He jumped out, shot down the walk to the safe house, squinting through the falling snow. He’d just raised his hand to pound on the front door when it opened all by itself. Dallas’ massive frame blocked his way, and Dean fought the urge to barrel over and through his friend.
“Where is she?” Dean snapped, his heart racing. “Where’s Emma?”
“And Francine? Where is she?”
Dean spun at the voice behind him, stared in confusion at the man standing there. “Mark.”
“Dean.”
The men shook hands automatically, a very out-of-place bit of calm and civility in what was a living and senseless nightmare. Then they both turned back to Dallas, who surveyed them with his large arms crossed in front of his body.
“Where is she, Foreman?” Dean grated out. “Don’t fuck with me, man. You said that some prick stuck a knife in her belly, and I want to get eyes on her. Now.”
“And where the hell’s Francine?” Mark interjected. “You want me to rip this fucking place apart by hand? ‘Cause I see no problem with that.”
“I'll help,” Dean offered.
“OK, guys.” Dallas’ voice was level, low. “We gotta have a little chat.”
“Later,” Dean said. “Right now, I need to –”
“Right now, you need to listen.” Dallas stood steady, his massive weight perfectly balanced on his boots. “Both of you.”
“But –” Mark started.
“Shut up,” Dallas lashed, all done playing now. “Shut up and listen.”
They did.
“Now.” Dallas sucked in air. “Before today, I was the only man to cross this threshold. You hear me? These women, these kids, this is their safe place… their only safe place on the whole goddamn planet. They don’t like men, they don’t trust men, and believe me, they’ve got their reasons. Now you two come charging on in here, shouting and making demands. I get that you’re upset, but this is their home. They’re already scared because one man came bursting in with a weapon, and you ain’t helping, either one of you. Now, you need to take it down about five damn notches. We clear?”
They nodded quietly.
“OK.” Dallas exhaled, hard. “Emma’s in the medical room, Dean, and Mark, she needs a doctor, stat.”
“To stitch her up?” Dean said, suddenly terrified. “He cut her that bad?”
“No.” Dallas turned, and they followed right on his heels as he led them down the hall. “To deliver your son.”
Dean stopped walking, stunned. “She’s – she’s in labor?”
“Yep.”
“You didn’t say that on the phone!” Dean shouted, his right fist itching to just drive a good, hard punch to Dallas’ gut. “How’d that tiny piece of intel slide on past you, Foreman?”
“Because I thought you’d kill yourself on the drive over in the damn blizzard if you knew,” Dallas said, not the slightest bit sorry to have withheld crucial information from one of his best friends. “I wanted you here and in one piece, man. And anyway, she still has time.”
“How do you know?” Dean asked desperately. “How can you tell?”
“I can’t.” Dallas stopped in front of a closed door, swung it open. “But she can.”
Alexandra glanced over her shoulder at the three men. She looked totally calm and in control, her dark eyes warm and reassuring. She was pressing down on a thick bandage covering Emma’s right side.
Emma gave a sharp scream now, and Alexandra gently parted her knees. She carefully felt between Emma’s legs, then her eyes met Mark’s. She nodded at the sink in the corner, and he knew – he just knew – that he was going to be delivering this baby. He nodded back to say message received, and then he walked over to the sink, started to scrub his hands.
He kept his back to the room, collecting his scattered thoughts. He was half out of his mind with worry for Francine, and all he wanted was to find out what the hell was going on. Liv had been so mixed up on the phone, so confused, babbling about a man with a knife, and Emma bleeding, and Francine speaking French, and Mark still didn’t have the first clue what had gone down. He needed to see Francine, needed to hold her. Then he’d breathe again.
But he was a trauma surgeon, an expert in triage, and the first rule of thumb was to prioritize. The worst and most urgent cases got immediate attention, and everything else just had to wait. Emma and her son were clearly at the top of the ‘shit to handle’ list, and Mark was the best man for the job. He was the only man for the job, and he wasn’t a man to refuse to help.
“Emma!” Dean was at her side, clutching her hand. “Oh, my God… you OK?”
“Dean,” she gasped. “I’m having our baby!”
“I know, angel.” He stroked her brown curls off her sweaty forehead. “I know you are.”
“It’s too soon!” Her dark blue eyes were almost purple with pain and terror. “It’s not supposed to happen like this! I’m supposed to be in the hospital, and it’s supposed to be in a month, and I’m not supposed to have a huge knife gash in my side, in the middle of a blizzard! It’s all wrong, Dean!”
All of his panic and rage had spiked as he’d stood in the door, but as soon as he’d seen her eyes, he’d felt his Ranger training kick in. Dean knew a thing or two about staying cool in a crisis, about keeping his head when shit was hitting the fan. Emma needed him now, she was looking to him for strength and serenity, and he was damn well going to come through.
“Baby,” he said calmly. “It’s going to be just fine. You hold on to my hand, and you breathe. You just hang on for the ambulance, and we’ll get you to the hospital yet.”
“Uh,” Alexandra said. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think that’s how this is going to happen.”
Dean’s scruffy blond head snapped up. “Huh?”
Mark approached now, holding his hands in front of his face. He checked Emma, cursed silently. He met Alexandra’s eyes again, and she stood aside, started to lay out fresh towels, and pour boiling hot water from the electric kettle that Kristin had brought from the kitchen at her request.
“What?” Emma panted. “What’s happening?”
“Emma. Listen to me, hon.” Mark was gentle, soothing. “This baby is coming now.”
“What?” Emma shouted. “No! No, no, no! Make him stop coming!”
“Yes.” Mark checked her once more, felt the head. “Your son’s on his way, Emma, and he’s not going to be stopped.”
“Oh, God.” Emma shut her eyes. “I can’t do this here… Dean, take me home. I don’t want to do this now. Maybe tomorrow.”
“Baby.” Dean felt the insane urge to laugh, knew that wasn’t going to help anything. “It’s OK. You just do as Mark says, and he’ll get you through this. You know he’s a doctor, right?”
Emma opened her eyes, glared at Mark. “Was a doctor.”
Now Dean did laugh; he covered it up with a small cough. “Yeah. He was… but I’ll bet he hasn’t forgotten how to do this. Right, doc?”
“I’ve delivered over a hundred babies, hon,” Mark said, his fingers checking that the baby’s neck was at the right angle. “From my side, I’ll get yours here safe, and from your side, you do as I say. Deal?”
“Argh!” Emma screamed as a long, hard contraction hit. “Fuck, that hurts!”
“Is that a ‘yes’?” Mark asked, teasing her.
She glared at him again, her stomach muscles relaxing at last. “No jokes while you’ve got your fingers inside my body, Doctor Hayden.”
“OK.” Mark opened her legs wider. “I promise. Now, you feel like you need to push yet?”
Emma nodded, biting her lip.
“Then go ahead and do that, hon.” Mark gave her a smile. “Your body knows what it’s doing here, so you just listen to what it says.”
“My body says that it wants to be in a goddamn hospital!”
Dean
bit back a grin. Fuck, how was this woman so adorable, even in the throes of labor? Damn, he loved her.
“I agree with your body, one hundred percent,” Mark said. “But this is what we’ve got to work with, and it’s not so bad. A bed, fresh bedding, boiling water, a trained doctor and nurse, an ambulance on the way. You’re good, Emma, so you just focus on what you need to do. You focus on bringing your son in to the world. Yeah?”
“Yeah,” she said weakly. “I just – I’m scared.”
“I know,” Dean said. “But you’re the strongest, bravest woman I know. You kicked cancer right in its ass, girl, so this? You can do this. I got you.”
“Dean,” she whispered. “I need you to help me.”
“How?” His mint-green eyes were so loving and tender as they gazed at her. “What do you need?”
“Tell me it’s going to be OK.”
“Emma, baby.” He stroked her cheek, held her eyes, didn’t even wince when her nails cut in to his hand as the next contraction built. “It’s going to be OK. I promise you.”
**
Jennifer Sawyer hung up the phone, stared at Chris Brooker in sheer, blind panic, her blue eyes shining with tears.
He was already packing, already planning the quickest trip to the airport. He looked up at her now, his handsome face tense, his gray eyes dark with barely-held-in-check anger.
“How is she?” he asked.
“Liv said there’s lots of screaming.”
“Fuck.” Chris doubled-down on the packing speed. “Dean?”
“Liv hasn’t seen him, but Dallas did, and said that he was beside himself.”
“Of course he was,” Chris muttered. “If that was you in there giving birth, after some asshole stabbed you in the stomach? I’d be losing my goddamn mind.”
Jenny took a shuddering breath, and Chris looked up, alert.
“You good, sweetheart?” he asked softly.
“Yeah. I’m just worried.”
“I know.” He came over to her now, gathered her in his arms. “Let’s get to the airport, change our tickets.”
“If we can’t?”
“Then we buy new ones. First flight from Washington to Colorado, we’re on it.” He hesitated. “But the weather at that end is bad, Jenny, and there may be delays until the storm breaks. Maybe even cancellations.”
“I hate that we’re so far away!” Jenny burst out. “Why did we have to come to source wood for the restaurant furniture this week? I should be there right now… I should be there for Emma, the way that she’s been there for me, over and over again.”
“Jenny…”
“And Liv? She’s a wreck, Chris. Oh, she was trying like hell to hold it together on the phone, but she did say casually – like it didn’t mean a single goddamn thing – that seeing that guy cutting Emma up took her back to what happened to her.”
“Oh, no.” Chris was horrified; he’d never even thought of Liv maybe having flashbacks, and he wondered how Dallas was handling it. “Oh, God.”
“I know.” Jenny fought down a sob. “Emma and Liv need me, and I’m in fucking Washington state, looking at wood for you to build me some tables and chairs. Jesus.”
“Hey.” Chris stroked her long, blonde hair, trying to calm her down. “We had no way of knowing this was gonna happen, baby. Nobody had any way of knowing any of this.”
“I know. I just –”
“Nuh-uh, don’t you do that. This is not your fault, this was not anything like in your control.” He kept his voice low. “We’ll get back to Denver, and then you’ll do and be everything that Emma and Liv need, and I’ll step up for Dean and Dallas if they’re struggling. But right now, we need to stay cool, pack, get out of here, get to our friends. And we’ll do it together. Yeah?”
“OK.” Jenny nodded, feeling like her chest was actually taking in air again. “Yes.”
“Good.” He moved away, still keeping an eye on her. “Do Beth and Jim know?”
“Dallas was on the phone with Jim while Liv was talking to me,” Jenny said, wandering numbly to the bathroom to collect their toiletries. “So I guess they’re going to be trying to get their asses back from Oregon post-haste. What a lousy time for us to all be away.” She disappeared through the door, and Chris heard her clattering around in there.
“Goddammit,” Chris muttered to himself, running his large hands through his short blond hair. “Talk about your cluster-fuck of epic proportions.”
“What’d you say?” she called from the bathroom.
“Nothing, baby.” Chris glanced at his watch, reached for the bedside phone to check out of the hotel in advance. “Just calling the front desk. Let’s roll in ten minutes, OK?”
“OK.” He heard her take another deep breath, and he felt nothing but relief that she’d pulled it together so fast. “Yes.”
**
Jim Alden disconnected the call with Dallas, stared out the hotel window for a few seconds. Everything in his huge, hard body strained to get back to Denver, to get to where he was needed, to just fucking move. If he were alone, he’d be packed and out the door by now… but he wasn’t alone. And the person that he was with was fragile at the moment.
He was with Beth Harper in her home town of Foxburg Falls, Oregon, and this was nothing even remotely resembling a lovely trip down the memory lane of Beth’s idyllic time in the small town. They hadn’t had long, lazy dinners with Beth’s parents; they hadn’t strolled the tiny main street, reminiscing about Beth working at the hair salon there. They sure as hell hadn’t gone back to her old house and relived all the happy moments that Beth had enjoyed in it.
No, they were back in Foxburg Falls for Beth to do some damn hard work. She had to deal with some horrific events, events which had changed and damaged her deeply, events which had haunted her for five years now.
They were there to face down a demon in the human form of Michael Ferguson, the former Sheriff of the town… and the twisted, sick fuck who had raped and beaten Beth, who’d gotten her pregnant and then killed her baby, and damn near killed her in the process. Beth was desperate to finally lay to rest the monster that she’d run from four years before – the vile, loathsome creature that Hunter Sullivan had shot and killed in a hostage standoff.
Ferguson may have been dead, but his cold, clammy hold on Beth persisted, lingered. She’d been in pretty intensive therapy for months now, but the nightmares hadn’t stopped… if anything, they’d worsened.
Her therapist had suggested that she return to Foxburg Falls to face things head-on, and Jim hadn’t hesitated for one second to accompany her. They’d been in Oregon for five days now, and she was just starting to look and sound like herself again. How was this news about Emma and Francine and what happened at the safe house going to affect her?
Jim’s biggest fear was that it was going to make her feel – yet again, some more – that the world was an unsafe, terrifying place for women. That even when they were somewhere guarded and protected, women were nothing but vulnerable to men intent on doing them harm. That women were in danger, all the time and everywhere.
Sometimes, the fact that Beth had pushed past her history, and actually trusted him, was beyond Jim’s comprehension. After what she’d been through, how did she allow Jim to touch her, hold her, kiss her? It was a small miracle that she let him in to her body, welcomed him in, even. To this day, he didn’t know what he’d done to deserve that staggering faith in him – but he was damned if he was going to give her even one reason to doubt it.
He looked over at the sliding glass balcony door, saw Beth through it. She was busily drawing, the cup of coffee that Jim had just brought her steaming at her elbow. She looked totally absorbed, her moss-green eyes narrowed in concentration, her long brown hair pulled back in a loose ponytail. He zeroed in on her hair now, loving its color. It was her real color, the one that flattered her eyes and skin, th
e one that made her look so damn beautiful.
He remembered when he first met Beth – back when she was hiding and still calling herself Kat – and how she’d color and change her hair length every two weeks or so. At the time, people thought it was part of her job as a hair stylist to change her appearance constantly, but Jim had always known that there was more to it than that. On some level, he’d always known that Beth had been in flight. On some level, he’d always wanted to know the real her, if she’d just let him in and close.
Jim’s heart tugged as he looked at her, his love for this brave, tough woman all-encompassing. He’d do anything to help her; anything at all to protect her.
And now he had to go out there on to that sunny balcony, and tell her that shit had gone down back in Denver… shit that had hurt Emma, and frightened Liv, and which had resulted in Francine being taken by a goddamn predator.
By the exact same kind of man which had stalked, targeted, and almost killed Beth all those years ago.
Goddammit. I’m gonna shatter her whole world. The world that she’s fought so hard to build here.
Taking a deep breath, Jim crossed the room, slid open the door. Beth looked up with a smile, and despite his worry, he smiled back. God, he loved her, and he was going to do whatever she needed. He was always going to put her first.
“How’s it going?” he asked quietly, gesturing at the sketchpad.
“Good,” she said. “I think I’m finished.”
“Yeah? Can I see this one?”
“Of course.” She leaned back so he could see the drawing. “I want you to see it, Jim. I want you to see them all.”
He moved closer, enjoying the heat from the sun. The balcony was fully enclosed, all glass, and it was their favorite part of the hotel room. They spent hours out here, drinking coffee in the mornings and wine in the evenings, just talking and staring up at the mountains that reminded them of the Rockies back in Denver, though on a much smaller scale.
Jim had mentally prepared himself to look at the sketch that she’d done, but it still kicked the breath right out of him, just for a second. He’d been taken aback at Beth’s natural artistic talent; even more so by the emotional wallop that her simple black-and-white pencil sketches contained. The raw emotion that jumped off the page at him never ceased to amaze and astound, and he knew her better now than he had done even a few days ago. God, what she showed him of herself in those sketches – it was nothing less than her soul.
Solid Heart (Unseen Enemy Book 7) Page 14