A Darkness Absolute (Casey Duncan #2)(118)

“Again, I made a slight misstep. Roger’s fault. I decided it was too risky, grabbing you and getting past him. I also decided I was missing an opportunity. The chance to snatch Nicole back from under your nose. You’ve been beaten, Detective. Leave it at that. Now you’ll come along quietly, confident in your ability to escape.”

“No.”

The gun going still. “What?”

I struggle to speak clearly. “I saw that hole. There’s no way I can go with you and expect to live. I’ll die slowly and horribly in a cave somewhere, and Nicole will die, too. I’m her replacement. So, no, I’m not going with you. For her sake.”

This isn’t what he expected, and he’s thinking fast.

“Will?” I say, fighting to keep my words clear as the drug threatens to silence me. “I’m going to ask you to take the shot. Benjamin will try to kill me. He might even succeed. But shoot to wound him and then keep him alive and in pain—horrible pain—until he tells you where to find Nicole. Can you do—”

Benjamin shoves me. Hard. I’m stumbling, trying to right myself. A gun fires. Something hits me in the back. Hits me hard. Another shot. Shouts. Footfalls. I’m falling, and I hear shots and shouts and then …

Darkness.





SIXTY-FIVE

I wake in bed. My brain feels like a poorly tethered balloon, threatening to float off.

There’s a voice. It seems to be coming from miles away. I can’t quite make it out, but it sounds urgent, anxious.

Huh. Something must be wrong.

A face appears in front of the ceiling. It’s Dalton. He looks worried. Shit. What happened now?

“Casey? Can you hear me?”

I close my eyes.

“No! Wait! Casey!”

I drop back into dreamless sleep.

*

The next time I wake, I bolt up like an alarm is screeching in my ear. Which it is—the screech of my inner voice telling me to get up, Benjamin’s on the run, and what the hell am I doing, lying here— Pain. Blinding, gasp-inducing pain blasts through my shoulder. Hands grab me. Hands lower me back to bed. Push me back to bed. Dalton’s voice saying, “Relax. Just relax. You’re okay. Everything’s okay.”

I blink hard to clear my vision. I’m in his bed. He’s there, over me, fussing with my pillow and saying, “You’ve been shot. You’re okay, but you’ve been shot.”

He’s measuring out painkillers. I say, “Not that.”

“Yes, this. You’re in a lot of pain—”

“I can’t think on meds.”

“You can’t think if you’re in pain, either.”

“Eric, please. You know I hate taking—”

He shakes the bottle and says, “Tylenol three. Yeah, Will gave you morphine at first, but now it’s just these, which you are taking. You’ve been shot in the shoulder.”

“You got Benjamin?”

He hands me the pills and busies himself pouring water.

I lift my head. “Eric? If you’re here, that means you got him, right?”

“It was chaos. Fucking chaos. He shot you, and—”

“And that’s why he shot me. Because he knew you’d help me rather than run after him. Tell me Will ran after him.”

“You’d been shot, Casey. Then you fell and hit your head, and yeah, we did exactly what he wanted, but I’m not going to apologize for that. Will got the militia on him right away. I went to try to find his trail, but it was a mess. Tracks everywhere, from everyone running around, thinking they saw him here or there, but it was just another damned militia guy. Will’s out there now with the whole team.”

I wait a moment. Then I say, “Eric?”

He pretends not to hear. He knows what I’m going to say.

“Eric?”

“Yeah, I fucked up in the clinic,” he says. “When he took you captive, I froze. If Will hadn’t been there … You were more useful than I was, and you’d been drugged and had a gun at your head. I just seized up. I couldn’t figure out what to do, so I didn’t do a goddamned thing, and you got shot, and he got away.”

“The point isn’t what you did then, Eric. It’s what you’re doing right now.”

“Someone has to stay with you.”

“And that someone shouldn’t be the best tracker in this town. Anyone can play nursemaid.”

He shakes his head. “Will didn’t know how the painkillers might react with whatever Sutherland—Benjamin—gave you. He said I should stay with you.”

I don’t respond. His jaw works, and he says, “Yeah, he was telling me what I wanted to hear. Letting me do what I wanted to do.”

Which is true, and I could give Anders crap for that, but the truth is, if Dalton was freaked out over me, I’m not sure he’d have been much good out there anyway.

“You need to go,” I say.

“I know.” He exhales. “I’m fucking up in every direction tonight, aren’t I?”

“I wouldn’t have done any different if the situation was reversed.”

“Yeah, you would have.”

He’s wrong. If Benjamin had been holding the gun on Dalton, I would not have been able to see it as a regular hostage situation and react accordingly. That’s a huge problem, professionally. I can’t let my emotions get in the way of my job. But personally?