Page 12 of Rust of Control

Nate got a hand behind Jude's skull. A lump up already, tender enough that Jude hissed through his teeth. Bone hard underneath it, no give. He tipped Jude's face back to the light and watched the pupils. Both moved.

"I'm okay," Jude said.

"I know," Nate said, which meant: I'll tell you when you are.

He heard the footsteps before the voice and had them placed before Rand came around the hood.

"What the -" Rand stopped. He had the show shirt on. He did not have the face of a man who'd found someone he loved bleeding on concrete. His face was running numbers: who's here, what's it cost, what's the play.

"Hey." Rand's voice slid into the careful register. "Is he… what happened?"

"I don't know." Nate stayed crouched. He gave Rand one second and went back to Jude. "How long's he been down here."

"I called as soon as I could get to the phone." Jude had almost nothing left. "Forty minutes. Maybe."

Forty minutes. November. Bricks against his back.

Nate got a hand under Jude's arm.

"We're going," Nate said.

"Going where?" The careful had a working edge to it now. "He should be somewhere he knows. Our place is ten minutes."

Our place.

Nate said nothing to that. He said to Jude, low, "Come on. Lean on me."

Jude leaned. He came up with a sound he was trying not to make. Nate took the weight, arm behind his back, hand braced under the bad ribs, and Jude's arm came over his shoulder and they were standing.

"Hold on." Rand moved into the space between them and the truck. "I don't know who called you, but he needs me. Let me take him."

Nate looked at him.

Rand wasn't afraid of him. Nate had known that a while. Men who were afraid of Nate kept more distance and watched his hands. Rand held eye contact and kept talking, because talking was the thing Rand was good at, and he was good at it right now, even with Jude bleeding between them.

"I'm not stopping you from anything," Rand said. Reasonable. Almost kind. "I just think-" And he reached for Jude.

Jude's weight shifted against Nate's side. A fraction of an inch. Away from the hand.

Nate hit him.

One punch. Knuckles to the jaw, not a full swing. He kept it short on purpose, because a full swing was a fight and this was not a fight, this was a door closing. It put Rand back against the Charger. Rand stayed there, holding his face, looking at Nate with something that was not surprise. Nate saw that and kept it.

"Move your car," Nate said.

Rand glared death, then seemed to land on the conclusion that pushing right now wasn't the advantageous play. He moved his car.

Jude was out before they crossed the Lodge. Not sleep, exactly. His body had stopped spending itself and gone still. His head tipped against the window. Nate kept his left hand on the wheel and his right flat on the seat by Jude's knee, near enough to the ribs to feel it if the breathing turned.

It held steady.

The case file was still on the floor of the cab.

He thought about the text from three weeks back, the one that came in at one in the morning and had been half deleted before Jude sent it.

Nate had read it and filed it and not asked. Not asking was the one thing he had that Rand didn't. He'd waited. Jude would walk through his door when he was ready, and holding the door open was not the same as shoving him through it.

He thought about the call Jude had told him about after, weeks ago, the one through the wall. The number too big for a band that played biker parties. Rand's voice gone strange. I know what they are. I know what they do.