Conner works on Shaun for a while. When he's finished, all the towels have been used and Shaun has a clean and bandaged gunshot wound underneath the wrappings around his ribcage and a few stitches on the back of his head. The girlfriend has kept the work area as tidy as possible and now she's gathering bloody towels and wondering aloud about washing them or throwing them out.
“Wash them,” I tell her. “You can still throw them out if you want afterward, but wash them first. Use bleach. A lot of it.”
She nods and finishes gathering them.
“Wyatt,” Conner says, “this is Regan. Regan, Wyatt.”
I don't care. Her name isn't important. I'm sorry that I've invaded her home and her world with my life, but I can't bring myself to care about her name. I just need Shaun to get stable enough to tell me who took Larken.
“Coffee?” Regan asks.
“Yes, please,” Conner answers for both of us. “He should wake up in a few hours. What happened?”
I don't have a few hours. I need Shaun awake right now. I roll my shoulders and neck, willing it to relieve some of my tension with a nice pop. “The job took a turn. Several. I don't know what happened to him. I wasn't there. I need him to wake up soon. I'm running out of time. He has to tell me what happened so I can fix it.”
The coffee pot sputters and Regan puts two cups on the counter in front of it before she leaves the room. Conner and I stare at the floor while we wait for the coffee to finish. I don't want coffee and I doubt I'll be able to drink it, but I don't know what else to do. I can drive all the way back to the house to look for clues, but I doubt I'll find anything useful. I just need Shaun to wake up and give me something to go on.
Regan comes back in. “I spread a quilt on the couch and put down a couple pillows,” she says. “I don't know if moving him is a good idea, but the table is hard. I wouldn't want to lay flat on a table like that.”
“Right,” Conner agrees, nodding. “Let me go get a clean pair of pants before we move him.”
“I don't care about the quilt, babe.”
Conner smiles at her. “I know you don't. But I wouldn't want to wake up wearing stiff, bloody jeans.”
She comes over to kiss his cheek. “I'll go get a pair of your sweats.” Then she leaves the room.
I'm glad he's got her. I'm happy for their happiness. But fuck both of them. I need to find Larken, and their moony behavior makes me want to scream.
Conner pours the coffee when the pot finishes and hands me mine. I hold it, letting the warmth seep into my hands, but I can't drink it. Just the smell of it is overwhelming. Regan comes back with a pair of gray sweatpants and a green button-down flannel shirt. She puts it on the counter and kisses Conner's cheek again. “If you don't need me, I'm going to go to bed for a few hours. I've got a tough client first thing in the morning.”
“Okay, babe. Thank you for helping. I'll see you in the morning.” He takes another swallow of his coffee after she leaves and puts the cup on the counter next to the sweatpants. “Help me get him changed and then we'll get him to the couch.”
A few hours later, Shaun wakes up suddenly, gasping and falling back against the pillows when he tries to sit up. I'm beside him in a second, but I don't get an opportunity to ask him anything because he grabs a handful of my shirt and pulls me down closer to him. “Did you get her?”
I shake my head. “She was gone when I got there. I brought you here.”
“Go. Hurry. He took her. You have to find Larken.” His eyes pinch shut and his head lolls back.
I grab his shoulders and shake him, forgetting about his injuries. “Shaun! Stay with me. Who took her? Was it the husband?”
He blinks at me but he doesn't pass back out and he slowly shakes his head. “No. A big guy. Mean. Had a big scar on his face.”
All the blood in my body turns to ice. “What kind of scar?”
Shaun's eyes flutter shut and his head drops to the side. I slap him awake and he groans, wincing in pain. “What kind of scar, Shaun? Tell me! What did it look like?”
He lifts a finger and traces an X over his eye. “Here. Like this.”
I close my eyes and pull in a long breath through my nose as my heart drops away from me. Tabor.
Tabor took Larken.
Fuck.
Conner leans down and pulls my hands off of Shaun's shoulders and settles him back down. When I look at him, there's no color in his face. “Did he say Larken?”
I nod. “She's the job.” I close my eyes and take another breath. Something Shaun said comes back to the forefront. “She's not a job. Not anymore.”
