3. GASOLINE
3
GASOLINE
“We don’t know where they run the computers out of because they—Spence, what the fuck do they do again? Fluff it?”
“They spoof the IP address to keep us from getting a lock on it. I’m not bad with a computer but I’m not on their level,” Spencer said.
Felix huffed. “We can’t let them go to ground. We may have a lot of unanswered questions, like why they deliberately sacrificed one of their own or what they hoped to accomplish by throwing the gauntlet down and then running, but we know this much: they came for blood, our blood. We ain’t gonna let the bastards live.”
There was a murmur of agreement throughout the group that Spencer cut through with a swipe of infuriating logic. “That’s great and all but that doesn’t help us find them.”
Blair shared a worried look with Julian as Felix glared at the strategist. He couldn’t imagine shutting down the boss like that. Marie, who had been tracing the grains in the dark hardwood with the toe of her shoe, spoke up. “Jake is good with computers, and you know he wants in.”
Felix opened his mouth, undoubtedly to refuse her as he’d done every other time she mentioned initiating Jake, but Spencer spoke first. The glass ashtray rattled on the bar as Spencer forcefully stubbed his cigarette out. “We need a plan that doesn’t hinge on a high school student. Thank you for the suggestion, Marie, but this is too precarious a time to be depending on a potential new member.”
Julian raised a hand. “Couldn’t we try to get a message to them and see if they want to surrender before anyone else is hurt?”
“No,” Felix and Spencer said.
“If we could get a message to them we would know where they are, and the fuckers would be dead by now,” Blair said.
Spencer’s flaxen hair fell forward as he took his glasses off to clean them. It was more a habit than anything, as far as Blair could tell. They never looked dirty. “The best lead we have is Jinx’s apartment. I’m gonna send Adam and Nolan to scout it but knowing Jinx, we aren’t going to be able to tell if it’s a trap until it’s too late.”
“Then we hit it from a distance,” Felix said.
Marie sat up a little straighter. “Wait until they’re home and get them with a sniper round through the window?”
Felix rolled an unlit cigarette between his fingers. “Torch it.”
“No,” Julian and Spencer said in unison.
“Ben being inside the PD isn’t going to make a difference if you start burning things down again. The chief of police would love to put you back in for arson,” Julian pointed out.
Spencer flattened his palms on the bar and leaned across, glasses forgotten next to the ashtray. “Julian’s right. We’ve managed to keep our noses pretty clean since you got out, but if the chief sees smoke, he’s coming for your head.”
“Let them come. Let Phantom come, too. We’ll burn them all.”
The silence that fell over the room spoke louder than any threat. Most of them shared a variation of the same look of defeat, as they knew that tone. Felix had made up his mind. The traffic outside was the only sound for a while. Felix’s gold eyes were alive with excitement and Blair could only assume he was seeing the boss as he was before he joined, before Felix did his time in prison. There was a feral edge to his gaze as he watched the cigarette smoldering between his fingers.
Spencer lowered his head. “I believe we can call this meeting concluded.”
Blair was still seeing the mad gleam in Felix’s eyes when he put dinner on the table that night. Tristan’s favorite, stir-fry with pineapple. He went easy on sauce and seasoning since the kid’s stomach was still torn up. His fever was staying higher than Blair liked, too, but at least Tristan was trying to eat. Blair’s dinner table also happened to be his coffee table but he didn’t entertain enough people to need more than that. Plus his couch was way more comfy than a stiff chair, threadbare though it may be with the red material fading into a weird pink in the areas where the sun got to it.
Tristan ate one piece of pineapple before he wrapped his arms around his stomach. “I’m sorry. It tastes good but...”
“Hey, don’t worry about it. You tried.”
Blair didn’t have much of an appetite, either. He wanted to bring Phantom down as much as the next person if not more but it wasn’t worth it if they lost Felix. He was the whole reason Blair took an interest in Incindious. Blair had been spending more and more time away from home when he crossed paths with the scarlet haired man, and everything just fell into place. Felix had given him more than a gang to join, he had given him a family. He felt guilty for the thought as he looked at his brother but his mom and siblings just hadn’t needed him after she got remarried. They were nuts about her new husband, and Blair, well, wasn’t.
A knock on the door shattered his reverie and sent his fork clattering to his plate. It was a hard, fast knock, nothing like anyone from Incindious. They found me . Phantom was there to finish what they started, they had to be. He stood up and waved Tristan down the hall. “Go, and remember what I told you.”
Tristan nodded and rushed to lock himself in the bathroom. It had to be some scary shit for a kid, but Blair had figured it better to have a plan in case of something like this than just wing it when the time came. He was glad he’d prepared Tristan, now that a second knock was shaking the apartment door.
Blair drew his Beretta without knowing what was more sad, that he kept it on his person in his own house or that it was looking like the measure might have been necessary. Pain shot from his leg up his spine as he approached the door but he forced himself to ignore it. He couldn’t use crutches and be in a stance to shoot at the same time.
This had to be the only apartment that didn’t have a peephole, for fuck’s sake. Spencer really should have insisted on one of those while he was going ham on making everyone get security systems. Blair flipped the lock and pulled the door open as fast as he could, gun readied in front of him. He returned to a two handed grip as soon as the door was open.
Most people threw their hands up or screamed when they found a gun pointed at them.
They didn’t usually look at the gun, then further down to its owner because they happened to be clad only in a pair of jersey shorts, and smirk like a lethal weapon wasn’t in their face.
But Wren didn’t seem to be most people.
His eyes traveled back up to the gun as slowly as they left it, lingering on Blair’s naked upper body long enough to make Blair wish that he was wearing a shirt. “Interesting way to answer the door. You need to get your brother and come with me to the hospital.”
Blair lowered the gun and clicked the safety back on. “Why the fuck would I do that? And how do you know where I live?”
Wren stepped into the apartment, put his hand around the barrel of the gun and pushed it to the side. “I accessed your patient file.”
A torrent of sensations hit Blair as Wren stepped closer, into his goddamn apartment like he owned it, and he was assaulted with the smell of coffee and cologne. It wasn’t unpleasant. Wren actually smelled good, nothing like the constant scent of antiseptic Blair assumed clung to doctors when they weren’t at the hospital. That was what bothered him, though—this cocky shit had grabbed a loaded gun and was standing so close that Blair knew what he smelled like.
Wren’s eyes lowered again and Blair was reminded of his bare chest. He wasn’t particularly insecure, he might be on the shorter side at five-six—okay, so pretty far on the shorter side—but at least he was muscular. His scattered freckles had mostly been swallowed up by his tan. Nothing special but nothing to be embarrassed about, either. He just didn’t like the way he was being stared at when the person looking was a relative fucking stranger who strode into his apartment uninvited.
“Where did the iguana come from?”
Blair startled out of his thoughts and blinked. “Huh?”
“Tristan said he had an iguana. The one Dr. Evans thinks he contracted a Salmonella infection from. Where was the iguana purchased?”
Blair thought back to the conversation he had with his mom when he had called to tell her he was going to keep Tristan for a couple days. Once he’d listened to her lecture that he better not be swaying his little brother toward his evil lifestyle , he explained how Tristan probably got sick. She had shouted about how that wasn’t possible, how much she paid for that lizard from— “The Caribbean. A client came back from the Caribbean with it and sold it to her, charged her a small fortune because of how much it cost to have it brought here.”
A vise grip around his forearm shocked Blair into silence. Wren’s appraising stare sharpened into something more demanding. “Is Tristan here with you? If he is, get him. We need to get him back to the hospital.”
This guy was giving Blair whiplash. He briefly considered the danger of letting Wren any further into the apartment but if the student was part of Phantom, he would have disarmed Blair when he grabbed the gun. Blair looked down at the pale fingers around his arm. Given Blair’s injury, Wren could have easily gained the upper hand with a grip like that if he wanted to.
Blair put the gun back in one of his deep pockets. “I’ll go get him… or you can just come with me, I guess,” he added when he noticed Wren following him.
He knocked on the bathroom door. “Hey. Pineapple.”
“What an odd nickname for a child,” Wren said.
“It’s the password, I told him not to open the door unless I gave him the password. Tristan, open up, it’s me! Everything’s okay.”
Blair heard a low groan from inside. He tried the doorknob without expecting any luck, as Tristan had done just as he was told and locked it. Blair was already limping without his crutches; there was no way he could get enough leverage to force it open with his shoulder.
“Tristan?” Blair called.
He was answered by a horrible retching sound.
“Move,” Wren said.
It seemed to be more of a formality than anything since Wren was already in motion. Blair stepped back the best he could before Wren’s leg arced up and his foot connected with the door, right above the lock. It flew open and hit the bathroom wall.
Blair didn’t waste time asking how the hell a med student could do that, as he was met with the sight of Tristan slumped against the toilet. The vomit in the bowl was streaked through with blood. Blair put a hand against Tristan’s forehead and found it cool to the touch. He grabbed a washcloth off the counter and wiped his face, Tristan watching him all the while with watery eyes. Tristan’s clothes were tacky with sweat but otherwise clean.
“Wash your hands,” Wren said before the washcloth had even hit the bottom of the plastic laundry hamper.
Blair threw a warning look behind him. “I will in a minute, right now I need to take care of him.”
“If I’m right then he could be carrying something dangerous and highly contagious, wash your hands before you risk spreading it any further.” The impatience in Wren’s voice seemed amplified in the cramped space.
“I’ve got to carry him downstairs anyway, he doesn’t look like he’s in any shape to walk on his own.”
“Neither are you. Wash your hands.”
Wren maneuvered around him to crouch in front of Tristan and pulled latex gloves from the pocket of his scrubs. As much as Blair wanted to punch him in the throat and silence his smart mouth for a while, Wren was right about that one. Tristan wasn’t small anymore, Blair wouldn’t be able to carry him and keep weight off his leg, too. He felt like he could grin and bear the pain but if his leg decided to go out then he would be adding even more discomfort to his brother’s ill state. He waited for the water to run hot and scrubbed with a few pumps of the hand soap up to his elbows.
Blair grabbed his t-shirt off the towel rack and pulled it over his head while Wren hooked the straps of a mask around Tristan’s ears. The other man’s presence in his apartment was still baffling. Wren stood up holding Tristan, and Blair finally had to ask, “Since when do med students make house calls?”
“Since it occurred to me he could have something highly contagious that posed the risk of an outbreak. Let’s go, I’ll drive.” He left no room for argument as he walked out of the bathroom and back across the apartment but given the circumstances, it was probably for the best that they weren’t wasting any time.
Blair stuck his feet into the worn Vans by the door and locked it behind him as they left. He had gotten good enough with the crutches to mostly keep pace with Wren’s long strides down the hallway. Wren must have already been scheduled to be at the hospital, since he was dressed in scrubs and all of his hair hadn’t fallen out of his ponytail yet. Regardless the whole thing was weird as hell, Blair thought as he punched the button for the elevator. Tristan’s labored breaths felt deafening on the otherwise quiet ride down to the ground floor.
“I thought it was a Salmonella infection,” Blair said as they walked out of the building.
Wren shifted Tristan to one arm and took his keys out of his pocket. Blair watched every move, not entirely comfortable with someone else carrying his brother but low on other options. “It still is but I believe he’s infected with a more uncommon subspecies of Salmonella bacteria. Uncommon here in the United States, that is.”
A pair of headlights flashed from the curb and Blair stopped in his tracks. Even from the side, without being able to see the emblem, he recognized the lean, low body of an Audi R8. The city lights became distorted patches of color in the glossy, almost reflective black paint. There was no way a student should be able to afford that; Blair knew plenty of people who weren’t hurting for money that still couldn’t touch something with that kind of price tag. Warning bells sounded in the back of Blair’s mind.
“How did you get that?”
Phantom could be paying him off.
“It was a birthday present. Not that I see why it concerns you.”
Blair hesitated at the passenger door Wren had opened for him. The shape of the 92 was still a reassuring weight in Blair’s pocket, if something did turn out to be amiss. He got in the sports car, and traded Wren his crutches for Tristan. With a few spins of the bolts, Wren had taken them apart and stored them in the trunk at the front of the car.
The engine purred beautifully as Wren pulled onto the road. Blair held Tristan in his lap, arms around his waist in place of a seatbelt. He had just started to relax when he saw Wren’s foot go to the clutch and the car roared into the next gear. Wren sped through a cluster of slower traffic and shifted up again. Blair pressed himself back against the seat, grip tightening on Tristan.
Felix’s driving had conditioned him against the fear of a car crash, as he was at the risk of that whenever the boss was behind the wheel, but Tristan being in the car did make him a little antsy. Blair watched buildings fly past and didn’t dare look at the red hand he knew was ticking steadily upward.
Instead, Blair found himself watching the man behind the wheel. Wren drove with one hand on the wheel and the other on his knee, fingers tapping and ready to move to the shifter. From the side Blair could see his eyes behind his glasses, a startling shade of cobalt blue in the dying sunlight, but there was nothing to be read from them that Blair could discern.
“What is this bacteria you’re so worried about and what does it mean for Tristan if he’s infected with it?” Blair asked. He hated to talk about Tristan like he wasn’t there but the kid was in no shape to take part in the conversation, if he was conscious of it happening at all.
Wren shifted down as they approached a traffic light. “Salmonella typhi. Dr. Evans ruled it out because Tristan hasn’t left the country recently, or ever.”
“But not you.”
“Tristan doesn’t like the lizard, he said as much. If it’s aggressive then he likely avoids contact with it and I doubt his parents would let him clean the cage since iguanas have sharp teeth and claws. We ruled out most other ways he could have contracted Salmonella or deemed them unlikely, at the very least.”
Blair was fascinated despite himself. It seemed the medical mystery of his brother was the only thing that prompted Wren to utter more than a couple words at a time. His voice still lacked any kind of emotion but the amount of thought he’d put into it made it clear he was interested, maybe even invested. Wren turned left, and Blair recognized some of the buildings around them. They were near the hospital.
“I think the person who sold your mother the lizard might have had typhoid fever.”
“That sounds… bad.” He wished he had a more intelligent answer but he had no idea what that was.
“It’s especially dangerous for children, never mind the prospect of an outbreak. Early detection is vital. That’s why you’re here.”
Wren parked in front of the emergency room entrance and went inside, then returned a moment later with a wheelchair. Blair opened the door and carefully handed Tristan off to him. Tristan groped at Wren’s ID badge, mumbling incoherently. Wren put Blair’s crutches back together and held them still outside the car door. Blair’s ears burned as he pushed up onto them. He would be glad when the damn hole in his leg healed up enough to walk unaided. Not only did he need to be ready when they moved on Jinx’s apartment, but he was tired of needing help all the time.
Wren pushed the wheelchair right through the waiting room, through the doors to triage and then to another set of double doors. He scanned his badge and, after a beep that confirmed his clearance, the doors opened to a wide hallway. Blair looked around as he followed behind. They weren’t in the pediatric center where Tristan had first been treated.
“Where is Dr. Garrett?” Wren asked the nurse’s station as he pulled a plastic cup from the dispenser next to the water jug and filled it. He put it in Tristan’s hands and let go once the boy had a grip on it.
The man there gave him a skeptical look. “I thought you were doing your rotation with pediatrics.”
“I need a blood test ordered and I don’t have time for Dr. Evans to question me. Get me Dr. Garrett,” Wren said, narrowing his eyes. Blair gaped at the exchange. Wren was brazen, to be a student and making such demands. Tristan, at least, seemed to have livened up a bit at the taste of water. He had finished half the cup already.
The nurse stood up, appearing ready for an argument but his eyes lighted on something over Wren’s shoulder that made him sink back down into his chair. “Doctor,” the nurse greeted, albeit petulantly.
“James,” responded a cordial voice.
Blair turned on his crutches at the familiar timbre. As he thought, Dr. Garrett was standing behind them. He waved awkwardly. “Hey, Doc. I wish I could say long time no see.”
“How is your injury, Mr. Kennedy?”
“I’m making it. I’m not here for me, though.”
Dr. Garrett looked at Wren. “Did you follow someone through the doors?” The way Wren looked away must have indicated a negative, as Dr. Garrett sighed and said, “I told you not to manually change your access code. What brings you here with such a handsome but quite ghastly young man?”
Wren explained to the doctor what he had told Blair in the car, and Dr. Garrett listened with a smile that looked almost fond despite his obvious exasperation with Wren’s rule-breaking.
“I can take the blood sample,” Wren persisted when the doctor didn’t say anything.
“Very well, I’ll order it, but if it comes back negative and Sarah finds out you brought her patient back in for no reason, don’t come to me for protection.”
“I can take care of myself.”
Dr. Garrett chuckled. “Off you go, then. Take him to the drawing lab.”
“Thanks for this, Doc,” Blair said when he realized Wren was just going to leave without another word.
“Wren can be… abrasive, but he has keen instincts and I trust him. Don’t fear for your younger brother. If he does in fact have typhoid, it’s early enough that antibiotics will fix him right up. Speaking of which, I hope you have been taking yours as prescribed?”
Blair was sure he laughed too loudly to be believable. “Oh, yeah, all the time. They’re great. I better go be with Tristan.”
He caught up with Wren and they got on the elevator. Tristan was asleep in the wheelchair, panicking Blair for a minute since he had been awake just a couple minutes ago, but Tristan’s chest rose and fell evenly.
Wren checked in with the lab and they went back. There were chairs designated for drawing blood, and Tristan stirred as he was moved to one of them. He became more alert at the sight of the package holding the needle. Blair put a hand on one of his small, tense shoulders.
“This is just like last time, you won’t feel anything,” Wren said.
He went through the same preparations as last time and Blair kept a reassuring hand in place as Wren readied the needle. In his weakened state Tristan seemed to have a renewed hatred for them. “Don’t wanna,” he said.
“Remember. Deep breath, exhale on three.”
Tristan breathed in, though it was shaky, and blew it out as the needle pierced his skin. He stared at the ceiling to avoid the sight of it. Blair squeezed his shoulder. “You did awesome, Tristan.”
“Can I go to sleep now?”
Blair looked over to see if Wren was going to need anything else, and smiled at his brother once Wren nodded his assent. “Go for it.”
Tristan went right back to his wheelchair and dropped his head back. He at least seemed more lucid after periods of rest, and the doctor had said he would be fine if they put him on antibiotics. “How long ’til we get the results back?” Blair asked.
“Within forty-eight hours. Sit.” Wren finished washing his hands and dried them off.
“What, why?”
“Your turn. Anyone else who has been in contact with him should get tested as well.”
Blair sat in the chair and put his arm out. Needles didn’t bother him, as the insignia tattooed under his collarbone proved. Wren donned a new pair of gloves and prepped a bigger needle that didn’t have the blue wings on the side. The piece of rubber he tied around Blair’s arm felt like it would snap if he moved the wrong way. Wren was close again, the smell of coffee mingling with the sterile scent of the lab.
“Where are your veins?” he murmured to himself, running a thumb down Blair’s arm.
There was a little pressure behind the touch and Blair hoped he couldn’t see the way it made the hairs on his arm stand up. “I still don’t completely get it,” Blair said.
“The veins supply—”
“Not that, smartass. I mean why you didn’t just call and recommend that Tristan came back in for further testing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful, but why did you care so much?”
The question might have offended anyone else, but Wren was calm when he met Blair’s eyes. “It wasn’t because I cared. I just wanted to know if I was right.”
“Whatever you say, Sunshine.”
Wren clicked his tongue and dropped his gaze back to Blair’s arm. If anything, the implication that he might care seemed to have peeved him more than the opposite.
“You can try drinking some water, that might help. Or I can take it from somewhere else,” Wren said, seemingly declaring the veins in his arm a lost cause.
“Like where?”
Wren picked Blair’s hand up and placed his thumb on top of it. Blair had wider palms but Wren’s fingers were long and rested at the soft pulse point on the underside of his wrist. The gesture was so much like holding hands that Blair stared in confusion for a minute before he realized Wren was tapping a particular place on top of his hand. “You have a good vein here.”
“I guess that’s as good a place as any.”
Wren moved his thumb to the side but didn’t let go of his hand otherwise. “You must not care for needles, either.”
“I don’t mind them, Tristan is really the only one in the family with that problem. You can go ahead,” he added when Wren raised the needle in question.
There was little more than a pinch when Wren inserted the needle. “Interesting.”
“Why’s that?”
Wren looked at him over the top of his glasses and tapped a finger against the inside of his wrist, just over his pulse. His lips tilted up slightly. “Because your heartbeat is erratic, Blair.”
Blair cursed the needle in the top of his hand for keeping him from pulling away. He didn’t know how to answer that, even to himself.
He’d been shot a few days ago, so that was fun. Plus, his little brother could have a rare and fatal infection. That was plenty reason enough for his heartbeat to be irregular, right? It definitely had nothing to do with Wren being… well, gorgeous.
Nope.
Wren capped the collection tube and removed the needle. He put a band-aid on Blair’s hand, smoothing it with his thumbs, the ghost of a smirk still on his face. Blair tried not to let his eyes linger; his gang was prepared to burn half the city down to get to Phantom, he really didn’t have time for this. Not that he wanted time for it.
Blair pulled his hand away and grabbed his crutches from where they were leaning next to the chair. Wren stepped back as though he had heard every one of Blair’s unspoken words. He didn’t look offended by the sharp withdraw of Blair’s hand. Instead, Wren watched him with curiosity and an expression Blair could only liken to satisfaction.
“I better get Tristan home, and talk my mom into getting the rest of them tested, especially my sister. She’s younger than Tristan.”
“I’ll walk you out. I need to move my car, anyway.”
Now that the wait had begun for the results, the trip back to the entrance felt far longer than when they came in. Blair could feel the prickle of fatigue behind his eyes and deep in his muscles. They went through the automatic doors to find the sky had gone dark, leaving the city in a harsh, artificial glow.
“Keep him as isolated as possible,” Wren said.
“That’s the plan.” He cleared his throat and toed a crack in the sidewalk. “I know you said you just wanted to know, or whatever, but thank you. I don’t care what your reasons were if it means he’s going to be okay.”
Wren’s eyes flicked down to Tristan, whose skin glistened with sweat where he slept in the wheelchair. He made a vague sound of acknowledgment and Blair continued, “You should let me thank you for real sometime.”
“Oh, are you asking me on a date?”
Blair’s face flamed. “What, no! I just meant I should buy you dinner or drinks or whatever to say thanks, don’t let it go to your head.”
He didn’t have to look over; he could feel the look on Wren’s face. Blair really wasn’t asking him on a date, he had too much going on already without adding to it. There was just an old-fashioned streak in him that felt like there was a debt to be paid for what Wren had done, his supposed motives be damned.
Blair finally glanced to the side as an ambulance passed them on the way to the emergency vehicle bay and painted Wren’s face with a myriad of red and blue. Part of him wished he had left it with a verbal expression of gratitude but Wren’s actions might have saved his brother’s life. From what he had been hearing about this typhoid fever, it could easily become life threatening to a child. That wasn’t something he could take lightly.
“My call starts soon,” Wren said, taking his keys out.
“I hope you don’t get in too much trouble for this.” Blair scratched the back of his head, thinking back to the stern woman who had seen to them the night before.
Wren opened the car door and looked over his shoulder. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”
The R8 roared to life and Blair watched Wren peel away from the entrance, Tristan stirring awake beside him from the noise. Blair stared at the black impressions of tire treads on the pavement where Wren had burned rubber. This is the end of my rotation with emergency medicine, Wren had said.
You won’t see me again.
His vision unfocused for a second and rather than the asphalt he saw Wren in the doorway of his apartment, felt a surprisingly strong hand wrap around his forearm. Coffee and cologne. Three black rings dancing in the artificial light. He could still feel that touch as though it was pulling him closer, creating an unstable gravity between them. Blair’s own words echoed, taunting, in his mind. You never know.