He glanced over his shoulder and then crossed to the man’s bedside. They’d cut off most of his hair and clipped it down to put in the black strips of sutures that decorated his skull.
“I’ve got it,” Dylan said. He patted his pocket absently. “But I don’t know what you want me to do with it?”
The ventilator wheezed with monotonous regularity. The man’s chest rose and fell under the sheet in time with it. Dylan felt a twinge of guilt for bothering him, but not enough to stem the build-up of questions that spilled out of him.
“Did you know him?” he asked. “My grandfather? My family. Do I have one?”
Nothing. Dylan scruffed his hand through his hair in frustration. John Snow’s face was still a raw mess. He couldn’t even tell if there was a family resemblance.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” Dylan said. “Or what it’s got to do with me.”
“Nothing.”
The unexpected interruption made Dylan jump. His nerves were more on edge than usual. He swung around to look at Somerset. The big man slouched in the doorway, shoulder propped against the jamb and arms crossed. His dark blond hair was freshly—roughly—cut short, and the severity of it made the strong, raw bones of his face stand out.
He was dressed all in gray, from his heavy wool overcoat to the threadbare jeans worn close to white at the knees and groin.
It wasn’t the time or the place, but Dylan’s mouth still went dry. He cleared his throat with a harsh cough.
“What?” he said.
“It’s nothing to do with you,” Somerset said. “This? It’s my business.”
There had always been murmurs that Somerset was involved insomethingshady. No specifics. It was just based on the customers at Just-as-High and the whole… Somerset package. Dylan hadn’t believed it, but maybe those gossips had more to base their theories on than too much time on their hands.
“Should I send you the bill for my car then?”
In only the second time since he’d first crossed paths with Somerset, Dylan felt the man’s attention focus solely on him. Somerset pushed himself off the door and stepped into the room. He closed the door behind him.
The back of Dylan’s neck itched. He didn’t like being closed in anywhere. It wasn’t claustrophobia, it was experience. Even if it turned out you didn’t need a quick escape route, it never hurt to have one.
“The Chevy was your car?” Somerset asked.
“Technically, it still is.” Well, at least until the insurance company got a look at it.
“You found him.”
It didn’t sound like a question anymore. Dylan stepped back as Somerset stepped forward.
“He was hard to miss,” Dylan said. “And before you ask, I’ve no idea what happened. I didn’t see what happened. I only caught the aftermath.”
Somerset stared at Dylan. His eyes narrowed as a flicker of suspicion crossed his face, but then he seemed to dismiss the emotion with a faint shrug of his shoulders. Dylan wasn’t sure whether he should be offended or relieved at not being considered dangerous enough to be involved in this.
He went with relieved.
Somerset turned his attention toward the bed. “I suppose if you’re going to be found half-dead in the street, a paramedic is the best one to find you,” he said absently.
He reached down to grip John Snow’s wrist and turn his hand over. With its palm face down on the bed, old scars on the back of the hand were revealed under the harsh overhead lights. Thin, white lines fractured back toward John Snow’s wrists from his knuckles.
The casual familiarity in the way Somerset touched the other man made Dylan shift uncomfortably. It was like when Alice hugged him. He didn’t hate it, but he didn’t know how to react to it.
He should go. This was the part where he always sidled out of the room to leave people with better emotional regulation to deal with whatever was going on.
“Do you know him?” he asked instead.
That was… not a bad question. Dylan gave himself a mental pat on the back for that.
Somerset set the man’s hand back down on the cheap hospital sheet. “You could say that,” he said. “He’s my brother.”
