She smiled at that and excused herself.
Doyle stepped into the space then, moving to stand before Larkin. His face was drawn and his pyrite eyes too bright—not with his usual sunshine, but unshed tears. His throat worked, Adam’s apple bobbing. “Can I hug you?”
Larkin nodded.
Doyle set his large hands on Larkin’s knees, pushed his legs apart, and stood between them. He leaned down, wrapped his arms under Larkin’s, and buried his face into the crook of Larkin’s neck. Very quickly, Larkin realized this embrace was not like Doyle’s typical hugs. This was desperate, him needing rather than giving. So Larkin reached his arms up and around Doyle’s neck, and despite the angle made more awkward by Doyle’s height, he squeezed as tightly as he could.
“You scared the shit out of me,” Doyle said as he pulled free but didn’t step out of Larkin’s space.
“Sorry.”
Doyle hastily wiped his still-dry face on the sleeve of his shirt and said, his voice closer to its usual comforting huskiness, “How do you feel?”
“Like a pedophile shot me with 100,000 volts of electricity.” Quieter, Larkin admitted, “I have a headache.”
Doyle touched Larkin’s right temple—unbeknownst to him, it was the exact spot that’d been cracked with a baseball bat—and then moved his hand to card fingers through Larkin’s hair.
“I passed out,” Larkin asked.
Doyle nodded. “Briefly. They told me you came around in the ambulance.”
“I don’t remember an ambulance….” Larkin raised his head and asked, “Did you ever watchThe Wizard of Oz.”
“Sure.”
“I feel like Dorothy when she wakes at the end of the film and says, ‘And you, and you, and you, and you were there.’ Old memories are all mixed up.”
“The doctor said to give it a few hours.”
“I guess.”
Doyle reached and finished buttoning Larkin’s shirt.
“Tell me what happened at the apartment.”
“After the second tase?”
“Hm-hm.”
Doyle popped Larkin’s collar, slid the floral pattern tie around his neck, and began to knot it. “I shot that sonofabitch in the kneecap.”
Larkin laughed suddenly, reflexively at Doyle’s echo of his own story. “Did you really.”
A reluctant smile tugged at the corner of Doyle’s mouth. “Yeah.”
“What about the girl.”
“She’s okay,” Doyle confirmed as he set the collar in place and took a step back.
Larkin ignored the look of disapproval as he climbed off the gurney and winced. “Where is she,” he asked, tucking his shirt into his trousers.
“Upstairs. She turned down a rape kit test. She’s only fourteen and they haven’t been able to contact a legal guardian yet, so the hospital counselor is sitting with her.”
“When can we speak with her.”
“I’mgoing to interview her,” Doyle corrected. “You’re going home to rest.”
“No.”
