Jackson wished to hell this wasn’t happening. But he was damn glad Morgan was the one in the hospital and not the body left in their kitchen. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Jackson could only shake his head. He sat heavily in a chair across from his brother. Why? Why? Why? It ran ceaselessly in his mind.
All the nightmares, all the screams, the darted looks, the terror that flashed in her eyes . . . They had taken months to calm, to reassure, but she’d come back to them. Morgan, their sister, had slowly emerged from the terrified woman that arrived that Christmas Eve night.
Her words the day she came home from the mall slithered into his brain: “For a very, very long time, I couldn’t even think of this place, or I’d have gone insane. Then it was all I could think of, all I wanted, and somehow, by some miracle, no matter what they did, I never uttered a word about the ranch. Or either of you, or even really of me. There were days I begged them to just kill me and be done with it.” Her hands shook and she licked her lips, wiping her cheeks, and Jackson didn’t dare move. His heart slammed against his ribs at her words. “You want to know who, and what and where and why. You’re my brothers,” she whispered, her voice breaking, “and I love you too much to burden you with that, because there are some things that are simply too dark to live with.”
. . . too dark to live with . . . too dark to live with . . . too dark to live with.
Was it a stranger? Or someone from the mysterious they/them/him she used to scream about in nightmares, cry out about in her sleep? Sob in his arms.
Damn it.
He leaned his elbows on his knees and hung his head, fisting his hands at his temples.
Could he and Gideon have prevented this, helped more, guarded her more if they’d only known what they were guarding her against? He was so angry at her for her silence, and so damn scared they could have lost her, that he didn’t know what the hell to do.
Looking at his hands, he was shocked to realize he might have washed the blood off of them but his jeans were stained, as were the cuffs and his sleeves, hell, the front of his white shirt. Morgan’s blood. A stranger’s blood. He closed his eyes. Jesus.
The door opened and Jackson shot up as the doctor walked in.
“Hello again. I’m happy to tell you that it appears your sister suffered no ill effects from this evening’s incident. However, the drug injected into her is a mixture of a narcotic. From X-rays, and the exams we performed, I still stick by my earlier concerns that she recently suffered a trauma.”
He shook his head.
“What concerns, what recent trauma?” Gideon asked, crossing his arms and standing next to Jackson. Gideon had been out of the room when the doctor had spoken to Jackson before.
The doctor sighed and motioned to the chairs. “From what we can see, your sister was systematically abused. There are multiple healed wounds, scars, healed fractures of bones and the scarred healing of torn ligaments.” He tilted his head. “However, she still isn’t awake and those are not the reasons she was admitted to the ER. Her arm, with some therapy, shouldn’t give her any trouble in the future. And once the drugs are out of her system, she’ll be fine.” The man clasped his hands, then shoved them into his scrub pockets. “However, the other incidents are those that we attempt to talk patients into reporting.”
Jackson waved him away. “What did you say your name was again?”
“Dr. Nettleship.”
Gideon stood beside him, Suzy sat in the chair he’d vacated.
“Dr. Nettleship, you can . . . ” Jackson took a deep breath. “We don’t take this lightly. We just don’t know what to do, or what to think. This is all a lot to take in.”
The doctor motioned again for them all to sit.
Jackson didn’t want to sit, but he did.
“Your sister was just attacked by a man. If she’s not seeing someone for counseling, from what I’ve seen of her X-rays, she should. Given the attack, I’m only trying to prepare you for the fact she might be even more upset, given her obvious history, than you might associate with what’s happened.”
Jackson stared at the young doctor. “My sister killed a man defending herself. However upset she is, or appears to be, I assure you, we would not think her overreacting.” Who the hell was this guy?
“Also the police are wanting to speak with her. I’ve told them they’ll have to wait until she wakes up, and I’m betting that won’t be for sometime yet.” He motioned to the door. “We’re keeping her overnight. Not just for observation. I want to run a few more tox levels tomorrow to make certain whatever the attacker gave her is out of her bloodstream.”
“Is she in a room yet?” Gideon asked.
Jackson knew Gid must be ready to climb the walls. His brother hadn’t seen her yet, had no idea what all went on.
“She’s been moved to room 423.”
“Thank you, Dr. Nettleship.”
* * *
Linc strode through the double doors of the Dallas Metroplex Hospital, shaking the water off. The storm outside was ripping across the Texas plains. People glanced at him and then moved out of his way. Tarver was right beside him.
Shadow moved from the waiting room just inside the main foyer and met them.
“I’m sorry, Linc. I tried my damnedest to get here. But was too late.”
Lincoln stopped and stared at him. Who was the traitor? He’d taken Shadow’s word that the storms kept him away. But was that really the reason?
Spearing Tarver with a glare for putting doubts in his head, he shook his head and strode to the information station.
“You know, you might try smiling instead of scaring people,” Tarver muttered.
Linc ignored him.
He already knew where she was. Damn her hide.
The jacket he had on hopefully covered his firearm. If not, he jolly well didn’t care.
After finding the way to the ER, he strode down the corridor.
He shoved his way through the double doors, past the waiting room to the closed door of the ER ward.
A nurse stopped beside him. “Can I help you?”
Tarver showed her his badge. “We’re looking for Morgan Gaelord.”
Her blond eyebrows rose. “Oh, yeah, her. Cops all over the damn place.” She hurried behind a U-shaped desk, tapped the keyboard of the computer then looked back at them. “She’s been moved up to floor four. We’re keeping her overnight for observation. Room 423.”
Without thanking her, he hurried to the bank of elevators. Tapping his thigh, he waited.
On the fourth floor, he found another nurse’s desk, but strode past it, nineteen, twenty. A nurse stepped out of twenty-one. “Can I help you?” she asked.
He glanced at her name tag. “Yes, Karen, we’re here to see the patient in room 423.”
She shrugged. “You family?”
“No.”
“Then you can’t see her.”
Linc hated hospitals. They reminded him of his father’s death, and of that of his sister. Sighing, he strode past the nurse, flashed his ID to the guard outside her door, who kept the ID and shoved the door open. He stopped.
She looked so damn small in that bed. Her hair had grown out a bit, darker, as she had been before Prague. She was still thin, but not sickly so. Just . . . toned.
Shadow put a hand on his arm. “Be nice.”
Linc looked at the hand, then back at the man he’d trust with his life. The leak, whoever they were, was not Shadow. “I’m always nice.”
Shadow only cocked a brow and crossed his massive arms. “Her brothers are around.”
Linc noticed Karen glaring from him to Shadow to Tarver. Tarver just shook his head and rubbed a hand wearily over his face. Ignoring them all, Lincoln walked into the room, listening to the quiet beep of the EKG, the hiss of the oxygen. He really hated hospitals.
Her arm was bandaged and there was a bruise on her cheek.
He looked up at her, noting she was asleep or still under the effects of the sedative the bastar
d had injected her with.
Linc walked to her bedside and took her hand in his. “I’m so bloody sorry, Morgan,” he whispered, brushing a finger across her cheeks. “I always said you were a survivor. You have no idea how much of one you truly are.” He reached behind him and pulled the chair closer before dropping into it. He saw again the blood in Amy’s apartment, the body of Glenda on the morgue table. His blood iced, knowing how close Morgan had come to dying.
God.
He closed his eyes and leaned forward, his forehead on their hands.
“Never again,” he vowed. Never again would she be in such a situation.
Chapter 26
Dallas Metroplex Hospital; 4:03 a.m.
Morgan’s eyes fluttered and she frowned. Lincoln reached up and smoothed the crease away from between her brows.
Carefully, he lowered the guardrail. He heard the nurse make a comment and Shadow’s rumble of a reply, but he didn’t turn to see what they wanted.
Linc sat on the edge of the bed and wondered why. Why now? Why his girls? Why Morgan? Well, he knew why. Mikhail had searched and somehow the man had found her. Lincoln prayed she would stay strong, not let this throw her back into a regressed depression and posttraumatic stress. He knew she’d seen Dr. Stewart regularly. He’d found that out on his own, then took a chance and emailed Morgan. They’d kept in touch. He often wondered if she was as open about her past with Dr. Stewart as she’d been with him.
He’d only stepped out earlier when Shadow told him her family wanted to see her. Jackson and Gideon had been in the hallway arguing who would stay in the room with her overnight, when the eldest Gaelord brother had looked down the hallway and straight at him.
It would be a bleeding long time before Lincoln forgot the hard accusation and blame in those frozen eyes. He and Jackson had almost gotten into a fight right there in the corridor. Not that Lincoln blamed Jackson. Hell, he blamed himself. Lincoln did take issue with the fact Jackson Gaelord thought Lincoln didn’t care what happened to Morgan. That was what set him off.
“You have no idea what it was like in that kitchen,” Jackson had snarled as he’d advanced on Lincoln.
For a moment, Lincoln just stood there, cold ice instead of anger. Not know what it was like? Then, as if something shattered in him, he grabbed Jackson and slammed him against the wall. He’d heard Shadow’s “Bloody hell.” Tarver ordering him to release Jackson.
Lincoln hadn’t. He’d held the man there, to the wall, eye to eye and all but growled back, “Not know what it was like, chap? I was on the fucking phone with her when the bastard struck. I heard what she said, what he said, what happened. I just came from looking at the body of a woman they’d eliminated. I saw the blood left in Amy Rodriguez’s apartment.” For a second, something flashed in Jackson’s cold eyes, but Lincoln pressed on. “I couldn’t do a bloody damn thing but listen to her scream, listen to him taunt,” he bit out. “Do not stand there and tell me I don’t know, when it’s you who doesn’t have a bloody fucking clue.”
And then arms had jerked them apart.
Lincoln still didn’t know what the hell had passed between them, but no one tried to stop him when he announced he was staying in the room tonight. He wasn’t letting her out of his sight.
Since that slight altercation, he’d been here, in the room with her.
A hand in his pocket, he pulled the simple gold band out and stared at it in his palm. Walking to the window, he looked out, played the ring across his fingers. One way, then the other, then back.
What the hell was he doing?
The lights of Dallas winked back at him in the predawn darkness. No one answered him.
He heard the door creak open and whirled, his hand going to his gun, the ring clattering to the floor.
Jackson stood in the doorway, dark against the brighter hallway lights.
“Has she woken up yet?”
“No.”
The brother nodded once, then again. Finally, he walked into the room and held his hand aloft. Those pale blue eyes stared and Lincoln slowly removed his hand from the butt of his firearm. Jackson’s gaze dropped to the floor before he leaned down and picked up Linc’s gold ring. Standing, the brother studied it, then opened his other hand, where a plain gold band—Morgan’s—rested on a gold chain.
Lincoln reached for his own ring, his fingers closing over it before he returned it to his pocket where it belonged.
Jackson still stood there, his other hand opened, brows frowning.
Those eyes pierced Lincoln again. “I never asked her, but I’m asking you. Are you married?”
Lincoln felt a smile tug at the corner of his mouth. His gaze locked on to the only woman who kept him awake at nights, haunted his dreams, made him wish things were different, made him want to make things different.
“Not yet,” Lincoln answered softly. Then he stared back into Jackson’s questioning gaze. “But I hope to change that one day.”
A muscle ticked in Jackson’s jaw, and his eyes didn’t waver from Linc. “She never pulled away from you.”
It was Lincoln’s turn to frown.
Jackson sighed, raked a hand through his hair and handed the gold chain and ring to Lincoln. “I remember that. When she came home that Christmas. She was so . . . ” He took a deep breath. “Terrified. Shattered. So damn lost. There were times she jerked away from me, from Gideon, sometimes even from Suzy. Never went out, and even when she finally started to, she shied from men. Not just certain ones, from them all.”
Those eyes skewered into him. Lincoln decided to keep his mouth shut.
“I always remembered that. Always remembered that while she shoved us away, when you were at the ranch, her eyes followed you. When she woke up screaming, she held on to you. Let you comfort her—which she never allowed anyone else to do.” The muscle still ticked in his cheek. “I want answers. I will get them, but maybe now’s not the time.” He nodded toward Lincoln’s hand with the chain and ring. “She never took that off. Wore it all the damn time.” A line around Jackson’s mouth eased as one corner lifted. “Guess she’s not the only one.”
With that, Jackson walked to his sister’s bedside, leaned down, kissed her cheek and then straightened. “We’re in the waiting room. I want to know the minute she wakes up.”
Speechless, Lincoln nodded, his hand fisted on what he held.
Jackson stopped at the door, his hand on the latch, his eyes narrowed back over his shoulder. “You hurt her, and I’ll rip you apart. No one’s hurting her again.”
“No, they’re not,” Lincoln agreed.
When the room settled, Lincoln shook his head and stared at the ring on the chain. Never took it off? Slowly, he walked back to her bed and sat beside her.
“Morgan,” he whispered. “Morgan.” Leaning close, he carefully replaced her necklace, tucking the chain and ring under the blue-and-white hospital gown. Staring at her, he leaned closer, then paused, breathed deep that scent that he’d always associate with her, something fruity. He closed the distance and kissed her forehead.
Lightning strobed in the room and thunder ripped the city air apart while rain sliced against the windows.
Lincoln held her hand and sat back in the chair.
What the hell was he supposed to do? He watched her, drifting off occasionally as the sky grayed and then turned pink. Nurses and doctors were busy in the hallway. A cart clattered by.
He studied her. That strong yet delicate jaw, the slope of her cheekbone, the fine arch of her dark brows. Her lips were plump, a wide mouth that he’d only seen smiling in old photographs. He’d never really heard her laugh and wondered if her eyes crinkled on the edges when she did. The pulse in her neck beat slow and steady near that pouting collarbone. Her skin . . . he’d always been fascinated with her skin. It was smooth, not creamy white, not dark, not a synthetic tan. It reminded him of women along the Mediterranean. A soft bronze, with a hint of brown.
He ran a finger gently over the IV in the back of her ha
nd, followed the vein up the inside of her arm.
“You’re a sodding fool, Blade,” he muttered to himself and sat back, his gaze resting again on her face.
Again, she frowned, the corners of her mouth tightening. Her lids slowly opened and she blinked, licking her chapped lips.
He kept her hand in his and waited until she focused on him. If she had any color in her cheeks, she might have paled. But as it was, she almost faded into the bleached pillowcase. She tried to raise her left hand, winced at the pain from her bound wound, her eyes shooting wide.
The EKG spiked.
“Easy. Easy,” Linc told her, putting his hand to her shoulder. “You, love, scared me to bloody death. Please don’t ever do it again.”
For one long moment, her eyes darted one way, to the door, then settled back on him.
“Lincoln? Wh—what am I doing here? I hate hospitals, hate them. The smell, all the people watching. Wh—what happened, what are you doing here?” Her questions all but tumbled over themselves.
Her pupils were still too dilated in his opinion, something was still streaming through her. He bit down and wished he knew for certain what the bastard had injected into her.
“I’m here because you needed me to be,” he finally answered.
For a long moment, she merely stared at him, then those eyes widened. “The man,” she whispered.
Her EKG kicked up again.
“Easy.” He squeezed her hand. “You’re safe. The man is no longer an issue.”
She slowly blinked at him. “I was on the phone with you.”
Blimey, like he’d ever forget. “Yes.”
Her eyes looked past him to the wall. Her breathing sharpened, her hand tightened on his, and he knew she wasn’t seeing the pale yellow hospital wall with its giant floral picture, but was seeing a scene in the kitchen.
“Morgan,” he softly said. Then again, “Morgan.”
Her eyes slowly turned to him. “He found me, didn’t he?”
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