Chapter Text
November 20, 2017
16:14
Riley has no sleeves.
Her stupid little black jacket is back in the van, left behind so she wouldn’t overheat running through this hot, hot desert. Just one more way she screwed up today.
Pleather isn’t water soluble though, so it’s not like the jacket would’ve been any use to begin with.
Or maybe it would’ve been. Mac probably could’ve—
In. Out. With the breath, Riley brushes at her eyes and very carefully doesn’t look in the direction of that rhythmic, fluting hiss just a few feet in front of her. “Sam?”
“Sats are on the low end of normal, but holding steady,” comes the quiet reply, overlapping slightly with its echo in her commlink. “No cyanosis. And we’ve got plenty of fabric, Ri. The water is what we needed, and you brought more than enough for the time we have left.”
The mind-reading is a welcome distraction this time, and the reassurance steadies Riley’s hands as she works carefully with the shears. Halfway up the right sleeve.
The right sleeve, the warm, black fabric in one hand. The solid plastic handle wrapped around the fingers of her other. With each squeeze the blades click softly together, banishing the blue-screen numbness that hovers over her.
In. Out.
“Hey, uh. So how do you…do that?”
Sam’s answer is a low, sad chuckle. “The first? Just a guess, really, based on the fact that you don’t have that information in front of you. The second comes with a lot of training on micro-expressions. Several different ones crossed your face when I suggested cutting off mine and…the sleeves you’re working on, followed by the momentary glance at your own arms and a deeply disgusted macro-expression. It isn’t all that different from the programme you used on—“ she stops suddenly, the silence stretching uncomfortably between them.
“Elwood,” Riley finally whispers, and keeps cutting.
“You keep stopping to touch your arm.” Sam’s voice is quiet, apologetic.” I wouldn’t have said anything if you weren’t still thinking about your jacket.”
Riley glances at her hand holding the emerging black rectangle. “I didn’t even notice.
“Right sleeve is done,” she announces, as if it isn’t obvious with that last snip of the shears. She tries not to think about why she needs to fill the space. “And this’ll help with overheating?”
“Mm, and circulation. I really should’ve thought of it much sooner. That and the pulse oximeter.”
“A little less self-pity, please, from both of you.” Riley can’t help a small jolt: again, she’d forgotten Matty was there. “And I want you drinking that water as well, I want to hear you swallowing.”
This is not Nigeria. One second to soak the black rag she just made, and Riley obediently lifts the remaining half-bottle to her lips. Swallows, and brings the cloth down to the still face tilted toward her.
“You too, Sam. You both just ran two miles up and down hills, under extreme conditions. Stay hydrated now that you can. You’ve given so much….”
The bracing words fade into an easy background noise as Riley wipes gently at the sand and sweat along his hairline. The lines are deep: sharp grooves etched across his forehead and down the sides of his mouth. Lines of pain….
In. Out. Just the task. The slow sweep of her hand. The drops of water rolling down his weathered skin—
Movement.
Riley freezes, not daring to breathe. If he wakes up to her face….
But he doesn’t. After nuzzling into the coolness of the rag, Jack settles again with a soft sigh. Riley lets out her breath, silently as she can. Her thumb ghosts across his cheek.
If she’s quiet—if she’s so careful, maybe she can stay with him. He’ll stay out, he won’t even know she’s….
In. Out.
Riley closes her eyes on his blurring features. The whistle of air seems even louder in her ears. Accusing. “Sam,” she makes herself whisper. “We gotta switch.”
“What’s going on?”
“I messed up. I wasn’t thinking, I—“
“It’s under control, Matty.” And somehow Sam’s smooth, steady answer nearly makes even Riley believe everything is fine. “Jack is defying our expectations—as you know he often does—so we’ll adjust accordingly. Ri, you’ll need to move first, and once you’re situated over here—“
Saxophones scream, loud and brassy and sending Riley nearly out of her skin.
“Shit, Boze!” Her hand shoots to her back-pocket, fumbling as the cacophonous 007 theme blares over the still desert. “Shit, what do I—Matty, he’s callin’—“
“Do not answer, Davis. Track that phone and send the location to me, now.”
Finally Riley gets a grip on the device, jabbing at the mute button, fingers flying to activate Bozer’s GPS before the cut-off music notes have faded from her ears. She shoves away the guilt clawing at her, the selfish relief at letting Matty deal with the questions she doesn’t know how to answer.
In. Out. This is not Nigeria.
“Sent.”
Matty doesn’t waste time on words, just vanishes from the comms with a hiss of static. Not muted this time, gone. And that’s a relief too—
One Riley isn’t alone in feeling, if the deep sigh across from her is any indication. “I think,” Sam says carefully. “She’s beginning to realize that she can’t do anything right now. And that we’re at a point where listening in might be doing more harm than good.”
Riley can’t help looking up at that, her forehead wrinkling in confusion. “I mean. Maybe? But what do you mean—“
“D-Diane?”
The phone falls from her nerveless fingers to the sand. That gravelly voice…Too late, far too late Riley remembers her plan to switch places. Slowly, she looks down.
The dark eyes staring at her blink once. Twice. Riley’s brain screams at her to move—move closer, move away—but he holds her trapped in his gaze. She watches his eyebrows furrow. “Nah,” he murmurs. “Not—” there’s a sudden, sharp inhale through his nose, his bloodshot eyes widening. “Ri. Oh, God, no—!“
“Hey.” Suddenly free, her hands reach for him on their own, her body folding down until their foreheads press together—risk of triggering be damned, she can’t leave him like this. “It’s okay, Jack, hey, it’s okay. It’s, it’s okay, man. I promise. It’ll be okay.”
If she just says it enough, forces it to be true—
Jack’s heavy moan tears through her, his breath blowing dry and hot and sour on her cheeks. His chest heaves, knocking into hers with every rapid inhale. “Wh-what’re ya doin in this…awful place? Ri, where’s Diane, where’s your mama—“
“Sh-she’s home.” Riley lifts herself up to make firm eye contact as he shifts further onto his back. She grabs for his hand, forcefully ignoring the dark red still caked under his fingernails. “Mom’s good, she’s safe. I’m here to get you outta here and…and back to her.” In. Out. “Okay?”
“But...Ri? That…really you?” His eyes move over every inch of her, from the top of her head down to the hand in his, then wonderingly back up to her face. “I’ll b’damned. Y’re so big. So…grown up.”
For a moment, Riley closes her eyes. “I…I guess so. Yeah.” She raises the rough fingers wrapped around hers until their bony knuckles press against her lips. “I missed you,” she whispers into them, the words she wouldn’t let herself say for so, so long.
“I’m s-sorry, baby.” Jack’s mouth is trembling when she meets his eyes again, more tears rolling down his temples to land on the hand she moves to cup his face. “So…sorry. Never sh-shoulda left you. S-so little.”
“H-hey. C’mon now.” She forces a grin, her laugh hoarse and fake to her own ears. “T-twelve wasn’t that—“
“Shit—!”
It’s all the warning she gets and then he’s jackknifing, nearly headbutting her before she catches him by the arms and just manages not to get dragged back down with him. “Whoah, hey! S-slow down, big guy—”
“Ri,” he whispers, frantic. “Ri, there’s a kid.”
A shudder moves through her, dread settling like a rock in her gut at how he can’t seem to stay on any one track. “A…a kid,” she echoes helplessly, her mind racing, searching for any that he might be remembering from their shared past. “Jack, I don’t know—“
“It’s okay, Sarge.” Sam’s voice behind him—cool and official and very American with a soft twang—shocks Riley back into the present. “I’ve got your specialist.
“Corporal Sam Beauregard,” she continues as Jack lets Riley lower him back down. Shaken, Riley looks up to catch a reassuring nod before Sam refocuses on the vitals below her. “Medic. We’re here to get you boys back safe and sound, me and your Special Agent Davis. You remember Davis, from the NSA.”
Jack studies Riley, distracted with his struggle to process this new information. “N…NSA?”
She shrugs, trying to make it convincing. Trying not to burn with shame at forgetting so easily, at forgetting Mac and…everything. “I, uh, I got recruited straight outta high school.” Two hard blinks banish her tears as she does her best to work with Sam’s narrative. “They…I’ve always been good with computers, ya know?”
“She’s the one that found y’all,” Sam adds, quiet and too kind. “Real impressive. We couldn’t’ve done any of this without her.”
In. Out. Riley keeps her head ducked, unable to meet those green eyes again.
Laying it on a little thick, some hateful, bitter part of her wants to say. But Jack swallowed it, he’s beaming.
“That’s m’girl,” he whispers, squeezing her hand and giving it a little shake.. “Always knew y’could do…whatever ya put that curly head to.”
She swallows around the lump in her throat. “I…s-somebody had to chase you down, old man.” It’s so like their usual back-and-forth that she really could almost forget.
But Jack’s focus wanders again, eyes rolling to the side. Searching.
“Th’ kid.”
Mac might have a good year on her, but Riley should’ve known who “the kid” was from the beginning. Jack will always be focused on his partner, and maybe there was a time—long ago and fresh out of a cold, gray-and-orange hell—when she had ached with something sharper than envy over it. But hearing it now….
In. Out.
“We’ve got him, man. We’ve got him.” She lifts her head, needing Sam’s confirmation that her words are true. Breathes again when she finds it. This is their old mother-hen, this is Jack. She can feel the pieces of her world slotting back into place, hearing his worry.
“We’ve got him,” she says again, nodding firmly at Sam. “He’s safe, okay, right over—“
“No!” The hoarse shout, the vice-grip on her hand... Jack’s eyes are fierce, his face harder than she has ever seen it before. “You. Don’ un’erstand. Not safe. Stay…away from ‘im.”
Blue-screen, tingling fuzziness settling over Riley’s skin, filling her ears with static. “What,” She finally manages past numb lips.
“‘S’dangerous.” The face she knows so well swims into shades of light and dark with words that have lost all their meaning. “Blew his trainin’ officer…t’hell.
“Did he…what’d he do? Ri,” he pleads when she doesn’t answer—can’t answer. “If he—he hhhurt you—what’d that bastard—“
“We’re gonna figure that out, Sergeant,” Sam cuts in quickly. “Don’t you worry ‘bout your girl, alright? She’s good, I’ve got her.”
“No. Jack.” Riley shakes free of her shock and leans forward, cradling his hand to her chest. He has to understand, she needs him to understand. “Jack, listen, he’s not—Mac isn’t—“
“He isn’t gonna be any trouble,” Sam finishes before Riley can, her tone brisk. “You just worry ‘bout yourself. Alright? How’re ya feelin’ right now?”
Blue-screen.
“Corp’ral.” Dimly, Riley feels Jack stilling, relaxing into the sand with a sigh. His grip loosens. “Gon’ crash. Take care of ‘er for me.”
“No.” No, he can’t crash, no, he can’t think what he’s thinking, no, no, no—
“Help’s—“ Sam stops to take a breath. “Help’s comin’ soon, Jack. Real soon.”
But Jack isn’t listening anymore. “Shoulda stayed. Shoulda…Ri….”
“H-hey.” Riley drops his hand, reaching for his face as his eyes slide shut. “Hey, man, no, wait. Jack.”
His only response is the pulse thudding steadily beneath her fingers.
Gently, she rolls him back onto his side, grabbing for his wrist and holding tight to that rhythm. “I d-don’t get it.” The words, the questions stumble and trip and form and break inside of her. “Sam, why would you say—I don’t—they’re partners—Sam, he was wrong, Mac was wrong, I’m not a trigger, I….”
In. Out.
In.
Out.
Riley picks up the cloth in her free hand—too covered in grit now to be any use. She drops it back down in disgust. “Why?”
In the quiet, the only thing she can hear is…him.
“Please,” Sam finally whispers. “Don’t make me…He was wrong, alright? It doesn’t matter how or why.
“All that matters is that we don’t need to switch anymore.” Her voice changes, a kind of determined positivity bolstering it. “You can stay where you are now, yeah? And we’ll maintain the script in case Jack wakes up again before they get to us.”
Riley wipes at escaped tears, numbly surprised that she has enough gunk left around her eyes to leave streaks on the back of her hand. There’s so much wrong with that script, with what Sam is saying.
But the words hold a brittleness that matches her bloodless face when Riley’s gaze drifts up again. Sam—who was always thin, but whom the word “fragile” has never seemed to fit before now, her arms poking stick-like and starkly pale against her black, cut-off sleeves. Riley feels her face heat, remembering her own spiteful words to Matty.
“I’m sorry,” she murmurs, her voice thick. It’s not enough, not nearly enough. But it’s truer than she can say. “Sam…I’m sorry I haven’t looked.”
“You would have if you’d needed to.” Sam glances toward her with a weak attempt at a smile she doesn’t deserve. “I struggled with it myself, at first.”
Riley turns away, letting go of Jack to pick up the shears and wipe them clean on her pants. “You’re right. I promise. I would have.” She starts on the left sleeve. “But I’m sorry I haven’t.”
“For what it’s worth,” Sam answers after a moment. “I’m glad you haven’t, Ri.”
“I can’t…stop.”
She can’t stop seeing that glimpse through her phone: the head thrown back, face bone-pale and red with all-over blood; the structure…those horrible little cylinders stacked and stained rust-brown….
The Link’n Logs that Elwood had gotten her sometime when she was six—an apologetic splurge after one of his “rough nights”. Mom had helped set them up, smiling too wide while tugging her blouse down around her purpling wrist….
In.
With the out, a whisper. “You will never know…what you did for us, old man.” Determined, Riley firms her grip on the shears. Cuts a steady line through this sleeve, up past the elbow.
The fabric, the blades’ gentle clicking. Her own weight pressing down on her heels, grinding the sand into her jeans. It’s busy work, she can’t help feeling. Just something her teammate gave her hands to do while they wait these last ten or fifteen or however-many minutes. But it did help him, and doing this means Riley isn’t just sitting here getting lost in stupid—
There’s a moment, a single moment of incomprehension as she pulls the new scrap away. Maybe, she thinks in slow disbelief, she has gotten lost, too deep into childhood images. A fan of past grays and blues and purples super-imposed onto his skin….
In. Out. Riley closes her eyes tight.
Opens them.
She doesn’t realize the shears have fallen until Sam’s worried voice comes to her through static. “Yeah,” she might’ve whispered back. Blue-screen.
The hands were large, with long fingers. Longer than Elwood’s. Longer than hers—
“—need you to respond, I cannot do this on my own. Riley!”
“What!” Riley whips her head up—
The flash of irritation is gone. A shiver steals over her. “Shit. Sh-shit, I—“
“Hey. Hey. Ri?” Sam is staring at her, reading her face. Normally, Riley doesn’t like that. She doesn’t like people reading her.
“Sam?” She can feel goosebumps on her arms. Her bare arms.
“I need you to take some deep breaths for me. Alright? Deep breaths.”
In. She raises her hands and finds them shaking. Out. “S-Sam?”
“Whatever it is, we’ll get through it,” comes the soft, soft answer. “Alright? They’re almost here. Can you talk to me a little?”
In. Out. Riley lowers her hands. Her fingertips press hard into her knees—
She lets go with a gasp. “I w-was angry at him.” It isn’t what she meant to say when she opened her mouth. “F-for breakin’ the comms. Man, I was…so pissed.”
Her selfish, petty, stupid anger. Riley’s tears aren’t enough to blot out the mottled shapes beneath that black fabric; she closes her eyes.
Sam’s voice comes to her even. Unjudging in the darkness. “You had every right to be, you know.”
In. Out. “He said…” The words. The ugly, hurting words press against her teeth, refuse to stay inside. “He s-said…it was…me.”
“And it—“ there’s a pause, a single shaking breath. “We trapped you out there, Riley. All of us.”
Riley’s face crumples, muscles stretched painfully tight, aching. She pulls Jack’s arm into her lap. Her body folds over the warmth of it, curls over those awful, awful bruises.
As she hides her face against his shoulder, the keening in her own throat rises and falls and blends with the hushed accusations that won’t ever leave her ears.
In.
Out.
She can’t say how long it’s been when she first feels the sand rumbling beneath her. Eyes swollen and stinging, sore to her bones, Riley lifts her head to see Sam peering into the distance.
“They’re almost here, Riley.”
“I’m sorry.” Again. She will never stop apologizing, and it will never be enough.
“It wasn’t you.” Sam stares her hard in the face. “You have to know that. It wasn’t you.”
“It wasn’t…my fault,” she allows, the truth of it scraping at her throat. The blue-screen nothingness is gone, along with the confusion. It’s all knife-sharp clarity, Riley knows now what her teammate had been so afraid to say.
There’s only one kind of trigger she could’ve been, and he wouldn’t just…say that without reason.
Not Mac.
“Riley…there was very little time to tell me anything. But you saw Matty’s name, you weren’t the only—“
Sam freezes mid-excuse. White-lipped and wide-eyed, she turns away, ducking down, sweeping her hair back from her ear. By the time the higher pitch registers, the air has begun to catch. A rattle that lifts the hair on the back of Riley’s neck….
“No—” she presses her hand tight over her mouth as the rhythm staggers again. She hadn’t thought, not through this whole nightmare, it hadn’t even occurred to her to think….
One held breath of watchful silence and Sam’s shoulders slump. “The numbers, they’ve only dropped a little.” But her calm is shaking loose, unraveling. “He bought himself enough time, he…he won’t drown, he can’t.”
Riley swallows her sudden surge of nausea. To think of him just feet away, too far away and drowning on bone-dry land….
In. Out. She drops her hand. “He won’t.” She searches for the confidence Sam is losing and forces it into her voice. “He won’t, Mac always pulls it off. And…and this time’s not gonna be any….”
Different. Everything is different, horribly different. Unable to finish, Riley scans the dunes, the growing engine noise. “I see ‘em,” she breathes, turning back to her teammate. “They’re almost here. Sam, he’ll make it, he will.”
Sam squeezes her eyes shut when another inhale falters on its way into becoming an exhale. “We’re nearly done, mate,” Riley hears her whisper. “Just a little longer. You can do that for us, can’t you? Just a little longer.”
“He can.” They won’t lose him. Not Mac, not their crazy, brilliant, infuriating smart-ass who can hack the whole world. Her brash, cocky teammate—her friend who never failed to put his trust in her.
Suddenly she can hear his voice. “Are you ready,” he’d asked barely a month ago, looking into her eyes with full confidence that she was. Believing in her, even when Jack…hadn’t.
In. Out. Riley lowers her line-of-sight.
“You can do this,” she whispers fiercely, glaring across the sand into his face—wiped free of blood now, and she doesn’t flinch away from the mask of redness around his closed eyes and slack mouth, doesn’t try to escape from the sound of those stuttering, struggling breaths. She meets the accusations head-on and says it again, wills her answer into him. “It’s my turn to believe in you now, and you can do this. Mac, c’mon, they’re almost here, man….”
And then they are. Like magic, the vehicle roars to a stop at the top of their hill, some kind of crazy love-child between a jeep and a pickup and an ambulance—
Riley has never seen a more beautiful machine in all her life.
Jenkins is young, and for the first time Riley realizes what it must look like to outsiders when she and her teammates show up to save the day. He asks for her name. Sam’s. The location, and a date she can barely call to mind—she almost loses it at the guy before he moves on from her probably a lot quicker than it feels, with instructions to “keep up the monitoring for now, you’re doing good. We’re gonna come back to him.”
Her fingers stay latched on Jack’s pulse-point, counting beats and breaths while Jenkins mutters a quick “Davis is A and O-times-four” to his partner, who’s older by at least a decade.
“As is Cage,” comes the gruff answer. “But we’ve gotta move, right now.”
“You mean he’s still—“ the man cuts himself off quickly. “Fubar bundy?”
“CTD. We’re gonna trach and vent right here, then treat with diesel. This is baptism by fire, kid, you ready?”
“Always.” There’s a familiar tone of suppressed excitement in the younger man’s voice—Jenkins is eager for the challenge they’re throwing at him. Already he’s moving, grabbing equipment from the ambulance and loading it onto the massive-wheeled stretcher, steering it with confidence back toward them. “You know I’m wasted as a white cloud.”
Don’t get cocky. Follow my lead and you’ll be fine. ”
“Will do.”
It aches at the same time that it helps, hearing these guys so obviously in their element. Riley had forgotten what it felt like. Doesn’t want to ever feel it again if….
In. Out, matching Jack’s exhale. She resists the urge to reach down and smooth away the line between his brows, half-afraid her touch will be the thing that breaks him out of oblivion.
They’re getting Sam’s input now, confirming when the ketamine was given. It seems so much longer than half an hour—but there’s an obvious relief in both men at the number: Mac will stay under without needing any further sedation while they make the second airway below the first, a full tracheostomy. The Mylar gives a long crinkle—
A flurry of frantic movement and Sam is pressed hard against her back, shaking and whispering apologies. “I can’t. I can’t, I’m sorry, I can’t.”
Closing her eyes, Riley reaches up one-handed for the arms wrapped like iron bands around her shoulders. She holds onto them through the quiet instructions of Jenkins’ partner. Distantly, she realizes that she doesn’t even know the man’s name.
In. Out.
A deep, dragging breath echoes hers. “I promised him.” Another. “Riley, I promised I’d get him out. I promised.”
“You did. You got both of ‘em out. You did. You did, Sam.”
Over and over again she says it, again and again and again, until her teammate’s trembling eases. A clammy forehead falls against her shoulder blade with another heavy sigh.
“I don’t know what this is.” The voice is low with despair. “I’ve never seen it before, Riley.”
Riley focuses on Jack’s pulse. His breathing, his warmth. “He’s gonna wake up,” she whispers, trying to find his steadiness. “They’re both gonna w-wake up an’ it’ll be like it was. Okay? Jack’ll be good, and Mac’ll be good, and we’ll all…all be….”
Machinery clicks on, a slow, steady shhhushhh-ing tempo. A quiet “well done, kid” from the older EMT. Riley chokes on a sob.
It’s all bullshit. Such bullshit. Those horrible purple marks….
Jack.
In. Out. She tries again. “He’ll remember him. He’ll remember. They’re partners—”
Her voice breaks as the footsteps and stretcher with its machine shuffle pass them. Sam’s arms tighten around her.
Together, they breathe.
Jack shifts at the sternum rub, but doesn’t wake. Jenkins hooks up IVs while his partner—Harrison, Riley learns—helps both women get their long-past-numb legs under them, speaking cryptically into a walkie-talkie the entire time.
“Be advised, 1-1: their director was right, there’s only one DOS. Two critical A and O-zeroes on board. A possible third A and O-four,” he adds, eyeing both her and Sam as he lowers the device. “We’ve got room for one of you in the cab with Jenkins.”
“Davis will go.” Sam says before Riley can open her mouth. “She’s his family.”
The “no” comes sharp and fast, and the moment it leaves Riley knows it’s right. “No way,” she says again, turning back toward her teammate. “Sam, you’re not thinking—“
“You have until we get him loaded up to decide,” Harrison cuts in. “There’s no time. I’d prefer both of you in there but it’s impossible, as I’ve tried to make your director understand.”
Riley spins to face him, urgency racing in her heart. “Did Matty tell you guys what’s goin’ on with him? With Jack?”
He nods. “I was in Desert Storm back in the day.” His face softens a degree. “It wasn’t Afghanistan, but I can have us in the Middle East if we need to be.”
“Okay.” In. Out. “Okay,” she murmurs again. Looks him in his dark eyes as she echoes the words Jack had spoken to Sam. “You take care of ‘em. Alright? Take care of ‘em for me.”
Jenkins calls out his readiness. Harrison gives her another stern nod, then moves to help his partner.
A hand lands on Riley’s shoulder. “Wait.” It’s Sam, and Riley isn’t sure how she’d never heard it before now, the sense of imminent collapse beneath the stone of her teammate’s voice. “Riley, if Jack wakes up in there—“
“If Jack wakes up in there, it’ll be him and his bomb guy,” Riley finishes. “I won’t be a thought in his head.”
“Riley—“
“I’d be in the cab anyway.” The fingers clutching her shoulder are cold. Riley turns again and takes them in hers. Squeezes tightly as she stares into desperate green eyes. “I’m not gonna leave you alone again,” she whispers. “Jack—both of them would want us to stay together. You know that.
“Sam, it’s still two miles to the van. And you haven’t been drinking any water.”
Silence for a few seconds. “I’m not sure I could keep it down,” Sam admits at last, dropping her gaze.
With one last squeeze, Riley releases her and runs to the stretcher. Grabs Jack’s limp hand and presses it to her lips. “Come back to us. Okay? And don’t—“ In. Out. “Don’t you dare let him go anywhere. Don’t, Jack.”
Forcing her feet to step away as they raise him into the back is the hardest thing Riley will ever do. Harrison follows quickly behind the stretcher, and Jenkins slams the doors shut with a clang. Spitting sand, the tires bite into the dune….
She turns her back before they’re gone, rushing to help Sam collect the stuff left on the ground and cram it into her backpack. The shears. The last three waters. Her phone goes into her pocket covered in grit. There’s another nearby, busted on a rock.
“The fixer’s,” Sam mutters as the rumbling engine fades. “Jack was using it when—”
“Yeah.” Riley stuffs it into the backpack as well. If she just keeps moving, the sick regret at letting him leave won’t swallow her whole. “Matty’ll want it. What about the rest of his stuff?”
“Jacket was empty. A team will come get the man and do a more thorough search when they clean up the place.”
In. Out. “Okay.” She skirts around the piled-up Mylar and ice packs, the indentations and dark splotches in the sand. Beside her Sam picks up slices of brown leather and rubber sole.
Move, move, move—
Her own boot knocks into something small and hard with a clunk. Flashing in the sun, it skitters across the top of the hill.
Stops.
Riley stares down at it for a long, long time. One heavy foot moves her forward. Another. Another.
In. Out.
She sinks to her aching knees.
The chunky, metal band lies heavy in her palm. With a fingertip Riley traces the lines of its face. The pointed nose, the proudly-upright ears.
“It’s s-such a stupid little thing.” A laugh sputters out of her as Sam’s shadow approaches. “I…d-don’t even know where he got it from. It’s just…it’s so friggin’ dumb.”
Her fist closes around it. Rocking, she jams her knuckles against her mouth.
Jack. Why?
Two hands grasp Riley’s elbows gently, lifting her to her feet. Slender arms wrap around her, holding her still.
“You can ask him. Yeah?” Sam breathes in. Out, and Riley follows. “You can ask him when you give it back to him.”
Riley nods against Sam’s chest. “Yeah.” In. Out. “Yeah, I will.” She makes herself push away, rubbing at her face. “Probably got it from some…Harley Davidson gangbanger.”
“Mac won it for him counting cards,” her teammate adds.
“Then they…b-blew up the bar.” Riley snickers. “Try’na get away from the hornets’ nest they kicked over.”
The watery smile passing between them dies a quick death.
It's time to go.
Riley’s thumb is the only digit that will fit the ring. Slipping it past her knuckle, she hefts her bag onto her shoulder.
Sam takes her hand, and squeezes it tight without looking at her. “Whatever it is, Ri…we’ll get through it.”
“Yeah.” She closes her eyes. Opens them to gleaming gold and blue.
In. Out.
In.
Out.
Two miles to the van.
Together, they start walking.