The Beautiful Daughters

by Nicole Baart

  But Caleb grabbed her wrists before she could turn away, and Adri was forced to let go of the dishes. They were only inches apart, but Caleb lessened the distance even more by lowering his head to meet hers. He brushed the tip of her nose with his lips.

  “You’re fascinating, Adri.”

  “Medical advances in developing nations are fascinating,”

  Caleb didn’t laugh.

  “That was a joke,” Adri protested weakly. Her heart was beating wildly and she could hardly breathe.

  “You’re gorgeous,” Caleb continued.

  “Harper’s gorgeous.”

  Caleb ignored her and instead kissed each of her eyes in turn. It was so tender, so intimate, Adri couldn’t stop the little moan that escaped.

  “I love your heart.” Then Caleb did the last thing Adri expected and pulled her into a hug. Her chin tucked against his broad shoulder, and when his arms circled her waist and pulled her feet off the ground, she found she fit perfectly in his embrace. “I want to know everything about you. Why you hate Blackhawk so much. How you ended up in Africa. What you’re hiding from.”

  Although Adri had melted into him only moments before, she stiffened and pushed herself away. “I’m not sure that’s any of your business. And I don’t hate Blackhawk.”

  Caleb set her down and took a step back so that he could look at her properly. His eyes revealed hurt, but he didn’t turn and leave. Even though Adri wouldn’t have blamed him if he did. “I’d like to make it my business,” Caleb said levelly.

  Adri felt tears prick her eyes. She grabbed Caleb by the shirt, bunching the fabric in her fists so that she could push him away or pull him close, she couldn’t tell. “Why are you doing this to me?” she asked, and was surprised at the tremor in her voice. “I’ve been doing fine. I’m trying to honor Victoria and forget the past and move on.”

  “You’re not moving on,” Caleb said.

  “Maybe I don’t deserve to.”

  “Come on, Adri. Everyone deserves a second chance. And a third and a fourth.” The corner of Caleb’s mouth tweaked as he bit back a grin. “I think I’m on my seventy-seventh.”

  Adri felt a giggle at the back of her throat. It was absurd and unexpected, and she wondered at the way that Caleb could bring her outside of herself. Make her forget all the serious things that weighed her down. “I think that’s it for you,” she said.

  Caleb shrugged. “Maybe.” Then he cupped her face in his hands and lowered his mouth to hers. Slowly, slowly he kissed her, giving her the time and space to shove him away. To say no. But Adri didn’t want to. Nothing was fixed, but it felt like Caleb was knee-deep in the thick of it with her. For the moment, it was enough. Enough to savor the press of his lips, the way his body fit against hers. One hand cupped her jaw and the other found the back of her head, his fingers deep in the tangle of her dark hair. Adri was swept away. She wanted to be.

  “Adri!”

  The shout came from the front of the house. The entryway.

  A bolt of adrenaline shot through Adri at the sound of her name. Maybe it was the fear of being caught all wrapped up in Caleb. Maybe she knew deep in her soul that something was not right. Either way, Adri was out of Caleb’s arms and jogging fast toward the sound, as if they had never kissed at all. A part of her resented whoever had torn them apart, but she also realized it was for the best. Caleb was too good to be true. She didn’t deserve him anyway. But he was on her heels when she found Jackson standing with his hand on the front door.

  “Something’s wrong,” Jackson said.

  She didn’t even ask what.

  Adri flipped on the porch light and threw herself into the night. There was movement and sound from below, but the gravel drive was all smoke and shadows in the darkness.

  “Harper?” Adri called, addressing the form that took shape at the foot of the stairs. What was she doing outside? Why wasn’t she in her room? But none of that mattered now.

  “Will,” Harper managed, gasping. “Please, help. It’s Will.”

  There was no mistaking the raw panic in her voice. Adri and Caleb were down the steps and racing past her before Harper could say anything more. Vaguely, Adri was aware of Jackson rushing to Harper, but she was behind them and in the end, Adri didn’t much care. He was out there somewhere. Her brother. Her Will.

  They raced down the road, kicking up dust as they sprinted in the dark. Adri wasn’t a runner, she never had been, but she pulled ahead of Caleb anyway. In the middle of the lane, less than halfway between the blacktop and the place where the drive curved into the roundabout, they found him.

  Will was on his back in the gravel. One leg was cocked awkwardly, a caricature of a man mid-jump. His hands were fanned at his sides, palms up, fingers curled into his palms like an infant’s. It was wrong. All wrong. Adri knew it the second she saw him.

  She hit the ground too early and had to scramble on her hands and knees the last few feet to her brother. “Will?” Adri took his face in her hands, her heart so high in her throat she could hardly form the word. She swallowed. “Will? Look at me. It’s Adri.”

  He didn’t respond.

  “Will!”

  “He’s bleeding.” Caleb said it almost calmly.

  Adri hadn’t realized Caleb was there. But he was, and as he peeled off his shirt to stanch the flow of blood that was coursing unchecked from Will’s wounded arm, Adri was filled with a gratitude close to elation.

  “What happened?” The question was ragged, ripped from her throat.

  “I don’t know,” Caleb said. “But this looks like a gunshot wound.”

  “Gunshot?”

  “I’m going to need your help, Adri. You’ve got to press here. I’m going to make a tourniquet.”

  “I’ve been drinking.” Adri choked on a sob.

  “I haven’t. You’ll be fine. Just do as I say.”

  Headlights washed over them as Caleb finished cinching his belt around Will’s shoulder. He pulled it tight, too tight if Will’s anguished cry could be trusted. Adri was sickened at the sound of her brother’s pain, but he wasn’t aware enough even to register that she was there.

  “I’m going to need you to help me lift him,” Caleb said. “This isn’t your brother, Adri. It’s just another patient.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing.” Caleb’s tone brooked no argument. “You’ve got to pull yourself together. I need you.”

  Adri wanted to scream. To throw back her head and bawl like a baby. But Caleb was right. Will’s life might depend on it. She took a long, shuddering breath and squeezed her eyes shut. When she opened them, she looked straight at Caleb. “What do you need me to do?”

  “Lift,” he said. “On the count of three. We’re going to lift him into the backseat of Jackson’s truck.”

  “Jackson’s here?”

  “Adri, focus.”

  She nodded vehemently.

  “Okay. One, two, three.”

  They lifted Will between them in one smooth, calculated movement and began to sidestep toward the pickup. Jackson leaped down from the driver’s seat and opened the back door, helped them ease Will onto the long bench as carefully as they could.

  Harper was in the front seat, cowering against the door and hyperventilating hard; the sound of her wheezing filled the cab. But Adri only registered this on a clinical level, in the same way that she could assess a patient in one calculated glance. She didn’t have time or head space for Harper. Not now.

  “He’s in shock,” Adri said, and knew that it was true. She wasn’t Will’s sister now. She was his nurse. “We need blankets. Tell me you have blankets in here.”

  “I don’t know.” Jackson was already speeding down the long drive, toward the main road and a hospital. “Open the sliding window.” He gestured toward the window at the back of the truck, behind Caleb and Adri’s hea
ds. It was black beyond the glass, the space obscured by a large canopy that undoubtedly housed some of their construction tools. “I think we have some canvases or tarps or something back there.”

  Caleb was crouched on the floor of the backseat, one hand still pressing his shirt against the injury and the other holding Will’s wrist, checking his pulse. “His heart rate is climbing,” Caleb told Adri.

  She thrust herself up from the place where she hovered over Will’s bent legs and yanked open the sliding window. It was a wild, claustrophobic ride, but Adri, lithe as a dancer, plunged half of her body through the narrow opening and emerged seconds later with an armful of dirty canvases. They sent a fragrant cloud of sawdust into the air of the cab, and Adri’s lungs constricted. But she didn’t care. She was already tucking the stiff fabric around Will, talking to him all the while.

  “We’ll be there soon,” she told him. “And if you’re good they might assign a pretty nurse to you. A brunette.” Adri’s eyes snapped to Harper as she stared wide-eyed over the back of the headrest. There was fury in Adri’s gaze. She could feel it in herself, this billowing anger at the injustice of what had happened. At the sight of Will before her, limp, unmoving. There would be a reckoning—she would see to it herself.

  “Blood pressure is dropping,” Caleb said quietly. “His pulse is faint. Systolic is below eighty for sure.”

  “Can you drive faster?” Adri asked Jackson. The speedometer was already hovering around 90, but Jackson pushed the pedal down more.

  “The closest hospital is Fairfield,” Adri reminded him. “Skip Blackhawk altogether. Take the highway.”

  It wasn’t far to Fairfield, a fifteen-minute drive under normal circumstances, but it felt like Jackson made it in five. The town was all but deserted, the streets empty of people in the middle of the night, but as they screeched to a halt beneath the neon red sign of the hospital emergency room, a police cruiser pulled up behind them, lights flashing even though he hadn’t engaged the siren. Or had he? Adri’s head felt stuffed with cotton.

  Adri fell out of the truck, screaming for a gurney, a trauma team, a surgeon. They came in seconds, nurses in scrubs and a doctor who was already wearing a surgical gown, looking as if he had been waiting for them to arrive. Maybe he had been. Maybe Jackson had called ahead on his cell phone. Adri couldn’t remember.

  Then, a whirlwind of activity, of bodies and shouts and a palpable urgency that echoed through the truck as they extracted Will’s limp body. Just as quickly as they came, everyone was gone: Will was whisked away, Jackson bent in conversation with the officer, who had abandoned his cruiser with the lights still flashing. Adri and Caleb were left standing at the emergency bay door.

  Adri wrapped her arms around herself and shivered so hard her teeth chattered. But then she realized that Caleb was naked from the waist up, his eyes frantic and trained on the red emergency room sign. The sight of him looking so vulnerable filled her with an emotion she couldn’t explain, and she went to fit her arms around his waist. He was warm, his chest heaving, and she put her cheek against the place where his heart was a staccato of muted sound. After a second he held her back, his embrace so tight that she struggled to breathe. But it was exactly what she needed. A reminder. His strong, stable body around her.

  Caleb’s arms engulfed the whole of her narrow back. Adri felt tiny in his embrace. Protected. He bent his head and kissed her hair, again and again until she turned her face into his chest.

  Adri felt like she could have stayed there forever, hidden in Caleb’s arms, where the real world and all the horror it contained could be held at bay. She couldn’t help but catch a few grave words passed between Jackson and the police officer. She looked over at them, assuming that she would find the middle-aged man in uniform studying Jackson’s truck intently. But when she followed the line of his gaze, she discovered he wasn’t looking at the truck at all. He was staring at Harper.

  27

  HARPER

  Harper had forgotten that she had injuries, too. When the police officer rapped on her window with his knuckles and helped her out of the vehicle, the first thing he did was escort her into the hospital. A nurse took her to a small trauma room and made her lie on her side beneath a bright light that gave Harper an instant, blinding headache.

  “Can you tell me what happened?” the nurse asked kindly. She probed the helix of Harper’s wounded ear with gloved hands, and Harper shuddered from the sudden burst of pain. “Is this a bite wound?”

  Harper didn’t respond, but her silence must have spoken volumes.

  “I’m going to have to start an IV. There’s a lot of bacteria in the mouth. You’ll need a round of prophylactic antibiotics. Are you up-to-date on your tetanus vaccine?”

  Harper couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen a doctor, much less gotten an immunization. But still, she didn’t speak.

  “Tetanus it is.” The nurse turned to write something on a chart. “Do you have insurance, Miss . . . ?”

  “Harper Penny.” The police officer supplied from where he stood quietly in the corner of the room. Jackson must have given him her name.

  “Do you have insurance, Ms. Penny?”

  “No.” It was the first thing Harper had said since she screamed for help. She half expected the nurse to throw her out immediately, but the older woman remained perfectly collected. Harper didn’t know whether to be grateful or upset. She glanced at the nurse’s shirt and saw that her name was Gayle.

  “You’re going to need a couple stitches,” Gayle told her. “And an IV, though we might be able to manage the antibiotics with a series of injections instead. We’ll have to see. Some wound irrigation, maybe an X-ray . . . Were you struck in the jaw?” Reaching out one hand, the other still clutching a clipboard, the nurse delicately explored the place where Sawyer had hit Harper. It stung, but Harper suspected it wasn’t broken. “The doctor will have to decide,” the nurse said, as if she could hear Harper’s thoughts. Then she picked up Harper’s hand and examined her fingers and the fine spiderweb of abrasions that had split across Harper’s skin when she attacked Sawyer.

  “Eventually, you’re going to want to consult a plastic surgeon about your ear. Cartilage can be tricky. Unfortunately, we don’t have a plastic surgeon on staff, but there’s a center for reconstructive surgery in Sioux Falls. We can give you a referral.”

  Harper could hardly comprehend what the nurse was saying, never mind tuck away information for later reference. Besides, she didn’t have insurance.

  “Do you have any other injuries?”

  “No.” Harper squeezed her eyes shut again. At least, none that you can see.

  “Well, sweetheart, you’re lucky we’re a nonprofit,” Gayle told Harper. “It complicates things, I’ll have to make a few calls, but we’ll get you patched up one way or another.” Turning to the officer who still stood in the corner of the room, she asked, “Do you want me to document?”

  “Yes, please.”

  Gayle left the room quietly and returned minutes later with a camera. She didn’t ask Harper if she wanted to have her wounds photographed, but Harper would have done whatever they asked of her anyway. She sat up on the bed, the paper crinkling beneath her, and offered up her cheek, her ear, her hands, her face for the camera. Her eyes were closed in every picture.

  When Gayle was done, she had a quick, whispered conversation with the police officer. As soon as the nurse was gone, he made his way over to Harper’s bed.

  “I assume you’re well enough to answer a couple of questions?”

  Harper put her hand over her eyes, but she nodded as best she could. What else was there for her to do? What was the point of hiding now? None of it mattered. None of it. Not with Will shot. In shock? Undergoing surgery? Harper thrust such thoughts from her mind and took a deep, shuddering breath. One thing at a time. That was all she could handle. She shifted a little on the paper-lined bed
.

  “I’ll tell you everything,” she said, looking the officer—­McNeil, according to the engraved tag on his shirt—straight in the eye. “Anything you want to hear.”

  And she did. The entire story, starting from the moment she first saw Sawyer across the bar. She paused once, when Gayle came in to start her IV, but after the line had been set and the antibiotic was drip-drip-dripping down the plastic tube, Officer McNeil asked for privacy. Gayle gave Harper a searching look, and Harper nodded, giving the nurse wordless permission to go. Harper’s injuries were far from life-threatening. They could be dealt with later.

  When Harper told Officer McNeil about the pornography, about the things that Sawyer had made her do, he asked her to hang on for a moment while he made a few phone calls. Within twenty minutes there was another police officer in the room, as well as a social worker. Jenna Hudson.

  They listened, documenting, interrupting with the occasional question or point of clarification, and when Harper had finally recounted the last hour of her life (was that all the time that had passed since she stepped out of the mansion?), the two men stared at her with indiscernible expressions. Jenna only smiled faintly, a look of pity mixed with sorrow, and gave ­Harper’s arm a comforting little pat.

  Did they believe her? Would she care if they didn’t? Were they judging her? Did it matter if they were?

  After a few silent moments, Officer McNeil finally stepped forward and offered Harper his hand. She reached out hesitantly, but as soon as their fingers touched he pressed her hand between both of his palms. He looked sad. He looked like he believed her.

  Harper felt tears burn hot in her eyes. She had held on to it all for so long, had pushed her fears, her revulsion, her hatred and self-loathing down so deep that she doubted she would ever be free of it. Her heart was cemented in her chest, walled off and cold, yet Officer McNeil’s touch, the look in his eyes, sent a hairline crack through the hardest part of her. But she couldn’t afford to fall to pieces here. She didn’t deserve to. Harper fought to maintain her composure and won. She coaxed a faint half-smile.