Page 96 of Manner of Death

“Oh. Right.” Bashir’s shoulders dropped. “Fine. We’re getting a hotel room. A fucking expensive one with a comfortable bed. And we’re going to take drugs and watch TV for the rest of the day.”

Sawyer laughed with some actual feeling this time. “Sounds like doctor’s orders to me.”

“Damn right it is.”

Thank God, Tami was willing to talk without Bashir in the room now. Yang had hours ahead of him, getting her full statement and everything she knew, but Bashir and Sawyer were done for the day.

And by the time Nan came back with her coffee, Bashir had already booked a room at the fanciest hotel in the city.

Chapter 26

Sawyer awoke before Bashir the next morning. He wasn’t surprised—it had taken way too long for Bashir to find a position comfortable enough for him to sleep in, and even then every little shift had woken him up until he could take another round of the really good painkillers. Those had been enough to knock him out, and he looked almost like his usual self as he lay there with his head turned toward Sawyer, arms carefully down at his sides, back propped up with a few extra pillows. His chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm, and Sawyer smiled to see it.

Bashir was hurt and he wasn’t going to be healed for a long time, but he was alive. That was the important thing. He was alive, and he was going to get better. They both were, as miraculous as that seemed. Sawyer hadn’t been taking their mutual survival for granted anymore by the time Boyce found them.

Stop staring and let the man sleep in peace.

Sawyer’s body tugged at him to just shut his eyes and lay back down, but his brain was too busy to let it happen now. Instead he got up, easing out of their gigantic, super comfortable bed so that he didn’t jostle his broken arm or sleeping boyfriend, and headed for the oversized zip-up hoodie on the coat rack. That plus pajama pants and his shoes would be enough to get him downstairs to the hotel’s in-house café for some coffee. He wrote out a quick note for Bashir, left it in plain sight on the bedside table, grabbed his wallet and phone, and headed downstairs.

There weren’t many people moving around in the lobby, but the few who were there invariably stared at him as he exited the elevator. Sawyer resisted the urge to snap at them to “mind their own damn business” and kept going straight for the café. They could stare all they wanted; he knew he looked like shit. There was no helping it after the week he’d had.

“Hi there!” the bubbly young man behind the counter in the café said as Sawyer walked up. “What can I get for you today?”

“A large coffee, black. And a caramel latte with whole milk to go,” he added; he could always reheat it for Bashir when he woke up.

“Sure! Anything to eat? We have all sorts of pastries and breakfast sandwiches.”

Sawyer hesitated, then said, “Okay” and picked out a couple of pastries to bag up and take back to the room as well. Bashir was sure to want another painkiller when he woke up, and they went down easiest when you’d had some food. Sawyer would know.

He paid, thanked the chirpy barista, and gathered his purchases awkwardly into one arm before heading for the café door.

Then his phone went off.

“Shit,” Sawyer muttered. Hands, hands, he needed extra hands… He deposited everything on the first table he could get to and grabbed his phone. “Hello?”

“Oh my God, Sawyer!”

He winced. “Jesus, Jessica, can you be a little quieter?”

“Quiet? Quiet? When I’ve just found out that my brother was almost murdered by a serial killer, again? And you want me to be quiet about it?”

Oh, for fuck’s— “How did you find out about that?”

“Oh please,” his sister scoffed. “Between getting transcripts from the police scanner and listening to the morning shock-jocks in your area going off on all the ‘nobody left to handle the dead bodies!’ at the morgue jokes, it’s not hard to put it all together. You and the M.E. were attacked by the other coroner or whatever, the same one responsible for the other mysterious murders that have been happening there lately.”

Holy crap. “Why are you getting transcripts of all this information?”

“Well, it’s not like you were going to tell me anything, is it?” His sister paused, then sighed. “Look, it was unfair of me to ask you to break the law for the sake of my pitch, I understand that now. My contact in the area—”

“Felix Daughtry, I take it—”

“My contact told me not to push it anymore, and so I stopped, but that doesn’t mean I stopped altogether! I couldn’t! I have a meeting with executives at two different studios today based on the work I’ve already done, so it’s really convenient that you and Dr. Ramin wrapped things up yesterday.”

Sawyer’s mouth compressed into a flat, straight line. “Well. How nice for you that my boyfriend and I surviving almost being murdered by a psychopath provided you with a convenient ending to your story.”

“Oh, don’t be upset,” Jessica said. “It’s not personal, Sawyer, you know that. It’s just…just business, honey. That’s how it is out here.”

“I know.” He knew it all too well. That was the whole reason he didn’t want to play the game anymore. “So, now that you know I’m alive and you’ve got your happy ending worked out, you better put the finishing touches on your pitch.”

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