.

He couldn’t speak, couldn’t say one word. He waited. For his years of experience to kick in, for the ability to distance himself from the man in the bed before him, so he could take in every detail as part of an investigation, not see the damage done to a human being, not see the young life that had almost been lost—that still might be.

The compartmentalization Walter had counted on for years never came. Perhaps he’d morphed into less of a cop than he’d thought. Retirement had changed him.

Or maybe it was something else.

He gripped the metal rail along the bed in his hands. The words came then. More than he’d meant to say.

“Seth.” His voice cracked. He cleared his throat and tried again. “My name’s Walter Simon. I’ve been trying to find you. Vargas asked me to look for you, but… He’s the one who found you.” Although from the looks of how Vargas was faring, Walter would’ve given anything to avoid that discovery for his friend. “I’ve got Charlie at my place. He can stay with me until you get out of here.”

Kevin was beside him then. Not touching him, not talking. Just there. They stood that way for several minutes, watching Seth, listening to the bleeps of the monitors, the oxygen surging through the mask over his face.

“We should go,” Kevin said. “He needs rest. His body just needs to heal.”

“Yeah, okay.” But Walter couldn’t move. Not until he said one more thing. “I’m sorry. I tried…” The rest was lost to the lump in his throat.

He shouldn’t have been fucking around with Kevin, focusing on his own pleasure, worrying over Kevin’s emotional state. He should’ve been looking into the case every waking moment, and then some. He shouldn’t have been relying on Gibson or Tucker. Or Kevin. He should’ve been focused on saving Seth’s life. On saving Dylan. On saving all of them.

Including Kevin.

Because every instinct told Walter this psycho was still coming after Kevin.

As much as it hurt to see Seth Fisher in that bed, Walter couldn’t take staring down at Kevin in the same state. Whatever had been building between them had grown stronger than lust, stronger than friendship.

Walter forced down another stiff swallow and said, “I’m sorry.”

He wasn’t sure who he’d said those words to.

Kevin slid a hand into his and squeezed. “Let’s go home.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

Kevin rounded the corner into the parking garage and maneuvered the car into Walter’s space. It had been years since Kevin had last driven, but he’d managed well enough. Better than Walter probably would’ve done, which was why Kevin had taken the car keys from him on their walk through the hospital parking lot.

Walter hadn’t argued or asked why. Hadn’t made a single joke about how Kevin would probably crash the car in the first five minutes. Hadn’t said a word, in fact. Just let Kevin slip a hand into his and steal the keys away.

The Walter Simon sitting beside him in the front seat was very different from the man Kevin had known for weeks now. Walter was disturbingly silent, more intense than the vampire guy from that first night at the Haven.

The weary silence continued as Kevin parked the car. He was unsure what to say or do.

He cut the engine and waited. When it was obvious Walter wasn’t going to speak or move, Kevin got out and rounded the car to the passenger door. He gave a slight tug on Walter’s arm. “Come on. We’re home.”

When they reached the apartment door, Kevin flipped the key chain in his hand, looking for the key to the apartment. Without a word Walter grabbed them, unlocked the door, and stepped inside, his stride more agitated than the slow, uneven steps in the parking garage.

Then he stopped in the middle of the entranceway and stared off down the hall at Charlie trotting toward him.

Slowly, like he’d been beaten along with Seth and could barely move, Walter patted Charlie’s head.

Kevin stopped beside him. He still had no idea what to do, how to get Walter to talk to him, or what to say in return. So he kept doing what felt right, like he’d always done with him. He ran a hand over Walter’s tense back.

Finally Walter spoke. “We should’ve been doing more…”

Kevin kept the hand moving, caressing.

Walter walked out of his touch, went to the couch, and collapsed onto it, his head landing on the cushion behind him, his gaze locked on the ceiling.

Charlie jumped up and sat next to him. Without sitting up, Walter returned to petting him, a gentle sweep of his hand over the dog’s fur. He seemed like he was trying to comfort the dog, as if it had been Charlie who’d gotten a look at Seth in that hospital bed.

All at once, Walter pulled his hand away. “I could use a drink.”

“I’ll get you something.”

“Something with liquor mixed in. Ah, fuck it. Skip the something. Just bring the booze.”

Kevin searched the kitchen cabinets and came upon a bottle of whiskey. He poured a glass and returned to the living room. Walter lay on his side, his tall body curled around Charlie, both of them with their eyes closed. The long, slow breathing of man and dog washed over Kevin.

He set the glass down and knelt beside the couch. Again he followed his instincts where Walter was concerned. He brushed a hand over his dark hair. A tender touch he’d never shown anyone before. Not once.

Kevin had never in his life felt like this about another person, wanting to care and comfort, to take away all the pain and disappointments, to be everything Walter needed.

A realization hit Kevin. Like remembering a long-forgotten song. Every lyric, every note pouring back into his memory, and nothing could keep him from singing it.

He’d avoided what he’d known about himself since he was a teenager, and in the process he’d closed himself off from feeling anything, from being intimate with anyone in a way that had nothing to do with sex.

He ran his hand over Walter’s hair again, down the stubble on his cheek, needing to soothe and not knowing how to do that.

Walter opened his eyes, his gaze on the fireplace across the room. “I failed him.”

“You did not. We were the ones trying to help him. You got Gibson involved, even when I said we shouldn’t. You did everything you could.”

“I don’t want to lose anything else.” Walter’s eyes fell shut, and when they opened again, they zeroed in on Kevin. “I don’t want to lose you.”

Was he talking about what Prescott might do? Or something else? Something about the two of them and this not working out? Kevin didn’t want to pursue that last thought. “Nothing is going to happen to me.”

“No, it’s not.” Walter went back to staring at the empty, stone fireplace. “I loved him.”

“Who?”

“Gary.” Walter tucked his arm under his head. “I want to believe if he hadn’t gotten sick, we would’ve made it, that we would’ve spent our lives together until we were both heading for the nursing home.” He slid his arm out from under his cheek and reached for Kevin, slowly caressing up the side of his neck. He cupped Kevin’s face in his palm. “But with you… I’ve never felt something so intense, so powerful. The thought that this guy will find you and hurt you… It scares me that I’ll lose you when we’re just getting going. But the worst part, what scares the hell out of me more than anything…is I’ll love you so much I won’t want to give you up. Ever.”

Kevin squashed down the surprise at those words, the flood of elation and the moisture building in his eyes. “How’s that a bad thing?”

“Because you’re twenty years younger.”

“Why does that matter so much to you? Are you embarrassed to be seen with me?’

“Never.” Walter dropped his hand. “We do this and someday you’ll be alone. I can’t do that to you. I know what that feels like, and I can’t go into this knowing you’ll hurt like that.”

“There are no guarantees in life. Look at Seth. Do you think that kid wanted to end up in a hospital bed? His life in serious jeopardy in his twenties? He was getting his life on track, and now this happens. But that doesn’t mean he can’t come back from this and have a future.”

Walter sat up so fast, Kevin toppled over onto his ass and Charlie scurried to the other end of the couch. Walter stole the glass of whiskey from the coffee table.

Shock and sadness gave way to anger.

“You want a drink?” He knocked back every drop in the glass as soon as the words left his mouth.

“I don’t drink the hard stuff much.”

“Not even after a night like tonight? After seeing Seth like that?” He stood and strode to the kitchen. He came back with another glass of whiskey, more than Kevin had poured for him. Walter considered Kevin where he still knelt on the floor next to the couch. “Vargas is turning over a list of club members to the police. You gave a false last name. You’re going to show up on Henderson’s radar, and he’ll want to question you.” He downed the whiskey.