“Oh fuck,” Cole grumbles as he helps Asher turn Jamie over. He takes off his jacket and wraps it around Jamie’s shoulders.
The poor guy is in and out of consciousness, blood congealed on the back of his head and his lips purple from being out in the cold too long.
“Jamie, can you hear me?” Cole calls out while Asher holds him in a sitting position.
I’m on the phone with emergency services, requesting an ambulance for Jamie and a squad car for us. I name drop Hornby into the conversation to make sure we get reliable fellas on board while we try to figure out what the fuck happened here—and where Willow went.
“Jamie!” Cole taps him lightly across the face.
“Holy shit!” Jamie cries out, snapping into full consciousness, stuttering and shivering. “What the fuck happened? Where am I? Where’s Will?”
“We were going to ask you the same thing. What happened?” I reply.
Jamie needs a moment to gather his senses. My blood boils, my nerves jangle louder in the back of my head. “I… We… We came over. Will wanted to talk to you. She figured we’d find you here.”
“Okay, what happened next?”
“We came around the back. She said she saw someone, probably some delivery guy unloading something,” he says.
I slip into my phone to check out the shop’s CCTV feed. Thank heavens for surveillance apps and cloud storage.
“And we got here and… that’s all I remember. Just… this sharp pain…”
“You’re okay,” Asher tries to soothe him.
“You don’t remember seeing anyone?” Cole insists.
Jamie shakes his head, then winces from the pain. “I’m sorry, no…”
“What did Willow want that it couldn’t wait until later?” Asher wonders aloud, giving Cole and me a curious glance.
“Oh God, where is she?” Jamie is finally catching up, looking around in understandable panic. “She was right in front of me. There was a big black car here, an?—”
“An SUV,” I interject, staring in horror at the video recording on my phone from less than half an hour ago. “A black SUV.”
Sirens wail in the distance, getting louder with each passing minute. I turn the phone around and show it to my brothers and Jamie. They get a clear view of Perry Jackson waiting on the corner, conking Jamie on the head, and knocking him out. We see him shoving a gun in Willow’s terrified face before he forces her behind the wheel of that black SUV. My blood runs cold as I realize what happened and how narrowly we missed it.
“That can’t be.” Asher murmurs, his eyes round with shock. “He didn’t…”
“He did,” Cole says. “He must’ve been following them around, waiting for the right momentto strike.”
Jamie frowns from both pain and fear. “Who is that guy? Is he the bastard who poisoned me? Brett whatever?”
“That’s not his real name,” I tell him.
“Then what is his real name?”
“Perry Jackson,” I reply.
Jamie’s face drops. “Wait, Will told me about him. Sheila’s ex? You weren’t sure that there was a connection based solely on the… ow, my fucking head! Based solely on the snake tattoo. She said you guys were still looking into that.”
“We were until earlier this morning when we got confirmation.” Cole sighs deeply, then looks at me. “It was her. It was Sheila. She’s been behind this the whole time. Nothing else makes sense.”
“Oh God, guys… There’s something you need to know,” Jamie gasps. The sirens get louder, and I hear the ambulance pull up just at the other end of the gangway, its last wail echoing through the air. “She was coming to see you to tell you something.”
“You mentioned that,” I say.
“Something important,” he replies.
