Page 56 of Laying Low

“Bratva crashed the gate at the border last night.We’ve got a few in custody, but they split up to look for you.We’re going to call local authorities to come protect you.The locals have no masks, no tac gear—they might even have bright red suits and goofy hats.I know you’ll be respectful.”

Reg’s whole body went cold.“Oh Jesus.”

“Yeah.See you in two hours.Be safe.”

And then Val hung up, leaving Reg terrified and pissed off at the same time.

Which was, of course, what Val had in mind.

“Are you okay, sir?”asked the nice registration nurse, eyeing him with concern.

“Do you have brothers?”he asked, some of the dizziness sloughing away, replaced with purpose.

“I do.”

“So you understand what it’s like to thank God for them right before you strangle them in their sleep, right?”

She laughed.“Yes.Yes I do.”

He nodded grimly.“Okay.So besides my brothers making my life absolutely miserable, what I learned from that phone call was there are bad guysstilllooking for the kids I’m with, and good guys—like Mounties, possibly, and border patrol, and a whole cavalry—are on their way here.I have no idea who’s going to get here first.I’m going to go stay with the kids, but if you want to send security our way to stay with us?That would be great.”

She opened her mouth in surprise, and Reg strode down the hall to where Anthony had disappeared into the exam rooms and hoped for the best.

“HEY, ANTHONY,”Ilia whispered, the “Mr.McCauley” burned away by the last five intense days.“Did you see that guy?”

Anthony, who had been holding Reynaldo’s hand as the boy slept, a decongestant and a febrifuge leaking into his arm with antibiotics and a sedative and fluids in general, glanced up.

“What guy?”he asked, alerted by the panic in the boy’s voice.

“There was a guy—a guy in a white coat.Like a doctor, but not.”

“How do you know he was not?”Anthony asked, his respect for the boy’s common sense high enough to take him very seriously.

“He looked very much like my uncle Lem,” Ilia said, and Anthony watched as the boy swallowed.“But younger.Thinner.A cousin I never met, perhaps.I… he is blond and blue eyed, like me, but his face is like a knife blade.”The boy wiped his eyes, like the rest of them too tired and worried and scared to be brave.“Like he had no mother to make the world softer, you know?”

“I know,” Anthony murmured.“Here.I want you to do me a favor and go to the bathroom.”The room—for all the smallness of the hospital—had an adjacent bathroom with a tiny shower.“Take a shower.You have an extra set of clothes, right?”

Ilia glared at him.“So I can be naked when they kill me?”he asked indignantly.

“Did he look in here?”

Ilia shook his head.“No,” he admitted.

“Then they don’t know you’re here yet.If they come for Reynaldo, I’ll call for security or… you know.”

“Fight them off?”Ilia asked skeptically.

“Oh ye of little faith,” Anthony chided, although for the thousandth time, he cursed the weapon he’d left locked in the Subaru in Tillamook.“But either way, I’ll protect you as long as I can, and you can feel like you didn’t sleep in the bottom of a fish barrel.”

The doctor—a perfectly nice Indian man who had been as kind to Reynaldo as could be—had given a delicate little sniff and tried not to grimace as he’d taken in the three of them.Anthony had stopped smelling the dankness of fish and sweat and metal and salt water, but he’d guessed then that maybe the rest of the world wasn’t so lucky.

“I can wait to not smell like fish,” Ilia told him obstinately, and then his chin wobbled again.“Please?I feel as though all of this is my fault.Let me… I don’t know.Leverage myself?Is that how you’d say it?If I have to?”

“No!”Anthony protested.“They were after Reynaldo, Ilia.You just made things more interesting.And for the record, so did my government.If they hadn’t been fascist fuckheads, we could have gone to them for help instead of running away from them because they want to put you in death camps.This wasn’t your fault.You and Reynaldo….”He smiled bitterly.“You just wanted what I wanted from Reg that night.A kiss.Only a kiss.”

Ilia surprised him by taking his hand in comfort.“I got my kiss—it was wonderful.How was yours?”

Anthony grinned.“Perfect.”