Spencer grunted. “Navy?”
He couldn’t claim to be surprised. Not with the way he and the others fought. He couldn’t see what he assumed was a tattoo, but he figured Spencer would know military ink when he saw it, considering one of his fathers was a Marine.
“Perhaps we should let Talon and Maddox say hello,” Jane said, nodding at Cooper and Spencer.
They dragged the man kicking and screaming through the room, and Wilder dropped his head back on the couch, squeezing his eyes shut. Emmett had to be alright. He had to be. He would get him back. There was no world in which he didn’t.
“What the hell happened?”
Emma. He blinked his eyes open slowly, finding her golden eyes within inches of his face, the worry in them making his heart clench.
“They took him,” he said. Whispered. Yelled. He wasn’t sure.
“Fuck,” Emma hissed, her fingers brushing over his face.
He drifted in and out of consciousness while Emma patched him up, though he caught a few words exchanged between her and Jane. Concussion. Pupils. Bleeding.
Did he have a concussion? The throbbing in his head claimed as much.
“Take these.”
Pills were dropped into his hand, and he dutifully popped them in his mouth, chasing them down with water from the bottle he was handed. He drank until his throat closed up and nausea hit him.
Someone grabbed the bottle out of his hand before he could drop it, and he put his head back down again, unsure how much time had passed when he opened his eyes again.
His groan was loud in the room, the sound making him cringe from the pain it sparked in his temples. He moved hisarms, feeling something wrapped around them where they’d made contact with the concrete.
“Don’t get up, you idiot.”
He turned his head to find Jane sitting on the floor in front of him. There was fear in her eyes, something he’d rarely seen. Was it for him?
“Yes, I’m scared,” Jane snapped, easily reading him in his vulnerable state. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“No,” he croaked out. He cleared his throat, squinting at her to avoid as much of the light as possible. “Yes?”
Her sigh let him know just how much of an idiot she thought him to be.
“How long?”
The words were like sandpaper on his tongue. Fuck. Everything sucked.
“Forty-five minutes since they took him. Emma gave you some of the good stuff. It knocked you out for a bit.”
Forty-five? And they hadn’t found him yet?
“I need?”
A hand on his chest held him down before he could even push himself up on his hands.
“You need to recover. You’ll be no help if you go out there half-cocked. You’ll only get someone killed. Most likely yourself, and even if you’re the bane of my fucking existence, I don’t want to lose you.”
He bit back the words threatening to spill, needing to focus on Emmett. He was more important than his shredded heart.
“Don’t,” Jane said, taking a seat on the couch to help him sit up, her hands gentle.
“Don’t what?” he croaked out, blinking against the blue and gold spots sparkling in his vision.
“Shut me out. Say what you need to say. I can’t do this anymore,” she said, the last part barely above a whisper.
