Lanyon, Josh - Adrien English 04 - Death of a Pirate King (30 page)

“Shut up, Paul.” Fingers brushed my cheek. I opened my eyes.

“Let him
die
,” Paul
said.

“He’s not dying.” Jake’s gaze held mine. “You’re not dying.”

I shook my head, although I was afraid that I was.

“Help is on the way. All you have to do is hold on.”

I said, “You wouldn’t happen to have a warm rock, would you?”

“What?”

“If you wrap a warm rock in a piece of cloth and then press
it against the wound, it’s supposed to ease the pain.”

His pale mouth quirked. “The only rocks I brought are the
ones in my head. I should never have agreed to this.”

“You didn’t.” I closed my eyes. My shoulder was starting to
hurt. A lot. I tried to lessen the pain by analyzing it. Nausea, crushing pressure
in my chest…maybe better to skip the analysis.

He crouched down beside me, gathering me against him. His
hand covered mine, holding the bunched and wet shirt against my shoulder much
harder than I was. I let him deal with it, rested my face in the curve of his
neck. Breathed in the scent of sunwarmed bare skin tinged with the sweat and
gunpowder and the metallic tang of blood. His heart was pounding fast on an
adrenaline rush.

I don’t have to be
strong
, I thought.
I don’t have to
put a brave face on it. I’m dying. I’m entitled to a little weakness
. I hid
my face in his chest, smothering the cry of pain that squeezed out of me.

It could be worse. I could be dying alone.

Or he could have hesitated. Even for a moment.

The pain eased up a little.

I could hear Paul continuing to speak urgently, pleading for
his own life in that stagy ultraplummy voice.

“Why can’t you see what this means for both of us? This is a
second chance -- our last chance. This is fate. Why are you fighting what is
clearly meant to happen?”

Jake said over my head, “Paul, one more word and I’ll blow
your fucking head off.”

Paul gave a strangled laugh. “My God, you are a
fool
.”

Jake shifted, and I hoped he wasn’t going to carry out his
threat.

He tipped my head up.

“Okay?”

“Great.” I’d decided to live long enough to see Paul Kane put
away.

His laugh sounded funny.

The pain was getting worse again.

He bent his head and said against my ear. “Hold on, baby.”

I nodded and closed my eyes.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Fuzzy…ceiling. There was something wrong with the light. Sort
of eerie…

I unstuck my eyes. Blinked. I was in a hospital room and Lisa
was sitting by my bedside.

She looked small and exhausted. She wore no makeup; her face
was pinched and suddenly old.

My shoulder hurt. It seemed stiff, bulky with bandages. It
hurt to move. My chest hurt. A lot. I became aware of tubes and wires and a
soft mechanical swish and hiss. I was hooked up to a bank of machines with
blinking lights -- and I didn’t seem to be breathing entirely on my own. Scary.
Very.

I must have moved or made some sound because Lisa’s gaze
jerked to my face. She looked more scared than I felt.

“Adrien…” Her voice -- little more than a whisper -- shook
badly.

I winked at her.

Her eyes filled with tears.

That pretty much felt like a full day’s work. I closed my
eyes.

* * * * *

The next time I opened my eyes there were cards and balloons.
I recognized Emma’s artwork on a large folded sheet of colored construction
paper. I believe I recognized that jubilant stick figure with the spiky black
hair, although it had been a long time since I’d felt like jumping for joy.

Everything hurt but I was breathing on my own again. My
mother sat beside my bed reading
Vogue
.
She looked immaculately groomed as always, so all was apparently right with the
universe once more.

I croaked, “I think Em should have her own horse.”

Lisa looked up from the magazine. For a moment she seemed to
struggle for composure, then she said, “Oh, Adrien! She’ll just fall and break
her neck.” She wiped hastily at her eyes.

* * * * *

Bizarre though it may be, it took awhile to remember that I’d
been shot aboard Paul Kane’s ship. I was so doped up that for a day or two I
thought I was in the hospital with pneumonia. My chest hurt like hell and breathing
was painful in the extreme. Everything was an effort. Even thinking was
exhausting. So I didn’t. I hid out in a cocoon of painkillers and refused to
let myself worry about how ill I was and what the future might be.

There was going to be a future, and that was the good news,
but I’d apparently had a couple of cardiac events. Everyone seemed a little
vague about these “events.” I gathered they were not cause for celebration --
despite the cards and flowers and balloons that accumulated.

“Did someone pick my cat up?” I asked…well, I asked everyone.

“Darling, Natalie is taking care of that cre -- your cat,”
Lisa assured me for the fourth time.

I closed my eyes…but I knew there was something I needed to
remember. Something I had forgotten…

And that’s when it came flooding back: my own personal voyage
of the damned which had ended with Paul Kane shooting me. And I remembered
Jake.

I opened my eyes again.

“Is Jake all right?”

Lisa’s delicate jaw gritted against all the things she wanted
to say. “As far as I know,” she got out every bit as tersely as Jake.

“Can you find out?”

She huffed out a little sigh. “Yes. I’ll find out.” I watched
her steel herself to ask, “Do you want to see him?”

It was a brave effort on her part but I felt a kind of internal
flinch. I did want to see him. And I didn’t. Not like this, looking like Emma’s
science project with wires and tubes and IVs and catheter and an oxygen tube up
my nose.

Watching me, my mother said with that uncanny perspicuity,
“Maybe when you’re feeling a little more in control.”

I assented, closed my eyes, drifted.

* * * * *

“What the hell
is
tapioca,” I asked, studying it on my spoon. “Is it some kind of rice?”

“I don’t know,” Guy said, “but if you don’t intend to spend
the rest of your life on an IV, you’d better eat it.”

“You usually don’t get threatened for not eating dessert. Not
that I really count this as dessert.”

I took a spoonful.

Watching me, Guy said, “I’ve got some good news. That
screenwriter, Al January, recovered consciousness. They think he’s going to be
all right.”

The relief was like a weight off my chest. “Thank God. Thanks
for telling me.”

He opened his mouth but restrained himself from saying the
things he had been longing to say since I regained consciousness -- the things
he had already said when I told him my plan to trap Paul Kane. He said instead,
“When you’re up to it, the police want to take your statement.”

“Oh.”

His smile was a little grim in response to my tone. “Lisa has
been holding them at bay with the threat of court orders and injunctions and
curses upon them and all their progeny.”

“Does she think…what does she think?”

Guy raised one shoulder.

“What did Jake tell them?”

“I have no idea.”

“But he
is
all
right?”

Guy’s brows arched. “Is
Jake
okay? I never thought to ask.” After a few beats he added reluctantly, “He was
released from the hospital yesterday.”

My heart did a little lurch, and it felt different. Weird.
Although I couldn’t have explained how; I wasn’t even sure I didn’t imagine it.

“Did he -- what happened to Paul Kane?” In some of my
drug-induced dreams Jake had shot Paul Kane to keep him quiet. In some of my
dreams he shot me.

“You mean the psychotic murdering bastard who shot you? He’s
currently in jail busy planning a lawsuit against the LAPD and claiming that
you framed him.”

I laughed, and Guy said, “I’m glad you think it’s funny.”

“Not funny, no.” I grimaced. “I had all these grandiose ideas
of bringing Kane to justice. Now I’m just grateful to be alive. Grateful Jake
didn’t…”

I didn’t want to remember those long minutes when I had
believed Jake had set me up, that his fear and paranoia had led him finally to
murder.

“You mean because you were asking him to betray his lover?”

I shook my head. “I was asking him -- insisting -- that he
come out. There was no way he could arrest Paul Kane that his relationship with
him wouldn’t be revealed. It didn’t matter if I got Kane to confess or not.
However Paul Kane went down, Jake was going down with him.” I closed my eyes.
“In a manner of speaking.”

I was aware of Guy removing my meal tray, sitting back down
next to the bed.

“How’s Peter?” I asked after a bit, resting my eyes.

“Young.”

I smiled faintly. “He’ll get it over it.” After a while I
said, “Maybe I wasn’t fair to Jake.”

And Guy said dryly, “No?”

“I couldn’t understand why…”

“He wanted to be friends if you weren’t going to be
together?”

That was the thing about Guy. He always seemed to know what I
was thinking before I did myself. I nodded and moved my hand on the coverlet.
His hand slipped under mine, fingers closing warmly about my own.

He said, “Maybe you weren’t unfair. Maybe it was just harder
for you to let go of your dreams.” His thumb lightly traced the pulse beat in
my wrist. He added softly, “Harder than it was for me.”

I turned my hand over and laced my fingers in his.

* * * * *

The next time I opened my eyes Jake was there.

I smiled.

It must have been a lousy effort. He said, “I won’t stay
long.”

He looked pale and tired. There were shadows like blue
smudges under his eyes. His arm was in a sling. Yeah, I got life support and
Jake got a dashing sling; that was pretty much par for the course.

“Not like I have to be somewhere,” I told him.

“I think your mother is summoning security even as we speak.”

They must have been taking their time because I had the
impression he’d been sitting there a while. Or maybe I’d dreamed someone was
stroking my hair.

“How’s the shoulder?” I asked.

“I won’t be throwing out the first pitch at Dodger Stadium
anytime soon.”

“I thought you were going to sing the national anthem.”

In fairness, it wasn’t very funny. Clearing his throat, he
said gruffly, “I wanted to…thank you.”

My mouth tasted horrible, gluey. Like tapioca. I swallowed.
“Sure.” I offered him another flicker of a smile. “Likewise.”

Not just for keeping Paul Kane from feeding me to the fishes.
They’d told me my heart had stopped before we’d made it back to harbor. Jake
had kept me alive long enough for the paramedics to do their bit -- no doubt
with Paul Kane reminding him of all the reasons he shouldn’t bother.

He looked like he hadn’t slept in days. The lines around his
eyes had lines of their own.

“You okay, Jake?”

His smile seemed an effort. “I think that’s my line. How are
you?” His eyes moved to my bandaged chest and shoulder.

I started to shrug, remembered in time. “Pretty much stoned.”
I considered his question reluctantly. “I don’t know. Everyone seems to tiptoe
around that.”

And it was freaking the hell out of me, although I didn’t
want to admit it. I turned my head, studied the monitors and medical equipment.
I thought ungrateful thoughts.

“Hey.” I looked back. Jake’s gaze held mine. “You won’t be
leaping buildings in a single bound, but from what I gather you’re expected to
return to your pre-op condition.”

His eyes never wavered and I relaxed a little. “Would that be
before or after I was shot?”

He twitched a grin. “And being the thrifty guy you are, I
know you’ll appreciate the two for one special you got. Bullet hole patching
and valve repair all for one low, low price.”

I said, echoing him on a long-ago November day, “You shop
around, you compare prices, you get the surgery right for you.”

His smile didn’t reach his eyes. I said belatedly, “I’m sorry
about Paul. I know you cared about him.”

I couldn’t decipher that expression.

“What’s going to happen to him?”

“He’s going to be tried for murder and attempted murder.” His
eyes met mine and he said carefully, “They’re not going to press the attempted
rape and kidnapping unless you insist.”

I appreciated that. Not a very dignified fate, the one Paul
had planned for me.

“They’ve got plenty to nail him with,” Jake said. “Even
without the Langley Hawthorne homicide. They found the digitoxin onboard the
Pirate’s Gambit
. ”

Kane wasn’t stupid, so it had to be arrogance. But then you expected
arrogance from pirate kings. And ruthlessness. And daring. Kane had them all --
along with a slew of other gifts from the gods.

Jake’s smile faded. He took a deep breath and said, “I’m
quitting the force.”

That was a shocker. I didn’t know what to say.

“It’s the right thing to do,” he said. “The honorable thing.
The lies, the double life -- you were right. I’ve compromised my position.”

Continuing to see things in black-and-white, career change
notwithstanding. No one judged himself more harshly than Jake. “What will you
do?”

“I’m thinking of going into the private sector.”

Again, I couldn’t think of anything to say. I couldn’t
picture him as…what? Security guard in a bank? Armored car driver?

Into my silence he smiled sheepishly and said, “I was thinking
of opening my own agency.”

“You mean like a PI?”

“Yeah.”

“Wow. Sam Spade.”

It seemed unreal. I couldn’t imagine Jake as anything but a
cop.

He was watching my expression. “I don’t want to hit you with
too much at once.”

“There’s more?” I smiled but I felt cold inside -- like the
hypothermic chill that hits you after major surgery.