Page 10 of Montana Mystery

My apartment was small, and a lot smaller now that I was sharing it with Brandon. But walking into it now, it was unbearably empty. Like the space itself felt Brandon’s absence.

“You’re being ridiculous,” I told myself out loud. “Spaces don’t have feelings.”

I grabbed a bag and packed a change of clothes and my laptop. A water bottle, my toothbrush, and toothpaste. After considering a moment, I grabbed a set of Brandon’s clothes too.

There was no way to know when he would wake up, but when he did, I wanted him to have clothes that weren’t soaked with blood. Or a one-size-fits-nobody hospital gown.

Everything I needed, I gathered. Chargers and a couple of snacks. My wallet. It all went into the bag. The nurses at the hospital were going to think that I was moving in.

But I needed to be there. Even with him sedated, I needed to be at his side in case something happened. Weirder things had happened than someone waking up from sedation. I’d been too late to say goodbye to my parents. There wasn’t a chance in hell I was going to risk missing that with Brandon. Nor would I let him wake up thinking he was all alone.

Now late, the hospital parking lot was much more empty than it had been. I was able to park close to the entrance. The new nurse at the desk didn’t stop me once I told her why I was there. If they told me I couldn’t stay because of visiting hours, I was prepared to sit in the middle of the floor and not move until they changed their mind.

Nothing was different when I reached his room. Brandon hadn’t moved. His breath still pushed slow and even thanks to the tube in his throat, and the heart monitor kept beeping steadily. The lights in his room were dim, but that suited me just fine. I was exhausted from the driving and emotions and adrenaline.

I should probably catch up on the work I’d missed today because of all of this, but I couldn’t muster the energy to pull the laptop out of my bag. That was okay. I could work on it tomorrow. Clearly, I wasn’t going anywhere.

When I unlocked my phone, it was still on the browser with Noah’s photograph. The photo Resting Warrior had used didn’t do him justice. At all. Up close, he was like every person’s dream of a cowboy. All he’d been missing was the cowboy hat.

While my brother was lying broken and battered, the last thing I should be thinking about was the way Noah Scott filled out his shirt and jeans. But I couldn’t stop myself. He was gorgeous. And more than that, he hadn’t treated me like I was overreacting. Or crazy.

None of them had. But for some reason Noah stuck out to me. Maybe because it was his face I’d been focused on my whole drive north. Maybe I’d attached my hopes for my brother to him. Maybe it was simply that I found him incredibly attractive despite the shitty circumstances. Either way, he was in my thoughts and I was too tired to push him out.

I drifted off to the image of dark blue eyes.

* * *

The beeping of the heart monitor became too much after a while, so I drifted from place to place in the hospital to work, always near enough that I could be called back to Brandon’s room, but far enough for a change of scenery.

Thankfully, things at work had been running smoothly since I’d gone off the rails yesterday. Owning a business, I couldn’t always guarantee that.

It started in the summers during college when a friend’s family went on an extended trip and asked me to house-sit for them. While I was there, I realized that they weren’t the only ones on vacation. A lot of their neighborhood was.

The lightbulb that went off in my head at the idea felt pretty literal for me that day. The number of vacation homes in Montana was high, and even with security systems, there was no replacement for the deterrent of seeing lights and movement in a house.

So I built it up. A network of people who needed money and had the freedom to travel. They monitored houses all across Montana. Either for people who used their home only for part of the year, or for people who were on a brief vacation but were concerned about their house being obviously vacant.

We’d grown enough that I usually didn’t have to monitor houses myself anymore, which made it easier to do things like take off and go to a ranch, or work from a hospital waiting room.

I would never be a millionaire with this business, but I didn’t care about that. I made enough to be comfortable, and nothing else I’d ever done had come close to the satisfaction of running my own business.

The itch to move settled in after another hour of arranging appointments and finding people to cover shifts at a house on the east side of the state. I packed my bag and went back to Brandon’s room. It was almost the end of the work day anyway and my brain was beginning to feel scrambled.

After leaving it for a while, the rhythmic sound of the heart monitor was soothing. Almost like a metronome, it had gone beyond irritation and finally just faded into the background.

A soft knock at the door had me looking up. Dr. Godin stood there, clipboard in hand. “May I come in?”

I straightened in my seat. “Of course.”

“How are you holding up?”

“I don’t really think that I’m the one that matters right now.”

He smiled grimly. “Things like this are always hard on the family. Just making sure you’re taking care of yourself too.”

“Noted.” It wasn’t something I wanted to talk about right now.

Dr. Godin sighed. “Things are looking good. I’d like to give him another day of sedation and then we’ll try waking him up. See if he tolerates it. If not, we can increase the sedation again.”

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