I winced at the hoarse plea coming from the blonde beside me. The man I was supposed to hate—no, Ididhate—was in my arms as I carried him to the chopper. The hospital was about a mile down the road, but time wasn’t on his side right now. Collin was fading in and out of consciousness.
Gwen came rushing to us, and all the doubts I had about her hesitancy around Collin went out the window. My woman got to work. She checked his pulse while walking with me, her eyes bouncing back between his face and the wound. Once we got him on the stretcher, she pulled his soaked clothing off him.
“No! Let me go! Gwen!” Kay screamed from behind me. Without taking her eyes off the injury, she ordered whoever was holding Kay back to let her on. The woman scrambled into the helicopter, breathing heavily.
“Gwen—”
My baby girl raised her head and looked her best friend in the eyes. “I’ve got him, Kay.”
A broken sound came from the woman’s mouth, and I instinctively wrapped my arms around her as the chopper lifted into the air. I rocked Kay back and forth, trying to soothe her. Her body was trembling, and she kept mumbling Collin’s name over and over.
Chanting it like a shattered prayer.
Getting everyone off the chopper was a blur.
Waiting in the ER, blur.
When the on-call doctor came to us, his face grim, I cursed as he told Kay there was nothing he could do. His heart suffered a rare injury. He said the best we can do was to “make him as comfortable as possible.” I gave Gwen a squeeze and brushed past Sullie and Dom as they came rushing in.
“Dean, where are you going?”
I turned to the small group surrounding a broken girl, a girl hanging on by a thread as the love of her life’s soul hung in the balance. When I looked at Karina’s face, all I saw was Gwen’s…five years ago, when a gun was pressed to my head.
Guilt washed over me like a cold midnight rain.
“I’ve got to make a call.”
“The bullet hit his heart.”
There was a strange tug on mine as James’ words settled over me. I looked up from my crossed ankles to find the agent running a hand through his hair. I suppressed a smile. It was good to have the old James back. He wasn’t gone for long, but it sure as fuck scared the shit out of me.
He had been at the stadium dealing with the aftermath of the explosion—though it was minor, two innocent people were still injured. Their hospital bills would be sent to me. Sullie said the Crew managed to get a lot of people out before the bomb went off. The local PD was demanding to have the remaining men—the living ones—who came with Romano brought into custody. James’ director had been dealing with politics for the last six hours.
The girls were downstairs in the ER with Karina. Before the devil got sent back to hell, he mentioned he had sent some men to—
I shook my head and suppressed a low growl.
There was so much shit to deal with, but the first thing we had to do was to make sure Collin survived.
“How did you find that out?” I asked, raising a brow.
He shot me a look. “How do you think?”
Casey.
I rolled my shoulders, groaning slightly at the stiffness. “Is that legal?” Not that I gave shit. I wanted to know the state of Collin too. I would have gotten the information somehow.
“Probably not. HIPAA and all,” he murmured before pulling out his phone to answer the call coming through. “Garner.”
I watched as he paced back and forth in front of me. We were outside the secure hallway where Collin was. Prisoners weren’t allowed near the general public.
But should Collin be in there?
A lump in my throat formed, and I found myself staring at my boots. There was dirt on them, along with the blood—Stevens’ blood. It was hard to miss. He was practically drowning in it when I found him and Kay…
Jesus.
She was covered in his blood. At first, I thought it was the shock of it all, but she was fighting for him. Jer told me to kill him if I saw him…and I was loyal to the man who took care of my girl and our son for five damn years. But seeing Karina cry out for the man beneath her, calling for God to grant him mercy, telling me that she wasn’t living on this Earth without him…
