Fishy Riot, page 5
“Where are you going? Where’s Emma?”
Jay squirmed, but he was only seven and Brayden wasn’t letting him get loose, so he sighed and gestured back toward the house, rolling his eyes. “She’s in the fridge,” he confessed as if this were completely normal. Brayden paused and looked stumped for a minute before Jay was lifted over one broad shoulder, screaming for Brayden to put him down while he strode into the house, bellowing threats of punishment.
“How the hell did he fit Emma in the fridge?”
“I cleaned out the vegetable crisper this morning and haven’t put the shelves back in yet,” Chloe mumbled, sipping her wine as if she too thought her granddaughter being in her refrigerator was completely normal.
“Mum, Emma is in the fridge! And you’re just sipping wine!” Hayley gaped at them all, finally looking up from where she was ensconced in the corner on a beanbag with a beer in one hand and Woman’s Day in the other.
“Oh, please, Taylor and Clay put Ashley in the chimney once and then tried to convince your father to light a fire. Besides, Emma is my granddaughter, not my child. Brayden is perfectly capable of disciplining his own children.”
“Whatever. You know he’ll just tell Kelly and she’ll have to lay down the law.” Clay snorted, and they all laughed because Brayden was the biggest softie on the planet and it always fell on his wife, Kelly, to discipline the kids.
“Wait, you put me in the chimney?” Ashley was gaping at Clay and Taylor who shrugged, not seeing how that came as any surprise. They’d all been there.
“You were being a brat. Wanted us to play with you, so we did.”
“Excuse me?” Ashley’s mouth fell farther open.
“Besides, maybe that’s where your love of fires came from,” Clay mused.
“Mum!” Ashley protested.
“I don’t see what you’re so worked up about. You laughed like it was the best day of your life and told your father you were going to be Santa when you grew up.” Chloe waved Ashley’s concerns away and took another sip of her spritzer.
“Really, son, you look quite good in this picture,” Daniel said, holding the paper Brayden had discarded. “Though the Salisbury lad seems quite displeased with his father.”
Even Daniel, who was not known for being the best judge of character, thought there was something wrong about that picture.
“I don’t like that man,” Chloe said softly, and a little overly succinctly, trying to compensate for her tipsiness by speaking overly well. “There’s just something not quite right about him. Everything they do in public is so staged. No one is that perfect. It makes me wonder what they’re trying to hide, that they think they need to be that perfect.”
“Says the woman dressed as if the prime minister could walk through the door at any moment.” Hayley waved a hand at Chloe’s outfit.
“Oh, dream on, as if I’d bother to even put my pyjamas on if that prick turned up at the door.”
“Amen,” they all said at once, toasting the air.
“But seriously.” Leila squinted at them from under the shade of the arm she had slung over her face. “What did those guys need a rocket launcher for?”
TAYLOR GROANED as he lowered himself onto the bed that night, towelling his hair dry and flopping back onto the pillows. He loved his family, but an afternoon was all he could take. They were loud, and the conversations made no sense and went around in circles until his head ached. There was never enough food for the amount he drank, and then he had to stay longer to sober up before they could drive home, which led to more crazy conversations and somehow tonight had ended with him having to change Emma’s undies three times. Gross. She was supposedly toilet trained, at five years old, but had gotten tired and overexcited, according to Kelly. He never wanted kids.
He was dozing off when his phone rang and “blocked” came up on the screen. Sitting up quickly, he unplugged it from the wall and answered on the third ring. “’Lo?”
“Uh… is this Officer Jameson?” That voice. He’d recognise it anywhere, and yet again it went straight to his groin. Taylor sat on the edge of his bed and strained to listen.
“Yeah. This is Taylor.”
“Hi. Sorry it’s so late. I should have called earlier….” Sietta sounded tired. His breathing was heavy.
“No, its fine. Thanks for calling me.”
“Sure.” Sietta exhaled heavily, and there was a hitch to the word. Taylor thought it sounded like pain.
“Are you okay?”
“Huh? Yeah, no… I’m fine.” But he sounded confused. Taylor cupped the phone as if he could cup the voice and protect it from harm.
“I just wanted to apologise,” he explained softly. “I didn’t know I had been photographed. I hope it hasn’t caused you any trouble.”
“Uh… no, no you didn’t.” The hesitation was odd. Taylor replayed the reply in his head. No he hadn’t caused him trouble, but that didn’t mean Sietta wasn’t in trouble, for something.
“That’s good. I’d still like to apologise properly in person. Could you meet me for coffee sometime?” Taylor asked, trying to coax responses that might indicate what was awry.
“No” was the immediate response. It was too immediate. Taylor doubted Sietta had even heard the request. Saying no was a reflex. It made him blink as he listened avidly to the call.
“What, never?” He chuckled, trying to make sure Sietta knew he was playing. Sort of. Something was off, and he wanted to know what. That he was interested at all was off, but he was trying not to think about that.
“Never,” Sietta agreed, and again it was so immediate that it was stunning. Taylor’s mouth went dry and he struggled to think of something to say, but Sietta beat him to it.
“I’m very busy, Officer Jameson. I don’t have time to meet you, and it’s completely unnecessary to apologise for something that was neither your fault nor caused me any hassle, I assure you. Thank you for your concern. Have a good night.”
And just like that he was gone, the line dead. Taylor immediately called the office and asked for a trace on the last number. His boss wanted to know why, and Taylor explained. His boss promised to look into it, and that was all Taylor was told.
There was a light knock on his door. Taylor hauled the sheet over his groin as Clay opened the door.
“He called?”
“Yeah.” Taylor huffed, feeling hot and bothered for no real discernible reason.
“It’s fishy?”
“It’s so fishy,” Taylor agreed. “Boss is tracing the number.”
Clay dubiously studied Taylor a little too closely, but then the door was closed and Taylor exhaled loudly, flopping back on the bed and staring at his phone screen. He willed it to ring again. It didn’t.
Never. He’d never been turned down so abruptly.
3: Reinforced Steel
“SO, LET me get this straight,” Clay said again as Taylor drove them in to the office. “You hadn’t even finished asking and he turned you down?”
“Yes.”
“Just flat-out refused. You?”
“Yes.” Like it hadn’t been embarrassing enough the first thousand times he’d explained it.
“He actually said never?” Did his twin brother really need to spell it out, repeatedly?
“Yes!”
“That’s so harsh, man.”
“You don’t say,” Taylor muttered darkly. He’d spent most of the night waking up from dreams he couldn’t quite recall, to lie in the dark and ponder his strange late-night phone call. The more he thought about it, the more he’d been convinced something was wrong with Sietta Salisbury. But he also felt increasingly depressed because he never dealt well with rejection, probably because he was almost never rejected. Like, ever, really. But Sietta probably wasn’t gay, and he had no reason to go to coffee with him, so really Taylor had no reason to be upset. But he was and it was taking a great deal of effort not to show it.
So he was pleased. So extremely over-the-moon pleased when they drove into the carpark to find the van being loaded up, everyone already in their gear, waving them over to suit up because there was a time limit on the warrant they needed to execute.
“Oh hell yes,” Taylor huffed as he locked the car and went to get his body armour. Clay was still laughing as he checked him over.
“Jamesons!” Mendel called, and they looked over to see him standing with their favourite toy.
“You guys get the ram.”
“Look at that.” Clay slammed a hand on his chest. “You get to raid someone’s house, and you even get the honour of kicking in the front door.”
“The only way was up,” Taylor grumbled, but he was feeling better already.
“WHAT DO you mean the door was reinforced steel?” Brayden’s voice snapped nearby, and Taylor groaned, not sure why his brother was screaming in his ear. Taylor was flat on his back with no idea how he got that way, and wherever he was reeked of disinfectant. He guessed he was at the hospital. That couldn’t be a good thing.
“I mean the slimy bastard had reinforced the door from inside with fucking steel!” Clay snapped back from somewhere by the bed to Taylor’s left. They both sounded pissed, and Taylor tried to move, but his head spun and ached and he wanted to vomit. So he whimpered and prayed they noticed and would stop screaming over his head.
“And so what? Taylor ran at it head first?”
“No, Taylor and I had the ram, and when it rebounded off the door, the force jerked my arm and I dropped my elbow too low. Taylor kept coming and it bounced up and smashed Tay in the head!”
“Excuse me?” Taylor whimpered, hands clenching in the sheet he was lying on. He was definitely on a bed. Fire raced through his head, his brain agreeing with Clay’s version of events. “You dropped it?”
“Sorry” was all Clay had the guts to say.
“Open your eyes, Taylor, I need to check your pupils,” Brayden commanded. Taylor only did as he was told because he knew Brayden would pry them open anyway. The light hurt and his eyes watered immediately as he strained to focus on anything, but the world was swimming and he barely managed to tilt sideways before he vomited over the side of the bed, right onto Clay’s shoes.
“Aw… come on! I didn’t mean it!” Clay protested, but the worry was clear in his voice, and his hands weren’t steady on Taylor’s shoulders as he held him up.
“Lie him back down,” Brayden commanded. Taylor didn’t need to be told twice, letting Clay lower him back down so he could close his eyes again.
“You’ve got a concussion. Your skull is cracked, literally not figuratively this time. Your face is a mess, but your scans don’t show any bleeding or fluid build-up…. You’re damn lucky.” Brayden’s hand was cool and soothing on his cheek and neck, and Taylor hummed to acknowledge he’d heard.
“Thanks, Bray.”
“Scared the shit out of me, Taylor. I have to go talk to Mum, she’s freakin’ out in the waiting room.” That task no one envied. He hoped Brayden managed to convince her not to visit. His head couldn’t handle it right now.
Taylor heard his footfalls recede and sighed, aware of Clay pulling a chair up beside his bed and taking his hand, rubbing soothing circles on his wrist.
“Sorry, bro.”
“All good. Wanted a holiday.” He could feel Clay smiling against his wrist, where he leaned down to lay a light kiss. He hadn’t done that in years, though it had been a common thing when they were kids and somehow one got hurt.
“Sleep. I’m on watch.”
He didn’t need to be told twice.
HE WAS woken every hour, on the hour, for twenty-four hours. The result was his head still hurt, his face had time to stop swelling and start bruising, and he was tired and grouchy as hell. He also wanted to go back to the drug dealer’s house and burn it to the damn ground, but apparently everyone had been so pissed that Taylor got hurt that there wasn’t much left of the house anyway. They’d gutted it, and charged the man with every crime they could find evidence of guilt for, which was a lot when a team of riot squad officers put their skills together. It helped that they found an awfully large load of drugs through the house, and a lab in the garage. Not to mention the half-naked girl in the bedroom turned out to be underage.
It didn’t help Taylor feel better.
“Hey.” Clay yawned and stretched, still not letting go of his hand. It made Taylor smile, and he managed to squeeze a thanks back. He knew how he would feel if their positions were reversed and was glad he’d been at the back. If Clay got hurt, he was sure the drug dealer would have been murdered the second they’d managed to get the door open. Instead, apparently Clay had caught him, dragged him out of the way, and let the others do the raid, while he’d stayed at Taylor’s side. They looked the same, but inside they were wired slightly different. Clay was the better of them, Taylor was the dark. Clay was air, Taylor a tumultuous ocean. Not that they ever let anyone else realise that. It was far more fun to leave people guessing and watch them choose wrong. Watching people flounder halfway through a conversation when they realised they were speaking to the wrong person was plain old funny.
“Hey.” Taylor barely managed to foster the energy to reply.
“You wanna go home soon? Bray said next time you woke up, he could get the forms.”
“Yeah. Go get him.”
Clay agreed and squeezed his hand one more time before leaving. Taylor counted to five to make sure he really was gone before he made his first attempt at moving.
He tried leaning up on his elbows. His head pounded and his stomach protested, but he ignored it and was successful. Gritting his teeth, he sat up and had to wait a minute for the nausea to fade. His eyes were watering again, and he was sweating as he got to his feet and used the wall to wander through to the bathroom. He grabbed hold of the sink and looked in the mirror. Shades of purple mottled half of his face, and there was a huge bump on the left side of his head, visible under his hair. A few stitches ran across his forehead around several rich red and purple bruises.
“Goddamn….” He barely even remembered what had happened. He recalled getting the ram out of the truck and following orders to the door. He knew Clay went first; Clay always went first, Taylor didn’t trust anyone else to have his back. And then… not much after that. He was going to get ribbed. So much was coming his way, he didn’t want to go back to work. Maybe he could move to Tasmania and get a job as a lumberjack… you know, if anyone ever approved forestry again.
“Tay?” Clay’s worry was thick in his voice and Taylor chuckled snidely because even if he had walked into the hospital room and found his bed empty, it had to be pretty obvious where he was. And sure enough a few seconds later, Clay’s head popped around the doorway and the man heaved a huge sigh of relief.
“I’m fine. Just give me the damn forms to sign.”
“Prove you can walk out here on your own, and you can sign them.” Brayden’s voice came through, and Taylor rolled his eyes, following orders and wearily wandering back out, gesturing at his face with a scowl.
“You call this good work?”
“I didn’t mean to lower the ram….” Clay immediately looked like Taylor had drowned his non-existent puppy.
“I meant the stitches, idiot.” This was why they couldn’t have a dog, seriously.
“They’re perfect and you know it.” Brayden sniffed haughtily, handing over the forms, and Taylor hurriedly signed them, aware his signature looked off and was far messier than usual, which was saying something, since no one was ever going to accuse him of having tidy handwriting to begin with.
“There. Now get me out of here,” Taylor grumbled, handing Brayden the forms and gesturing for Clay to lead the way.
“You have to go in a wheelchair.” Brayden tried to stall him.
“Like hell,” Taylor scowled at him, and there was no further argument. They all knew if there had been, Taylor would have been perfectly okay with beating up whatever orderly tried to make him. Clay would have felt the need to help him out and then Brayden would have had to try to explain to their boss why two police officers were arrested in a hospital while one of them was his patient. Really, it was far too much paperwork for everyone involved. Far better idea to let him walk. Or he supposed trundle was more like it. He was trundling. Joy.
“What are you smirking about? Your head looks like I attacked it with a bowling ball.”
“Nothing,” Taylor assured Clay, still grinning all the way to the Hilux, which was parked in a no-parking zone, with the police permit on the front.
“Not a word,” Clay demanded, and Taylor obliged all the way home, dozing off and not complaining once about Clay driving.
HIS PHONE was ringing. He needed to get that damn thing disconnected. He fumbled around on the bedside and managed to answer the call, all without opening his eyes or moving anything other than his arm, which was good because he didn’t want to vomit on his sheets. Mostly because that would require stripping the bed and actually doing some laundry. Washing machines were loud. His head couldn’t do loud right now. Which was why he let the phone drop away from his ear almost immediately.
“So you’re not dead! You’re not dead, and you still couldn’t think to call your mother and tell her that? What sort of son have I raised?” Chloe blubbered through the phone at him. Taylor heard the door open, and then the bed dipped and he sighed at the gentle hand that trailed down his neck to settle in his hair while Clay picked up the phone.
“Mum, I just told you he was fine and at home and that he was sleeping. Why the hell would you wake him up?”
“He needs to be woken up, he’s got a concussion. Brayden told me! I did research. You have to wake up concussed people!”
“He’s been released from hospital, and it’s been more than twenty-four hours, and your son the doctor said he was fine,” Clay tried to point out reasonably. “I think Brayden’s slightly more qualified than Wikipedia.”
“Taylor’s skull has a crack in it!” She screeched through the phone, so loud Taylor thought their neighbours could probably hear it.
“Which is nothing out of the ordinary,” Clay stupidly reminded her. “We’re always breaking stuff. It’s our status quo. He’s fine. I’m fine. If you stop calling him, he can get some more rest, and he’ll feel better sooner and get to visit you sooner!”
Jay squirmed, but he was only seven and Brayden wasn’t letting him get loose, so he sighed and gestured back toward the house, rolling his eyes. “She’s in the fridge,” he confessed as if this were completely normal. Brayden paused and looked stumped for a minute before Jay was lifted over one broad shoulder, screaming for Brayden to put him down while he strode into the house, bellowing threats of punishment.
“How the hell did he fit Emma in the fridge?”
“I cleaned out the vegetable crisper this morning and haven’t put the shelves back in yet,” Chloe mumbled, sipping her wine as if she too thought her granddaughter being in her refrigerator was completely normal.
“Mum, Emma is in the fridge! And you’re just sipping wine!” Hayley gaped at them all, finally looking up from where she was ensconced in the corner on a beanbag with a beer in one hand and Woman’s Day in the other.
“Oh, please, Taylor and Clay put Ashley in the chimney once and then tried to convince your father to light a fire. Besides, Emma is my granddaughter, not my child. Brayden is perfectly capable of disciplining his own children.”
“Whatever. You know he’ll just tell Kelly and she’ll have to lay down the law.” Clay snorted, and they all laughed because Brayden was the biggest softie on the planet and it always fell on his wife, Kelly, to discipline the kids.
“Wait, you put me in the chimney?” Ashley was gaping at Clay and Taylor who shrugged, not seeing how that came as any surprise. They’d all been there.
“You were being a brat. Wanted us to play with you, so we did.”
“Excuse me?” Ashley’s mouth fell farther open.
“Besides, maybe that’s where your love of fires came from,” Clay mused.
“Mum!” Ashley protested.
“I don’t see what you’re so worked up about. You laughed like it was the best day of your life and told your father you were going to be Santa when you grew up.” Chloe waved Ashley’s concerns away and took another sip of her spritzer.
“Really, son, you look quite good in this picture,” Daniel said, holding the paper Brayden had discarded. “Though the Salisbury lad seems quite displeased with his father.”
Even Daniel, who was not known for being the best judge of character, thought there was something wrong about that picture.
“I don’t like that man,” Chloe said softly, and a little overly succinctly, trying to compensate for her tipsiness by speaking overly well. “There’s just something not quite right about him. Everything they do in public is so staged. No one is that perfect. It makes me wonder what they’re trying to hide, that they think they need to be that perfect.”
“Says the woman dressed as if the prime minister could walk through the door at any moment.” Hayley waved a hand at Chloe’s outfit.
“Oh, dream on, as if I’d bother to even put my pyjamas on if that prick turned up at the door.”
“Amen,” they all said at once, toasting the air.
“But seriously.” Leila squinted at them from under the shade of the arm she had slung over her face. “What did those guys need a rocket launcher for?”
TAYLOR GROANED as he lowered himself onto the bed that night, towelling his hair dry and flopping back onto the pillows. He loved his family, but an afternoon was all he could take. They were loud, and the conversations made no sense and went around in circles until his head ached. There was never enough food for the amount he drank, and then he had to stay longer to sober up before they could drive home, which led to more crazy conversations and somehow tonight had ended with him having to change Emma’s undies three times. Gross. She was supposedly toilet trained, at five years old, but had gotten tired and overexcited, according to Kelly. He never wanted kids.
He was dozing off when his phone rang and “blocked” came up on the screen. Sitting up quickly, he unplugged it from the wall and answered on the third ring. “’Lo?”
“Uh… is this Officer Jameson?” That voice. He’d recognise it anywhere, and yet again it went straight to his groin. Taylor sat on the edge of his bed and strained to listen.
“Yeah. This is Taylor.”
“Hi. Sorry it’s so late. I should have called earlier….” Sietta sounded tired. His breathing was heavy.
“No, its fine. Thanks for calling me.”
“Sure.” Sietta exhaled heavily, and there was a hitch to the word. Taylor thought it sounded like pain.
“Are you okay?”
“Huh? Yeah, no… I’m fine.” But he sounded confused. Taylor cupped the phone as if he could cup the voice and protect it from harm.
“I just wanted to apologise,” he explained softly. “I didn’t know I had been photographed. I hope it hasn’t caused you any trouble.”
“Uh… no, no you didn’t.” The hesitation was odd. Taylor replayed the reply in his head. No he hadn’t caused him trouble, but that didn’t mean Sietta wasn’t in trouble, for something.
“That’s good. I’d still like to apologise properly in person. Could you meet me for coffee sometime?” Taylor asked, trying to coax responses that might indicate what was awry.
“No” was the immediate response. It was too immediate. Taylor doubted Sietta had even heard the request. Saying no was a reflex. It made him blink as he listened avidly to the call.
“What, never?” He chuckled, trying to make sure Sietta knew he was playing. Sort of. Something was off, and he wanted to know what. That he was interested at all was off, but he was trying not to think about that.
“Never,” Sietta agreed, and again it was so immediate that it was stunning. Taylor’s mouth went dry and he struggled to think of something to say, but Sietta beat him to it.
“I’m very busy, Officer Jameson. I don’t have time to meet you, and it’s completely unnecessary to apologise for something that was neither your fault nor caused me any hassle, I assure you. Thank you for your concern. Have a good night.”
And just like that he was gone, the line dead. Taylor immediately called the office and asked for a trace on the last number. His boss wanted to know why, and Taylor explained. His boss promised to look into it, and that was all Taylor was told.
There was a light knock on his door. Taylor hauled the sheet over his groin as Clay opened the door.
“He called?”
“Yeah.” Taylor huffed, feeling hot and bothered for no real discernible reason.
“It’s fishy?”
“It’s so fishy,” Taylor agreed. “Boss is tracing the number.”
Clay dubiously studied Taylor a little too closely, but then the door was closed and Taylor exhaled loudly, flopping back on the bed and staring at his phone screen. He willed it to ring again. It didn’t.
Never. He’d never been turned down so abruptly.
3: Reinforced Steel
“SO, LET me get this straight,” Clay said again as Taylor drove them in to the office. “You hadn’t even finished asking and he turned you down?”
“Yes.”
“Just flat-out refused. You?”
“Yes.” Like it hadn’t been embarrassing enough the first thousand times he’d explained it.
“He actually said never?” Did his twin brother really need to spell it out, repeatedly?
“Yes!”
“That’s so harsh, man.”
“You don’t say,” Taylor muttered darkly. He’d spent most of the night waking up from dreams he couldn’t quite recall, to lie in the dark and ponder his strange late-night phone call. The more he thought about it, the more he’d been convinced something was wrong with Sietta Salisbury. But he also felt increasingly depressed because he never dealt well with rejection, probably because he was almost never rejected. Like, ever, really. But Sietta probably wasn’t gay, and he had no reason to go to coffee with him, so really Taylor had no reason to be upset. But he was and it was taking a great deal of effort not to show it.
So he was pleased. So extremely over-the-moon pleased when they drove into the carpark to find the van being loaded up, everyone already in their gear, waving them over to suit up because there was a time limit on the warrant they needed to execute.
“Oh hell yes,” Taylor huffed as he locked the car and went to get his body armour. Clay was still laughing as he checked him over.
“Jamesons!” Mendel called, and they looked over to see him standing with their favourite toy.
“You guys get the ram.”
“Look at that.” Clay slammed a hand on his chest. “You get to raid someone’s house, and you even get the honour of kicking in the front door.”
“The only way was up,” Taylor grumbled, but he was feeling better already.
“WHAT DO you mean the door was reinforced steel?” Brayden’s voice snapped nearby, and Taylor groaned, not sure why his brother was screaming in his ear. Taylor was flat on his back with no idea how he got that way, and wherever he was reeked of disinfectant. He guessed he was at the hospital. That couldn’t be a good thing.
“I mean the slimy bastard had reinforced the door from inside with fucking steel!” Clay snapped back from somewhere by the bed to Taylor’s left. They both sounded pissed, and Taylor tried to move, but his head spun and ached and he wanted to vomit. So he whimpered and prayed they noticed and would stop screaming over his head.
“And so what? Taylor ran at it head first?”
“No, Taylor and I had the ram, and when it rebounded off the door, the force jerked my arm and I dropped my elbow too low. Taylor kept coming and it bounced up and smashed Tay in the head!”
“Excuse me?” Taylor whimpered, hands clenching in the sheet he was lying on. He was definitely on a bed. Fire raced through his head, his brain agreeing with Clay’s version of events. “You dropped it?”
“Sorry” was all Clay had the guts to say.
“Open your eyes, Taylor, I need to check your pupils,” Brayden commanded. Taylor only did as he was told because he knew Brayden would pry them open anyway. The light hurt and his eyes watered immediately as he strained to focus on anything, but the world was swimming and he barely managed to tilt sideways before he vomited over the side of the bed, right onto Clay’s shoes.
“Aw… come on! I didn’t mean it!” Clay protested, but the worry was clear in his voice, and his hands weren’t steady on Taylor’s shoulders as he held him up.
“Lie him back down,” Brayden commanded. Taylor didn’t need to be told twice, letting Clay lower him back down so he could close his eyes again.
“You’ve got a concussion. Your skull is cracked, literally not figuratively this time. Your face is a mess, but your scans don’t show any bleeding or fluid build-up…. You’re damn lucky.” Brayden’s hand was cool and soothing on his cheek and neck, and Taylor hummed to acknowledge he’d heard.
“Thanks, Bray.”
“Scared the shit out of me, Taylor. I have to go talk to Mum, she’s freakin’ out in the waiting room.” That task no one envied. He hoped Brayden managed to convince her not to visit. His head couldn’t handle it right now.
Taylor heard his footfalls recede and sighed, aware of Clay pulling a chair up beside his bed and taking his hand, rubbing soothing circles on his wrist.
“Sorry, bro.”
“All good. Wanted a holiday.” He could feel Clay smiling against his wrist, where he leaned down to lay a light kiss. He hadn’t done that in years, though it had been a common thing when they were kids and somehow one got hurt.
“Sleep. I’m on watch.”
He didn’t need to be told twice.
HE WAS woken every hour, on the hour, for twenty-four hours. The result was his head still hurt, his face had time to stop swelling and start bruising, and he was tired and grouchy as hell. He also wanted to go back to the drug dealer’s house and burn it to the damn ground, but apparently everyone had been so pissed that Taylor got hurt that there wasn’t much left of the house anyway. They’d gutted it, and charged the man with every crime they could find evidence of guilt for, which was a lot when a team of riot squad officers put their skills together. It helped that they found an awfully large load of drugs through the house, and a lab in the garage. Not to mention the half-naked girl in the bedroom turned out to be underage.
It didn’t help Taylor feel better.
“Hey.” Clay yawned and stretched, still not letting go of his hand. It made Taylor smile, and he managed to squeeze a thanks back. He knew how he would feel if their positions were reversed and was glad he’d been at the back. If Clay got hurt, he was sure the drug dealer would have been murdered the second they’d managed to get the door open. Instead, apparently Clay had caught him, dragged him out of the way, and let the others do the raid, while he’d stayed at Taylor’s side. They looked the same, but inside they were wired slightly different. Clay was the better of them, Taylor was the dark. Clay was air, Taylor a tumultuous ocean. Not that they ever let anyone else realise that. It was far more fun to leave people guessing and watch them choose wrong. Watching people flounder halfway through a conversation when they realised they were speaking to the wrong person was plain old funny.
“Hey.” Taylor barely managed to foster the energy to reply.
“You wanna go home soon? Bray said next time you woke up, he could get the forms.”
“Yeah. Go get him.”
Clay agreed and squeezed his hand one more time before leaving. Taylor counted to five to make sure he really was gone before he made his first attempt at moving.
He tried leaning up on his elbows. His head pounded and his stomach protested, but he ignored it and was successful. Gritting his teeth, he sat up and had to wait a minute for the nausea to fade. His eyes were watering again, and he was sweating as he got to his feet and used the wall to wander through to the bathroom. He grabbed hold of the sink and looked in the mirror. Shades of purple mottled half of his face, and there was a huge bump on the left side of his head, visible under his hair. A few stitches ran across his forehead around several rich red and purple bruises.
“Goddamn….” He barely even remembered what had happened. He recalled getting the ram out of the truck and following orders to the door. He knew Clay went first; Clay always went first, Taylor didn’t trust anyone else to have his back. And then… not much after that. He was going to get ribbed. So much was coming his way, he didn’t want to go back to work. Maybe he could move to Tasmania and get a job as a lumberjack… you know, if anyone ever approved forestry again.
“Tay?” Clay’s worry was thick in his voice and Taylor chuckled snidely because even if he had walked into the hospital room and found his bed empty, it had to be pretty obvious where he was. And sure enough a few seconds later, Clay’s head popped around the doorway and the man heaved a huge sigh of relief.
“I’m fine. Just give me the damn forms to sign.”
“Prove you can walk out here on your own, and you can sign them.” Brayden’s voice came through, and Taylor rolled his eyes, following orders and wearily wandering back out, gesturing at his face with a scowl.
“You call this good work?”
“I didn’t mean to lower the ram….” Clay immediately looked like Taylor had drowned his non-existent puppy.
“I meant the stitches, idiot.” This was why they couldn’t have a dog, seriously.
“They’re perfect and you know it.” Brayden sniffed haughtily, handing over the forms, and Taylor hurriedly signed them, aware his signature looked off and was far messier than usual, which was saying something, since no one was ever going to accuse him of having tidy handwriting to begin with.
“There. Now get me out of here,” Taylor grumbled, handing Brayden the forms and gesturing for Clay to lead the way.
“You have to go in a wheelchair.” Brayden tried to stall him.
“Like hell,” Taylor scowled at him, and there was no further argument. They all knew if there had been, Taylor would have been perfectly okay with beating up whatever orderly tried to make him. Clay would have felt the need to help him out and then Brayden would have had to try to explain to their boss why two police officers were arrested in a hospital while one of them was his patient. Really, it was far too much paperwork for everyone involved. Far better idea to let him walk. Or he supposed trundle was more like it. He was trundling. Joy.
“What are you smirking about? Your head looks like I attacked it with a bowling ball.”
“Nothing,” Taylor assured Clay, still grinning all the way to the Hilux, which was parked in a no-parking zone, with the police permit on the front.
“Not a word,” Clay demanded, and Taylor obliged all the way home, dozing off and not complaining once about Clay driving.
HIS PHONE was ringing. He needed to get that damn thing disconnected. He fumbled around on the bedside and managed to answer the call, all without opening his eyes or moving anything other than his arm, which was good because he didn’t want to vomit on his sheets. Mostly because that would require stripping the bed and actually doing some laundry. Washing machines were loud. His head couldn’t do loud right now. Which was why he let the phone drop away from his ear almost immediately.
“So you’re not dead! You’re not dead, and you still couldn’t think to call your mother and tell her that? What sort of son have I raised?” Chloe blubbered through the phone at him. Taylor heard the door open, and then the bed dipped and he sighed at the gentle hand that trailed down his neck to settle in his hair while Clay picked up the phone.
“Mum, I just told you he was fine and at home and that he was sleeping. Why the hell would you wake him up?”
“He needs to be woken up, he’s got a concussion. Brayden told me! I did research. You have to wake up concussed people!”
“He’s been released from hospital, and it’s been more than twenty-four hours, and your son the doctor said he was fine,” Clay tried to point out reasonably. “I think Brayden’s slightly more qualified than Wikipedia.”
“Taylor’s skull has a crack in it!” She screeched through the phone, so loud Taylor thought their neighbours could probably hear it.
“Which is nothing out of the ordinary,” Clay stupidly reminded her. “We’re always breaking stuff. It’s our status quo. He’s fine. I’m fine. If you stop calling him, he can get some more rest, and he’ll feel better sooner and get to visit you sooner!”
