“Well, what’d they say?” he asked, refusing to be intimidated by Joe’s disapproval.
“They’re here.”
“Here? In America?” Rick was shocked. His mother did not like to fly, and his father was never able to get away from his work long enough to come to America.
“Yeah, they said Angela Theland called them, and they were sure you must need them, so they came.” Joe sounded envious that Rick had parents he could rely on.
“Wow. Are they at the airport?” Rick realized he was going in the exact opposite direction at that moment.
“Yeah, where’re you?” Joe asked, this time with no accusation in his voice.
“Actually, I’m on my way back to the hospital.”
“I thought you couldn’t see her for another few hours.” Joe sounded concerned all of a sudden.
“Yeah, well, what I saw at the house convinced me that one of us needs to be around her at all times.”
“What’d you see?”
“Joe,” Rick said. His distress was clear; Joe could tell something was upsetting him. “This thing didn’t just happen—she was attacked. I don’t know by who, but it’s very obvious it was someone she knows, because there’s no sign of forced entry and the only fingerprints around are hers. I found signs of a fight in the entryway, and what the investigation team determined was her blood in the entryway, hall, and bathroom.” Rick’s voice took on an almost hysterical edge as he listed the areas of the house his injured wife had wandered to and from. “She was hurt, Joe, and then the sons of bitches left her to die.” His voice broke on the last word, and Joe knew there were tears in Rick’s eyes at that moment. There was a pretty fair-sized lump in his throat as well.
“We’ll get ’em, Rick,” he said. “You and me, we’ll get ’em. But right now we need to make sure she’s safe. I’m assuming that’s why you’re on your way back there now.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay,” Joe said, switching gears as his mind turned. “I’ll pick up your parents. You just get back there and watch her.”
“Thanks, man,” Rick said, swallowing against the lump in his throat.
Joe left his house a little while later; he didn’t see the truck parked just down the road. He drove to the airport in the black Jaguar he rarely used. He had bought it a few years before, needing a vehicle that would fit more than one passenger. Randy had driven it when they were first married, and she’d liked it so much Joe had bought her a white one for her birthday that year. Now, sitting in the car, Joe was surprised that it still smelled a little bit like his wife.
He arrived at the airport and headed for the terminal. He parked in front, assuming he’d get a ticket, but he didn’t want to keep the Debenshires waiting any longer than necessary. He found Robert and Anabelle sitting inside. Joe strode over to them, looking haggard and worn out.
He hugged Anabelle and shook Robert’s hand, then called a porter over to take their luggage—what little they had managed to throw into a couple of suitcases.
Once they were outside and the car was loaded, Joe opened the door for Anabelle and then the front passenger door for Robert. As he reached the driver’s side, Joe leaned over and pulled the parking ticket off his windshield.
“Shit,” he muttered, stuffing the ticket into his jacket pocket. He got in and turned to Anabelle. “Rick’s at the hospital with her. Like I told you on the phone, she’s a little better now, but they still aren’t sure…” He trailed off as his throat tightened up. This was his partner he was talking about, next to Randy the most important person in his whole world, right up there with Rick. He wondered as he turned back to start the car if he should tell them that he and Rick were at odds, and why. He decided they’d figure it out soon enough—no point in upsetting things further.
“And how are you, Joseph?” Anabelle asked pointedly. He wondered if she knew about Randy, not sure if Rick had told them anything.
“Well,” he said, his face serious, “I’ve been better.”
“We heard about Randy, son,” Robert said sympathetically. “We’re sure things will turn around. The day of the wedding, it was obvious how much in love the two of you were.”
Joe knew Robert meant to be supportive, but he couldn’t control the cynical laugh that burst out. “Yeah, at least one of us was really in love.” Again, Joe felt his throat tighten, the scene in his home that morning making him angry and hurt as it replayed in his head.
Anabelle and Robert looked at each other, not sure what had happened since Randy started at the academy. They were all silent for a while, but Anabelle wanted to ask a question, and she knew she needed to do it before she saw her son.
“Joseph, what’s happening between Rick and Midnight?”
Joe glanced at her in the rearview mirror, not sure what to say. “How much do you know?” he asked, needing a place to start from.
“Deborah told us about Rick staying out a few nights when she was in town, and she said it was with Sheila Theland. When we talk to Rick he is very evasive, telling us that he and Midnight are having problems, but that they’re not serious. And then Angela Theland is the one to call about Midnight being in the hospital.”
Joe considered his options. He’d known the Debenshires a very large portion of his life, and never before had he been in a situation like this. He knew they needed explanations, but he also knew some of those explanations could hurt them. He didn’t want them to think Rick and Midnight’s problems had started with him and Midnight being together, but he wasn’t sure whether denying it would make him appear more guilty. Robert Debenshire was a lawyer, after all—he was used to that.
“Yeah,” Joe said, careful to keep his tone level. “He left out a couple of things.” He looked at Robert as they stopped at a red light. “I’m sorry, some of this might be rough to hear, and if you don’t want to hear it from me, tell me and I’ll let Rick do it.”
“No, Joseph,” Robert said. “I know you’ll tell me the truth, and the whole story. My son tends to leave out the information that might upset his mother and me.”
“Or that might get his ass written out of the will for good,” Joe said harshly. Robert seemed taken aback, and Anabelle raised an eyebrow at her husband. She had told him he should question Rick more, but Robert had told her she was overreacting. Apparently, she’d been right.
“Go on, Joseph,” Anabelle said.
“Well, it was his runnin’ around with Sheila that got him in the water he’s in. He was out with Sheila the night that Midnight had to return from Sacramento unexpectedly. He’d been with Sheila for the entire three days that she was gone.”
“Where was Mikeyla?” Anabelle asked, already appalled with her son’s behavior.
“She was with the nanny,” Joe said, his voice showing his disapproval. “Anyway, Midnight had managed to bang herself up at the range up in Sacramento—she was up there rallying support for FORS—and she had to come home. She was on painkillers, and her friend at BNE had to drive her home, and he told me she’d had what he could only term as a breakdown when they got there.” Joe looked at Robert pointedly. “She already knew more or less what Rick was doin’. Anyway, I found Rick with Sheila that night and basically tried to knock some sense into him. After that he didn’t come home or to the office for about four or five days. Midnight filed for a divorce. She and Rick got into a couple of fights about that, but a couple of weeks later, she and Rick…” He paused, glancing back at Anabelle apologetically. “Well, let’s just say all the fire hadn’t gone out of the relationship. But things just ended after that. Midnight couldn’t handle his infidelity—she has a real thing about trusting someone, especially men, and once that’s been betrayed, you’ve basically had it.”
Joe paused again as they drove into the hospital parking lot. He parked the car and turned to look at Rick’s parents. He knew he had to tell them the rest; he didn’t want them to feel like he’d been trying to hide his own guilt in all of this.
“I’ve been up in Sa
cramento, teaching at one of their academies. Last week Midnight told me that Randy was cheating on me, and I kind of went on a bender. Eventually she came up to try to talk me down, as it were.” He took a deep breath, realizing this was probably the hardest thing he’d had to do in a really long time. “Well, Midnight and I ended up, well, together. I don’t know if you two know about her and I, and I guess if you don’t this would probably seem like a really rotten thing to do, but—”
“Joseph,” Anabelle said softly. She was nodding. “We know about your and Midnight’s past relationship.” There was no anger in her voice, no accusal, and Joe found himself very relieved. It was as if Anabelle and Robert were his own parents, and their outrage would be more than he could take at this point.
“Yeah, well,” he said, abashed, “I guess it’s not past anymore.” He looked at Robert, wanting to know if his best friend’s father was irritated about the situation. Robert seemed surprised, but not angry. “Anyway, the thing is, Midnight came back in the middle of the week and was supposed to have Mikeyla for the weekend. I guess when Rick dropped Mikeyla off, Mikeyla found Midnight on her bed, unconscious. She called Rick, and Rick got back to the house—I guess Angela brought him. Anyway, they got Midnight to the hospital, and here we are.”
“But what happened to her?” Anabelle asked.
“Well, we’re not totally sure. Rick found signs of a struggle at her house, and he thought that she had been thrown against a wall. When they got to her she had managed to move around the house, and ended up in bed somehow, but she had hemorrhaged badly and—” He looked at both of them, aware that he was about to shock them. “She was pregnant.”
Anabelle closed her eyes, and Robert shook his head, as if trying to deny what Joe was saying.
“When she and Rick were together some two and a half months ago, she got pregnant. Rick didn’t know.” Joe found it necessary to tell them the last, not wanting them to think their son was totally cold-hearted.
“But you did?” Robert asked insightfully. Joe just nodded, clearly troubled now.
“Let’s go in,” Anabelle said after she recovered her composure. She felt it was more important to be with her son right now. Not only might he lose his wife, but he had already lost a child in the last twenty-four hours.
Rick had forced the doctors to let him in to see Midnight when he arrived back at the hospital. He told them it was police business and that her life may be in danger—not just medically. The doctors had no choice. Rick shoved past them and the security guard trying to stop him, the look on Rick’s face making the guard realize he wasn’t paid nearly enough to be killed trying to keep a cop from seeing his wife.
When Rick entered Midnight’s room and saw her lying there, he had to lean against the nearest wall, closing his eyes and hoping he wouldn’t pass out. When the shock wore off, he walked over to the bed. For all intents and purposes, Midnight looked like she could be dead. She had no color, and her breathing, although assisted by a machine, seemed too shallow to support life. When he touched her hand it was cold. He had to keep telling himself that as long as the monitor was still finding a heartbeat, she was alive. There were IVs running into her arms, one of which was blood. The doctors had told him that the blood loss alone could have easily killed her. They were attempting to replace the vital fluid as rapidly as possible.
Noting that there were no chairs in the room, since visitors weren’t allowed in this section of the hospital, Rick knelt down. He thought about his strict Catholic upbringing, and found it ironic that even though he hadn’t been in a church since he and Midnight were married, not only had he been praying a lot in the last eighteen hours, here he was now, kneeling too.
“I wouldn’t do this for just anybody, you know,” he whispered next to his wife’s ear. He longed for her to wake up and tell him she wasn’t just anybody, or to slug him for his behavior of late—anything, so long as she woke up.
But she didn’t move, and Rick found himself watching her face intently. He had begun to think in the last few hours that this was some kind of wrath from God, a consequence of his adultery, that God was saying, “If you can’t be good to her, I’ll take her.” Rick reflected that it was probably what Joe had been thinking when they fought.
He couldn’t think about it. His mind veered violently away from any thought of Midnight and Joe together. It made him feel like he had over four years ago when he met Midnight. He had imagined what it would be like to have Midnight look at him in the way that she looked at Joe. Joe had obviously meant so much to her. They had fought, and come together and fought again, but when the chips were down, it was Joe that Midnight had clung to when a member of FORS had been killed. It was Joe who was able to talk her down and remove her firearm from her grasp. Rick hadn’t been able to get through—she had locked him out, literally and psychologically. But when he and Midnight got married, when he found out she was carrying Mikeyla, it had felt so incredible that someone so fantastic could love him and want to have his child. She was radiant the day of their wedding, and looked at him with all the love and trust with which she had looked at Joe—even more. And now, he had screwed all that up. He had betrayed her trust and this was his punishment.
“Come back to me, baby,” he whispered, “and I swear I’ll make it up to you. I love you.” There were tears in his eyes, and he put his head down on the bed next to her, his hand still holding hers. He needed to be close to her, needed to be there, in case she woke up, or… Again his mind shrank from the thought. He couldn’t think about what he would do if she actually died. Every nerve in his body protested the idea.
Before Anabelle Debenshire walked into Midnight’s room, she took a deep breath. The doctor had told them Midnight was still in a dire condition, and that they might be surprised by her frail appearance. The doctor had no idea what a contrast saying the words “frail” and “Midnight Chevalier” in the same sentence really was. When Anabelle saw her son, his head resting on the bed next to Midnight, his hand holding hers, she instantly felt tears sting her eyes. She realized how difficult it must have been for Rick two years before, when Mikeyla was born. They had almost lost Midnight then as well, and Rick had been frantic. Anabelle had been sorry she hadn’t been able to be there for him; she had been glad that Joe was there to support him. But now, things were different.
Anabelle walked over to her son and touched his shoulder gently. Rick started, his head snapping up, his body tensing. When he saw that it was his mother, he started to get to his feet, but his legs wouldn’t cooperate. He’d been down on his knees for so long that his legs had basically gone to sleep from the knee down. Joe, who had come in behind Anabelle, reached over and pulled Rick up, steadying him as his mother held him in an embrace.
Rick was crying. Seeing his mother had brought all the anguish and worry out. Joe went to find some chairs for the Debenshires; he also needed an opportunity to get out of the room. The sight of his partner lying there, looking all but dead, had been more than he’d been prepared for. He’d seen Midnight in a lot of bad situations, with a lot of injuries, but he’d never seen her like that. He had felt like someone had just crushed his lungs, and he couldn’t breathe.
Standing outside the room, he leaned against the wall, sliding down to sit on the floor. He was breathing deeply, as if he were in actual, physical pain. Until then, he hadn’t really faced the possibility that she could actually die. And now the prospect of the hours of waiting just seemed too much to handle. Joe found himself wanting Randy there with him, wanting her to hold him and tell him everything would be okay. He was surprised at that; he had always been the strong one in the relationship. Or so he had thought—it was slowly dawning on him that he had depended on Randy as much as she had depended on him. He stood up and walked over to the pay phones. Without thinking, he dialed Randy’s cell phone number. He didn’t know if she was still carrying it, or if she’d even be near it at the moment, but he knew he had to try.
Randy was very surprised when her
cell phone rang as she and Sarah were having lunch in the cafeteria. She always kept it handy when she could, out of habit; Joe had called her on it many times to tell her he’d be late, or how a bust had gone. Randy hadn’t really realized it was Joe’s influence that had given her the habit until she answered and, to her shock, heard his voice.
“Hello?” she said casually.
“Randy,” Joe said. He sounded despondent, and Randy almost choked, thinking he was going to tell her Midnight was dead.
“Joe! What’s wrong?” she said, forgetting about her own situation and beginning to worry about him—again, out of habit.
“I just…” he said hesitantly. “I need you, please.” His voice was so quiet, so desperate, that Randy couldn’t even consider telling him no.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“At the hospital. Can you come here?” he said, imploring.
“I’ll be there as fast as I can.” She hung up.
Sarah was watching her carefully. “You’ll be where as fast as you can?” she asked, her tone indicating that she thought Randy was just running at the sound of her master’s voice, something she had accused Randy of over and over.
“Sarah! You don’t understand, and I don’t have time to explain. Please, just tell them I’ll make up the time, or whatever. Look,” she said, trying to sound more patient now, “I need to borrow your car. Dick dropped me off this morning…” She trailed off as she thought about the morning’s confrontation with Joe. As Sarah handed her the keys, still looking uptight, she wondered idly whether Joe would bring that up. But she didn’t think about it anymore as she sprinted across the campus and headed for Sarah’s beat-up Camaro.
The drive to the hospital was quick, but Randy still found herself pressing the pedal hard. She wanted to run every red light she encountered. She wasn’t sure what had prompted Joe to call her, but she wasn’t going to let him down. The guilt she felt over what Dick—and indirectly she—had done made her long to make it up to Joe. At the hospital she parked in a handicapped space, not caring about the huge ticket she’d probably get, and rushed inside. When she was directed to Midnight’s room, she walked as quickly as she could. She saw Joe in the hallway; he was pacing back and forth, and Randy wondered as she approached him why he wasn’t in the room with Midnight.
Treachery Rising (MidKnight Blue Book 4) Page 11