Dead Run (Dangerous Ground 4)

by Josh Lanyon

  Although Marie spoke some English, the interrogation took place in French with Bonnet quickly translating the rapid-fire exchanges.

  “Finistère disbanded after Yann’s death. Finistère had nothing to do with yesterday’s attack. This is what she says.”

  “This is what they all say,” Taylor retorted. “Ask her where Helloco is now.”

  “She insists Yann died in the explosion,” Bonnet told Taylor after she asked his million-dollar question and got Marie’s plugged-nickel answer. “Whoever this man is that you saw in the airport, he is not Helloco.”

  “I bet. Ask her if she knows Yannick Hinault.”

  Bonnet asked the question.

  Marie shook her head.

  Taylor said, “Tell her I believe that Hinault is Helloco.”

  Bonnet repeated his words. Marie’s expression was contemptuous. “Porc stupide! ” She rattled off a short and clearly to-the-point sentence.

  Bonnet looked mildly apologetic. “Marie says she is in better position to know if her lover is dead than you.”

  “Then how does she explain how some forty years ago the only body in that blown-up country house in Sarthe belonged to Guillaume Durand, the gardener?”

  Bonnet relayed the request. Marie gave Taylor a long, strange look before she responded. Her answer seemed to excite the other two police officers. Bonnet looked doubtful.

  “What did she say?”

  Bonnet replied, “She says that both Yann and the gardener died that day. She says she, Roland, and Didier removed Helloco’s body after the explosion. They did this to try to keep us, the police, from discovering that the estate in Sarthe was used as a safe house.”

  Marie continued to stare at him with her basalt gaze. Taylor said, “What did they do with Helloco’s body?”

  Bonnet inquired, and Marie answered shortly. Bonnet shook her head. “She says they buried it in the woods.”

  “What woods?”

  “The woods surrounding the estate. I think she is lying. The woods were searched repeatedly, and this grave would have been discovered.”

  Watching their faces, Marie added something else and gave a harsh smoker’s laugh.

  Bonnet said, “She says they hid the grave too well for us to find. I do not believe her.”

  Taylor wasn’t convinced one way or the other. Marie might be lying. She didn’t display the obvious giveaways of looking into space or changing vocal pitch or fidgeting, but prison was a great training ground. Even FACS, or micro expressions, were open to multiple interpretations. And on the other side of the coin, Bonnet was naturally defensive on behalf of her colleagues. Even in the most closely conducted investigations, mistakes were made.

  “It’s easy enough to prove. She can take us to the gravesite, and you can run a DNA sampling on whatever’s left of him.”

  Maybe Marie could guess the direction the investigation was going to go because she interjected another string of French.

  “She says it was too long ago and the grave was concealed too well. She could never find it now.”

  “She’ll never know until she tries.”

  Bonnet translated for Marie, who folded her arms and stared fixedly into space.

  Taylor said, “Throw her wrinkled butt in jail and ask her again in forty-eight hours.”

  His tone must have made his feelings clear. Marie glared at him. Bonnet stifled a stern smile. “You are what they call a hard-ass, Agent MacAllister, oui?”

  “Me?” Taylor raised his brows. “I’m a pussycat. Go on. Tell her she’s headed back to prison.”

  “But you realize we cannot jail her for such an infraction as you suggest? There is the parole violation, oui, but we do not really have anything to link her to —”

  “Charge her as an accessory — or whatever you call it over here — to last night’s attack on the catacombs.”

  Bonnet frowned. “I cannot make such allegations. We have already investigated, and as she has informed us, there is proof that she possesses an alibi for all of yesterday. She does not appear to have received any visitors —”

  “Somebody from Finistère claimed responsibility, and according to her, she’s the only remaining member of Finistère still on the loose. Remind her of that. You have that guilty-until-proven-innocent thing, right?”

  Bonnet said tartly, “Oui, but we prefer to arrest and charge the correct people, Agent MacAllister.” All the same she turned to Laroche and began to speak.

  Laroche folded her arms and stared stubbornly out the window at the blue-green blur of the distant forest. However, Taylor — or the memory of the atrocity the night before — prevailed, and Laroche was duly arrested and bundled into a police car that preceded them back to town.

  * * * * *

  It was six o’clock that evening before Taylor was at last able to get over to the hospital. He’d tried calling twice during the day, but once he’d been informed Will was sleeping, and the second time the doctor had been with Will. So it did nothing to improve his temper when he finally walked into Will’s hospital room only to find Naval Lieutenant Commander David Bradley sitting beside Will’s bed with a big, fat grin on his face.

  Taylor checked in the doorway.

  Will looked up. His eyes lit and he smiled. “Hey. Where’ve you been all day?”

  “Trying to figure out who dropped a crypt on you.” He smiled without warmth at Bradley, who had stood at his entrance.

  Bradley said, “Can I talk to you, MacAllister?”

  Taylor looked from Bradley’s strained face to Will, who was still smiling and holding a hand out in greeting.

  “Can it wait?” Taylor moved toward the bed, but Bradley intercepted him.

  “No.”

  Taylor opened his mouth, but the message in Bradley’s eyes was urgent.

  “MacAllister? Where the hell are you two going?” Will complained as they stepped into the hall.

  “Back in a minute, Will,” Bradley said.

  “What’s going on?” Taylor demanded. He’d only met Bradley once before, but he wasn’t an easy guy to forget, being very big and very handsome. He had thick brown hair and warm brown eyes. When off duty he sported a beard, but he was not off duty now, and he looked offensively impressive in his uniform. Taylor hated that he had to look up to meet the other man’s gaze.

  Bradley’s ham-sized hand closed around Taylor’s biceps, and he forcibly shifted him a few feet down the hall and out of earshot of the room.

  Taylor freed himself. He was now thoroughly alarmed and thoroughly angry. “What the hell’s going on?”

  “Shut up and listen.” Bradley kept his voice low.

  Taylor’s apprehension ratcheted up another notch. “Say it. Whatever it is.”

  “Will is…a little confused.”

  He’d been thinking subdural hematoma or spinal injuries or… He didn’t know what he’d been thinking, but all of it had been terrifying and terminal. His abject relief that it was none of these things, nothing serious at all, apparently, mutated to fury. He shoved Bradley.

  “Confused? What does that mean? Jesus, I thought — why the fuck did you —”

  It was like shoving an elephant. Bradley barely shifted, didn’t seem to notice, in fact — which was even more infuriating. He cut across Taylor’s angry outburst with a crisp, “I mean he doesn’t remember that you two are together.”

  Taylor froze. “What?”

  “He doesn’t remember the last year or so. Or at least his memories are sketchy. He doesn’t remember that you have a relationship beyond work.” Bradley added, “And friendship.”

  Taylor’s mouth opened. “I… What?”

  “There’s more. And, from your perspective, worse.”

  David. He knew what was coming. His heart was pounding so loudly he almost couldn’t make out Bradley’s voice, but he knew what he was saying, could read his expression and his lips.

  “He thinks he and I are still dating,” Bradley told him.

  Chapter Eight


  “What was that about?” Will asked when David returned to the room. “Where’s MacAllister?”

  “Using the head.” David took the chair next to the bed and smiled into his eyes.

  “Yeah? Then give me a kiss before he gets back.” Not that Will felt like kissing. His head ached like a son of a bitch, he felt vaguely nauseated, and for someone who had apparently spent fourteen hours in bed, very, very tired. And then there were the giant moth holes in his memory. But there was something troubling in David’s gaze. Almost a trace of sadness.

  “I don’t think your doctor would —”

  “Shaddup,” Will growled.

  David leaned over, smiling, and their mouths brushed. That was better. Nice. Familiar.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” Taylor said from the doorway, and David jumped and sat up as straight as if he were undergoing a military inspection. Or possibly a rectal exam, given the extreme discomfort of his expression.

  “Didn’t anyone ever teach you to knock,” Will drawled.

  Speaking of expressions, Taylor looked ghastly. His face was bone white, his eyes shadowed and red-rimmed. He looked sick. Will’s memory flickered. Something about Taylor being ill. Nearly dying? It worried him. He needed to hurry up and remember. But Taylor must be okay now because he was working again. According to Stone he’d been out all day chasing leads to last night’s terrorist attack. So he had to be okay, right?

  Why couldn’t he remember this stuff?

  Taylor still stood in the doorway. Since when did he wait for an invitation?

  “You okay?” Will asked.

  “Great.” Taylor came in and took the room’s other chair. He gave David a baleful look, and David looked guilty. What. The. Hell. It wasn’t Will’s imagination. There were more currents running through this room than the entire Pacific.

  “How are you feeling?” Taylor turned to Will.

  “Like someone dropped a piano on me.”

  A familiar if faint gleam lit Taylor’s gaze. “Maybe you tried to sing for them.”

  “Nah. I know better by now.”

  “What’s that?” David asked, watching them.

  “Will can’t sing,” said Taylor, who really couldn’t sing. “His dog howls every time he tries.”

  That reminded Will of something. “If I’m posted here in France, where’s Riley?”

  “I’ve got him.”

  Will nodded. That made sense. Taylor was the closest thing he had to family in the Southland. “How did it go today? How’s the investigation coming?”

  Taylor made an iffy motion. Will’s gaze sharpened. “You sure you’re okay? Your hand’s shaking.”

  Taylor gave him a wan smile. “Long day.”

  “I bet.” He didn’t like the idea of Taylor out there on his own. Talk about lousy luck. For both of them. “Some vacation.”

  “Yeah.”

  Will said slowly, “You’re staying with me?”

  A muscle jumped in Taylor’s jaw. “Right.”

  Will turned to David. “And you’re here for the D-day anniversary celebration, but you’re not staying with me.”

  David’s expression was as blank as Taylor’s. “Right.”

  Will’s head was starting to pound again. “And how long have I been posted in Paris?”

  Taylor’s tone was hard to describe. He was looking at David, not Will. “I guess you’re supposed to remember all this on your own.”

  “It’s a simple question,” Will said irritably. He closed his eyes. By now the throbbing in his head was making his stomach roil. “I thought amnesia was just something they made up for the movies.”

  “Me too.” Taylor sounded a little bitter.

  “We ought to let Will get some rest,” David said. His chair scraped back.

  “You care if I sit with you awhile, Will?” Taylor’s tone was very casual.

  “Yeah, stay,” Will reassured, not bothering to open his eyes. He knew how he’d felt when Taylor had been…

  When Taylor had been what? It was there for a moment. The image of Taylor in a hospital bed looking like death warmed over. Had Taylor been shot? Where the hell had Will been that he let Taylor get shot?

  Already the memory was slipping away. He knew he should pursue it, get this nailed down, but he was just too damned tired.

  “Can I trust you?” David was saying. It was supposed to be a joke obviously, but there was an undernote of seriousness.

  “Further than I can trust you.” There was zero humor in Taylor’s reply.

  Will didn’t catch David’s response. Maybe just as well. The two guys he cared most for hated each other’s guts. That was a problem. But it was a problem he just didn’t have the energy for right then…

  * * * * *

  Will was having a very weird dream about Taylor. Not the first time. He’d had dreams about Taylor since they’d been partnered. It was only natural. Taylor was disturbingly attractive. More, he was sexy. Sex on legsas Will’s granddad would have said — though not about another man, God knew.

  But this was definitely a weirder dream than usual. Taylor was lying naked next to him, and Will was feeding small, shiny globes of the world into Taylor’s exquisite ass. A little rope of them, each globe just a bit larger than the one before it, though not large enough for Will to make out what part of the hemisphere he was looking at. Not that that was the point. The point was that Taylor was moaning and squirming and begging Will for more each time Will pushed one of the smooth little balls into his pink little hole.

  Will woke embarrassed and excited and aware that he’d come messily in his sleep. He remembered at once where he was, that there had been a terrorist attack on the catacombs, and that he’d been caught in an explosion with…wait. No. That was where the memories came to a shrieking stop.

  Retrace his steps.

  He’d been dreaming about Taylor. Okay, skip that part.

  Taylor was in France.

  Will stared at the empty chair beside the bed. Before the disappointment could sink in, he realized Taylor was in the room after all.

  He stood at the hospital window, and he was gazing out at the starry night. He was rubbing the back of his neck, and there was a tired slump to his shoulders that somehow hurt Will’s heart.

  If something was really wrong, Taylor would tell him. He wouldn’t keep anything from him, surely.

  “So we’re not partnered anymore?” Will was still having trouble adjusting to that idea. He’d been shocked when Stone had brought him up to speed during her brief visit that afternoon. Of course they couldn’t stay partnered forever, but…

  Taylor turned quickly and came back to the bed, pulling the chair around and straddling it. “No.”

  “But you’re still posted in LA?”

  “For now.”

  “For now?” Will considered this uneasily. “You’ve been offered another posting?”

  Taylor nodded, but instead of elaborating, he said quietly, “Do you really not remember, Will?”

  Now there was a dumb question. “Why the hell would I fake something like this?” He regretted his sharpness at once as Taylor shook his head. He looked exhausted, drained. He looked like Will felt.

  “What’s the last thing you do remember?”

  Will squinted, trying to look back into the past. “It’s not like that,” he tried to explain. “It’s not like my memories break off. I remembered my name and what year it is and who’s president. I remembered being posted over here, sort of, and I remember we were talking on the phone. I remember all kinds of stuff, but it’s all blurred together and the gaps are…big.”

  “And I’m one of them.”

  Will couldn’t take the look on Taylor’s face. The naked hurt. He was embarrassed for Taylor, and at the same time he ached for him. “That’s not true. Of course I remember you, Tay.”

  Tay? Since when did he call Taylor Tay? What kind of a sappy nickname was that?

  Taylor was giving him a funny look, and no wonder, but the nurse chose that mo
ment to swan in and tell Taylor in her painstaking English that visiting hours were over.

  Taylor turned on the charm — he could be charming when he wanted to be, despite rumors to the contrary — and she allowed him another half hour.

  “Merci, mademoiselle.”

  Will found Taylor’s awkward French sort of cute, and so, clearly, did the nurse. She spent a few seconds flirting with him. The French flirted as naturally as they breathed.

  When she’d departed on rubber soles, Will said, “Tell me about the investigation. What were you doing today?” Even as he asked, he was wondering exactly why Taylor was involved in a Paris RSO investigation when he was supposed to be on vacation.

  “We’re not supposed to try to jog your memory.”

  Will said exasperatedly, “How are you jogging my memory by telling me about stuff I never knew?”

  To which Taylor snapped back, “How should I know how this works?”

  That was more like the Taylor he knew. Will grinned at him and Taylor scowled, but his ire was already fading. He proceeded to tell Will the whole crazy story from the start, which no one else had bothered to do, either because they were trying not to overexcite him or they thought he remembered.

  “You tried to get them to ground all the planes at LAX?” Will felt winded just thinking about it.

  “Not all the planes.”

  He even sounded offended, as though such an idea would never have crossed his mind. Will started to laugh, and after a second Taylor joined in. “You’re a nut,” Will commented. “I’ve always said so.”

  Taylor rolled his eyes like Will was flattering him outrageously, and an image flashed into Will’s mind of the two of them standing on a mountaintop somewhere…the High Sierras?

  “You’re a nut, MacAllister. Did I ever tell you that?”

  “A girl never gets tired of hearing it.”

  When was that? When the hell would they have gone camping? Taylor hated camping.