Restoration 01 - Getting It Right

by A. M. Arthur

  “He’s the one who bought the whiskey, Detective. I merely encouraged him along. Took a lot more than I expected to get him compliant enough to undress.”

  Two things coalesced in Nate’s mind: James was nearly naked and Pfieffer was an

  admitted rapist. Nate’s gut cramped. “If you touched him, I’ll kill you with my bare hands.”

  Pfieffer didn’t seem put off by the dark promise in Nate’s words. “Well, obviously I touched him in order to—oh. Don’t be ridiculous. Fucking Dr. Taggert is your job. After all, what’s a domestic call without a little sexual assault?”

  Nate’s lungs stopped working for a moment, until things got a little gray and he sucked in air. “You’re sick.”

  “I’m perfectly healthy, thank you. Now, Detective, you are going to bend Dr. Taggert over that coffee table and fuck him. Are we clear?”

  “No.” Nate would sooner take a bullet than do that to James.

  “No, we aren’t clear?”

  “No, I won’t fuck him. Not like this, not because you said so.”

  Pfieffer made a show of clicking the safety off the Smith & Wesson. “Not even now?”

  “You won’t shoot me. The minute you do, a neighbor is going to hear it and call 911.

  You won’t have time to make this scene what you want before backup gets here.”

  Something like respect flickered in Pfieffer’s eyes. “You’re right. It’s too soon to shoot anyone. It’s quite noisy.” He reached behind his back and produced a chef’s knife. The blade gleamed in the lamplight.

  Nate braced for a lunge.

  Pfieffer plunged the blade into James’s left thigh. James made a gurgling noise, the pain making it through the haze of drunkenness. He listed to the side, fingers sliding uselessly against the hilt of the knife.

  Rage and adrenaline sent Nate’s blood pulsing and put a bitter taste in his mouth. A brutal, uncontrollable need to protect James overtook his better sense, and he kicked the coffee table hard, shoving it across the floor.

  It surged into Pfieffer’s calf and knocked him off balance. Nate circled and came in low, catching Pfieffer in the gut with his shoulder. They tumbled to the floor, Nate on top, both of his hands grasping for the gun. Pfieffer drove a knee into his ribs, and the once-broken bones screamed. The pain was dizzying, but Nate didn’t let go.

  I let go and we’re both dead.

  Another blow to his ribs made his vision blur. The third loosened his grip. Pfieffer tossed him off. Nate tried to roll away but his aching ribs skewed his sense of direction, and he ended up stopped short by the patio doors. He looked up, right at a sweating James, whose hazel eyes were wide with fear and pain.

  He didn’t see the butt of the gun until it was between his eyes. Agony exploded in Nate’s face. Bones in his nose popped. Blood poured down his lips and chin, and more trickled into the back of his throat. He fell. Couldn’t see for the pain. Couldn’t speak for the blood. The whole world felt like a water bed, floaty and wrong.

  Pfieffer was muttering something, cursing maybe. Moving around. Nate flailed, desperate to stop him. To save himself and James. His hand came away empty. More pain in his ribs, sudden and fierce, made Nate scream. His eyes watered, and he choked on the blood in his throat.

  “If you want something done right, do it yourself.”

  Something thumped. Someone groaned.

  James. God, please.

  “Back away, Pfieffer!”

  Nate forced his stinging, bleary eyes to focus. The scene confused him. James facedown on the couch, one hand reaching blindly for Nate. Pfieffer crouched over him, upper body twisted to face the door, gun pointed that way. Pointed at Wallace Carey, whose own service piece was up, aimed at Pfieffer.

  What’s he doing here?

  “Well, this is unexpected,” Pfieffer said, angry for the first time.

  “What the actual fuck is going on?”

  “Put your gun down, Detective. It’s all just a bit of fun.”

  Carey glanced at Nate, his expression grim, then took a step closer to Pfieffer. “I don’t think so. How about you put yours down?”

  “Why? So we can talk about this? I don’t think so.”

  “Stand up and move away from James. Now.”

  “No.”

  Pfieffer was trapped, and he knew it. If he stood down and let himself be arrested, he was heading for death row. He didn’t seem like the prison type. He liked control. He’d lost control, and he wasn’t going to back down.

  Suicide by cop.

  The anger settling into Carey’s face told Nate that he recognized it too. This was going to end badly, and Nate couldn’t move fast enough to help.

  “You have been nothing but trouble since day one, Detective Wolf,” Pfieffer said without looking away from Carey. “You can thank yourself for my death, and for Detective Carey’s.”

  Nate lunged. “No!”

  The two gunshots banged almost simultaneously, leaving Nate’s ears ringing. Blood splattered the wall above James’s sofa. Pfieffer fell face-first to the floor with a sickly thump. A second thud. All Nate could see were the bottoms of Carey’s shoes.

  “Wally!”

  Nate fumbled for his phone, fingers shaking so badly he barely managed dialing 911.

  “Yes, there’s been a shooting. Ten-double-zero. Two officers down, one civilian injury. The suspect is dead. We need backup and ambulances.”

  He rattled off the address, and then dropped the phone before the operator could inundate him with questions. Crawling on hands and knees was preferable to trying to stand, so he fumbled his way to the couch. James was unconscious, his skin cold, clammy.

  Nate combed his fingers through James’s hair, across his cheeks. “Wake up, baby, please.”

  Eyelashes fluttered. Good enough. Nate tugged him a little farther off the edge of the cushion, and then shoved two fingers into James’s mouth. Deeper. James gagged. Nate held on until James’s body jerked and he vomited. Hot amber liquid and some of dinner came up, splashing the carpet and the leg of Nate’s pants, and he didn’t care. He needed that whiskey out of James before it killed him.

  “Wally!”

  He helped James throw up two more times, grateful his broken nose kept the odor at bay.

  James collapsed face-first on the sofa, panting, eyes still shut but more active. Less comatose. It was a start. The knife was still in James thigh, an awkward angle given the way he’d been shoved by Pfieffer. Nate didn’t want to risk taking it out, though. A major artery was in the thigh.

  “Wally, talk to me!”

  Still nothing.

  The hole in the back of Pfieffer’s head told Nate all he needed to know. He crawled past the body, ribs and nose thumping with pain, over to Carey. Carey lay on his back, arms and legs perfectly still, an oozing wound in the center of his abdomen. Nate unbuttoned his shirt, tugged it off and pressed it over the wound. A steady pulse jumped beneath his fingertips when he checked.

  Thank God.

  “We solved the case,” Nate said to his unconscious friend.

  But at what goddamn cost?

  Chapter Twenty-four

  “Good news, babe. You can go home today,” Nathan said.

  “Thank Christ.” James had loathed every moment of the past three days he’d spent in the hospital. He especially loathed the physical therapist who came twice a day to make sure he was walking okay on his injured leg. No tendon or bone damage, but everyone was clucking around him like a pack of mother hens and he was over it.

  Everyone being Nathan, Boxer, Elliott, plus the doctor and PT, and a gaggle of nurses.

  Kate had stopped by to visit, as had Tori and Allen, and even Michaela Sands.

  Getting stabbed in the leg made a guy popular.

  For the moment, James was alone with Nathan in his shared room. The guy in the other bed was off getting tests done, and James wanted to enjoy the slice of peace they’d managed to find.

  “Get over here.” James patted the side of the
bed.

  Nathan settled next to him, climbing right up and stretching out on top of the blanket. He draped an arm across James’s chest and rested his cheek on his shoulder. He took care with his broken nose, finding a position that didn’t jostle the white bandages on his face. James hugged him tight, grateful every single moment of every single day that they were both all right.

  “You’ll have to stay with me for a few days,” Nathan said. “The department finally declared your place no longer a crime scene, but cleaning it won’t be easy.”

  “Stay with you?” James feigned annoyance. “All those stairs?”

  “Hey, you can sleep on the couch.”

  “Only if you sleep there with me.”

  “Anything you want.”

  James tightened his hold, absurdly happy to do something so simple. From the moment Pfieffer had ambushed him at his apartment and held him at gunpoint until he drank himself stupid, James had lived with a horrible gut feeling that he’d never see Nathan again. That he’d pass out, choke on his own vomit and die. So much of what had happened after Nathan arrived was a blur. He remembered Nathan’s voice. The dull agony of being stabbed. Someone rolling him, hands on him. Vomiting.

  Nathan had filled him in on all of the missing bits once the alcohol had been flushed and James could think straight. Keeping Nathan from blaming himself for James getting hurt had taken all of the energy he’d possessed. Nathan had stood up to a murderer and he’d protected them both long enough for Carey to ride in for the rescue.

  A fortuitous chain of events. According to Carey, James’s missed call had worried him, so he’d called back. The lack of response nearly made Carey call Nathan, but he figured it was a sobriety thing, and he didn’t want to wave James’s business in front of Nathan. So he’d gone to James’s place, expecting to pick a drunk friend up off the floor. He’d heard Nathan scream before he could knock, so he’d used the spare key James kept taped to the top of the door frame and gone in with his gun out.

  Wallace Carey had saved their lives and taken out the bad guy, but at a potentially huge cost to himself. Pfieffer’s shot had lodged dangerously close to Carey’s spine.

  “You talk to Wally this morning?” James asked.

  Nathan sighed. “Yeah. No change.”

  “Fuck.”

  “It could still be a few more days before the swelling goes down enough for the doctors to be sure.”

  “Yeah, but in the meantime, he’s laying up in ICU fucking paralyzed.” And that was on James for calling Carey in the first place. For being too weak and buying that bottle of Bushmills.

  “Stop it,” Nathan said.

  “Stop what?”

  “If I don’t get to self-flagellate for you getting hurt, you don’t get to do it over Carey. He was an officer doing his job. It’s the risk we all take.”

  “He didn’t come over as a cop, he came over as a friend.”

  “Doesn’t matter. You don’t get to be upset that you scraped by with only a hole in your leg.”

  “Tyrant.”

  “And proud of it.” Nathan traced figure eights on his chest, a light, teasing touch. “How do you feel about eventually going back to your apartment?”

  “I don’t know.” James hadn’t given it a lot of thought. He liked his place well enough. It served as a bachelor’s pad to fuck in and throw the occasional party. But he wasn’t a bachelor anymore. Going back to a space where he and Nathan had been attacked, and another man had died…it made his insides squirm. “Not great.”

  “This might seem kind of sudden, but in reality it’s only been a matter of time given how long we’ve known each other, so I guess—”

  “Nate, you’re babbling.”

  Nathan lifted his head, brown eyes shining. “Move in with me. Permanently.”

  James blinked. “Really?”

  “Why not? You won’t have to go back to that apartment and all of its ghosts, and you won’t have to waste money for a deposit on a new one, when you’ll be spending most of your time with me anyway.”

  “I will, will I?”

  “Of course you will.”

  He laughed at the perfectly innocent look on Nathan’s face. James liked the idea as much as it scared him. He could see himself living with Nathan, sharing one space like real partners.

  He wanted to sleep next to Nathan every night, wake up to him every morning. To have Nathan close by whenever things went south and he thought about drinking again. He wanted every opportunity to make Nathan happy.

  “Trial run,” James said. “I keep the lease on my place for two more months. That way there’s no pressure. We can let things work out naturally.”

  “But your stuff is coming to my house.” Nathan didn’t frame it as a question.

  “Of course.” He grimaced. “Maybe not the sofa.”

  “Good call.”

  “You do realize we’re a bit of an odd couple. You pick up when you feel like it, and I can tell if a vase of flowers has been moved two inches to the left.”

  Nathan laughed. “We’ll figure those things out. We figured us out, didn’t we?”

  James kissed his temple. “Yeah, we did. Finally.”

  Someone cleared their throat.

  Nathan twisted around, giving James a better view of the room’s doorway. Romy

  hovered there with Brendan shadowing him. Both men seemed embarrassed by their arrival.

  James grinned, happy to see his star patient.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” Romy said. “We tried to visit Detective Carey, but we aren’t family.”

  “I’m sure he’ll be pleased to hear you tried,” James said.

  Nathan sat up, but stayed sitting on the bed. Romy and Brendan came deeper into the room, and James introduced them to Nathan.

  “And this is Nathan Wolf,” James said, smiling. “My partner.”

  Brendan didn’t react. Romy’s eyebrows shot into his hairline—not hard given how

  shaggy his hair was. “Really?”

  Nathan chuckled. “I bet now Pot O Gold is going to be all atwitter with the news that their biggest man whore is off the market.”

  “Hey.” James swatted his shoulder. “Only I can call myself a man whore.”

  Romy looked utterly mystified. “Wow. You and Ezra in the same year. Must be

  something in the water.”

  “Must be.”

  “They ain’t the only ones settlin’ down,” Brendan said. He put a big hand on Romy’s shoulder, and Romy leaned into the touch. Even more than Boxer and Louis, they were by far the most physically mismatched pair James had ever met, but they worked. They loved each other.

  And that was all that really mattered.

  “We won’t stay,” Romy said. “I wanted to say hi.”

  “Thank you for stopping by,” James said.

  “Of course.” To Nathan, Romy said, “And it was really nice meeting you.”

  After the pair left, Nathan returned to his lounging position, the back of his head now in the crook of James’s shoulder. They stayed that way, neither talking, existing in the now.

  “Do you think your roommate will freak out if they wheel him back in and we’re still like this?” Nathan asked.

  “Don’t care.” James could only see part of Nathan’s profile. “Would it bother you?”

  “No. I don’t give a shit what a stranger thinks.”

  “What if Lieutenant Danvers walked in?”

  Nathan tensed, then relaxed. “Maybe a little. There’s a big difference between people knowing something and having it right in their face.”

  “True. Okay, so no molesting you in front of your fellow officers. Check.”

  “You are such an adolescent sometimes.”

  “I know you are, but what am I?”

  Nathan’s sudden burst of laughter turned into a sharp whine. “Ow, fuck. Don’t make me laugh, it hurts my nose.”

  “Sorry.”

  “No you’re not.”

  “You’re right, I�
��m not.”

  More laughter. This time, Nathan elbowed him in the ribs. “Jerk.”

  “I know you—”

  Nathan twisted around so he was half-draped over James and slapped a palm over

  James’s mouth. “Finish that sentence and I will smother you with a pillow.”

  Behind his hand, James managed a muffled, “Tyrant.”

  “Someone needs to keep you in line.”

  James tugged Nathan’s hand down. “You volunteering?”

  “For as long as you’ll have me.”

  “Baby, I’ve wanted you for fifteen years.” He threaded his fingers in Nathan’s thick, soft hair. “I’m never letting you go again. That’s a promise.”

  Love, devotion and a thousand other things glittered in Nathan’s eyes as he leaned forward and gently brushed his lips over James’s. “Despite the scars?”

  “I love your scars.”

  “And the PTSD?”

  “I’m an alcoholic. We both have our issues. I want the whole package, Nate.”

  “Good, because I promise I’m never running away again. No reason to. Everything I want is right here in front of me. I love you, Jay.”

  “I love you too.” He kissed Nathan soundly, a firm press of lips and tease of tongue that promised him everything and more. “I’ll love you even better if you get your knee out of my bladder.”

  “Shit, sorry.” Nathan shifted his left leg lower, off his abdomen. Resting the knee on James’s groin. “Better?”

  James groaned. “You are trouble, Detective.”

  “Why yes, Doctor. Yes, I am.” With a wicked glint, Nathan pressed his knee harder into James’s dick, which was taking a keen interest in the pressure. “What do you say we duck into the bathroom and make a little more trouble?”

  “Trouble, huh?”

  Nathan bit his chin, then shifted so his own erection pressed against James’s thigh.

  “Trouble.”

  “I like your brand of trouble.”

  “Excellent. Race you to the bathroom, gimpy.”

  “Hey!” Nathan rolled off the bed before James could retaliate for the insult. “No fair. I’ve got an IV stand to drag.”

  “Now that’s the kind of sexy talk that keeps a relationship going,” Nathan deadpanned.