I hadn’t returned since that night, but there was no time to kick myself for it. I didn’t even know if he was still here, but I wasted no time parking and rushing inside the hospital.
It took another ten minutes of navigating the hospital maze and a little white lie with the nurse at the desk to find out what room he was in, but then I was walking into his private suite without warning, paying no mind to the startled nurse on the other side of his bed, who was swapping his IV bag.
“Oh!” she gasped when she noticed what I was clutching. “Absolutely not. No, ma’am. You can’t bring that in here!”
“Shut up and stand over there,” I ordered with my gaze fixed on a sleeping Roshaun and my gun pointed at the corner where I wanted the nurse to stand. After a brief hesitation and realizing she’d never get between me and the door in time, she stumbled into the spot I’d pointed out.
The pain meds they had Roshaun on must have been heavy because he was still out of it when I stepped up to his bedside.
“Wake up,” I ordered with zero emotion as I slapped his cheek with my gun a few times.
It took a few minutes for Roshaun to fight off his meds and the initial confusion after a long and deep sleep, but then his gaze widened when he noticed me standing there and felt the muzzle of my Ruger on his cheek. “What the—Hunter?” He blinked at me. “Fuck are you doing here?” His gaze darted around the room, unfocused and hazy. “Where’s Coby?”
Roshaun was one of those types who assumed having a dick between his legs put him in charge. Being ordered around or bested by a woman would strike a huge blow to his pride and damage him more than any physical blow.
Still…
The nurse cried out when I adjusted my grip and began smashing the butt of my Ruger into his face without a word. “Arrgh! Shit! Arrrgh!” Roshaun shrieked in pain while curling into a ball and trying to duck out of the way. “Fuck are you doing?” he shouted.
I didn’t stop until I heard a satisfying, sickening crack, followed by blood gushing from his shattered nose. Some of it splattered onto the machines reading his vitals and the whiteboard on the wall next to his bed.
“Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God!” The nurse muttered hysterically before opening her mouth wide to scream. “Help! Somebody help!”
Swinging the gun the nurse’s way, I met her terrified gaze and felt no mercy in my heart—not even for an innocent woman just trying to do her job. The only good thing about me was gone, and without Coby, I had nothing to fucking lose. “Last warning to shut the fuck up. I’m not here for you. I’m here for him. He’s not worth getting shot over, sis.Believeme.”
That seemed to calm her down. “Okay,” she said with a quick and jerky nod, making the large bun of her box braids loosen. She threw her hands up in surrender. “Okay.”
Returning my attention to Roshaun, who was groaning in pain and clutching his side, I felt nothing but hate for Coby’s brother—a man I once trusted and looked at like a brother. “Don’t play games with me, Roshaun. Tell me who they took her, where, and why.”
“Who?”
Snatching the pillow from behind his head, I placed it over his thigh, pressed the Ruger into the pillow, and pulled the trigger. The muffled shot was punctuated by Roshaun’s scream of pain and the sound of a body hitting the floor across the room.
The fucking nurse had fainted.
“Arrrgh! My leg! My leg! Aww, fuck! You shot me, you crazy bitch!” The pussy motherfucker was crying now as he reached for his leg, only to be stopped by the pain of his broken ribs.
“You’re in a hospital,” I reminded him. “The sooner you tell me where she is, the sooner the doctors can save you.”
“Save my—what are you talking about? You only shot my leg.”
I retrained the gun, aiming for his liver this time. “So far.”
Roshaun collapsed against the bed with a groan and spent a few precious seconds trying to catch his breath. “It’s no use…Hunter. You’ll never…g-get…to her. She’s gone.”
“Where?” I urged through gritted teeth.
“He has her now. Kilpatrick.” The name made my stomach sink because I knew what it meant. Coby hadn’t been kidnapped by traffickers or garden-variety creeps. She’d been taken by theFola. People with the power to make her disappear forever and get away with it. Roshaun chuckled, baring his blood-stained teeth as he stared at me knowingly. “I doubt Ocean will want to share.”
“What does he want with her?”
Roshaun coughed before shaking his head weakly. “Don’t know. Didn’t matter.”
“It didn’t matter, or you didn’t care?”
“Just kill me,” he muttered as he looked away, a stubborn look that reminded me of Coby entering his eyes. I hated how much they looked alike. Coby was fucking beautiful. Looking at Roshaun’s ugly mug just made me want to vomit. “I’m dead anyway.”
“No.” I shoved my gun inside my thigh holster to keep from using it again.
