Without hesitation, he tapped the screen to take the call.
“Hey,” he greeted, aiming for chipper despite the overwhelming guilt that swamped him.
“Baz.” She was sobbing, her voice bordering on hysterical. “Oh, my God, Baz.”
Every cell in his body went ice cold at the fear he heard in her voice.
“JJ? What’s wrong?”
He could hardly understand her when she said, “Please. I need… Oh, God, Baz. It’s… I don’t know what happened. I… God … I don’t know what to do. I need you.”
“Don’t know what to do about what?” he asked, although he wasn’t waiting for an answer, already out the door of the barn and making a beeline for his truck. “Are you at home?”
“Yes,” she sobbed. “Can you… Can you come over?”
“Of course I can.” He reached his truck, searched above the front left tire for the spare key. There it was, still in the little magnetized box he kept there. “Don’t move, JJ. I’ll be there in five minutes.”
The call disconnected, and he considered calling her back to keep her on the line but figured it would be easier for him to focus if he wasn’t listening to her breathe. Something was seriously wrong. In all the time he’d known her, never once had he seen or heard JJ cry. He figured for her to do so, she would have to be in a pretty bad place.
He made good time into town then over to JJ’s. More than five minutes but less than ten, then he was walking up to JJ’s front door.
From the outside, everything looked normal. JJ’s SUV was parked in the driveway. There were no other cars. He took that as a good sign that Dante wasn’t lurking about. Just the thought of JJ bringing him back to her place made his gut cramp painfully tight—almost as painfully tight as when he thought about how he’d had sex with a stranger.
He took a deep breath, expelled it slowly. He would not think about JJ and Dante. The same way he wouldn’t think about Blondie and the clusterfuck that was last night.
Another breath in. Out.
Baz knocked lightly on the door, then stepped back and waited for JJ to answer. When a minute passed and she didn’t, he checked the doorknob, saw that it was open.
When he stepped inside, his heart stopped beating.
At least it felt like it, because fear washed over him, more cold seeping into his pores and down into his bones.
He’d seen plenty of crime scenes over the years, but what was laid out before him looked like something right out of a horror flick. It looked like a bomb had gone off in the house. The furniture was overturned, the rug askew, the television smashed.
But it was the blood that made it a freak show.
He steeled his spine, focused, forcing down the fear for JJ.
“JJ, where are you?”
A whimper sounded, and he hurried past the blood on the floor and the overturned furniture. He reached the short hallway that was the crossroads of the house. There on the floor in front of the bathroom was JJ. Her back was against the wall, her head on her knees.
“JJ?”
When she looked up, his breath lodged in his throat.
Instantly he was squatting down in front of her. He was scared to touch her, there was just so much blood, but he couldn’t help himself. He needed to know where she was injured.
“We need to call an ambulance,” he stated firmly, taking her wrist, pulling her arm away to find the injury.
“It’s not mine,” she whispered, her voice rough. “The blood. Not mine. I’m not hurt. And I … I didn’t do this.”
Baz watched her, trying to process everything she was telling him.
“I… Oh, God, Baz. Is he … dead?”
Keeping his voice level, Baz stared down at her. “Iswhodead, JJ?”
