Page 29 of The Wrong Man

“The cloth,” I say, because I need to say something to break the strange tension building between us. “On my forehead. You’ve been...”

“Cooling you down,” he confirms. “Your temperature was dangerously high. I’ve been changing the compress every twenty minutes.”

Twenty minutes. Which means he’s been sitting here, watching over me, tending to me, for hours. The thought makes something complicated twist in my chest.

“Why?” The question comes out barely louder than a whisper.

He reaches for the cloth on my forehead, dipping it in a bowl of water I hadn’t noticed before. He wrings it out carefully and folds it into a neat rectangle before laying it back across my brow. The cool fabric feels like heaven against my heated skin.

“Because you’re sick,” he says simply.

“That’s not what I meant.”

His hands still. He looks at me, really looks at me, and for just a moment I see something raw and unguarded in his eyes. Something that looks almost like longing.

Then it’s gone, shuttered away behind that mask of careful control.

“Try to sleep,” he says, settling back in his chair. “Your body needs rest to heal.”

I should argue. Should demand to know what he’s planning, what’s going to happen to me, whether this strange gentleness is just another form of control. But my eyelids are already drooping, my body sinking deeper into the mattress, my thoughts scattering like leaves in the wind.

“Are you going to sit there watching me all day?” The question slips out, barely more than a mumble.

There’s a pause. Then his voice, low and rough, rumbling through the darkness that’s already closing in around me.

“Yes.”

It should be creepy. It should terrify me. The monster who broke me, sitting vigil at my bedside, watching me sleep.

But somehow, in my fever-addled state, it almost feels like safety.

That’s my last thought before sleep claims me again.

Chapter ten

Dante

Ihave never felt so helpless in my entire life.

Dylan is burning up. His skin is flushed and damp with sweat, his breathing labored and rattling in a way that makes my stomach clench with fear. Every few minutes, he shivers violently despite the blankets I’ve piled on top of him, his body caught in some terrible war between fever and chills.

I don’t know what to do. I am a man who always knows what to do. I have built my entire career on being calm, controlled, and competent in the face of any situation. I have dealt with bullet wounds and broken bones and men who begged for death. I have never once felt this gnawing, desperate uncertainty.

But I have also never cared whether any of those men lived or died.

I press another cool cloth to Dylan’s forehead and watch his eyelids flutter. He mumbles something I can’t make out, his head turning restlessly on the pillow. His strawberry-blond hair is dark with sweat, plastered to his temples in damp curls.

This is my fault. All of it. The days of stress and trauma that weakened his immune system, the cold shower I left him in for hours while I uploaded a video of myself murdering a man. The hypothermia I didn’t get him any medical help for. Every single thing that led to this moment can be traced back to my decisions.

If he dies, I will have killed him. Not with my hands or my tools, but with my carelessness and my cruelty and my refusal to believe the truth when it was staring me in the face.

The thought makes something twist in my chest. Something that feels dangerously close to panic.

I need help. I need someone who knows more about medicine than I do, which admittedly is not a high bar. I know how to hurt people. I know anatomy from the perspective of maximizing pain and extracting information. But healing? Keeping someone alive when their body is trying to give up?

That is not my area of expertise.

I reach for my phone and scroll through my contacts. Dr. Torrino is the obvious choice. The old man has been patching up members of our organization for decades. He is discreet, professional, and excellent at his job.