by James Tate
"Don't worry about all of this," Steele told me as I frowned in the direction of Dave’s—or Declan's—body. "After you get that wrist sorted, we can debrief. Your injuries take priority, Hellcat."
I jerked a nod of understanding and let the nice, older female EMT coax me into the other ambulance. Even though I was the only one who'd heard my stalker's dying confession, I was a long way from being able to pass the information on. It was so much worse than I'd ever anticipated, and just the idea of voicing the reality made my stomach churn again.
Nope. No, Steele was right. It could wait a couple of hours.
* * *
That couple of hours turned into the rest of the night, as Archer was admitted for observation, despite his protests. After my wrist was x-rayed and set in a cast and I'd been given a couple of painkillers for all my other bruises, I'd given him a stern talking to.
James had accompanied us to the hospital, offering to keep an eye on me while Kody and Steele dealt with the cleanup, and I weirdly appreciated his company. I liked him, despite really knowing very little about him. A small part of me hoped that maybe we could get to know each other when my life was less blood soaked.
After all, he was the only genetic family I had left. Chosen family, though? I had plenty of that. Archer, Kody, and Steele owned equal parts of my soul; they were my fucking everything. But the events of the night had brought me clarity regarding the other members of my new family. Anna and Steinwick had gained my undying respect. I doubted I'd ever forget the image of Anna beating a man to death with a skillet.
"He'll be out for a while," James told me softly as I sat beside Archer's bedside. "They've given him some sleeping aid to help his body heal."
I nodded, tired as fuck. "Probably smart," I mumbled. "He wouldn't rest otherwise."
James gave a soft laugh. "Ain't that true. Never met a man so hardheaded in my life." He paused, but I could sense he had more to say.
I didn't push him, though. I was too damn exhausted.
Eventually he sighed, sitting down beside me. "You know... I never even thought about kids. It just never seemed to be in the cards for me, and I was content with the life I had."
I said nothing, but I was curious to see where he was going with this.
"I definitely never thought about what it'd be like to have a daughter, that's for fucking sure. And I sure as fuck never thought I'd be the father to a grown-ass woman who is perfectly capable of standing on her own two feet." He ruffled his fingers through his hair and blew out a long exhale. "Listen, you don't know me from a bar of soap, but for what it's worth..." He trailed off like he had no idea what the right phrasing was for what he wanted to say. Eventually he just shrugged. "You've got three guys who would quite literally die for you, Madison Kate. They love you with a force I never even knew possible. I guess... that's all any parent could want for their kid, right?"
It didn't sound like a rhetorical question; he was genuinely asking if that was the right reaction to his newly discovered adult daughter dating three violent killers.
Glancing over at him, I gave a small smile. "Don't overthink it, James," I advised with a hint of amusement. "It just is what it is."
He gave a small grimace somewhere in the realm of awkward embarrassment. "Well, anyway." Another pause. "Are you happy, Madison Kate? I mean, if you could ignore all the shootings and bombings and stalkers... if you were just a normal girl, dating three guys who loved her equally, would you be happy?"
I raised my brows, not totally sure what point he was making. "Um... well, I don't think I can ignore all those things. Without all of that, I might never have met Archer, Kody, and Steele, so then the answer would be no. I can't possibly picture my life now without the three of them in it. They're it for me, and I love everything that comes with them—blood, violence, and all. So, if your real question is would I change anything if I could? Hell no. This is me, now. The real me. And they're just the other parts to my whole piece."
James held my gaze for a moment, his eyes curious but not judgmental. He just wanted to understand, and I appreciated that about him.
After a second, he jerked a nod. "Well, good. I'm pretty glad I took the job with Archer, that's for sure. I never could have seen this coming, but I'm surprisingly okay with how it's worked out."
I returned his smile. "Me too."
James cleared his throat a bit awkwardly, then gave another short nod. "I'll leave you be. Whenever you want to head home, I'll be in the waiting room, okay?"
"Actually, I'm probably going to stay a while," I told him with a yawn. "Bree is still upstairs, so I want to go and see her when she wakes up. You can head home and get some sleep; one of the guys can come get me later."
James just gave me a tight smile as he paused in the doorway. "Nah, I'll wait. Take as long as you need; my gardens can wait a day." He gave me a joking wink, then left the room.
A warm feeling had settled over me as we'd spoken, and in his absence, I found myself smiling. He might never be my dad but, he was a damn sight better than the one I'd known growing up.
I yawned again and rested my head on the side of Archer's bed. It was only four in the morning; Bree wouldn't likely be awake for a while yet. Maybe I'd just... close my eyes a moment.
40
"Babe, wake up." Kody's gentle voice jerked me out of my deep sleep, and I sat up with a gasp, then groaned in pain. "Hey, whoa, take it easy, MK."
"Ow," I complained, trying to rub my eyes and accidentally bashing myself in the face with my plaster cast. "What's going on?"
Kody smoothed his hand over my face, rubbing his thumb over my nose, which I'd just whacked. "You were asleep on the side of the bed," he told me in a low whisper. "I was worried your neck would be hurting. Let me take you home, babe, Arch will be fine here."
I shook my head. "No, I wanted to..." I trailed off, blinking at the clock on the wall. "Oh damn, I was asleep for more than five minutes." It was past eight in the morning. Bree should be awake by now. "I wanna go and see Bree." I stood up from my chair and every stiff muscle screamed at me. Holy crap, I was feeling rough.
Kody didn't argue with me, just nodded and took my good hand in his. I hesitated before we left the room, glancing back at Archer's sleeping form with indecision. It felt wrong to leave him so vulnerable.
"I've got Arch, Hellcat," Steele told me, coming from down the corridor with a tray of coffees in hand. "Here, take one of these, kiss me, tell me you're fine, then go do what you were doing."
I couldn't help smiling as he handed me a coffee. Rising up on my toes, I pressed my lips to his in a tender kiss, which he leaned into.
"I'm fine, Max," I whispered against his lips. "And I love you."
His mouth curved in a blissful smile. "I love you too, Hellcat."
"One of those for me, bro?" Kody asked, plucking a coffee from Steele's tray without waiting for a response. It was a damn good thing all four of us drank our coffee the same way; it made ordering easy as hell. "Come on, babe. Let's go see Bree, then head home for sleep."
I grumbled about not wanting to leave the hospital without Archer but sipped my coffee and followed him along past the nurses’ station to the elevators. We passed through the waiting room on the way, and I was genuinely surprised to see James still sitting there, waiting. Just like he'd said he would.
He was in one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs, reading what looked like a well-worn paperback romance novel that he must have found in the stack of magazines and coloring books. He was a decent way through it, too.
"All okay?" he asked us, his gaze flicking up from his book when he noticed us there.
I nodded and gave a small smile. "You're fine to go home," I told him. "You look wrecked."
His gaze flipped between Kody and I before he replied. "Nah, I'm good. I'll hang out in case you guys need something. I've heard how much coffee you go through, Madison Kate. You might need a refill soon."
I snorted a laugh, shaking my head. "Suit yourself. An
d it's MK. Only people I don't like call me Madison Kate."
James bobbed a nod, a hint of red creeping up his neck. "MK. Got it." Then he shifted his gaze to Kody, and his eyes turned hard. "Don't take your eyes off her."
Kody just nodded and nudged me over to the elevators. He kept his face neutral until the doors slid closed, then his lips curved in a wide grin as he glanced over at me.
"What?" I asked, suspicious as fuck.
He snickered a laugh. "Babe, I reckon your dad might actually kill us if you get hurt again. He's got that whole protective papa-bear look nailed."
I rolled my eyes, shaking off his teasing. "Stop it. James probably finds this whole dynamic just as weird as I do."
Kody shrugged, sipping his coffee. "Maybe, but I think he's adapting pretty well. But for the record, he wouldn't need to kill us if you got hurt again." His joking demeanor evaporated, and his tone darkened. "I'd do it for him."
The elevator doors slid open on Bree’s floor, and he took three steps out before noticing I was frozen to the spot. He turned back to me, a small frown creasing his brow.
"You coming, beautiful?"
"Yeah." I forced my feet to move, swallowing past the seriousness of that moment we'd just had. I knew exactly what he was feeling, though. It was the same thing I’d felt watching Steele and Archer both nearly die in front of me.
Joining Kody, I leaned into him as he wrapped his free arm around my waist. My hands were occupied holding coffee and wearing a plaster cast, but I still appreciated the half hug as we headed down the corridor to Bree's room.
Her door was closed, so I tapped lightly before cracking it open to check if she was asleep. To my relief, she was awake already and eating breakfast with her TV on.
"Hey girl," I greeted her, pushing the door open fully to enter.
She looked up with a wide smile, which quickly fell when she saw the state of me. Crap. I hadn't even told her about the showdown with Zane and Kruger. Hell, I hadn't even turned my phone on since before the wedding.
"MK!" she shrieked, her face a picture of panic. "What the hell happened? Oh my god, you look like you've been run over by a truck!"
I smiled and quirked a brow at her pointedly, and she scowled.
"Not funny," she snapped back. "I wasn't run over. Just run into."
"Okay, semantics," I said on a snort of laughter. "I'm fine, though. Just bruised."
Bree glared at Kody, who'd followed me into her room. "Why the hell does Kodiak Jones look like he just woke up from a lovely, refreshing sleep? Where was he when you got beaten the hell up, girl? What fucking use are three boyfriends if they can't keep you safe?"
Guilt and regret flashed over Kody's face, and a flicker of anger passed through me. "Bree, stop it. Kody saved my ass, multiple times. He just always looks good; you can't hold it against him."
The smile Kody shot me was doing little to hide his guilt over me getting hurt, but that was something for us to work through ourselves. Hopefully naked.
"Anyway, I wanted to come see how you were getting on with everything," I told Bree, changing the subject. "How's baby doing?"
She shot Kody another warning look, not dissimilar to the way James had just eyed him. But then she refocused and smiled as she rubbed her growing belly.
"Baby is happy and healthy. This bed rest bullshit is suiting him nicely, that's for sure. I'm dying to get out of here, though." She groaned a bit like being trapped in the hospital was physical torture.
I smiled, knowing all too well there were a million worse places to be. "What did your doctors say about your bones setting? Are they happy with everything?"
She nodded enthusiastically. Her wrist was still bandaged heavily from a recent surgery to correct the way it was all healing. "Going as good as anyone could have hoped. The only concern now is my stupid placenta. They have to keep giving me transfusions for baby, but they seem confident it will sort itself out soon. I'm quietly hoping they'll let me go home for the rest of the pregnancy. I really don't want to be stuck here for another five months."
"Yeah, fair enough." I sat down in one of her guest chairs with a groan. Whatever show she was watching had super catchy music, and I watched it for a minute. "What's this? You finished Gilmore Girls?"
"Yup," she replied. "This show is my new obsession; it's about this chick and her ghost band, who—" She broke off and narrowed her eyes at me, tilting her head to the side. "Fucking never mind what I'm watching. What the hell happened to you?"
I exchanged a look with Kody, but he just shrugged. The message was clear. It was entirely my call what I wanted to tell Bree about all that we'd done in the past few days. How many people we'd killed. Fucking hell.
Biting my lip, I agonized over what I'd actually come to ask her. Then I gave myself a quick mental slap to get it over with.
"Hey Bree, I want to ask something a bit left field," I told her, ignoring her question about how I'd ended up so battered.
She frowned in confusion but nodded. "Anything at all," she said. "What's up?"
I shifted in my seat and tightened my grip around my coffee. "Uh, I wanted to know... did you ever meet any of our new security guards?"
Now she looked even more confused. "Yeah, I did. I mean, not at the house; the last time I was there was... I don't even remember. Your boys sort of made it clear I wasn’t welcome at the house, remember? They tried that BS with your dad threatening you to stay away from me.” She snorted a laugh, because we’d just taken to hanging out in the library at SGU instead. “But I met the bearded guy, Sampson?" I nodded. "Right. I met him when you were visiting Steele. And a couple of the other guys. Wade and Bill?"
"Gill," I corrected but nodded again. "Right, yeah, that's what I thought. I just... fucking hell." I chewed on the edge of my lip, really not wanting to keep going down this line of questioning. Kody was frowning at me, too, like he had no idea what sort of thread I was picking at.
Bree gave a nervous laugh. "Okay, you're kinda freaking me out, girl. What's going on?"
"Bree, do you happen to have a photo of that guy you were seeing last year?" I let the question out in a rush, and she blinked back at me, more confused than ever.
"David?" she repeated with a squeak of alarm. "Why?"
I cringed at the name, cursing myself. Kody clued in there, too, and cursed profusely under his breath.
"Just... do you have a picture? It's kind of important." I didn't want to go jumping to conclusions if I was wrong. It was a pretty common name, after all. "You mentioned he was older and pretty firm on keeping your relationship quiet."
Bree's cheeks heated, and her eyes shot to Kody. She was clearly embarrassed, but... fucking hell. This was bigger than her bad taste in men.
"Kody's not judging you, girl," I told her in a gentle voice. "Please just tell me?"
She rolled her eyes skyward, blowing out a long breath. "Yes, he was older. Like... dad-age old. And he was a cop. So like, yeah. That would have been a bit of a fucking scandal if his wife had found out, right?"
My chest ached. He had a wife? This got worse and worse. I really, really hoped it was a coincidence and he wasn’t the same Dave. Or maybe that his wife was a total fabrication.
Bree reached for her phone, looking depressed as fuck as she unlocked it and opened her photo gallery. "He never wanted me to take pictures of us," she mumbled. "I figured he was just super paranoid about his job or something. But I took one when he wasn't looking one day... I don't know why. I was just really in love, you know? Or I thought I was."
Tension sang through me so hard it was everything I could do not to snatch the phone out of her hands. The photo had to have been from almost a year ago, though, so it was going to take her a bit of scrolling to find it.
Kody cleared his throat. "He was a cop?" Bree nodded, still scrolling. "He's not anymore?" He clarified.
"Uh, I don't think so," she replied. "I saw him a couple of months ago in the grocery store downtown. He was in some kind of private security
uniform, and last I knew SGPD didn't allow moonlighting. I just assumed he'd done something to fuck up and got fired. Maybe he was screwing other teenage girls and got caught." She shrugged. "I didn't exactly approach him to chat. Dallas was with me, and I didn't want to point him out, you know?"
I nodded my understanding. Dallas would have slaughtered him. Hell, that might have done me a huge favor if he had. But Bree couldn't have known. No one had known.
"Here." She expanded an image and passed it to me. "Not the best picture, but it's all I've got."
I took the phone and held my breath as I looked down at the screen. The man in the picture had his back to the camera, his face in part profile, but there was no doubt in my mind. That was Dave. Declan. Whoever the fuck he was. He'd targeted Bree, made her fall for him, gotten her pregnant, and all for what? To leverage her for information? For access?
I swallowed heavily and offered the phone to Kody.
He took one glance at it, then tightened his fist around the phone like he wanted to hurl it at the wall. A venomous curse fell from his lips, and Bree's brows shot up in shock.
"Guys, what the fuck is going on right now? Why are you asking all this shit about David? Did something happen?" She gasped, her eyes taking in all my bruises again. "Did he do that to you?"
I grimaced and gave a slight headshake. "No, most of this was from Zane." It was just my broken wrist that her ex-boyfriend had given me, but she didn't need to know that. "He was... David, I mean—he was one of our security guards at the house that was killed last night."
Bree gasped, covering her mouth with her fingers as her eyes swam with sadness. "Oh my god, that's... Holy shit." She shook her head in disbelief. "What happened?"
I met Kody's eyes, then sighed. "My stalker," I replied, keeping the details vague to spare her the inevitable guilt. She didn't need that burden added to her shoulders on top of everything else. She was innocent in Dave's scheme; she shouldn't have to suffer the guilt of knowing he'd used her. "He, uh, he tried to abduct me. It didn't end well."