“Don’t need to. I heard enough when he lied to Jess.”
“You know Jess?” Masher asks.
“No.” She snorts and starts to fall again. I manage to keep her from sliding to the ground and angle her dead weight into the seat.
“Find out who he is before you dump him.” I jog around the other side of the car and get behind the wheel. The quickest way to get answers is to get them directly from her, which means I need her alive.
CHAPTER11
MAXINE
“She needs to look at you.” The deep voice cuts through the fog as hands pull at my clothes. My stomach hurts, and I don’t think it’s ever been this bad. I blink and find a woman, probably in her mid-thirties, looming over me. Her face is round and kind. Does she know what they did to me?
I look above my head and see Winger holding my upper arms down. When our eyes connect, he continues, “Let her help you.” The order is delivered as if he’s never been denied.
Thoughts of the parking lot and what happened filter through my thoughts, but it’s disjointed and fuzzy. “We need to clean you up and see how deep this is,” the woman encourages kindly.
I take my hands off her wrists, allowing her to lift my shirt enough to see my stomach while staring up at the ceiling. I don’t want to see why my stomach hurts. I feel like that will make the pain worse.
A sharp inhale has me hissing when she prods the area. “Give her something for the pain,” Winger tells her. My eyes are drawn to his neck as he leans over me. It’s a vulnerable spot to expose. I think of a few ways I could neutralize him, like shoving my fingers into the hollow at the base of his throat or his Adam’s apple, but I don’t feel threatened right now and I need to conserve my strength.
I jerk when I feel a sharp prick in my arm, and then it floods with warmth. The dulling effect is almost instant.
My eyes continue to roam over his jaw while he’s busy looking at the other woman—I don’t want to think about him seeing my stomach—then up to the small triangle tattoo almost behind his ear.
It’s not hidden, yet it’s small enough to go unnoticed. It makes me curious about what it could mean, but when I think about asking, I roll my lips in to keep my mouth shut.
“She should really have a scan. There’s no way for me to tell if she’s bleeding internally like this.” The woman sounds frustrated. I wonder if I missed something. I am feeling groggy, so maybe I dozed off.
“You said her blood pressure and shit was good,” he snaps.
“For now.” Her tone suggests she’s reminding him.
“I’m fine,” I mumble, not used to having people fuss over me. I find I don’t like the attention. It makes me feel weak and defenseless. I can’t believe I let myself get stabbed. If Winger hadn’t shown up, it never would have happened.
“You killed him.” I deflate, knowing I won’t get answers now as to who hired him, but his slip did tell me someone knows about me and, more importantly, what I’ve been doing. The fact that they hired someone to kill me proves that.
“You’re welcome,” he replies in a tight voice, as if he doesn’t appreciate me announcing it. Shit.I open my eyes again, wondering who else could have heard me, but we’re not in a hospital or even a doctor’s office. I’m lying on a comfortable bed in a nondescript room.
At least I don’t have to add him to my list.
“What list?” he asks, and I realize I muttered my last thoughts out loud. Damn, what kind of pain killers did she give me?
I bite the inside of my lip, clenching my teeth down to make sure I don’t let anything else slip. The moment I stop fighting the weight pulling at my eyes, I slip into the quiet darkness.
WINGER
“When will we know if her insides are okay?” I glance up at Masher’s sister. Rex paid for her to go to college when he found out she wanted to go into the medical field, but she knew it would indebt her to him for the rest of her life. We haven’t had to call on her often, but I’m grateful for her now.
“I’ll keep an eye on her tonight and make sure she doesn’t spike a fever or anything, then get her scheduled for a CT scan in the morning. It’s the best I can do without drawing extra attention to her and the type of injury. I’m assuming we want to keep this under wraps,” she answers without looking up at me.
“Yeah.” I settle back on my ass now that Maxine is no longer fighting. It was rough when Cheryl took off her pants. The way she screamed is still echoing in my ears, and knowing what I do about her past makes it even worse. I almost wish I didn’t ask Iron to look into her.
Even passed out or sleeping from the medicine, her features are still pinched. I don’t know if it’s because she’s in pain—she hasn’t once complained about her injury—or if it’s something else that has her distressed. I find myself pulling her chin down gently, removing her lip from between her teeth.
She looks so damn innocent with her eyes shut as she lies helplessly on the bed. It’s hard to reconcile her with the same woman who was holding a gun on her attacker. I wonder what she would have done if I hadn’t interrupted, and what is the list she referred to?
Every time she opens her mouth, I have more questions than answers, and none of them will be resolved by sitting here, staring at her. “Let me know if anything changes,” I instruct Cheryl, rising from the head of the bed. I snatch her discarded pants from the floor before heading into the kitchen.
