Taxi (Take It Off #11)

by Cambria Hebert

  Hell, I hoped the white-haired bastard lay there and bled to death as we drove away.

  What did that make me?

  Human. It made me human.

  It also made me honest.

  Honest men didn’t like to be lied to, but right now, I was praying I’d been told the mother of all lies.

  They had a recording of the phone call I’d had with donor registry. Was it all a setup? A big ruse to get me to do something sinister?

  Or were the men preying upon my weaknesses?

  I wanted to believe so badly I ignored the truth nagging the back of my mind. I ignored the urge to bite my nails in anticipation, and I tried not to feel like it wasn’t just two people I killed today… but three.

  If that phone call had been a hoax, if I turned down a chance at an AB negative organ, then I might have just killed Rocco.

  All the ifs and mights were feasting away on my insides. I passed the elevators and rushed up the stairs to the OR. A familiar nurse dressed in scrubs and carrying a clipboard of paperwork was in the hall when I burst in.

  “Janet.” I heaved. “Where’s Rocco?” I glanced toward the brown swinging doors that led back to the operating rooms.

  “Dr. Kelley, are you okay?” She frowned.

  I waved away her concern. “Where is he?”

  Her brow furrowed. “In his room, I imagine.”

  I stumbled back.

  The truth hit me like a train at full speed.

  “Dr. Kelley!” Janet rushed toward me, grabbing my arm. “You need to sit down.”

  “Rocco’s not up here?” I whispered, strained.

  “No,” she replied, worry dripping from the single word.

  I pulled away and rushed back into the stairwell. Once there, I lunged down two flights of stairs, then leaned against the wall to catch my breath.

  My sister, my God, my sister must be beside herself. I told her he was getting a kidney. I promised her I’d be there and her son would be okay.

  I was late. The kidney never came.

  She was going to hate me.

  Rocco might, too.

  Shoving off the wall, I stepped out onto the floor where Rocco was located. I pivoted left and practically sprinted toward his room, which was the last door on the left. Laura stepped out of the doorway, looking straight ahead, like she was lost in thought.

  My shoe squeaked against the tile.

  Her head whipped around.

  “Derek!” she gasped and rushed toward me. “Where have you been?”

  I stopped before I got to the doorway, and Laura closed the distance between us.

  “Oh my word! What happened?” she exclaimed, three fingers pressed against her lips as if to hold in a screech.

  I didn’t answer at first, instead taking a moment to appraise her features. Laura was a beautiful woman, with dark hair and eyes like mine—more fine boned, a narrow nose, and thinner lips. She was older than me by several years, but it had never been evident.

  At least until the last year. Until right now.

  It was like she’d aged five years since I’d seen her last. Her skin was sallow and pasty, her normally warm eyes bloodshot and dilated. For the first time, I noticed fine lines at the corners and just beneath her lower lash line. The thick strands of her hair were pulled back harshly in a low ponytail at the base of her neck, the ends frayed and lackluster. The tip of her nose was red, and her skin was dry. Beneath her bottom lip was a red welt from where she’d clearly been chewing at it.

  I’d done this to her.

  I made a promise—a life and death promise—and didn’t keep it.

  “How’s Rocco?” I asked, keeping my voice low.

  “He’s sleeping. It’s been a long day. He’s been upset.”

  I felt like a sailboat without any wind in my sails, drifting… drifting along like I’d lost my way.

  “We need to talk,” I murmured, fighting the urge to go into my nephew’s room and wake him just so I could hug him.

  She nodded, and I pulled her across the hall into an empty room.

  “Your face.” She fretted, staring at the black eye I sported. Then her eyes trailed to my clothes. “You’re hurt.”

  “I was kidnapped.” Yeah, it was a blunt way to say it, but I didn’t have time to pretty up the words. Now wasn’t the time for gentle bedside manner. She’d been waiting, wondering.

  She deserved a straightforward explanation.

  Laura sucked in a breath. “What?”

  I nodded. “Last night when I got home, I was shot with a tranquilizer and taken out of my driveway.”

  Her voice was low and shocked. “I tried to call you so many times.”

  “Well, now you know why I didn’t answer.”

  “Were you hurt?” She began pacing along the length of the wall and wringing her hands.

  Just watching her made me exhausted. I sank on the end of the nearby hospital bed. No sleep, the adrenaline rushes… It was all catching up to me.

  Maybe that’s why it seemed she was repeating herself. I felt like I could sleep for an entire week.

  With Rose beside me.

  With thoughts of the red-haired coffee fairy at the front of my mind, I said, “Not too bad. They didn’t want me hurt. Rose was a different story.”

  “Rose?” She paused in pacing and swung to stare at me.

  “You know the coffee truck girl outside?” I told her.

  “The one you totally like?” She didn’t say it with a teasing note in her voice like usual. When I—a non-coffee drinker started showing up with coffee cups in hand, it was like open season to pick on her little brother who clearly had a crush.

  I told her she was delusional even though she wasn’t.

  Right now, though, she wasn’t amused. Instead, she seemed horrified, and as soon as the words escaped, she slapped her palm over her lips.

  I nodded. “She was kidnapped, too.”

  “Oh my God, Derek.” Her voice broke. “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s over now.”

  “They let you go, then?” she said before I could continue. “Where is it?”

  “Where’s what?” I frowned.

  “I meant to say she. Where is she?” Laura amended.

  “Rose is downstairs, admitted for the night,” I replied slowly.

  “Is she all right? What’s her condition like? Will she recover?” She started pacing again, the nervous, anxious energy surrounding her beginning to penetrate my exhaustion.

  She was acting weird.

  I watched her closely. “Why wouldn’t she recover?”

  “Of course she will,” she reasoned almost as if to herself. “You’re the best surgeon at this hospital.”

  “Why would Rose need a surgeon?” I said, steady.

  A very, very bad feeling came over me. It seemed to suck every bit of oxygen from my lungs.

  Laura stopped pacing and glanced up. “Tell me you got it.” Her voice was pleading.

  I jolted to my feet, my heart galloping against my chest. I could barely force the words out of my mouth. “Oh shit, Laura. What did you do?”

  A half cry, half moan escaped her throat.

  No.

  So quickly, my feelings changed. Comprehension washed over me.

  “Tell me you weren’t involved in this.” Disbelief and shock consumed me. Memories flashed behind my eyes, memories of my sister at various times in our lives.

  Never in a million years would I have ever thought she was capable of something like this. Hell, part of me still awaited her denial. All she’d have to do to convince me I was totally off base was say the word no. I’d believe her.

  I’d believe her in an instant.

  It just wasn’t possible my sister, the girl who had literally been in my life since the day I was born, would do something like this.

  “He’s just a little boy.” Her voice was broken.

  In that moment, I was, too. The statement shattered me. My knees actually felt weak.

  She
did this. Laura had me kidnapped. She had me chained up by criminals to try and force me to steal an organ for my nephew.

  The kidnappers hadn’t lied to me.

  My sister did.

  I dropped back onto the bed, my eyes not really focused on anything at all because the thoughts and feelings inside me made me blind to everything else.

  “Please understand,” she begged, rushing close.

  Her movement snapped me back to reality. My head whipped up. Whatever she saw in my eyes made her pause. Her stature became tense.

  She should be nervous.

  I rose. She took a step back.

  I found that very telling about the way I must have looked. Black and blue from the hits I took, blood smeared all over my ripped and dirty clothing.

  But not my blood.

  Rose’s.

  My sister did this to Rose.

  I took another step closer, my hands clenched. At my side, my raw wrist burned. I stopped in front of her, just short of arm’s distance. I was genuinely afraid if I went any closer, I’d do something I’d regret.

  “You had Rose kidnapped, an innocent woman, a woman you knew I wanted.”

  She started to protest. I watched it form on her tongue.

  I silenced her by cutting my hand through the air between us. She flinched.

  If I wasn’t so angry, I’d be offended. It was true; I felt deadly, and I was beyond betrayed. Even still, I’d never physically hurt Laura.

  Apparently, I couldn’t say the same about her.

  “You had me kidnapped, dumped into the back of a taxi, and carted off to some abandoned farm where I was chained up and threatened. Those men… the men I assume you paid?”

  She nodded, and I made a choked sound.

  “It was for Rocco!” she burst out. “He needs a kidney desperately, Derek. I can see it in your eyes every time you look at him. I watch him lie in that bed day after day as life slowly drains out of him.” Her cheeks became flushed, and the resolve of a mother filled her gaze.

  She was no longer worried about me, no longer frightened of what I might do.

  She was unrelenting. She was fierce, and she would goddamn do what she had to do to save her son’s life.

  “My little boy is dying because his body is betraying him. Because two organs won’t do their job. People walk around every single day with perfectly good organs. He only needs one. One.”

  “You can’t just take an organ out of someone else’s body!” I roared.

  “The hell I can’t!” she bellowed back. “I made a promise to that child, to myself. I promised him I would protect him and love him. I promised him a good life. I thought you promised him the same!”

  I sucked in a breath.

  “But you wouldn’t do it, would you? You wouldn’t just go against your morals for one hour to save the life of a boy you claim to love like a son.”

  “You think me murdering someone is the way I should prove my love?” I disparaged.

  “It’s not murder. She would be fine with one kidney.” Laura’s eyes flashed. “You chose your dick over your own flesh and blood.”

  I was moving before the words even left my mouth. I shot forward and grabbed my sister, moving until her back hit the wall, and I pinned myself against her. My breath heaved, and I knew she could likely feel it blowing in her suddenly pale face.

  I was so fucking pissed I couldn’t even see straight. Maybe I would hurt her… Maybe she’d pushed me way, way too far.

  “How dare you?” I growled. “I’ve treated him like a son his entire life. I pay his damn hospital bills. I give him the best care I can humanly give. I’ve been killing myself for years now trying to find that boy a kidney. I’ve had myself tested three times, each time giving myself false hope I would miraculously be a match. I’ve even been trying to find his good-for-nothing father.”

  She gasped. She had no idea I’d been searching for that douchebag.

  “Don’t you dare say I don’t love him. Don’t even fucking think it. I want him to be whole again just as badly as you.” I felt my eyes flashing down at her.

  She swallowed thickly.

  I shoved away from her. She made me sick. I felt like she was a complete stranger now.

  “You’ve been trying to find Daniel?” she whispered.

  “My private investigator keeps coming up empty,” I replied, not looking at her.

  The vulnerability in her voice cut me, and that made me angry. I guess even a betrayal this heavy didn’t keep me from caring.

  “I know what I did was terrible,” she whispered.

  My back muscles bunched. I wanted to laugh. What she did went way beyond terrible.

  “I can’t keep letting him deteriorate. One night when I was researching online for something, anything that could save him, I saw some articles on black market organs.”

  My eyes closed.

  “People pay for organs. They just buy them.” There was a hint of wonder in her voice, like she’d never heard of it until she accidentally stumbled across the information on the web.

  “It’s illegal, Laura. That’s why it’s called black market. They steal the organs out of unwilling donors.”

  “I started looking deeper,” she said, ignoring my words. Maybe that was how she did this; she ignored the parts she didn’t want to think about. “I made some calls. I paid someone here at the hospital to see if there were any matches for his blood type. I didn’t want anyone not in the States. I wanted a viable, healthy organ.”

  Insanity. How had I completely missed that my sister was bordering on insanity?

  “The hope I’d felt when I heard there was a match…” Her voice broke, and she finished her sentence with a sob. “I hadn’t felt that kind of hope in a long time.”

  “Laura,” I rasped, still unable to look at her.

  “So I made some calls. I found some men who were willing to kidnap the match. I never asked much about her identity. I never even read the personal information I was given. I thought it would be easier—”

  “She was just a means to an end for you.” I cut in.

  “No! Not at all. But I had to do this. I gave them strict orders not to hurt her any more than necessary. Once the kidney was removed, she was to be taken to a hospital a few hours away. The men would disappear with their hefty fee, and you could do the surgery and save my son.”

  “And me?” I asked.

  “I got scared,” she whispered. “I worried I was doing all this only to let a criminal cut out the thing that would save Rocco. So I took out a second mortgage on the house. I offered them more money to kidnap you… I knew you’d cut out the kidney the right way. It was safer. Not just for Rocco, but for the donor.”

  “They were going to kill her,” I snapped.

  “What?”

  “You hired criminals. Did you think they would do everything you said? They wanted me to cut out all her organs. Not just one. They planned to only give me the kidney if I cut out all her other organs to be sold on the black market. Rose would be dead.”

  “That’s not what I wanted!” she insisted and started to cry. “I only wanted to save my son.”

  A slew of curses filled the room. Roughly, I turned and yanked her into a hug.

  I couldn’t help but feel like she was a victim too.

  “Why couldn’t you have just saved him?”

  Her tortured cry cut me like a knife. I’d probably bleed from that statement the rest of my life.

  Why couldn’t I have just done it?

  Why did it have to be Rose? Would I have done it if it hadn’t been her? Why did life have to be so fucking unfair?

  “I’m sorry.” The apology ripped from my gut.

  Deep, gut-wrenching sobs tore out of her as she clung to my chest. How in God’s name did I find myself here? How did she?

  “What happened to the men?” she asked after long, long minutes.

  “I killed them.”

  It struck me then how I hadn’t even hesitated in k
illing them, but with Rose, it had been an internal battle. At least not there in the end.

  It was because it came down to them or us. Eat or be eaten. They’d been trying to hurt me by using my nephew. I thought they’d been lying. They hadn’t lied about him, but they lied about everything else.

  Regardless of what my sister thought, I wouldn’t have walked out of there with my life. Neither would Rose. No one would have been any better if I’d done what they ordered.

  But what about Rocco?

  Now they were dead.

  I was here.

  And I would wonder if the choices my sister made and the choices I made would ultimately cost Rocco.

  “Have you spoken to the police?” she asked, pulling away from me and wiping at her face.

  “Not yet.” My tone was hard and clipped. I looked away from her once more. It hurt too much to look. My resolve weakened when I did. Part of me just couldn’t be as livid as I knew I had the right to be.

  Part of me understood why she did it.

  “I can’t look at you right now,” I growled and spun to leave.

  “Wait,” she called.

  I stopped but didn’t turn.

  “What will you tell them?”

  I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. Instead, I walked out, leaving her behind to wallow in what she’d done. I went directly across the hall into the darkened room.

  From the foot of the bed, I stared down at my sleeping nephew.

  His hair was on the long side like mine. A while back, he told me he wanted to grow his hair, and I promised I’d grow mine, too.

  Rocco’s hair wasn’t quite as dark as mine. It was more of a medium brown, where mine was just dark. It flopped over his forehead and eyes. His cheeks were pale, his complexion sallow. He was small and frail beneath the quilt my mother had made him out of T-shirts from all the places we’d been and places he’d yet to see.

  Places I wondered if he would ever get to see.

  There was a stuffed dinosaur on his left and a giant stuffed shark on his right, monitors hooked up all around, and several decks of cards nearby.

  The physical pain of staring down at him was the worst pain I’d ever known. It was the absolute in grief.

  If I could trade my life for this boy’s, I would in a heartbeat.

  But I couldn’t.

  And it was that which would haunt me forever.