Dylan took off his coat, hung it on the arm of his chair, and headed for the canteen, while Ash shed his coat, then sent Gunner a text telling him their dad made it through surgery, and which floor they were on, then sent Nora the same information.
Dylan came back with their snacks.
“Thanks,” Asher said, and carefully set the coffee aside to cool, while he opened the packaging and took a bite of the roll. It wasn’t great, but he’d had worse.
Dylan kept eyeing his brother as they ate. The brothers could read each other like a road map, and Dylan guessed Asher was already in investigation mode, and he was right.
Ash didn’t believe it was meant to be a robbery. Not even a botched one. Nothing was taken, not the money in the till, and his dad’s wallet was still on him when they found his body. He was holding on to what Nora told him until Gunner arrived to hear it, too.
Jacob wasn’t the kind of man to have enemies, but Asher needed to find out if he’d recently had words with a customer, or if someone was holding a grudge. But that was allfor later. Right now, they just needed him to wake up and survive this nightmare, then they could deal with whoever had done this, and make sure nothing like this ever happened again.
Within the hour, Jacob’s surgeon walked in, scanned the faces of the people in the waiting room, and then walked straight to where Asher and Dylan were sitting.
“Are you Jacob Kingston’s family?” he asked.
They both stood abruptly. “Yes. We’re his sons,” Asher said.
“I’m Doctor Reading. I operated on your father earlier this morning. He is on the critical list, but his vital signs are holding steady. He was brought in with a single gunshot to the chest. It entered between his heart and upper shoulder and exited a little higher on his back, which means the shot was from someone standing above him, firing from a short distance away. He was severely weakened from the blood loss by the time he got here.”
“Did you have to transfuse him?” Asher asked.
“Yes, he had a whole blood transfusion. I expect it to raise his numbers to a stronger level. I just checked his vitals. He’s holding his own, and that’s positive, but as I’m sure you know, the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours are crucial.”
“Did he ever regain consciousness?” Dylan asked.
“Not as of yet,” Doctor Reading said. “I’ll be checking on him again this evening during rounds. We have him heavily sedated, so don’t expect too much from him at this point. He’s healing, and right now that’s what matters most.”
Ash nodded. “We have one more brother due to arrive soon. We are all the family he has, and he’s everything to us.”
“Understood,” Reading said. “I need to finish my rounds, but I will say, what a remarkable resemblance you all have to each other. Like younger versions of your father. Restassured, we’re doing everything we can for him,” he said, and then he was gone.
Dylan shoved a hand through his hair in frustration, then turned and walked to the window.
Asher followed and slid his arm across Dylan’s shoulder. Several minutes passed as they stood in silence, just staring out the window. Then all of a sudden, a man walked up behind them, stretched out his long arms, and gave both of them a hug.
“Got room for one more brother?” he said.
They turned. “Gunner!” they said, then hugged him.
The only sign of emotion on his face was a quick muscle jerk at the side of his jaw as he hugged them back.
“Sit,” Ash said, and they did. “Are you hungry? Do you want some coffee? Something to eat?”
“Not until I know what you know,” Gunner said, and so they began filling him in on everything the doctor told them, with him listening intently until they finished.
“I called Nora on the way to the hangar,” Ash said.
They both looked up. “You’re talking to Nora?”
“More than talking. After Dad told me that her father had recently died, and her mother had been gone four years, and she’d come home to deal with the family property, I felt the guilt. Then when he told me that she’d visited him, and that she looked like the stress of it all had just about broken her… I couldn’t bear the thought of how she’d faced all that alone and went begging. Long story short, she not only forgave me, but I’m flying high on my second chance. When I was driving to the hangar, it dawned on me that she and everybody else in Crossroads would have known about it before we did. I wondered what she knew that Reddick didn’t tell. She said Pearl heard the shot. She’s the one who found him bleeding and unconscious, and saved his life.”
“My God. What are the chances? We owe her big time,” Dylan said.
“This kind of shooting isn’t the Crossroads we grew up in,” Gunner said. “Nothing was stolen. He hadn’t received any threats, or we would have known about them. And unless the character of the residents has drastically changed, I’m not going to believe it was a local who did this. Did he ever say anything to either of you about having trouble with someone?”
“Not to me,” Dylan said.
“Nor to me,” Asher added. “When I called him after we learned about Pete Brandt dying in prison, the bar was full and there was so much laughing and shouting going on, he had to walk into the hallway to talk to me. I asked him if he’d been hassled by reporters, and kind of reminded him that might start happening. He just blew it off and said he had to get back to the bar. Half the clientele was watching a football game, and there was an ongoing snooker tournament as well. He was in great spirits, and then this happened.”
