Page 25 of One Step Sideways

Danny

Sadie heard them before I did, but suddenly there was a lot of noise and a kid injured and in pain. I’d served as a medic in Diesel’s unit. Funnily enough, my data skills outweighed the medical ones but that wouldn’t get me anything other than a posting behind a desk. I noticed the scar on the kid’s face, obviously, but it paled into insignificance when I saw the ones on the rest of his body. Most of his body. The knife wound to his side meant his shorts and his tee came off immediately.

Ringo fell silent pretty much immediately and stayed back. Kane shot him a passing glance but kept his focus on Shae’s face, talking to him, making sure he didn’t panic. When I got an okay over the phone from Diesel, I shot him up with morphine.

He wasn’t likely to bleed to death, but it was a little too close to his spleen, and infection was a risk, obviously, and this kid had barely any medical records as I looked.

“This makes no sense.” I glanced up and knew Ringo was talking to Diesel on his cell. “The seven-times champion obviously cheated. He had to have been paid a fuck-ton because the gym will never let him back, even if, without a victim, he gets away with it from the cops.”

I met Kane’s eyes and agreed with Ringo’s assessment. This smacked of a set-up.

When I was happy with Shae’s injury, and he finally fell asleep, Ringo decided he was needed somewhere else, after Diesel told him he was on his way back. Iwas left with the kid, Sadie, and Kane. The first two were easy. I still had no clue what to do with Kane.

“Rawlings on his way back?”

I looked over at Kane and nodded. He was so fucking quiet, and I was used to the team. Ringo was like a ghost, sure, but Kane was almost on another level.

Or was he?

Maybe he was on another level because I was putting him there? The time between us earlier weighed on me. Not in my gut like lead, as if I was embarrassed, but more in my heart. I felt lighter. Not that I wanted to think about that too much. Some things were too much. Too much feeling for someone that needed to concentrate on simply surviving.

“Danny?”

I’d managed to avoid talking to Gray for hours. Lying in our own filth, it didn’t make for conversation. I fought my way to the present; even if I didn’t want to be here, Gray’s voice wouldn’t let me float away.

“No,” I rasped, unsure of what I was saying no to. Probably reality.

“You have to stay with me.”

“Why?” I croaked out wretchedly. I was even getting used to the smell. Aubrey hadn’t, and right that second his way out sounded so tempting, except I was too much of a coward, even for that. If someone handed me a gun, I wasn’t sure I could have pulled the trigger. And that was more shaming than every indignity they heaped on us. I was too useless to even end it.

I blinked back into the moment only to have Kane looking at me like he knew where I’d been, and the sudden urge to tell him overpowered me. “I told you we were in a pit,” I kept my voice quiet because of Shae but I doubted I could manage much more than a whisper anyway. “I didn’t mean that euphemistically. The floor space was dug out. In the end, it was just Gray and me. And we had been down there for…” My throat closed and Kane grabbed my clammy hand. “Forever,” I finished. It had seemed like it. “I wouldn’t have made it without Gray.He kept me going.”

“You know,” Kane said lightly, “funnily enough that’s what I used to say to Archie, but he said that it worked both ways. Archie told me he had always promised himself if he lost that last appeal, he would pick a fight with one of the gang leaders and end it, but then I arrived, and he said—” His throat closed, and I could see the effort it took to continue. “He said I gave himhope. Not that he would ever be released, but that he could keep me alive to make sure I got out. My dad never cared but I spent a lot of nights wishing I was Archie’s son. Then it was over.”

The unspokenbecausehe diedfell between us.

“He had cancer,” I said, trying and failing to say it wasn’t Kane’s fault, and Kane nodded, but it was an acknowledgement of a fact not an excuse or acceptance. I knew about the letter Diesel had gotten via the Tampa team from Constance Picket. I hadn’t taken much notice and, much to my shame, assumed she had been lied to by the old guy, Archie. Maybe I was wrong about a lot of things.

“I was torn,” Kane admitted. “As if the universe hadn’t screwed with Archie enough, he had to get cancer. He was in a ton of pain, and I found out the head custodian was going to make an appeal and would likely get him approved to go to a hospice to die in peace, but he refused.”

I gazed at Kane. I could see what it was costing him to share and guilt ate at me. He was doing this because he was trying to get me out of my own head but at the same time, he baring secrets he probably wished he could keep buried. Had I been completely wrong about this guy?

“He did it for me,” Kane whispered, his head down, and fuck knew what that admission cost. “I told him I’d be fine, but he just refused to go. The last two days he was in the clinic, and the C.O.s let me go in and out since I wanted to sit with him.” Sorry, C.O.s stand for correctional officers,” Kane added. “Then O’Connell was transferred in and I didn’t really know him. He’d started maybe the week before, but he immediately barred me access to Archie, saying there was no way I could be anywhere near the drugs they kept there, as being enhanced, I could probably steal them. Because I argued, they immediately locked me in my cell.” He paused. “Archie died about five hours later, and I wasn’t with him.”

My breath seemed to catch in my chest. And the breath Kane took seemed like it was almost for me. “The dogs my dad used for the fights were in an outside kennel, but at one point we had complaints over barking, so he moved them into the cellar. Even when I had to go down there, I could always come out. I wasn’t trapped. I can’t imagine you being down…” He swallowed, his voice petering out.

I glanced up at Kane, took in the over-bright eyes, the tick of a muscle in his jaw as if it was counting down to an explosion of pain. “No,” I said, evenly. “I think you were as trapped as I was.”

And right that second something passed between us. Shared, but different.

“So, tell me some more about you,” Kane asked, clearly desperate for a change in subject.

I obeyed, not wanting to break the connection. “Daniel Sullivan, twenty-nine. Medic in the third battalion, 75th. Parents are Elizabeth and Roger Sullivan. Older brother of Stephen, and younger brother of Cornan and Emily. Proud uncle,” I added after a moment, and something like regret rushed through me. I didn’t see Cody and Geneiva nearly enough.

I glanced at Kane. “What about you?”

A huff of breath escaped his lips and for a moment I was sorry I asked.

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