by Aiden Bates
Pete knew what a fever meant. Fever meant infection. Infection was bad. The infection could get into his bloodstream and become systemic, killing him. The infection could get into his bones and… do bone things. He didn't know. He was a photographer; it wasn't his job to know these things.
He hunched in on himself even further. Everything was pain at this point, from his head to his toes. Now he knew that it wasn't a hangover. He'd been feeling the first symptoms of infection, which meant that he must have been out longer than he'd thought. That roughly jived with the sun starting to come up outside.
He tried to remember how infections progressed. How long did it take before they killed you? He guessed that depended on what exactly the infection was in the first place. He might have picked up the infection from the bullet itself, or from lying in the trunk of a car. It was entirely possible that this wasn't the result of hack surgery on the dirty floor.
His own blood still stained the floor over in the corner. He decided that he didn't need to check it out. He could see the puddle from here.
He didn't want to die like this. He didn't want the infection to kill him. He didn't want to go out the way that the infection would take him out, either. He'd heard enough to know that it would be bad, nothing resembling dignity to it at all. Not, he mused, that death carried much dignity to it in the first place. He'd been at enough crime scenes to know.
He tried not to think about it. He knew that there was at least one guard outside his door. In his condition, he couldn't get much of anywhere. Outside people drove past on their way to whatever the day held, but they had no way of knowing what was happening in the old abandoned school.
He wondered if Russ or Sierzant would shoot him before his own ravings started to get to be too bad. He hoped that it would be Russ. He thought that Russ was kinder somehow; maybe it was just the age spots on his hands, making Pete think of his own grandpa.
He drifted in and out of slumber. There wasn't anything else for him to do but fret, and he wasn't feeling up to fighting it anymore. Each time he woke up he felt warmer and warmer, and he wondered if when he woke up next he'd finally be in Hell.
...
Ozzy guzzled cup after cup of coffee. He didn't need the caffeine. Nothing was going to let him sleep until his omega was safe in his arms again. He drank the coffee so that he had something to do with his hands, so that he could avoid snapping something in half or punching a wall or otherwise being a destructive jackass.
His last words to Pete had been a fight. They'd been a damn fight. Everyone had told him that he needed to spend more time with Pete, that he needed to be there for his omega, but would he listen? No. They'd had a fight, and Ozzy had gone off and slept on the couch for three damn weeks. He'd assumed that there would be time to make up later. There was no more later. There might not be any more later, ever, if they didn't find Ozzy soon.
Everyone put everything else on hold to join in the hunt. If there had been any doubt in anyone's mind, it went out the window when Oliver showed up at the Cold Case office to tell detectives that Pete's blood, and no inconsiderable amount of it, had been found at the house.
"It wasn't enough to kill him," Oliver told him, back straight and head held high. "It wasn't. But it was enough to leave him weak and disoriented, and not able to fight back effectively. We also found a large amount of dust on the floor."
Ozzy shook his head. "I don't care if Pete has been depressed, he would never allow dust on the floor." He swallowed. "Even before Marissa showed up, he had this thing about keeping the house clean. It's a thing with him."
Oliver cleared his throat. "The dust is most conspicuous in the footprints of a male, wearing size ten work boots."
"But Pete's a twelve."
Tessaro whacked Ozzy on the back of his head. "Stop thinking like a family member and start thinking like a cop."
Ozzy rubbed at the back of his head. Tessaro hadn't held back much. "Ouch. Okay. So there was someone else in there, which jives with what Ruth told us and with what neighbors heard. They heard gunshots. The assailant came in from a very dusty environment. What does that tell us?"
"Could be anything," Nenci drawled, "but I'm thinking abandoned building. They get this level of grime to 'em, this deep dust, that never comes out no matter how hard you try. Plus, if it's abandoned, it's not going to have a lot of curious eyes."
"Considering the amount of blood, they couldn't have taken Pete very far if they wanted him to live. And they presumably want him to live." Ryan looked the worst out of all of them, because he was trying to solve a crime while growing another human. Pete hadn't done much but sleep at this stage of his pregnancy. "Kidnapping people you just plan to kill is an entirely different type of crime. I'm thinking abandoned buildings in Wayland, Lincoln, Concord, or Maynard. Marlborough is just a little too far out. Framingham is too close to here, too likely to run into one of our own."
Langer's fingers raced over the keyboard. "I've got a list of about a hundred buildings for us to check out."
"Pete doesn't have that kind of time!" Ozzy shouted.
"Hey," Devlin told him, grabbing his wrists. "Pete is strong. He can do this."
Ozzy's phone rang. He picked it up. "Detective Morris."
"Ozzy. I don't have much time, so put this on speaker."
Ozzy didn't recognize the voice on the other end, but he recognized the sense of urgency. He pushed the button to put the phone on speaker and gestured to his friends. "Okay. You've got the floor, buddy. Who are you?"
"My name is Russ Meyrick. Pete is being held in Room 206 at the old Roosevelt School in Maynard. Right now there's a guard of about ten, all ex-cops or current cops. Some are sympathetic to him. Some are not. You come in, you come in with your lights off and your cars silent. And I mean silent. They're listening for you. Don't trust anyone with a badge that you don't know. Got it?"
"Yeah?" Ozzy shrugged, stunned into helplessness.
"Good. He's sick. Get here fast." The line went dead.
Ozzy looked up at Devlin. "Do you think it's a trap?" His heart throbbed in his throat. Every instinct in him wanted to go after Pete, right the heck now, but he knew all too well the value of a well-baited trap.
"It's a possibility." Devlin stroked his chin. “Meyrick has shown himself to be friendly before, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything." He took a deep breath. "At the same time, Oliver said he'd lost a lot of blood. I think we have to risk it. SWAT is ready to scramble. Go suit up. I'll call Amos."
Ozzy had never put on his body armor so quickly in his life. He jumped into the SWAT transport with the rest of the guys and only briefly wondered if Amos had cleared them. He couldn't think about that now. When you went into a fight, you had to assume that the guys with you had your back. You couldn't sit around and twitch about it.
The trip up to Maynard passed in a blur. He couldn't see out the sides of the armored vehicle, so he had no idea what he was driving into. All that he knew was that the large, overstuffed vehicle was propelling him toward his mate.
The vehicle pulled to a stop, and the SWAT team rushed out of the back. Uniformed troopers, in conjunction with some members of Maynard PD, deployed around the perimeter. State troopers closed the road around the building, much to the anger of people engaged in their morning commute. It was time.
A cool calm came over Ozzy as they circled the building. The front door was boarded up, which made sense given that the building was abandoned. He could only assume that the kidnappers had gone through a rear door, not easily visible to the casual passer-by. He gestured to Tilson, and they circled around to the back.
They encountered their first guard, a denim-clad man with a stereotypical cop haircut and hooded blue eyes. He had dried blood on his clothes, and Ozzy could smell Pete in the stains. The cop held his hands up in surrender, even though he showed no fear. "I'm okay with a lot of things, boys," he said in a low voice. Ozzy figured that he was probably trying to avoid alerting anyone to the conversation. "I ain't okay with puttin
g hands on a cop's family, man. That ain't right." He shook his head and let himself be pulled along to be formally arrested.
The next guard they encountered was not so remorseful as the first. He saw the black-clad SWAT team members heading up the stairs and pulled out his gun, drawing a bead on Ozzy. Ozzy didn't think twice. He shot the man in the shoulder that held the gun, knocking him down and forcing him to drop the gun. "So much for the element of surprise," he muttered, and ran. Someone else would detain the man. His first priority, his only concern, was Pete.
He and Wilson raced up the stairs to the second floor of the hundred-year-old school building. The sight of the old murals on the walls was jarring, reminding him of some of the old zombie apocalypse flicks he used to watch. He'd seen some similar places in Fallujah, "repurposed" schools, and he had to fight hard not to see Arabic graffiti on the colorful pictures.
When he saw room 206, his heart jumped. Two guards waited outside, and Ozzy brought his gun up when he saw them. They exchanged glances, though, and surrendered. "Dude's in bad shape," the one on the right told him. "He needs to be evacuated, pronto."
Tilson gestured, and he took the two prisoners down to find cops who could formally arrest them. Tilson was a smart guy. There was no way he was going to get in between Ozzy and his mate.
Ozzy kicked in the door to Pete's prison. The room was filthy, covered in a thick coating of dust. Pete wasn't hard to find. He lay curled up on a beanbag that had seen better days, under a blanket that had been used for God knew what in the past. His eyes were open but glazed over, and he shivered despite the sweat that shone on his face.
He turned his face toward Ozzy, and then he laughed. "Now the hallucinations," he said, speaking through cracked, dry lips.
Ozzy ran forward and peeled back the blanket. It wasn't hard to find the source of infection. Someone had sewed up a large wound in Pete's arm with black sewing thread, and big red streaks radiated out from the foul-smelling injury. "Oh, baby," Ozzy said, and dropped a kiss to Pete's burning forehead. "I'm going to take good care of you." He lifted his omega up into his arms. Maybe he should have waited for a stretcher and paramedics, but right now he didn't care. "We're going to get you to a hospital and we're going to get you healthy again, you'll see."
He couldn't help but wonder when Pete had gotten to be so damn thin.
He had to wait for Tilson before he could head out, but Tilson came back quickly. Then, Tilson covered him while Ozzy carried Pete down the back stairs and out toward the perimeter.
Pete had no idea what was happening. Ozzy had no way to know what was going on inside that fevered brain, but rescue wasn't part of it. He became combative as Ozzy tried to carry him out, which wouldn't have been a problem given Pete's weakness if Ozzy weren’t trying to run with him through what was essentially a kill zone. Later, his heart would break that Pete didn't believe that Ozzy would come for him. Right now, he just had to hunker down and let his mind go blank.
Bullets exploded around him, but none hit him. He was lucky. He knew that. Cops on the ground fired back at cops in the building, and there was a part of Ozzy's brain that screamed in pain at the thought of firing on cops at all. It didn't matter what they'd done, shooting his brother officers was wrong, and he knew that every other officer on the ground and firing had that same voice screaming.
He made it out of range and screamed. "I need a truck!"
Tessaro was at his side in half a second. He holstered his weapon and reached out, not to take Pete from him but to share the burden. "Come on, there's one over here." They carried the struggling omega over to a waiting ambulance near the roadblock.
Paramedics opened the door and recoiled at the sight of Pete. Maybe it was the stench, Ozzy didn't know. "He's in bad shape," one said. He reached down to take Pete's head and shoulders.
Ozzy helped him to get Pete onto the gurney. "I know there's a gunshot wound that looks like a bad home surgery job."
"We'll get him to Emerson," the driver told him with a smile.
"Oh no," Tessaro told them with a shake of his head. "Pete's already been put in danger once today, by people we should have been able to trust. Do you really think his alpha's going to let him out of his sight?"
The paramedics swallowed and looked at each other. "Good point," the first one said and strapped Pete to the gurney. "Buckle up, officer."
"Thanks, Tessaro." Ozzy grinned at him, just a little, as the doors slammed closed.
The ride to Emerson Hospital should have taken five minutes. It took two. The first nurse to see Ozzy almost screamed when she saw him in his SWAT team get up, but the paramedic assured her that it was necessary. "Apparently there were dirty cops that took the guy, and the patient is this guy's omega, and it's fine. He didn't even try to shoot us."
"Close quarters," Ozzy shrugged.
They got Pete into a treatment bay right away. No one wanted to give him any nonsense about insurance or waiting to see a doctor, which told Ozzy that this was a dire emergency indeed. Doctors, nurses, and other people in scrubs and masks flooded the treatment bay, shouting out orders and demands for medications and equipment until Ozzy started to feel distinctly out of place.
Finally a doctor, a tiny woman who looked like she was probably of South Asian descent, turned to him and pointed. "Out. That gun is not sterile. A gun is never sterile. Out. Go call someone or something. We'll take it from here."
Ozzy had never been given an order with such finality. He left the treatment bay and went to the waiting room as the adrenaline slowly melted from his body.
He took off his helmet and his gloves. His phone was somewhere in his equipment, silenced for the mission so it couldn't be a distraction or give them away. He turned it on now, and stared at it for a long moment before finding the recents tab. Then, before he could chicken out, he dialed Cynthia Nolan's number. She deserved to know.
She picked up on the first ring. Had she been waiting by the phone all night, just hoping for a call? "Osmund?"
"Yeah. Yeah, Cynthia, it's me." He sounded awful, even to his own ears, and he didn't care. "We got him. We got Pete."
"Oh thank God," she said, her sobs obvious even over the phone. It was the most overt display of emotion that he'd ever seen from Cynthia, and for a moment he wanted to scream. Now she showed concern for Pete? But she came from a time and place and class that didn't reward outward displays. Ozzy was too emotional right now to be judgmental.
"He's in bad shape. The bad guys shot him, and the wound got infected. We're at Emerson Hospital. Still at the ER. We literally just got here." He let himself chuckle. "I wanted you to know."
She hesitated. "What about the miscreant behind all of this?"
"The other guys can take care of him. They've got him locked down inside the building. I don't give a crap about him. All I care about is getting Pete well again." He closed his eyes.
"We'll be there as soon as we can." Cynthia hung up.
She showed up not half an hour later, with Ruth, Angus, and Marissa in tow. Marissa barely seemed to recognize Ozzy, which brought tears to his eyes. He knew that he deserved it, though. He'd gotten so blinded by his drive to keep her and her daddy safe from Sierzant that he'd been a ghost in her life.
Cynthia seemed to be content to put their differences aside. In full view of the rest of the waiting room, she helped him to remove the heavy body armor that went with his SWAT identity. Then she put her arms around him and hugged him. "Thank you for rescuing my boy."
All of the adults clustered together for another two hours before the tiny South Asian doctor emerged from the treatment area. Her face was grave, and she'd changed her clothing. "I'm Dr. Sudhakar. I'm Mr. Nolan's physician while he stays with us." She looked around. "Are you all his family?"
Ozzy nodded. "I'm his alpha. This is his mother, his brother Angus, and our housemate Ruth." He decided to describe Ruth that way so that Dr. Sudhakar would let her stay; she didn't deserve to be excluded just because she was an employee.
> "Okay then. If you'd like to come with me." She led them into a private consultation room. "I'm not going to lie. The infection is very bad. We're throwing everything we can at it. We've admitted him now; he's in the intensive care unit. He'll be there until we can reduce the effects of the infection and make sure that he doesn't lose the arm, or anything else."
Cynthia gasped. "In only a few hours?"
"Like I said, ma'am, it's a severe infection. The paramedics reported a gunshot wound, but what we found was a bad home surgery job sutured with sewing equipment. Any of the above could have caused the infection, and it could have been exacerbated by unsanitary conditions. He was already in a weakened state, thanks to slight malnutrition and dehydration.
"The person who did the bad home surgery might have caused the infection, but they also saved his life. He'd lost a lot of blood. You can go up and see him now. We have him sedated for his own safety. Oh—his right arm has a fracture of the humerus. It seems almost minor at this point, but he'll have a recovery time of four to eight weeks."