by Lissa Kasey
All scattered. Even the one with the Yorkie. It just had: Peyton? Fire? Water? How did I get there?
There were a few other notations. Of where and when Tony went to school. He’d been closer in age to Ashlyn and Kade than Madison or Skyler. Kade had a notation that he’d gone to Tony’s school and had no memories. Not even déjà vu. He deduced he’d just never been there before. He also marked off a few others of the pets who’d been killed when he wasn’t in therapy with small notes like: no memory; or was with Jonathan. The only real incident left was the Yorkie. He’d seen something happen, but not all of it.
Apparently I was back home in San Francisco now, as he had the return trip marked. How they’d gotten me here wasn’t listed, but he was scheduling his time as he usually did. A few hours at the office each morning, then the rest of the day at St. Francis with me. Haven was heavily booked with cases, bodyguard, and a few insurance cases. James was listed as handling the insurance cases. His PI license was brand-new and documented into the system.
Kade had a few college tours set up for the next few weeks with Micah. Most of them were trade schools and one for the university. He had therapy and rehab, which he was scheduling for times when he was sure someone else could be with me, but he was doing so much it was no wonder he looked worn out.
There was a notation from yesterday, when I’d slept most of the day, that he’d met with his father. There was a notation that he’d gone with Steven and James at his back. Just in case….
That didn’t stop my heart quickening at the thought. But he was here with me now. Safe.
I clicked on the meeting link to see if Kade had made notes. No notes. Just a scan of a document. A contract. I opened it to stare at the multiple blank signatures it was asking for, and again it took a minute for the words to focus. It was a marriage contract. Offering Kade millions of dollars if he would marry some girl whose name I didn’t recognize. There was a passage highlighted toward the end that relationships outside the contract were allowed so long as they were discreet, but Kade would be required to produce at least one legitimate heir.
This was insane. I couldn’t imagine Kade even considering it. Though the monetary offer was sizable. There was also a huge privacy disclosure form attached. I didn’t more than glance through that. The entire idea made me sick. And my heart hurt. Though Kade was here with me, that didn’t mean he wasn’t considering it. If he thought I was going to be his little toy on the side, he had another thing coming.
I sighed. There was no way Kade would think that way. He wasn’t desperate for money, nor was he seeking acceptance from his family. There was a link in the name of the girl he was supposed to marry. A background check of intense levels already run through my software. On the surface she seemed like a good person, well educated, from a good family, no red flags in her background. Except she was from a family who shared defense contracts with Kade’s dad. It was meant to be a match for political gain, or at least that’s what I took from it.
Hadn’t Madison and Ashlyn said the same thing? Their father arranged matches for everyone for his own gain rather than theirs. Except for Peyton’s, of course. Maybe that’s why she had come unhinged? She didn’t feel like her dad was giving her enough attention? And what about Ashlyn? She wasn’t much younger than Kade. Shouldn’t she have an arranged marriage by now? Xander I could see putting it off since he was still technically in school. But Kade had been out of the family so long I’d have thought Ashlyn would have been married to someone long before all this.
I glanced back through the notes, and there was a link to a paternity test in the file. At first glance I thought it might have been the original test to prove Micah was Kade’s, as if there was any doubt there, but this was actually Kade’s DNA compared to Howard Almantey’s DNA. It was a match. Howard was Kade’s father.
The fact disappointed me for a minute. I had really wanted Kade to be free of the family. But he’d reminded me numerous times that blood did not make family. Love made family. His family was me now. And mine was his. Our family was growing in a lot of ways. Britney and Will and their baby, Sophia and Micah, Tomas and Tyler, Newt and even Jacob. What a weird bunch we were.
I pulled up the list of Kade’s siblings, staring at their basic stats, which I already had memorized, like name, age, birthdates, location, occupation, and marital status. On the surface the oldest three were exactly the same. Born two years apart, all lived in California, though not all in Carlsbad, all except Peyton worked for their dad, and all were married into wealthy and affluent families, even Peyton. She might have married a football player, but he was a heavily sought-after one who banked over twenty million per year.
Below the oldest, the list seemed to change as all three of the younger siblings were self-made when it came to success. Kade had his military career and a very lucrative property management business he owned but others mostly managed for him. He also had Haven, which was well respected and bringing in a growing profit now that he was managing it.
Ashlyn had a successful career in modeling. The fact that she still modeled at all while she was over thirty was a miracle in and of itself. The industry was brutal, ageist and sexist. But she was featured in a lot of the upper-class magazines and shops that catered to women who were a little older and had a lot of money to spend. I knew a lot of the clothes she modeled were classic Jackie O style, which never seemed to die among the rich. She spent most of her time in New York but also had an upscale condo just down the beach from Carlsbad.
Her birthdate, however, was a little odd. Kade would have been just under a year old when she was born. I didn’t know a lot about pregnancy, but that seemed really fast.
Xander was five years younger than Ashlyn. Again self-made. Lots of scientific achievements. Unmarried. But maybe he had yet to accept a contract from his father. He lived and worked out of Texas, had no noted properties in California anywhere, and seemed to do nothing but work and study science. Ashlyn was right about him needing to get out more. It was odd that he was so separated from the family. But technically Kade was too, just in a different way. And since Xander had been so much younger than the rest of them, he probably wasn’t close to any of them.
Maybe Kade’s mom had really needed the break after having Kade and Ashlyn back to back? I dug up their birth certificates, all scans of very old documents. Madison, Peyton, Skyler, Kade, and Xander’s were all identical. Ashlyn’s listed Howard as her dad, but the mother portion was blank. That was odd. I added a notation to ask Kade about it in the morning. Thirty-plus years ago very little was done by computer as the digital era was just beginning. All the certificates were handwritten. So maybe it had just been an oversight.
I sighed and put the phone back on the table. It really sucked being tired all the time. And having Kade sleeping in a chair instead of wrapped around me. Hopefully they’d let me go home soon. I closed my eyes and quickly I drifted.
SOMETHING WOKE me. Usually I wasn’t a light sleeper, but the uncomfortably small bed, with no added body heat from Kade, and days spent in bed, kept me from falling deep. I was sure I’d heard the door open. The room was dark. Empty at a quick glance. Maybe it had been a nurse, just popping their head in to check on me.
Kade was so curled up in the blanket now that even his face was masked. He looked almost invisible and small in the chair, but I knew he was there. I sighed and closed my eyes.
I’d just begun to doze again when something covered my face. I put up a hand to brush it away, but it pressed harder, cutting off my air. I reached up to push it off, tried to turn my head enough to get another breath, but I felt arms, a pillow, and strength I couldn’t match in my weakened state. Someone pressed a pillow over the sides of my face, and I floundered, kicking, gasping, trying to suck in air.
Something fell to the floor with a loud thunk, shaking my bed, but the pillow didn’t move. Stars crossed my vision, and I recognized all too well the feeling of suffocation as my lungs burned with pain. It had almost happened
before, when I’d nearly drowned in the bathtub when Donovan had attacked me. For a minute I feared he’d gotten out of jail.
Terror coursed through me, and I fought harder. I gripped the arms, tugged on them, scratched them, dug my nails into their flesh, and tried to reach a face but got nothing. It was little more than blind flailing, but just like that first time, I wasn’t going to die without a fight. Not with Kade sleeping five feet away.
The IV in my arm stung from the wild movements.
I felt for it, trying to focus myself on not passing out. There was tape covering the needle, but I gripped it, yanked it out of my arm, and aimed it at my attacker like a weapon. I jammed the needle into their arm as hard as I could, feeling flesh give and a hot splash of blood dot my hand.
There was a yelp and the pillow loosened. I shoved it off and sucked in a huge, painful breath.
Ashlyn stood over the bed, both arms a bloody mess from my scratches, and there was a gash on her left one where I’d obviously gotten her with the needle.
And then Kade was behind her, slamming into Ashlyn, sending her forward to sprawl over the bed as he tried to get a grip and keep his balance at the same time. His big arms wrapped around her to drag her away from me. She kicked and threw a punch at him. Hit him hard enough in the chin to send him staggering back, but he wouldn’t let go. He only had one leg, but he used his body weight to try to hold her back. She fought like she was possessed.
“Kade,” I cried, trying to unravel myself from the blanket, the pillow she’d tried to kill me with, and the bed that I was boxed into.
I expected Kade’s new guards to come rushing in, but it was all crickets and near silent beeping from the machines. They were probably home in bed as who would think I’d need a guard at a hospital where there were already supposed to be guards on duty 24/7?
I cursed the nurses for not showing up, but maybe they saw the attack on the monitor and were waiting for security. Fuck, we didn’t have time for security.
Ashlyn’s legs flailed, slamming into the bed hard enough to slide it across the floor and half tip it. The bed banged into the machines, stopped only by the wall. It jolted me hard, and my head spun in a nauseating circle. It took me a few seconds to refocus.
She and Kade were on the floor, her practically on top of him. She kept punching him, kicking him, while all he did was try to hold her down. He wasn’t even protecting himself, just holding her in place so she couldn’t escape his grip to come at me again.
He was bleeding. His nose, I think. Maybe a split lip. Her arms were covered in blood, but she didn’t seem to notice. Her face was splattered with blood, but her expression was almost lifeless. It was like something out of a horror movie.
I reached for the nurse call button and prayed they wouldn’t take forever to answer. If they hadn’t noticed the struggle on the monitor, they’d hear the call and have to respond. At least I hoped they’d respond.
Kade was losing, but only because he wasn’t fighting back. I didn’t know if it was because he didn’t want to hit a girl or just didn’t want to hit his sister.
I fumbled with the railing, finally getting it to release, and rolled out of bed. My legs didn’t want to hold me up, and I stumbled, landing hard on my knees. The call button fell with me, hitting the floor and breaking apart to dangle from the long cord attached. I grabbed it and pulled the cord as far it would reach, forming a circle like a lasso from an old Western movie and throwing it around Ashlyn’s head. I was close enough to wrap it around Ashlyn’s throat, then gave it a quick jerk backward.
She stopped beating on Kade for a minute to struggle with the cord. She got her fingers beneath it and tugged it hard enough to drag me forward a foot or two. I pulled it harder, using my own body weight to drag her off of him. I had to loosen my hold to stand up and give myself more room to move, and that was all the time she needed.
She threw herself backward, into me, shoving us both into the bed. I tripped over the compression machine that must have fallen off the end of the bed when I’d begun struggling. Pain flared through my ankle as my leg wrenched, and I fell backward, flipped over the bed, and landed half-sprawled between the bed and the wall, upside-down, legs in the air, helplessly twisted and dizzy.
There was a sharp snapping fizz-pop, and the movement in the room seemed to stop. My heart was pounding and blood rushing into my ears. I blinked away tears, hoping Kade was okay and that she hadn’t gone for him again. I panted, trying to keep air in my lungs and stop the spin of my vision.
It was Kade who shoved the bed away and helped lower my feet to the floor. He tugged my hospital gown down over my hips.
“Baby, please tell me you didn’t get hit in the head again.” He pulled me into his lap, his hands on my face, eyes searching every inch of me. I gasped, unable to hold back the tremble now that I was back in his arms. Ashlyn lay on the floor, bleeding, twitching, the tines of a Taser blast sticking out of her side.
“Fuck,” Kade grumbled. He kissed my forehead. The door opened and a nurse stood in the doorway, blinking wide eyes at Ashlyn on the floor and us in the corner with the room in disarray. A guard I’d never seen before appeared behind the nurse with a tray of coffee in hand from a real coffee shop. His eyes widened as he took in the scene.
I pointed to Ashlyn. “She tried to kill me.”
And that was when the hospital security finally arrived.
Chapter Thirty-Three
THE GUARD was one of Jacob’s with little actual guarding experience, left over from the old team. He had been convinced by Ashlyn to go across the street from the hospital and get real coffee for everyone. She’d shown off pictures of herself and Jacob and emphasized what great friends we all were. He bought it.
He didn’t know that I didn’t drink coffee, and that Kade preferred sugary coffee drinks, or that no one was allowed in my room without Kade’s permission. Duke, who had been working for months on trying to train Jacob’s leftover guards to be real guards, had already had not-nice things to say to the man whose only job had been to keep everyone out of the room at five in the morning while Kade and I slept. He grumbled an apology to Kade and promised to work on his people’s basic intelligence. Though since Adrian Duke and his men worked for Jacob and not us, I figured it was Jacob’s problem.
Will had happily arrested Ashlyn. The hospital security had cuffed her while they took statements from us. Kade’s face was swelling and turning colors. He ended up with two stitches in his cheek, and a doctor had to reset his nose. He refused to let me go until Will arrived to take over Ashlyn’s arrest.
“He tried to kill Oliver,” Ashlyn had been telling the hospital security guards and the police since the moment they’d arrived. “He tried to suffocate him with the pillow. He’s a monster.”
Except that everything she’d done was on camera. And everything Kade hadn’t done as well. He’d never actually struck her. Just the final shot with the Taser, and that was all. I’d done more damage to her in self-defense than Kade had. Her arms had to be stitched in several places, including the large gash I’d nearly gouged out of her bicep with the IV needle.
Will said he already had a copy of the feed, and no matter what Howard Almantey might try, the video was not going to vanish. Ashlyn was seriously unhinged, and I’d misjudged her completely. She had turned from raving maniac into a demure and very polite lady who couldn’t understand why she was being detained and cuffed.
It was a Jekyll and Hyde sort of thing that made me shiver.
James and Steven arrived to take over security from Duke’s detail. Both were furious and self-deprecating that they hadn’t been around. But they had lives too. It wasn’t like I normally needed a guard. Maybe Kade did. He was more focused on me than anything external.
The neurosurgeon who had been overseeing my care insisted I get another brain scan to check for any possible damage, though I didn’t recall hitting my head. My ankle was another story. Tripping over the compression machine had twisted it and torn a
ligament. It had quickly swelled to twice the size and throbbed at the slightest movement. So now I had a huge bandage wrapped around my foot and ankle, with a Velcro sort of covering that kept it mostly immobile. I wasn’t supposed to put any pressure on it. Kade was also bruised and supposed to be in a wheelchair, which of course he refused.
Micah showed up at midday with a duffel bag and Kade’s keyring. I was in Kade’s lap, half sleeping, half on high alert, dozing, but jolted by the slightest movement. He had the blanket wrapped around me, and I refused to go back into the bed, though the room had been righted.
My scan was clear, and I was just done. I needed to go home. To my space with Kade. To Newt. To where all the rage and hate from Kade’s past couldn’t touch me.
“The nurse says she’ll be in with some final paperwork for you to sign,” Micah told Kade. He put the duffel bag on the bed but didn’t attempt to open it. “Jacob packed the bag.”
“Yeah?” Kade asked.
“He’s sort of….”
Kade raised a brow at him.
“Does he do that with everyone?” Micah finally asked.
“Do what?”
“The innuendos. Flirting. Everything is sex to him.”
“Yes,” I said. Except Kade. Mostly he left Kade alone.
“Yes,” Kade agreed. “That’s just Jacob.”
“Mom said if he stared at her boobs one more time, she was going to see if he could sing as well with a few less teeth.”
I snorted a laugh.
Micah looked at the bag. “Anyway. There should be clothes in there for both of you.” His cheeks pinked. “I’ll um… wait for you outside. The nurse said she’d bring a couple of chairs around.” He darted out the door, and Kade chuckled.
“Are they living with us?” I asked.
“Nope. They are actually in Walnut Creek. I just had a renter move out of a house out there.” He looked thoughtful. “Well, that was before the case with Jacob and the whole world blew up.”