Stepping into the bright sunshine, I debate swinging by the Grateful Bread to pick up more cinnamon rolls when someone calls out my name.
Scott jogs up, a smile on his face, and I stifle a pang of guilt. The boy visited me while I was in the hospital. He’d obviously seen the glowering hulk of a man at my bedside, and yet he stuck around and made me laugh, then called me a few times while I was in Thailand. He deserves the best. Far better than I could give him, at least, regardless of whether Nick was in the picture.
“Hey, you.” Will hugging him give him the wrong idea? I hope not. Scott gives excellent hugs. I launch myself at him, and after a long moment, he returns the hug. “What? I’m not good enough to hug anymore?”
He glances around. “No, just not sure your boyfriend would be cool with it.”
“If Nick has a problem, he’ll have to deal with it. Besides, he’s at work.” Probably still growling in anger as his men report nothing of use. “Are you free? Do you want to grab some coffee?”
“Depends. I don’t have to worry about him swooping in and dragging you off?”
Where the hell did he get these ideas about Nick? “I think we really need some coffee. Come on.” Not giving him a chance to escape, I loop my arm through his and steer him down the walkway and off campus to the Grateful Bread. I can get my caffeine fix and cinnamon rolls at the same time.
After we’ve settled into our chairs outside the bakery, I give him a pointed look. “So. My boyfriend has been intimidating my friends into staying away from me?”
He sips his coffee before answering. “Maybe that’s the wrong word. He didn’t stop anyone from coming in who wanted to see you, but he didn’t look happy about it.” After tearing open another packet of sugar, he dumps it into the cup and stirs. “Honestly, Cass? I’m worried about you with him.”
I pause mid-bite into my cinnamon roll. “What? Why?” The questions are muffled by the layers of dough, so they come out sounding more like “Wumph? Hwyh?” He grins, and I swallow the bite. “You know, Neese said almost the same thing. He’s never hurt me, and what happened a month ago is not his fault.” It’s not anyone’s, really.
A couple of women out for a run pass by our table, their breathless conversation loud enough to be heard halfway down the block. Scott half-turns in his seat to follow their progress. I kick him in the shin, and he turns back to me with a grin. “So, you coming back to class next semester?” he asks.
“Yeah. All registered and everything. You graduate this semester, right?” Scott had taken summer classes the last two summers, setting him free from the school grind a few months earlier.
“Bet your ass I am.” His brows draw together, and he drops his gaze to his coffee cup. “Sometimes I wish I hadn’t taken those extra classes, though.”
Suddenly, he jerks backward, coffee spilling over his hands, and a dark splotch appears and spreads on the right side of his chest, close to his shoulder. His eyes go wide, and some of the color leaves his face.
My brain locks down and clears away the extraneous noise, giving me the speed and room to process what’s happening. Blood. It’s blood. Someone shot Scott. My chair lands with a clatter of metal on cement as I scramble out of it, pulling Scott to the ground.
No one is screaming. No one is running, crying, or whipping their heads about rapidly, trying to figure out what’s going on. No one’s doing a damn thing except for Scott. Scott’s bleeding. With steady hands, I rip off my sweater and press it to his shoulder. “Scotty?”
He blinks once, twice, slow and dazed. “Cass?”
The shock will help. It’ll keep him from registering how badly it hurts, at least for the next minute or so.
“Oh my God!”
Finally, someone’s noticed something’s wrong. The redhead’s standing a few feet away, mouth wide open and her phone in her hand. I jerk my head toward it. “Can you call 911?”
Her head bobs up and down in a puppet-jolt motion, but it takes her a good ten seconds to actually raise the phone and dial. If I wasn’t so worried about blood loss, I’d have called myself. It would have gotten done faster.
“Cass?” Scott pats my arm, an absent movement, and he twists his head to the side and bucks, vomiting onto the sidewalk. I glance away, stomach clenching in sympathy. I will not be sick. I’ve seen worse. I’ve done worse. I can handle this.
Worse takes on a whole new meaning when the blood on your hands belongs to someone you know.
I reach under his body and shift him onto his side, probably pressing his face right into the mess he’s made, but it’s better than potentially choking to death. He coughs wetly a few more times, and then he groans. “Want to sit up? Help should be here soon.”
He groans again, and I maneuver him into a sitting position. The redhead seems to have moved past her morbid horror and gone inside the bakery because she returns a minute later with a damp towel. “Here.” She tries to hand it to me, and I lift a brow, shooting a pointed glance at my hands, still holding my sweater in place over the wound. She swallows hard and crouches on his other side, gingerly wiping his face clean. “Um. The 911 woman said police are on their way.”
A siren wails in the distance the second the words leave her mouth. Scott’s a little sweaty and a lot gray. The pain he’s in is easy to imagine. I remember the dull, radiating heat of Isaiah’s knife wound all too well. The redhead rambles at Scott, patting his hand in an awkward bounce until he finally curls his fingers around it, and she stills.
I study the table. Scott and I were almost directly across from each other, Scott a little closer to the edge of the street. The force of the bullet pushed him away from the table, so it likely came from behind me. Whoever fired was a lousy shot. Another few inches to the left and the bullet would have lodged itself in me, not him.
Or.
Or.
Or maybe I’m not the intended target. Maybe it was Scott all along. I scan the street, looking for Tris. He’s nowhere to be seen.
It fits, as much as anything fits with Isaiah’s new pattern that isn’t a pattern. Following me but making no contact. Threatening me by stalking my best friend and her boyfriend. Now taking potshots at whomever I happen to be with? If I wanted to throw someone off, that’s what I’d do.
Apparently knowing me has become a dangerous thing. My chest tightens and my stomach drops as I reach the conclusion I hoped to avoid. I have to tell Denise the truth. It’s the only thing that might get her out of this mess unharmed.
An ambulance rolls to a stop at the sidewalk, and paramedics tumble out, one of them hurrying over where we’re huddled on the sidewalk while the other moves to the back and opens the doors. I’m nudged out of the way as the first paramedic takes over, and I sit on the ground nearby, anger coming to a slow boil in my blood.
Isaiah is a dead man.
Chapter 16
Hospitals exist in this weird pocket of time, where everything is speeding up and slowing down all at once. The paramedics won’t let me ride in the back with Scott, but they allow me to ride up front, and we roll into the loading bay at UCLA Medical Center in a matter of minutes.
After that, everything’s at warp speed. Scott’s wheeled into a curtained-off area, and a nurse stays with me to find out what happened while people in scrubs crowd around his gurney. She takes the information and points me toward a restroom where I can wash the blood from my hands.
If I were normal, I wouldn’t have made it out of the bathroom. I’d be curled in a ball on the floor, whimpering and rocking back and forth, and the guilt that’s starting to encroach would have taken over completely. But I’m not normal. I can push that guilt into a corner to deal with later. I can hold myself together until I have time to break down. Nick’s right. I’m not normal, I doubt I ever will be, and it’s about fucking time I start accepting it.
So I wash my hands, march out of the restroom, and head for the waiting room.
My phone buzzes against my hip, and I pull
it out, checking the screen. It’s Nick, probably wanting to know why I haven’t returned his car. “Hey.”
“Cass? Are”—dead air—“done?”
Damn hospitals. “Hold on.” I wind through the waiting area and step outside, squinting into the sun. “Sorry, crappy reception. What did you say?”
“Wanted to know if you were still on campus. If you are, I can have Con drop me off, and we can grab something to eat.”
I scoot farther from the entrance as another ambulance pulls up. “Constantine should drop you on campus so you can pick up your car. I’m at the hospital right now, and I don’t have any way of getting back to the car other than walking.”
He’s quiet for so long I pull the phone away from my ear to check to see if we’re still connected. “Nick?”
“You can’t say something like that and just leave me hanging.”
I wince. “Sorry. I’m fine. Scott was shot. I came with him. I should get back inside. They’ll probably be taking him up to surgery soon.” Since I’m not family, I doubt the staff will tell me much, but I need to be there for Scott.
The redhead from earlier wanders into view, and I wave her down. “I need to go,” I tell Nick.
“Text me the location of the car.” He doesn’t sound pissed. He doesn’t sound happy, either.
We hang up as the girl stops in front of me, shifting her weight onto her back foot. “Hi?” Her fingers curl tight around the strap of her messenger bag. “Um. I’m Tori. Victoria. Tori. Call me Tori.” A blush sweeps over her cheeks.
I manage a smile because she looks like she needs it. “Cass. Are you here for Scott?”
She nods. “Is that his name? I thought…” She looks at the door. “I thought I’d see how he was doing.”
“I think they’re going to be taking him up to surgery soon, if they haven’t done so already.” She pales, but before she can stumble away and babble an excuse, I grab her hand. “Come on. I was about to go inside.”
Scott’s being wheeled out to the elevators when we return, and his bleary gaze drifts past me to Tori. He perks up, and his mouth curves in a grin before the door closes, leaving the two of us standing in a fluorescent-lit hallway.
I gesture to the call buttons. “Do you want to come up and wait with me?” She slides a glance at the waiting area, her body tensed to leave. Crap. I should have just let her go. She doesn’t owe Scott, or me, anything. “Or if you need to go, I understand.”
Waiting for her answer is strangely agonizing. Scott’s in surgery. He’ll be there for a while. Me sitting around waiting for him to come out of surgery isn’t going to change the outcome. But my calm is eroding the longer I stand here. I need to be up there. He took that bullet because he was with me. If he hadn’t been, he’d still be whole. My guilt’s reached a whole new level in the space of an hour.
“Yeah,” she says softly. “I’ll come with you.”
I punch the button, and we stare at the doors like doing so will magically make them open. I’m grateful to Tori for distracting Scott and being concerned enough about his wellbeing to follow up. But I don’t know what to do with her. I don’t know how to act or what to say. I can’t say with absolute certainty that bullet was intended for Scott. I can’t say it wasn’t, either.
We don’t speak as we step inside or while we ride to the surgery floor. I cast about for something to say. If I’m talking, I’m not trapped in my own head, waiting for the guilt to crush me.
“Thanks for your help earlier,” I say.
The elevator doors open, and we make our way to the waiting area. The space isn’t the most welcoming with the standard doctor’s office decor and brilliant, blinding overhead lights. Our shoes squeak on the linoleum. Tori chooses a chair with a view of the long hallway to the restricted double doors. “You’re welcome. Um. Do you think he’ll be okay?”
“It was his right shoulder, and he was conscious the whole time. There’ll be blood loss and risk of infection, definitely some rehab to regain full use, but he’ll be fine.” Probably. Turner’s training didn’t just focus on the best places on the body to ensure a mortal wound.
Tori stares at me. “How do you know?”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to lie and say “pre-med,” but I can’t. “The heart’s on the other side of the chest, and there’s no major arteries in that spot, either. The worst thing that could happen is he’ll lose some functionality in his arm.”
She’s still wide-eyed, and I shift in my seat. “What’s your major?”
A long moment passes before she answers. “Accounting.” She drops her gaze to her hands and picks at one of her fingernails. “Are you and Scott, like, together or anything?”
I shake my head. “No. We’re just friends.” Speaking of friends, Denise will be furious if I don’t tell her what’s happened. “Do you mind if I leave you here for a minute? I need to call someone.”
She flaps her hand. “Sure.”
I hightail it out of the waiting area for the stairs. The cinderblock walls throw sounds back at me, my footsteps loud as I pace the small landing while I wait for Denise to pick up.
The call goes to voicemail, and a niggle of irritation sneaks through. “Neese, it’s me. Scott’s at UCLA in surgery. He was shot, but I think he’ll be fine. I know you’re probably still mad at me for lying, but if you could—” My breath catches, and I suck in air. “I’d really like it if you could be here. At least for Scott.” I hang up before I start bawling and tuck the phone back in my pocket.
I hate this unease, this not knowing what’s going on inside Denise’s head. I used to know what she was thinking before she said it, and I never had to wonder if she’d return my call. Since that night at El Dorado, though, she hasn’t responded to any of my communication attempts.
Without her, I’m afraid I’ll lose my grasp on Cass the College Student and remain Cass the Assassin.
I’m afraid I’ll end up like my father, unwilling to show affection or emotion.
Tori’s in the same place I left her in, her hands clasped in her lap. She looks up when I plop down on the short couch next to her chair. “How are you so calm? I don’t know him, and I’m a mess.”
At first glance, she looks fine. A second pass proves otherwise. Her mouth is tight, and her hands are knotted so hard together the knuckles are white. “I guess I’m used to this sort of thing,” I say slowly.
She peers at me. “Used to it? This happens a lot?”
“No. Not to my friends. This is a first. I just… Violence isn’t anything new in my life.” If that line gets back to Scott or Denise, I’ll have a hell of a lot of explaining to do.
Aside from not being sure how she’ll react, I haven’t told Denise for legal reasons. If she knowingly withholds information about a crime, regardless of evidence, she could end up in trouble. She might be a stranger, but Tori deserves the same courtesy.
Rubber squeaks across the floor, and a tall, dark-haired man comes into view. I’m not surprised to see it’s Nick. What is surprising is the look on his face. It’s completely devoid of anger and the frantic concern I’ve become accustomed to since I almost bled out on the floor of the parking garage. There’s concern, yes, but it’s almost nonexistent in comparison.
“Still in surgery?” he asks when he sits beside me.
“Just went in. It’ll probably be a while, but I couldn’t get much information on his condition before he went in. He was conscious. That’s about it.”
He regards me steadily, then leans forward and presses a kiss to my forehead. “Let me see if I can get anything out of them.” He gets to his feet and walks over to the nurse’s station.
“Holy shit, is that Dominic Kosta?” Tori hisses. I whip my head toward her, and she’s gaping after him. “You know Dominic Kosta? You’re dating Dominic Kosta?”
Her reaction is strange. “Um, yeah. Why?” Most people seem to ignore Nick, as much as it’s possible to ignore someone who has enough pre
sence for ten people. Nick’s not someone you disregard.
“You mean aside from he’s got the fastest growing technology conglomeration in the city, he’s also one of the hottest men in a city full of them.” She stares after him with something like hero worship on her face. “And you’re dating him. Wow.”
Learning more about Nick’s business, his legal business, has moved to the top of my list of things to learn about Nick. If he’s as important as Tori seems to think he is, being with him will put me in the spotlight in more ways than one.
He comes back and takes a seat next to me, wrapping an arm around my shoulders and cuddling me into his side. I immediately stop shivering, something I didn’t know I was doing until tension rushes from my body, replaced by warmth. “What happened to the sweater you were wearing earlier?” he asks.
“I had to use it on Scott’s shoulder.”
He lets go and leans forward, holding out a hand to Tori. “Dominic Kosta.”
“T-T-Tori. Um. Tori Sutherland.” Her mouth hangs open a little, but then snaps shut with a click, her cheeks turning red.
“Nice to meet you, Tori.” He gives her that slick, devastating smile, the one that used to make my knees disappear until he started smiling at me with a warmth that crept into the cracks in my soul. His arm goes back around my shoulders, and I stifle a sigh, tipping my head onto his shoulder. One finger at a time, I’m losing my grasp on the hard, impenetrable ice I needed to get through the shooting. It’s something that only used to happen at the ocean, the gradual slip and slide of the pieces of me reordering themselves.
It happens more and more with Nick around when there’s no ocean in sight.
“Cass?” Denise walks up, clutching Charlie’s hand, and the ice breaks completely. I jump up and throw my arms around her, so relieved she came I’ll probably start wailing in a second.
She digs her fingers into my back, holding on as tight as I am. Eventually we draw apart, and she does a double-take at Nick seated on the couch. “Hi, Nick,” she says, caution dripping from the words.
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