18
Molly was suffocating under a blanket of darkness. She couldn't seem to swim through the layers of black on black to wake herself up.
Her thoughts came in broken snatches.
Cord.
Toby.
Pain.
The No-Name.
Cord.
In the awful conditions,it took Cord ten times as long as it should've to make it to the nearest hospital with a trauma center.
The hospital in Dallas was bustling, apparently catering to a whole host of people who thought it'd be fun to drive during an ice storm.
He stalked across the lobby, vaguely aware of everyone staring at him. At the information desk, he looked down at himself and realized he hadn't stopped long enough to wash Molly's blood off of him. It was smeared across his coat and jeans, staining his hands, maybe even on his face. He couldn't remember now if he'd brushed a kiss on the uninjured inch of her forehead or not.
Had she made it this far?
The person working at the information desk sent him up two floors to the intensive care unit. There, the nurse manning the desk asked him exactly what his relationship was with Molly. He knew enough about privacy laws that he'd been preparing himself for this during the last ten minutes of his drive.
The lie slipped easily off his lips. "She's my fiancée."
When Molly woke up, he'd make it true.
The nurse couldn't tell him anything except that she was in surgery for the bullet lodged in her abdomen. There wouldn’t be more information until Molly got out of surgery.
The nurse gave him a pointed look and urged him to visit the men's room to wash up, even offering him scrubs to change into.
He stood under the too-bright fluorescent lights, staring at the water turning pink as it washed Molly's blood down the drain.
Toby had shot her.
And they'd crashed.
Which one had come first?
Had Molly forced the accident to try to escape?
What had she been thinking? His imagination ran wild, trying to figure out how it had happened, why she might've thought causing an accident was her only escape route.
She wouldn't have trusted the cops to find her. They'd failed her before.
She couldn't have known that Cord was out looking for her. Or how far behind he was.
She'd done the best she could in terrifying circumstances.
He'd fought to stay emotionless on the drive here. The weather was so horrible that he'd needed every ounce of attention to get himself to Dallas in one piece. To be here for her.
Now that he had nothing left to do but wait, the emotions he had held at bay overwhelmed him.
He bent his head to rest on his forearms as the tears came hard and fast.
Molly might be dying on the operating table right now.
