Minka
MINKA
A rcher’s phone buzzes, but the world outside is still dark. The device vibrates somewhere nearby while the man sleeps draped over me, his heart pounding in my ear, and sweat slicking between us. His stubble scratches my scalp, and his breathing catches as the buzz of the phone invades his subconscious.
But he doesn’t wake yet.
“Archer?” My eyes ache as I force them open. Like sandpaper on the backs of my eyelids. Which means it’s not nearly morning yet. Which, ultimately, means someone is dead. “Hey?” I push his shoulder and swallow a stab of guilt when my action leads to a sharp intake of air.
Because even if his old bullet wound is healed on the outside, it doesn’t mean he’s not in pain on the inside.
“Archer. Your phone is ringing.”
“Fuckkk.” He rolls off me and falls to his back, his hulking form a mere shadow in the otherwise dark room. Copeland City lights shine through my window, the curtain a poor excuse for a covering so it’s never pitch black in here. “I’m not on call.”
“I think you’re always on call.” I fight the covers and crawl onto my hands and knees, my bare backside too exposed as he reaches across and pats my rump. But I follow the vibration to the foot of the bed and feel around until I find his jeans, the rough denim and smooth leather belt, dumped just as soon as he escaped them a few hours ago. “What the hell is the time?” I feel around his jeans until I find the offending pocket, then I snatch out his phone just as the call ends, and I find not only Fletch’s name on the screen but the number two beside it.
We missed the first call completely. “It’s Fletch.” I flop back again and slam my hand and the phone into Archer’s belly. “Your partner, your problem.”
“I shouldn’t have problems between the hours of nine at night and seven in the morning. I don’t feel like that’s asking too much.” Grudgingly, he brings the phone up and hisses when the bright backlight blinds him. “Fuck me. A man’s night spent with his wife should be sacred.”
Startling me, my phone rings from somewhere else in the apartment. Not just a buzzing, but a whole fucking orchestra on loudspeaker. Or that’s how it feels, anyway, when the sky is still black and the sun is somewhere over Australia. “He’s calling me now?” I crawl off the bed and snag the closest fabric I can find—a hoodie that belongs to Archer—and then my yoga pants, so I’m not walking buck naked into a shared space that also houses a teen who copes with sex and isn’t ashamed to hit on his own sister-in-law. “Someone better be dead, Archer. He’s making your problem my problem.”
“I’m calling him.” He dials and flops back in bed. But even as he does so, my phone continues to chime. Sluggishly, I stumble to the door and open it, only to find the device on the floor—definitely not where I left it last night—which means Cato must’ve delivered it before he went to sleep.
Even though I stole his dinner.
“I guess he’s a good kid. Sometimes.” I bend and pick it up, finding Aubree’s name flashing for attention. “What?” Confused, I straighten again and swipe to answer, and though I bring it to my ear, I turn to Archer and find him sitting up again, spine straight and stress etched in every line of his face. Finally, exhaustion makes way for fear. “What’s wrong?” I cling to Aubree for answers. “What happened?”
“Come to the hospital. Hurry.”
A rcher’s hand wraps around mine, his palm almost twice the size of mine and touching halfway along my forearm. But he’s no longer sleepy. No longer using just a portion of his brain. He refuses to release me as we step out of the elevator and arrive in a bustling ward, hopping with energy and panic and emergency personnel.
“This way.” He tugs me toward the nurse’s station and flashes his badge at the first annoyed RN who looks up. “Detective Archer Malone. I’m looking for Detective Fletcher. I know he’s here somewhere, and I need to see him immediately.”
She scans his badge with an air of disdain. Because his emergency, I suppose, is not hers. “Is he being arrested for something, Detective?”
Archer’s eyes fire with rage, so I step forward and show my badge, too. It’s not really the same and holds none of the same powers. But medical practitioner to medical practitioner, I appeal to the woman who’s clearly worked too hard and nearing the end of her patience—if not her shift. “Chief Medical Examiner Mayet. Can you please direct us toward Detective Fletcher? He’s already called and let us know he’s here. So if you could?—”
“.” Aubree steps out of a room, her hair a mess and her shirt… Tim’s. She wears jeans that fit her like a glove and a flannel shirt buttoned up the middle that swamps her tiny frame.
“Hey.” I keep my voice low and refrain from charging straight into the room with monitors beeping and machines working hard. “How is he? What’s happening?”
“Pretty wrecked.” She nibbles on her pinky nail as nerves beat through her blood. But then Tim steps out of the same room and stops at her back, his chest against her frame and his hand resting on her hip. His touch brings her peace, the way Archer’s does for me. And for that alone, I approve of whatever relationship they choose to indulge in. Even if, on the outside, they appear incredibly incompatible. “He’s in there,” she continues. “And he’s a mess. But no one died, so…”
Relieved, I exhale and attempt to look around the pair. “And Mia? Is she here?”
“She’s with the sitter.”
“I want to go in.” Archer pulls me around the duo. “I’m not staying out, . I refuse.”
“It’s okay.” I walk faster and reach the door in the same step he does. Then I carefully grab the curtain and pull it back to find a man broken. A hospital bed takes up a massive chunk of the room, and machines fill what little space remains. Wires and tubes stretch in every direction. And a body, bruised, broken, and battling for life, lies in the middle.
“Fletch.” Tears burn the backs of my eyes as I move into the room. “Hey.” I press a hand to his shoulder and gently squeeze. “How are you doing?”
He sniffles and looks up at the woman he once loved. The one who chooses death over sobriety, time and time again. “She’s been into surgery already,” he rasps. “Last time was bad. But this is so much worse.”
“Booth?” Archer stops on the other side of the bed and looks down at the woman whose face is unrecognizable to anyone who doesn’t already know her. The stitches holding her lip down at the left, and her cheekbone, I can guess just by looking, shattered from something other than a fist. “Who brought her in? And are they picking Booth up for it?”
“Cops are already onto it.” His eyes go to Arch, so I move to the foot of the bed and quickly scan the whiteboard at the head. Unfortunately, other than her name, date of birth, and her surgeon’s name, there’s no new information to glean. “She’s really stepped in it this time.” Sniffling again, he glances up. “They had to repair her spleen and liver. Ruptured both. And she was calling me all day. So maybe?—”
“Don’t go there.” Archer pulls up the chair on her other side and sits, pinning his best friend with a fierce stare. “She’s here, and she’s busted up. But she’s alive, and now we can get her into rehab. This was a decent outcome, remember?”
“Not like this.” He studies Jada’s face, but turns and wipes his cheek on the shoulder of his shirt. “No one should go through this. Not once, and definitely not twice. She never even has the chance to get clean before she’s put back on opioids for pain relief.”
“But being here, and later, in a clinic, she’s closer to being better than she is when she’s out on the streets. Sometimes bad things have to happen before good things can come.”
“Says the guy whose wife is safe and healthy.”
“She’s not your wife! She’s someone you used to know, and she doesn’t want the same life you want anymore. You’re incompatible. You can still want the best for her, without sending yourself to a grave in her place. Remember that stuff we talked about just yesterday ? You don’t have to save her, for her to be saved. You don’t have to run yourself over like your suffering could somehow make things better for her. You can both be happy, and it doesn’t require you to be together, or even in the same state, for that to be true.”
“Just shut up.” Defeated, he brings his focus back to Jada and stares, tears shimmering in his eyes. “Stop talking about her.”
“You told me to remind you!”
“And right now, I want to smash my fist into your face every time you speak about her.” He looks my way, then to the whiteboard with narrowed eyes. “Don’t read her files. Don’t stick your nose in. It’s none of your business.”
Archer snarls. “We are here for you! We’re here in the middle of the fucking night because we love you. That means we’re not gonna sit back and watch while you punish yourself for something you didn’t do wrong.”
“Oh… um… Sorry.”
I turn in time to catch Fifi’s horrified expression. But I don’t tease her like I normally would. I don’t taunt her for coming tonight.
“Aubree called me,” she croaks desperately. Too quietly. “I heard she… She said Jada…” Frustrated, she snaps her lips into a firm line and draws a long breath. Then, finally, she meets Fletch’s red, swollen eyes. “I wanted to make sure you were okay. And that Mia was?—”
“I can’t do this right now.” He drags his focus away and goes back to Jada, picking up her hand and flattening her fingers across his palm. “I don’t want to cause more damage. And I’m not in a place where I can talk to anyone without blowing shit up.” He swallows and nods, ever so subtly. “Mia’s fine. She’s sleeping.”
“Aubree?” I hold my colleague’s stare and tip my chin in her direction. Since it would be cruel to talk in front of a man hurting so badly. “Come into the hall with me?”
“?” Archer bites out, his brows sitting high on his forehead in question. “Stay.”
“I’m just going into the hall for a minute. I won’t be more than fifteen feet away.” I circle the bed and press a kiss to the back of his head. But then I go to Fletch and do the same. And though I risk him smacking me away, or worse, rejecting me, he allows me this moment of comfort for us both, before I step away and stride through the door.
“What do you need?”
“There’s no file in her room. And nothing useful written on the board.” I turn at the door to the room beside Jada’s and fold my arms as Aubree comes to a stop in front of me. I’m not even sure if I’m horrified or pleased, but Fifi follows suit, fleeing from the hospital room rather than staying behind with a man who loves someone else. “I don’t have a way to access the computers without breaking the law. But I get the feeling you know more than I do. So what’s going on?”
Gritting her teeth, Aubree looks down at her feet. “I did break the law. And I just so happen to have friends on this floor. Her attacker?—”
“Booth? Or one of his men?”
“I can only go off the whispers I’m hearing, and those whispers lean toward Booth doing the work himself this time. He stabbed her three times with a serrated blade. Injuries are consistent with not only fists and feet, but what the detectives think was a plank of wood or something similar, approximately seven inches wide.”
“Which is what shattered her face.”
“Yeah,” she sighs. “He crushed her internals, so it looks like she fell off a damn cliff and splattered to the ground a hundred feet below.”
Fifi’s cheeks turn the kind of white I see only in the morgue. “He was cruel.”
“Surgeons had to repair her spleen, kidney, and lung,” Aubree continues. “Her ribs ruptured the right, and the left is filling with blood slowly, so they already know they’ll have to take her back again in a few hours to drain it. She has swelling to the brain and isn’t expected to wake for a day or two.”
“Any clue why he did this?” But then I shake my head. “I mean, besides the fact he’s a prick whose day is coming.”
“I don’t know. But the damage is pretty bad. Last time she ended up here, it was three against one. This time, it was one on one, and yet, so much more vicious. He re-broke her wrist, so they’ve had to pin and add it to the ‘ we’ll fix that later ’ pile, since her head is more of a concern right now. Her kidneys are struggling to function; the doctors are keeping a close eye on it.”
“Organ transplant?”
She exhales in a long huff. “I imagine that’ll come soon once the more immediate issues are dealt with. She’s tachycardic and, so far, unable to settle down despite the meds they have her on.”
“For fuck’s sake.” I bring my hand up and run it through my hair. “So we risk MI, too. Which is another organ to be sourced.”
“But she’s an addict,” Fifi finally inserts. “They won’t put her on any lists if she has a history of drug dependency, right?”
“Unlikely,” Aubree answers. “If her body can’t heal from this, then she’s in a world of trouble not even Fletch will be able to save her from.”
“And in the meantime,” I add. “He’s ready to set the world on fire. He’s hurting, and though Archer will paint a target on his own back and take the brunt of his temper, I’m not sure Fletch has it in him to get through to the other side of this.”
“What if she dies?” Aubree’s eyes glisten with unshed tears, her voice lowering to ensure Fletch can’t hear. But I feel the tremor in her words. Her worry. “If she dies, half of him goes into the ground with her.”
“Aubree?” Tim steps out of the room and tilts his head to the side when we turn. “I’m gonna get coffee for everyone. Wanna come for a walk?”
“Yeah.” Her breath comes out in an achy shudder. She brings her eyes back around to meet mine, but there’s not much else left to say. So she sighs and turns away. “There’s a machine on the fourth floor.” She takes his hand, wrapping herself around his arm and leaning against his side. “We’ll get them something to eat, too. Especially Fletch.”
“Do you think I should leave?” Fifi drags her bottom lip between her teeth and warms when I bring my gaze back around. “He’s not in a good space for extra stress, and if I’m making this w?—”
“I think tonight will be the worst he’s ever had, or ever will have, for the rest of his life. And I think he’s terrified of making things worse with you. He’s too tired to watch what he says, and too broken not to give in to his temper. But…” I add, as each of my words weighs her down just a little more. “I think beneath all the pain and worry is a man who needs a hug. He wears his heart on his sleeve and carries more loyalty than any one person should.”
“—”
“I think he’ll always find comfort knowing you’re here. Despite the drama and the pain he’s caused you in the past, I think it will be good for him to know you came. So if you can thicken your skin for a few hours, or close your ears and just be here, then I think it would go a long way in healing a heart that bleeds tonight.”
“That was…” Frowning, she clears her throat. “Introspective and romantic of you, Chief.”
I snort and start back toward the room. “Shut up. Did the mayor fire you yet? I heard he’s an awful man to work for.”
“Oh sure. He’s a monster. And yet, not once has he called me by the wrong name, taunted me for simply existing, forced me to listen to med talk I don’t need to hear, or ignored the instructions I’ve fed him since my presence in his life is literally what I’m paid to do. Additionally,” she lowers her voice as we approach the door, “he takes his calls, and no one ever shouts at me on the phone because he’s ignoring them.”
“That’s the honeymoon period. It’ll end soon.” I grin and pause at the door to collect myself. I flick my hair back and draw a breath big enough to fill my lungs. Then I lower my hands to nervously pat my pants down—they weren’t messy to begin with—and enter the room to be hit, first, with Archer’s fiery stare. “Hey.” I’m not here for Jada, and though it makes me aware of a fundamental flaw in my very being, I don’t feel sympathy for her current predicament. But I feel for Fletch, and I want to save Fifi from having to sit too close, so I wander to his side of the bed and perch on the arm of his chair. “Aubree’s getting coffee for everyone, and Tim’s obsessively dogging her every step.” I set my hand on the back of Fletch’s head and scratch.
Archer likes it, so… “Can we set the bad attitudes aside and just be here for you for a bit? No fighting. No mean words. Just comfort.”
“Yeah.” Sniffling, he drops his chin to his hands, his elbows to his knees. “I’m sorry for everything I say and do between now and…” he sighs. “Forever.”
“No need to be sorry,” I counter with a gentle smile, though I know he can’t see it. “Just be aware. That we’re here and that we love you. And that Fifi is here too,” I tease. “Even though she didn’t have time to do her makeup or hair, which, to her, is a punishment way worse than any tantrum you might throw.”
He drags his eyes up and stops on the woman who lingers on Archer’s side of the room. She wouldn’t dare sit on the arm of his chair—I wouldn’t let her, even if she thought to do it. She leans against the wall, her arms folded and her foot quietly tapping the floor.
But she looks at him, at least. For the first time in too long, she meets Fletch’s honeycomb stare without slapping him down with her words or a harsh scowl.
“Thanks for coming.” He lowers his head again, too tired to do much else. “You don’t have to be here. I’d understand if you want to go.”
She clears her throat, soft and gravelly. “Do you want me to leave?”
He squishes his cheeks, but wordlessly turns his face to show her a definitive no . “I don’t want you to go.”
“Then I’ll stay.” She slides against the wall, lowering until she’s on her butt and her knees are drawn high. Then, she drapes her hands over her knees and allows her fingers to dangle. “For you. Until you ask me to leave.”