Page 44 of Act Like You Don't Care
“The police are looking into it. We’re going to pull the video feeds for them once the building is clear. It had to have been when we pulled the perimeter here to bulk you guys up in Kentucky.”
“Shit,” I said, with feeling.
“Miles?” Tam said plaintively, completely ignoring the exasperated paramedic.
That damn cat. “Dad’s going to see what he can do. How are you feeling?”
“I’m fine,” Tam insisted. He did look better now, but his eyes still weren’t tracking properly. “Please. She’s been my only real friend for years. I can’t—” He broke off, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes as if he couldn’t bear to see the world.
I squinted up at my father. “There’s a small gray cat up in the condo. Long hair. Can someone look for her?”
“I think they might have her already,” he said, gesturing at the front of the building where someone in a full face mask and fire suit was coming out of the building with a small, blanket-wrapped bundle in his hands.
“Badness!” Tam yelled and bolted before I could reason with him. I gave Dad an exasperated look and took off after him, hoping that Tam didn’t ricochet into something that would cause real damage. He looked like he was drunk, running along the side of the building and trying to dodge all the people and equipment that a situation like this brought out.
When I caught up to him, Tam was sitting on the bench in front of the building, holding the cat and breathing in deep, desperate gulps. “He killed her. She’s dead.” His face had gone pasty white and his eyes were closed. “I want to go home,” he whispered, soft enough I was certain he hadn’t meant anyone to hear.
Where was home to Tam?
“Let me see,” I said gently. Whatever it was that had filled the apartment, the effects were already wearing off on me. Tam seemed to be a little slower to clear it out of his system, but he’d also been through more of the apartment.
He opened his eyes to glare at me and his arms tightened around the little body in its blanket. I waited, because I knew how much she meant to him and I didn’t want him to think I didn’t care. He sat quietly beside me for another long moment, gently rocking the cat’s body, then he reluctantly gave her up to me.
I laid her out on my lap and unwrapped the blanket. She was entirely still and for a moment, I thought sadly that Tam had been right and I’d just made the situation worse. But her gums were still pink and, when I watched closely, I thought I saw something other than the breeze moving the fur over her ribcage. Quickly, I glanced around, caught my father’s eye, and called him over with a jerk of my head. “We’re going to send her to the vet,” I told Tam, who was watching me numbly. “Just to make sure.” It might have been a poison, but given how I was feeling now, I was betting not.
Dad crouched in front of us. “What’s up? We need you two to go to the hospital, then you,” he pointed at Tam, “are going to our safe house until this guy is caught.”
“I need you to take the cat to the vet, get her checked out. I don’t think he planned to kill Tam up there. And I think, maybe, she’s just heavily sedated. Watch her sides.” That caught Tam’s attention and his expression brightened, hope and fear at war in his eyes. We all three stared at the cat, watching with nerves jangling while we waited for another shallow breath.
Suddenly, Tam grabbed my arm and squeezed hard enough I was going to bruise later. “She is! She is!” Unthinking, he threw an arm around my neck and kissed me roughly somewhere around the corner of my mouth, then started to gather her up again. “We have to go!”
I hated to do it, but I put my arm around his shoulders and pulled him back down onto the bench. “Dad will take her, or Rick. Or Jim. One of them. You’re going to the hospital so we can make sure you didn’t get too much of that stuff.”
He opened his mouth to argue but I squeezed his shoulders and shook my head, staring him down. He was starting to shake now—I wasn’t letting him out of my sight. And we still didn’t know what that gas was.
Dad caught my eye and I knew that I was going to be answering some questions about that kiss later, but that was a problem for tomorrow’s Miles to deal with.
“Your mother is on her way,” Dad said. “She’ll know the best place to take him.”
“Her. Her name is Badness,” Tam said.
The paramedic came over to us again. “If you’re not going to the hospital, I need you to sign this form.” He held out a steel clipboard with a triplicate style form clamped to the top of it.
“He’s going,” I said and started to push myself to my feet. The world spun for a second, then righted itself. “Me too. I got dosed as well.”
“Miles,” Tam began but I shook my head.
“Give the cat to Dad, he’ll make sure she gets to the vet. There’s nothing you can do right now except make sure you both get proper care.”
I thought for a second he was going to fight me on this, as bullheaded and backward as that would have been. Then silently, he handed the cat over to my father and let himself be strapped in on the ambulance stretcher.
Tam
Real hospitals weren’t anywhere near as nice as the ones on TV shows. Even when you were in a private room, with all the perks of good insurance.
My room was spacious, except for the crowd filling it up. I’d retreated to the chair by the head of the bed because it was the only space that hadn’t been taken over by alphas. Noisy alphas.
“I need to call my mother,” I said in the middle of the Ad Astra crew’s discussion on how to whisk me out of town without anyone noticing. They’d taken my phone for analysis, whatever that meant. Looking to see if someone had put a tracker on it, I gathered. Ridiculous, because that phone never left my side unless I was filming and then Will hung onto it. Actually, they’d taken everything of mine, right down to my underwear, and given me this set of scrubs that made me look like a cheap extra on a low-budget hospital drama.
