If he was living ‘over the shop’ though, he was asleep.
Dylan stooped to pick up a stone off the ground. He stepped back, ready to chuck it at the window like he was in a YA romcom. His arm was cocked back when he caught the iced-over flicker of a red light on the camera over the door.
He dropped the stone—trying for discreetly—and turned the gesture into a vague wave instead.
Tomorrow. He could come back tomorrow. It was only—he checked his phone—six hours. If he couldn’t get in, neither could anyone else. If his watch was in there, it was fine.
It was logical, but the knot of anxiety in his stomach didn’t care.
When you didn’t have much, you hung onto what you had. In Dylan’s case, that had always been that old watch. It had been with him through six foster homes, juvie, and one tour in Afghanistan. He didn’t even remember his grandfather that well. There were only bits and pieces that might have been real or something he’d seen on TV. Dylan couldn’t even have sworn if the D. H etched on the back of the watch was his grandfather or not.
The only solid memory was the night the old man pressed his watch into Dylan’s hand, scarred old fingers hard as he closed Dylan’s fist around the soft leather and cold metal.
“Keep this for me,” he’d said. There was an accent to his voice, but Dylan had never been able to place it. Not from those few words. “I’ll be back for it.”
That had been a lie. Dylan still hung onto the watch. He wasn’t a superstitious man, but it felt like bad luck not to have the thing on him. Nothing good had ever happened to him when he didn’t have the watch. That was why he kept it in his jacket pocket and not in a locker or left at home.
Of course, plenty of bad things happened when hedidhave it. That didn’t seem to strike the same chord.
The uncertainly pinned Dylan in place. He fidgeted with his phone as he chewed on his raw-feeling lower lip. The cold had found the tender bones under the bruises, and a skull-cracking headache settled in.
One last time, he made the bargain with himself. Then, if he couldn’t find a more-or-less legal way in, he’d come back tomorrow.
He stuck his hands in his pocket and headed back to the front of the bar. Maybe he’d missed an open window? Or if he set the alarm off?
If it pissed Somerset off, he could spank Dylan for it if he wanted.
Yeah, even that wasn’t going to be enough to distract Dylan from his missing watch. That was a shame.
He was almost at the mouth of the alley when there was a sudden, deafening crash. A burglar alarm went off inside the building, shrill and monotonous. Dylan hesitated, but he’d made his whole career out of heading toward trouble, not away from it. He gripped his phone in one hand and broke into a jog.
The first thing he saw was his car. Or what was left of it.
Broken chunks of glass from the windows were scattered over the frosted pavement like glitter. Splashes of bright, hot red were mixed in with it. Blood smelled different in the cold, but Dylan still recognized it.
He jogged across the snowy pavement toward his flattened car.
The next thing he saw was a bare foot, the nails grayish and the tips of the toes split and raw, dangling through the broken windscreen. It led up into a leather-clad leg, the heavy-wear practical leather of a biker rather than fitted and fashionable, and the slack sprawl of a body cradled in the caved-in roof of the Chevy.
“Shit,” Dylan said.
He crossed the last few feet to the car and scrambled gracelessly up onto the hood. The metal was so cold that he lost skin where his fingerprints stuck to the hoarfrost. They’d grow back. Dylan pulled himself half up onto the roof to look at the man. His face was swollen and discolored, badly beaten, and the white T-shirt he had on was plastered to his chest with blood.
He was breathing, but it was labored and wet. Spit bubbled pinkly between his lips with each shallow exhale.
“It’s OK,” Dylan said. The chatter was autopilot, something for a panicked patient to focus on. Or that was the theory. This guy didn’t look like he could hear much, so it was mostly for Dylan’s own benefit. “We’re going to get you some help. It’s going to be OK.”
That sounded like a lie. Dylan ignored that as he pulled the man’s bloody shirt up, the fabric sticking to his fingers, to check out his chest.
Bruises dappled his ribs and chest in ugly, dark patterns. Those, Dylan noted down in a detached little part of his brain for later, were older than the other injuries. Long, ragged cuts carved over the man’s ribs, skin and muscle flayed back until Dylan could see bone and the deflated flap of a lung.
Dylan set his phone down by his knee. He took his heavy jacket off and then pulled his T-shirt over his head. It was makeshift but the best he could muster. He wadded it into a ball and pressed it against the seeping wounds. The pressure he had to apply made the man groan and open his eyes. They looked black, unfocused, and glazed.
“I’m sorry,” Dylan said. “I know it hurts, but I have to stop the bleeding. Try to stay calm.”
He dug his fingers into the cotton, already soaked with blood, to hold it in place while he grabbed his phone. He’d not turned the light off, and it played over the man’s limp body as Dylan fumbled with the screen. It turned the dark, sticky wounds into fresh, gory red ones.
9-1-1, he jabbed into the touch-screen.
