My words were slurred when I said, “I really messed up. That man doesn’t want to see me romantically anymore.”
The paramedic looked at me with a frown. “For a man who doesn’t want to see you anymore, he certainly didn’t look like that. Don’t worry about a thing right now. Just think about getting better. The bullet is lodged in your bicep. You’re going to need a minor surgery to remove it.”
“Fantastic,” I murmured.
The rest of the ride was quiet and I kept drifting back and forth between being asleep and awake. Then I was being carried out of the ambulance and wheeled into a set of glass doors. There was a lot of chaos going on in the ER but I barely registered it.
My paramedic was on her little walkie-talkie, telling someone that I needed to be in the O.R. stat. Then I heard her say the bullet had lodged in the brachial artery and I would need immediate surgery.
“But it doesn’t hurt that bad,” I mumbled. “Are you sure it’s not just a flesh wound?”
She smiled as she walked alongside of me, carrying the baggie with that wonderful drug in it. “I’m sure. But you’ll be okay. You’re just going to be taken right into surgery.”
“Can I see Lucas?” I asked with a hoarse voice that felt odd as it came on quickly. “Is he here?”
“I have no idea,” she said as she shook her head. “Even if he was, there’s no time for visiting, I’m afraid. And they wouldn’t let him back here, anyway. It’ll be okay. You’ll be out of surgery in a few hours and in recovery for a while then in a room of your own and he can come see you then.”
“Why am I feeling so groggy,” I choked out.
“Because I’ve already administered a bit of anesthesia to help you fall under more quickly when the anesthesiologist gets started on you.” She looked up and smiled. “Here we are.”
The stretcher pushed open a set of stainless steel doors and I found the room freezing cold. Several men were waiting for me in blue scrubs and face masks. Then one of them came up to my side and said, “Hi, I’m Doctor Stan. I’ll be taking this pesky bullet out for you this evening. No need to worry, my dear.”
“K,” I muttered.
Two of the men came to me. One took my shoulders and one my feet and they picked me up and transported me to a very hard surface that was very cold. The thin sheet covering it did nothing to take the cold away from the obviously stainless steel operating table beneath it.
A man came up behind me and the smile he had shown in his blue eyes. “Hi, I’m Peter and I’ll be your bartender for this evening. I’ll be monitoring your vitals and keeping you sedated while he takes out that bullet. I can’t imagine how a nice girl like you ended up being shot, but I bet you have a great story behind it.”
“It’s alright,” I mumbled. “Nothing to write a book about.”
He laughed and placed a clear thing over my mouth and nose and said, “Just take in normal breaths, and soon you’ll be in La Land.”
And just before I closed my eyes, I saw Lucas leaning his head against the glass at the top of the wall. Then I realized this was an operating theater and he was in the room, watching over my operation.
I raised my hand and gave him a little wave and he gave me one back then he blew me a kiss. My insides melted with the gesture and I thought for only a second that it meant he did still want to see me. Maybe he had changed his mind and was ready to go back to our agreement after all.
I hoped so, anyway.
Then it all went black and I fell under the spell of the drugs.
When I woke up, I felt stiff and my arm ached. It hurt worse than when I got shot. A moan came out of me as I tried to move. “Just be still,” I heard a voice say.
It was his voice!
I laid perfectly still and blinked until my eyes focused. Then I saw him hovering over me as I lay in a hospital bed. I tried to talk but something stopped me and made me choke a little.
Suddenly his handsome face was gone and a female nurse was there. She put her hand on my forehead as she said, “Let me get the tracheal tube out.”
I gagged as something large slipped up my throat, making my eyes water. When it finally got out, I tried to talk and the sound was all scratchy. Lucas put his finger to my lips then the nurse pushed some button to raise the top portion of the bed up.
Lucas picked up a large cup with a lid and a plastic straw and held the straw to my lips. “Drink, slowly.”
I did as he said to and felt the cool water go over my now very sore throat. After I popped the straw back out, I muttered, “Ow.”
He smiled and kissed my forehead. Then the nurse took my attention as she began moving things around and calling for someone else over a little box on the bedside. “Now that you’re awake, we can move you to your room. Mr. Montgomery here spared no expense and you’re set up in one of our nicest rooms. He got another one of our very nice rooms for his driver, Mr. O’Brien. I’d say you two are pretty lucky to have this man looking out for you.”
“Danny?” I croaked as I looked at Lucas.
“I’ll tell you all about it later. Right now I want you to relax and heal, baby. No arguments about that. I’m going to take care of you,” he said.
I felt better already, knowing he’d be there with me and for me. But I felt bad about hearing Danny was in the hospital too. An urgency leapt up inside of me as I had yet to tell Lucas the name of the woman behind everything.
“Lucas, the plot against you,” I said but half the words didn’t make it out audibly.
He patted my shoulder and said, “Don’t worry. Your voice will be back by tonight and you can tell us everything you know then.”
A male nurse came in wearing Scooby Doo scrubs and gave me a smile. “Hello, I’m Leo and I’ll be your nurse until the evening shift comes on.” He took the bed and started moving me out of the tiny room and into a large hallway. “We’re going all the way up to the top floor.”
Into a large elevator, we went, with me on the bed and Lucas right beside me. I never felt safer than I did at that time. Lucas was like a rock and he was right there. He looked at me with something in his eyes I had never seen before. I wanted to call it love but this was Lucas I was talking about. Love wasn’t even in his extensive vocabulary.
When the elevator stopped and we got off, my nurse pushed the bed along the wide hallway and into a large room already filled with flowers and get-well balloons. Tears stung my eyes as I knew Lucas had all of this done.
I mouthed a thank you to him and he smiled at me as the nurse placed my bed right in the middle and put a television remote next to my left hand. That’s when I realized my right arm was immobilized. “Hey,” I croaked. “What happened?”
The nurse sat on the left side of my bed and popped a thermometer in my mouth then set about to check my blood pressure. “Oh, honey! Let me tell you how lucky you are to be alive. That bullet was lodged in one of your very important arteries. When the doc took it out blood went everywhere. You had to have a few pints of blood transfused to keep you with us. Your hubby, here, gave the okay for the transfusion, otherwise, the doc couldn’t have given it to you and the outcome could’ve been terrible.”
He took the thermometer out of my mouth and I said, “Oh my!”
“Oh my, indeed!” the nurse said as he raised his eyebrows and took the blood pressure cuff off. “Your pressure is still on the low side but that’s normal after surgery. I’m sure it’ll come around in a few hours. Anyway, if there had been no one around to sign the papers, the doc would’ve had to do the surgery then bring you out of anesthesia to get your permission for the transfusion and then give it to you, if you agreed. It would’ve been very hard on your body.”
All I could do was look at Lucas and mouth another, thank you. He was truly my hero.
Chapter 6
Lucas
When the nurse finally left the room, I sat on the bed next to Sloan and ran my hand over her cheek. She looked so weak and helpless lying on that hospital bed. It was my lust for the
poor thing that had her there and I knew that without a doubt.
“What do you want, baby?” I asked her. “Anything at all and I will get it for you.”
She smiled, weakly and whispered, “Just you.”
Just me is all she wanted and I was thinking very hard about giving her that. She’d wanted romance and I’d given her very little of that. The room was filled with flowers I had brought in and balloons and I had one more thing I wanted her to have but I was waiting for her to get more lucid before that happened.
The door opened and the detective came in. “I stopped by your office. Your head of security was in the secretary’s office. Neither acted the least bit guilty when I talked to them about what happened last night. I told them Sloan had been incoherent when I got to her and couldn’t tell me a thing. I also told them that she still hadn’t woken up from the surgery to be able to point me in the direction of who it was who’d chased her and shot her. But when I asked Torrance if he could come to the station so we could talk more formally, he said he was unavailable anytime soon as he had a lot to do with a business risk you were having.”
I looked down at Sloan as she spoke with broken words as some just weren’t making it out of her mouth, “It was Cecelia who was shooting.”
“Seriously?” I asked with surprise. I never saw that coming!
She nodded and I got her giant cup of water and held it to her lips. She took a drink then she said, “And the name of the woman behind it all is-”
The door opened again and there stood Drew Torrence. I wanted to fly off that bed and tear him limb from limb but the detective shot me a look that told me to stay calm. I knew we had to get more than just Sloan’s testimony as to what she’d overheard to bring them all down.
Sloan gripped my hand and I felt her stop breathing. She was terrified and who could blame her. So I stroked her hair and whispered close to her ear, “You’re fine. I’m here. Act like you don’t remember a thing about the incident at all.”
Her grip loosened a little as the detective asked Torrence, “What are you doing here? I thought you were way too busy to go anywhere.”
“I need to talk to my employer.” His dark eyes darted to mine. “Alone, it’s about our leak.”
“I’ll come see you when I get time. Sloan is all I care about right now.” I was not going to go somewhere alone with the man I knew tried to kill the woman in my life. The woman I had grown to love.
He shifted his weight and crossed his arms. “I really need to know what you want me to do, Lucas.”
I wanted him to go jump off of a cliff but I didn’t say that. “I tell you what, Drew, I give you permission to speak freely in front of these people. I know Sloan has nothing to do with this since she was nearly killed. And the detective is here to help. So go ahead and say what you have to say to me.”
“Lucas, this room might be bugged,” he said, still trying to get me to go somewhere with him. “Do you have any idea who was chasing you, Miss Whitlock?”
She shook her head and I answered for her, “She can’t remember a thing about last night at all. I’m afraid the alcohol and the shock along with the anesthesia wiped her memory clean.” He looked relieved with my lie and that’s exactly how I wanted him to feel.
It was doubtful he’d do anything to harm me with the detective knowing I’d left the room with him, but I didn’t trust myself not to harm him.
The detective took the reins and said, “There’s no possible way this room is bugged. Only hospital workers have been in here.”
“You never know,” he said. “This information is too big to be found out. Or our guy might hear about how we’re on to him and leave the country. Then we’ll lose the chance to get him and stop this from happening again.” He looked at me. “You do want this to end and never have any more threats, don’t you?”
“Of course,” I said. “But you seem to think you get to decided things and I told you to speak freely and you’ve argued with me which is an ignorant thing to do. So tell me what you have and the detective will make notes. Won’t you, Detective Allen?”
He pulled out his phone and pressed a recording app. “I will. Start whenever you want to, Mr. Drew Torrence, I’ll record it all.”
Suddenly Drew was backtracking and seemed not to want to talk at all. Finally, he said, “I don’t want this recorded. The man I’m about to indicate in this is very powerful. If he found out it was me who ratted him out, then I’d be dealt with. If you know what I mean?”
The detective reminded him of something. “If this goes to court, which it will, then you’ll have to testify anyway. So go ahead and tell Mr. Montgomery what you have to say.”
“Do as he says, Torrence. It’ll save me the trouble of telling him myself. I will have to handle this legally after all. So, please let us all in on who is behind this. Because now we have espionage, attempted kidnapping, and kidnapping charges, plus two counts of attempted murder to add to the ever-growing list of crimes this person and all who have helped this person will be charged with.” I sat and stared at him as he fidgeted and squirmed under the pressure of all three of us scrutinizing him.
“You don’t seem to understand. He will kill me.” He paled a bit, getting into his act.
Sloan spoke quietly with a scratchy voice as she said one word, “Why?”
He narrowed his eyes at her then quickly stopped. “You wouldn’t understand. You’re young and naïve about the way the world works. I’m also checking in to find out who did this to you, Miss Whitlock.”
She was quick to tell him, “Don’t. The police are handling my attempted murder case. I’m not authorizing you to do a thing, Mr. Torrence. Stay out of my business.”
He looked at me and asked, “Is that how you want it, Lucas?”
I nodded. “She’s a grown woman and the decision is hers to make.”
“I see,” he said then began to back out of the room. “With the consequences that most likely will occur with my information, I don’t want to reveal anything at this time.”
The detective smiled. “That’s your prerogative at this time. If I need that information, I will have you picked up and brought in for questioning. You can bring a lawyer if you’d like.”
Torrence nodded then looked at me. “Are you positive you don’t want to let me tell you this in private? If you give the police the man’s name, then I’m left out of it.”
My eyebrows raised as I said, “Not very protective of you, is it?”
“Well, if I was going to handle this situation no police were going to be involved. I think you knew that, Lucas,” he said.
“Well, they’re involved now, aren’t they,” Sloan said. “And they’re going to stay involved from now on.”
“In all of it?” he asked me.
I gave him a nod and he looked afraid. It was the first time I saw fear in the man’s expression. But I knew it wouldn’t be the last.
He left the room and the detective put his finger to his lips and walked over to where Torrence had been standing. He pointed to the door handle and I went to look at what he was pointing at.
On the very back of the handle where no one would see, Torrence had placed a tiny bug. The detective took a picture of it but left it in place.
He gestured for me to follow him back to Sloan’s bedside where he picked up the television remote and turned the T.V. on. I got the idea and said, “How about a little television, baby?”
She looked at me as I turned the sound way up. Then I leaned in and whispered, “He’s placed a bug on the door handle. This is actually a good thing. We can lead him in the wrong direction and make a surprise attack.”
She nodded and whispered back, “Give me a pen and paper and I’ll write down everything.”
I decided to make small talk while the detective thought about what we should say to throw them all off. “Too bad about your memory, Sloan. But I have to tell you that I’m not all that upset about it. You and I had a little fight and that’s a good thing you
don’t recall any of that.”
“Why’d we fight?” she asked and winked at me.
“Never mind,” I said as I found a small pad of paper and a pencil. I pulled up the tray-like table they had in the room that went over her bed and placed the pencil in her left hand and the paper on the tabletop. “I want you to think about nothing. It’s more important to me that you get well.”
The detective came up with some information that was true and made it seem as if we’d never find the culprit who shot Sloan. “I pulled up some traffic cameras and we got the plates of a small blue car that was following you through several stop lights. But the plates didn’t belong to that car. They belonged to one the perpetrators got off a car in a junkyard.”
“Were you able to see how many people were in the car or if they were men or women,” I asked.
“It was too dark to make anything inside the car out. The streetlights glared off the windshield, making it impossible to make out anyone,” the detective said as Sloan was having a bit of trouble writing with her left hand.
Then she stopped and looked at me with concern. “Lucas, I have to get my thesis done. How can I do it if I have no use of my right hand? I’ll never get to graduate this year. I’ll have to go longer.”
I wrapped my right hand around her left one to steady it as I said, “I’ll get you some help. I’m sure, given the circumstances, your professor will allow you to have someone to type as you dictate.”
“I hope you’re right,” she said as she formed the first letter. It was an, ‘L’ and then she managed to get out an, ‘I’ and before I knew it, the name, ‘Lila’ was on the little notepad.
I had no clue who that was. So I helped her with the last name and when I saw that it was Sheffield, it finally dawned on me who the woman was.
A one - night stand and a difficult woman to take. Lila was the cousin of Iris and I had no idea why she’d want to take me down so bad, she’d kill people to do it.
I wrote down the town she lived in upstate New York and the detective gave me a nod and said, “Well, I’ll leave you two alone. If I get any information, I’ll let you know, Mr. Montgomery.”
Evergreen: An Alpha Billionaire Romance Page 97