Ilse winced, leaning against the white wall by the privacy curtain surrounding Sawyer's hospital bed. She tried to turn, slowly, to glance towards the nurse, but her neck brace prevented the motion. Wincing, she waited, patiently, and then the nurse clicked her tongue and muttered, “All right, there we go. You've got a visitor, Tom.”
She received a grunt in reply and slowly opened the curtain with a soft rattle.
Ilse bit her lip nervously, staring at where Agent Sawyer leaned back in the hospital bed. Multiple bandages wrapped around the glass-cut arm. His leg was in a brace, and soft padding encircled his ribs. Sawyer's face was scraped and wounded, but as he turned to glance at Ilse, his eyes flickered with a spark of something close to amusement.
“You look like shit,” he rasped out, wincing as he spoke.
Ilse stared down at the sandy-haired agent. His baseball cap sat on the nightstand next to him where he'd demanded they place it. He'd managed on caffeine pills and sheer willpower for the last forty-eight hours. But once the paramedics arrived, Ilse had been in the middle of rousing back to consciousness when Sawyer had collapsed on the stage, his leg giving out from under him.
The doctor's report had been grim: multiple contusions, lacerations, and even a fractured leg.
“They ever find the source for your elevated heart-rate?” Ilse murmured, glancing at the monitors beeping next to Sawyer's bed.
He scowled at her. “Leave it alone.”
“I'm just saying,” she said, trying not to twist her neck. “Just seems like you might want to take it easy on those pills.”
“Coffee sucks.”
Ilse rolled her eyes, leaning back against the wall for something sturdy to brace against. For a moment, the two of them lingered in silence, watching as the nurse finally left the room to go tend to a beeping noise from down the hall.
Ilse wasn't sure what to say. Sawyer had saved her life. She didn't like that she'd needed saving. In a way, it felt like she'd been useless. She'd tried to empathize with a murderer, and it had nearly cost her everything. If she'd died, and if Duncan had gotten to Sawyer, then the priest would've perished also.
Her empathy nearly got someone killed.
But then again, how many times had it turned out the other way?
“What you thinking?” Sawyer asked, watching her with a furrowed brow. He barely twitched, but even so his face screwed up in an expression of pain.
She glanced towards his morphine drip, then frowned. “You're not managing pain?” she said.
“I'm managing just fine,” he retorted. “I don't trust those drugs.”
She frowned at him but decided not to bring up the caffeine again. Instead, she said, “I'm thinking about Duncan. Thinking about his father. We never even met the man.”
Sawyer winced. “Off the grid. Chances are he fled the state, or he's buried somewhere in that forest.”
Ilse winced. “I see. And Duncan?”
“Admitted to it all,” Sawyer muttered. “Not that he needed to. His little kill shack had more than enough evidence.”
Ilse felt another little flutter of grief. She sighed wearily, closing her eyes for a moment, simply listening to the droning background noise of the hospital, the sound of Sawyer breathing.
“You couldn't help that guy,” Sawyer said after a moment.
She blinked, watching him now.
The sandy-haired agent frowned. “You couldn't,” he insisted. “He was beyond help. We did our best.”
“We?” she said. “You did. I nearly got us killed.”
“I did tell you to wait in the car.”
Ilse snorted, but then winced, rubbing at the back of her neck. One of her eyes was bruised too from where Duncan had jammed his thumb. “Yeah... But that's not what I mean. I just... I thought I could talk to him. Thought I could...”
“Help him? Yeah, like I said. No go.”
“It just seems wrong, though. Seems wrong his dad messed him up...”
Sawyer snorted. “And who messed his dad up? And who messed the guy up before that? This shit has no end if you keep pulling threads, Ilse. It's everywhere, all the time. That's just how it is. You still have to take your shot...” He swallowed, wincing. “Metaphorically speaking, I mean.”
Ilse shrugged. None of this made her feel better. It all seemed so sad. She was used to empathizing with the victims of killers. But the killers themselves?
“You know,” Sawyer said, shaking his head. “We make a good team, you and I. If you ever get sick of your books...” He watched her, unblinking, “I could use your help on occasion.”
Ilse's eyebrows flicked up. She hadn't been expecting this from the prickly agent. “I guess we did all right,” she said. “I'm still not sorry for getting out of the car.”
Sawyer muttered something about a booster seat and child locks, but then his expression softened, and he flashed a weary smile.
Ilse returned the smile and waited for Sawyer to close his eyes. “The priest is going to make it,” she murmured. “At least, that's what the doctors say.”
“Mhmm.”
Mhmm, indeed. One of the victims would live. He'd have questions, worries, fears, pain. He'd need help, someone to walk him through the PTSD, the anxiety at even the strangest things. These were the people she worked with. The people who needed her help.
She needed to return to Washington. She needed to head home.