“What was that about?” Will asked when David returned to the room. “Where’s MacAllister?”
“Using the head.” David took the chair next to the bed and smiled into his eyes.
“Yeah? Then give me a kiss before he gets back.” Not that Will felt like kissing. His head ached like a son of a bitch, he felt vaguely nauseated, and for someone who had apparently spent fourteen hours in bed, very, very tired. And then there were the giant moth holes in his memory. But there was something troubling in David’s gaze. Almost a trace of sadness.
“I don’t think your doctor would —”
“Shaddup,” Will growled.
David leaned over, smiling, and their mouths brushed. That was better. Nice. Familiar.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Taylor said from the doorway, and David jumped and sat up as straight as if he were undergoing a military inspection. Or possibly a rectal exam, given the extreme discomfort of his expression.
“Didn’t anyone ever teach you to knock,” Will drawled.
Speaking of expressions, Taylor looked ghastly. His face was bone white, his eyes shadowed and red-rimmed. He looked sick. Will’s memory flickered. Something about Taylor being ill. Nearly dying? It worried him. He needed to hurry up and remember. But Taylor must be okay now because he was working again. According to Stone he’d been out all day chasing leads to last night’s terrorist attack. So he had to be okay, right?
Why couldn’t he remember this stuff?
Taylor still stood in the doorway. Since when did he wait for an invitation?
“You okay?” Will asked.
“Great.” Taylor came in and took the room’s other chair. He gave David a baleful look, and David looked guilty. What. The. Hell. It wasn’t Will’s imagination. There were more currents running through this room than the entire Pacific.
“How are you feeling?” Taylor turned to Will.
“Like someone dropped a piano on me.”
A familiar if faint gleam lit Taylor’s gaze. “Maybe you tried to sing for them.”
“Nah. I know better by now.”
“What’s that?” David asked, watching them.
“Will can’t sing,” said Taylor, who really couldn’t sing. “His dog howls every time he tries.”
That reminded Will of something. “If I’m posted here in France, where’s Riley?”
“I’ve got him.”
Will nodded. That made sense. Taylor was the closest thing he had to family in the Southland. “How did it go today? How’s the investigation coming?”
Taylor made an iffy motion. Will’s gaze sharpened. “You sure you’re okay? Your hand’s shaking.”
Taylor gave him a wan smile. “Long day.”
“I bet.” He didn’t like the idea of Taylor out there on his own. Talk about lousy luck. For both of them. “Some vacation.”
“Yeah.”
Will said slowly, “You’re staying with me?”
A muscle jumped in Taylor’s jaw. “Right.”
Will turned to David. “And you’re here for the D-day anniversary celebration, but you’re not staying with me.”
David’s expression was as blank as Taylor’s. “Right.”
Will’s head was starting to pound again. “And how long have I been posted in Paris?”
Taylor’s tone was hard to describe. He was looking at David, not Will. “I guess you’re supposed to remember all this on your own.”
“It’s a simple question,” Will said irritably. He closed his eyes. By now the throbbing in his head was making his stomach roil. “I thought amnesia was just something they made up for the movies.”
“Me too.” Taylor sounded a little bitter.
“We ought to let Will get some rest,” David said. His chair scraped back.
“You care if I sit with you awhile, Will?” Taylor’s tone was very casual.
“Yeah, stay,” Will reassured, not bothering to open his eyes. He knew how he’d felt when Taylor had been…
When Taylor had been what? It was there for a moment. The image of Taylor in a hospital bed looking like death warmed over. Had Taylor been shot? Where the hell had Will been that he let Taylor get shot?
Already the memory was slipping away. He knew he should pursue it, get this nailed down, but he was just too damned tired.
“Can I trust you?” David was saying. It was supposed to be a joke obviously, but there was an undernote of seriousness.
“Further than I can trust you.” There was zero humor in Taylor’s reply.
Will didn’t catch David’s response. Maybe just as well. The two guys he cared most for hated each other’s guts. That was a problem. But it was a problem he just didn’t have the energy for right then…
* * * * *
Will was having a very weird dream about Taylor. Not the first time. He’d had dreams about Taylor since they’d been partnered. It was only natural. Taylor was disturbingly attractive. More, he was sexy. Sex on legsas Will’s granddad would have said — though not about another man, God knew.
But this was definitely a weirder dream than usual. Taylor was lying naked next to him, and Will was feeding small, shiny globes of the world into Taylor’s exquisite ass. A little rope of them, each globe just a bit larger than the one before it, though not large enough for Will to make out what part of the hemisphere he was looking at. Not that that was the point. The point was that Taylor was moaning and squirming and begging Will for more each time Will pushed one of the smooth little balls into his pink little hole.
Will woke embarrassed and excited and aware that he’d come messily in his sleep. He remembered at once where he was, that there had been a terrorist attack on the catacombs, and that he’d been caught in an explosion with…wait. No. That was where the memories came to a shrieking stop.
Retrace his steps.
He’d been dreaming about Taylor. Okay, skip that part.
Taylor was in France.
Will stared at the empty chair beside the bed. Before the disappointment could sink in, he realized Taylor was in the room after all.
He stood at the hospital window, and he was gazing out at the starry night. He was rubbing the back of his neck, and there was a tired slump to his shoulders that somehow hurt Will’s heart.
If something was really wrong, Taylor would tell him. He wouldn’t keep anything from him, surely.
“So we’re not partnered anymore?” Will was still having trouble adjusting to that idea. He’d been shocked when Stone had brought him up to speed during her brief visit that afternoon. Of course they couldn’t stay partnered forever, but…
Taylor turned quickly and came back to the bed, pulling the chair around and straddling it. “No.”
“But you’re still posted in LA?”
“For now.”
“For now?” Will considered this uneasily. “You’ve been offered another posting?”
Taylor nodded, but instead of elaborating, he said quietly, “Do you really not remember, Will?”
Now there was a dumb question. “Why the hell would I fake something like this?” He regretted his sharpness at once as Taylor shook his head. He looked exhausted, drained. He looked like Will felt.
“What’s the last thing you do remember?”
Will squinted, trying to look back into the past. “It’s not like that,” he tried to explain. “It’s not like my memories break off. I remembered my name and what year it is and who’s president. I remembered being posted over here, sort of, and I remember we were talking on the phone. I remember all kinds of stuff, but it’s all blurred together and the gaps are…big.”
“And I’m one of them.”
Will couldn’t take the look on Taylor’s face. The naked hurt. He was embarrassed for Taylor, and at the same time he ached for him. “That’s not true. Of course I remember you, Tay.”
Tay? Since when did he call Taylor Tay? What kind of a sappy nickname was that?
Taylor was giving him a funny look, and no wonder, but the nurse chose that moment to swan in and tell Taylor in her painstaking English that visiting hours were over.
Taylor turned on the charm — he could be charming when he wanted to be, despite rumors to the contrary — and she allowed him another half hour.
“Merci, mademoiselle.”
Will found Taylor’s awkward French sort of cute, and so, clearly, did the nurse. She spent a few seconds flirting with him. The French flirted as naturally as they breathed.
When she’d departed on rubber soles, Will said, “Tell me about the investigation. What were you doing today?” Even as he asked, he was wondering exactly why Taylor was involved in a Paris RSO investigation when he was supposed to be on vacation.
“We’re not supposed to try to jog your memory.”
Will said exasperatedly, “How are you jogging my memory by telling me about stuff I never knew?”
To which Taylor snapped back, “How should I know how this works?”
That was more like the Taylor he knew. Will grinned at him and Taylor scowled, but his ire was already fading. He proceeded to tell Will the whole crazy story from the start, which no one else had bothered to do, either because they were trying not to overexcite him or they thought he remembered.
“You tried to get them to ground all the planes at LAX?” Will felt winded just thinking about it.
“Not all the planes.”
He even sounded offended, as though such an idea would never have crossed his mind. Will started to laugh, and after a second Taylor joined in. “You’re a nut,” Will commented. “I’ve always said so.”
Taylor rolled his eyes like Will was flattering him outrageously, and an image flashed into Will’s mind of the two of them standing on a mountaintop somewhere…the High Sierras?
“You’re a nut, MacAllister. Did I ever tell you that?”
“A girl never gets tired of hearing it.”
When was that? When the hell would they have gone camping? Taylor hated camping.
The next instant the vision was gone. Taylor was talking about what he’d learned about this Yann Helloco who might or might not be Yannick Hinault.
“I think he’s got a death wish. All he painted were graveyards and graves. Tell me that’s not seriously disturbed.”
“I won’t argue that with you. This is a guy who thinks planting car bombs and blowing up museums is part of the dialogue for change.”
“At least no one was crippled or killed when they blew up the museum.”
Will narrowed his eyes. There it was again. That glimmer of memory. He’d been on the phone talking to Taylor about the destruction of the museum and its collection of paintings by Jacques-Louis David, and David — his David — had been on the sofa listening. And there was some reason he didn’t want Taylor to know David was there.
Or was it David who couldn’t know that he and Taylor were…
Wait.
He and Taylor were what?
A picture flooded his mind of himself licking Taylor’s nipples, of Taylor whimpering his name, pleading for more. Christ. It was so real he could taste Taylor’s skin, feel the flushed heat radiating off him, the touching dampness of his underarms and groin —
“Man, you have a funny expression on your face,” Taylor remarked.
Will jerked back to reality. Taylor’s expression was curious. Will felt hot and uncomfortable as though his astonishing thoughts were running above him like a CNN Chyron. Brandt wants to fuck MacAllister.
He must have hit his head harder than he thought.
Okay. Focus on the job. That always helped in the past when he got to thinking undisciplined thoughts about his partner.
“So you think Helloco returned for this ex-girlfriend of his?”
“Do Ithink that? No. That was Tara.”
“Tara?” Will put a hand to his head. It was starting to throb again. “Right. Tara.”
Focus.
“So why do you think Helloco came back after all these years?”
Taylor said, “I’m not sure he is back.”
“You know what,” Will said as kindly as he could. “My head’s pounding like a son of a bitch. I don’t think I’m going to be a lot of help tonight.”
Taylor was already on his feet. “Right. I should have left ten minutes ago anyway.” He hesitated. “You’re supposed to be getting out of here tomorrow. Do you want me to pick you up?”
“David will —”
Taylor flinched. What was going on there? “Sure. Of course. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
He was at the door before Will could say good night, and now that the moment came, Will was dismayed at how much he didn’t want Taylor to go. Especially not looking like that.
Will called his name. Taylor turned in inquiry.
“You didn’t say where your next posting is.”
Voice and face were expressionless as Taylor answered, “Didn’t I? Iraq.”
“Iraq?” Will was surprised the monitors didn’t sound the alarm, because he was pretty sure his heart stopped.
It made sense, of course. They needed good people in Iraq. Taylor was one of the best. And he was overdue an overseas position. And this would be a promotion for him, and he’d earned it.
Yeah, it made perfect sense.
But Will had lost some close friends in Iraq. He didn’t want to risk losing another. Particularly not Taylor, the best friend he’d ever had. He loved Taylor like another brother. Like…
His head was pounding so badly he wondered if he should ring for help. He spoke over the thump. “Did you accept?”
“Not officially.”
“But you’re going to?”
Taylor hesitated. “Yeah,” he said finally. “I’m going to go.”
There was nothing left to say after that. Will listened to the soft, steady footfall of Taylor’s steps disappearing down the corridor.