Page 53 of The Ashes of Summer

The guard turns, irritation already written across his face as he starts, "Who do you think you—" The rest dies in his throat the moment he properly looks at me. His Adam's apple bobs as he straightens instinctively. "Sheriff."

There it is.

The authority he'd been so eager to throw around a second ago disappears almost instantly, replaced by the awkward uncertainty of someone realizing they've picked the wrong person to challenge.

I hold his gaze for another beat before stepping aside.

Constance doesn't waste the invitation. She brushes past him without so much as a glance, moving through the doorway like the corridor belongs to her. Adelaide follows close behind, her movements slower, shoulders drawn tight, the color drained from her face. The second her eyes find mine, whatever composure she's been clinging to gives way. Her expression folds in on itself, her lip trembling as tears gather, and the knot already cinched around my chest pulls impossibly tighter.

"Oh, Jacob."

Before I can make sense of the look on Adelaide's face, she's closing the distance between us, her arms wrapping around my neck with enough force to steal the air from my lungs.

Every muscle in my body locks. For a second, I don't move at all. I don't know where my hands are supposed to go. Whether I should return it or step away. The instinct to create distance wars with the knowledge that shoving away a woman who's barely holding herself together would make me an even bigger bastard than I already feel. So I settle for neither. My arms hover awkwardly at my sides while she clings to me, her fingers bunching the fabric at the back of my shirt as though I'm the only thing stopping the ground from disappearing beneath her feet. It's over almost as quickly as it begins.

She pulls back, swiping hastily beneath eyes already shining with tears before she has the chance to lose them completely. "Please tell me there's a plan," she says, the words tumbling over one another. "Please tell me you know where she is."

"I have a broad idea."

Broad being the operative fucking word.

I pull my phone from my pocket and unlock it, the satellite map open from the hundredth time I've stared at it tonight. I hold it out between us.

"It looks like wasteland, but there's something out there. The butler called it Rivers Ridge." My eyes drop back to the map, tracing the empty stretch of land that refuses to give me anything useful. "He said that's where she'll be."

Adelaide studies the screen in silence while Constance steps in beside her, leaning over her shoulder. Neither of them speaks, both searching the map as if the answer might suddenly reveal itself.

Then Constance looks up at me. "So why the fuck are you still here?"

There's genuine disbelief in her voice. I don't blame her. If our positions were reversed, I'd be asking the exact same question.

"I know nothing about the layout," I say, the words coming out harder than I intend. I rake a hand over my face before forcing myself to keep going. "I don't know the entry points, the exits, how many men are inside, where they're positioned, what security they're running. We storm that place blind, Jackson will have her gone before we even make it through the fucking gates." Or worse. The thought wedges itself beneath my ribs before I can stop it. "He'll kill her." The words scrape their way out of my throat, leaving a bitter taste behind that refuses to disappear."He can't know we know where she is. The second he suspects we're coming, everything changes."

Constance blows out a slow breath, dragging both hands back through her hair before dropping them onto her hips. Every part of her is screaming to act, to move, to do something, and I can see the fight she's having with herself as logic gradually forces its way to the front.

"Okay," she mutters eventually. "Fine. I get it."

I don't think she does. Not completely.

"What can we do?"

I turn my attention back to the hospital bed, to the man lying there with a machine beeping every time his heart beats. The rise and fall of his chest is infuriatingly steady.

"Nothing," I say quietly. "Not until this son of a bitch wakes up." I let that sit for a beat. "Then I'll carve every piece of intel he's got out of him."

"There has to be something," Adelaide says, desperation creeping into every word.

"With all due respect, Jacob," Constance says, stepping closer, "Summer is our best friend. We can't just stand here waiting."

Before I can answer, her attention catches on the woman standing beside the monitors. She stills. Her eyes sweep over Tamara from head to toe before narrowing with open suspicion. "Hold up." She points toward her. "Who the fuck are you?"

Tamara straightens from where she'd been checking the monitors.

"I'm Dr. Tamara Whittingham. I'm helping bring him around."

Constance's gaze slides back to me with concern written plainly across her face.

"You told her…everything?”