Turn Up the Heat

by Kimberly Kincaid

  Shane met his friend’s eyes for less than a second before trying to elbow his way past in an effort to reach Grady, but Jackson reached around him and held firm.

  “Dude, you gotta let them do their jobs. They’re trying to help him.”

  “I’m all that man’s got,” Shane growled at Jackson. “And I’ll be goddamned if he doesn’t know I’m here when he needs me.” He struggled against Jackson’s unyielding torso. Why wasn’t Grady answering, damn it? “Grady!”

  “Shane?” A tall redheaded paramedic he’d also seen tending bar at the Double Shot from time to time looked over her shoulder, but Shane was so worked up that it barely registered. “Shane!” she barked again, and the word sank in enough for Shane to realize it had been directed at him. Jackson’s hold weakened, and Shane took full advantage, pushing past him to answer the woman.

  “Yeah?”

  “Teagan O’Malley, Pine Mountain Fire and Rescue. When was the last time you saw him?” Her hands moved in a flurry of sure activity over Grady’s body, and she leaned in to murmur something to him before glancing back at Shane. Grady looked so pale and fragile that Shane’s heart thudded around in his chest.

  “This morning. He was . . .” Tired. Grady had been tired, and Shane had known it. “He was fine.” Shane forced himself to look at Grady’s face. Please wake up. Please. “Hey, Grady. We’re gonna get you fixed up, okay. Just hang in there.”

  The old man’s gray eyes flashed open at the sound of Shane’s voice, showing a mixture of fear and pain that made Shane’s blood turn to ice in his veins.

  “Call . . . him . . . you have to call . . . make it right . . .”

  Shane reached in to grab the old man’s hand, giving it a squeeze. “Okay. Okay.”

  Grady closed his eyes again, and Teagan cut in roughly. “It’s better if he doesn’t talk unless he has to. Know any medical history?”

  Shane nodded, but couldn’t speak.

  “Any drug allergies that you know about? Past history of heart attack? He had one last year, right?” More movement, and the other paramedic made purposeful strides with a wheeled stretcher. Oh, shit, this was bad. No, no, no, no.

  Shane forced the answers from his mouth. “Uh, no allergies. But yeah, he had a mild heart attack fourteen months ago. His meds are in the cabinet in the office.” Both hemispheres of Shane’s brain were bound by a fog that made it difficult for him to think, and he felt as if his entire universe was crashing down over his head.

  “I’m going to need those. Now would be good.” Shane’s legs refused to move. He couldn’t leave Grady’s side, not even for the two seconds it would take to grab the medication bottles from the shelf in the office. “You can’t let him die.” He’d meant the words to come out firm, forceful, but instead, they were a vulnerable plea.

  “I’m going to do everything I possibly can to make sure that doesn’t happen, okay? But you’ve got to let us do our job here.”

  Shane caught a flash of movement, blond hair and plaid flannel, and someone handed the fistful of orange bottles to Teagan.

  “Ah. Thanks.” She scanned them quickly and rattled off a bunch of syllables to her partner that sounded odd together, like some sort of code. Bits and pieces, fragments of things, crossed Shane’s field of vision, but nothing made any sense. Why was Bellamy’s car on the lift? And what the hell had Jackson been doing here?

  “He’s stable enough for now, but we need to get to Riverside Hospital. They have an advanced cardiac unit, so they’ll be better able to diagnose and treat him than Pine Mountain’s medical facility. Is Grady his first name or last?”

  “First.” This couldn’t be happening. Why hadn’t Shane been there? Guilt pushed through him, relentless and fast.

  He should’ve been there.

  “You work with him. Do you know his last name? We’re going to need to find his family, if he’s got any.” The male paramedic began strapping Grady to the stretcher with care, and Teagan aimed an expectant look at Shane.

  His heart wrenched in his chest, his voice utterly cold as the words formed in his brain and forced their way from his mouth. “His last name’s Griffin, just like mine. The only other family he’s got besides me is his son, Charles Griffin, Esquire. My father.”

  Bellamy blinked at Shane and took an involuntary step backward as she reeled in an equal mix of shock and confusion.

  Shane was Grady’s grandson? But why hadn’t he said anything to her?

  Recognition shot through her as she stood, dumbfounded, next to Jackson. No wonder Grady had seemed so familiar to her when she’d met him that morning. Shane’s mannerisms were an exact mirror of Grady’s, right down to the inflection in his voice when Shane had called her “darlin’” the other day. Even if the physical resemblance was only slight, they were definitely cut from the same cloth. How had she not seen it before?

  “Jesus,” Jackson said, his chiseled jaw falling open. “Grady’s his grandfather?”

  “You didn’t know either?” Shock rebounded through her chest.

  “No. He never said anything,” Jackson replied in a low voice, shaking his head. “After Grady had that heart attack last year, Shane just showed up. I always thought it was a stroke of luck for the old man, you know, that some drifter came along to save the day. But Shane never told me where he came from.”

  Bellamy nodded, her thoughts racing on fast-forward. Shane’s devotion was a little clearer, but still. Jackson was right. He had to have come from somewhere, left something behind, in order to help Grady out.

  Wait a second . . . Charles Griffin, Esquire? Bellamy’s stomach dropped like a rock.

  Oh, God. He couldn’t possibly be Charles Griffin, Philadelphia’s most prominent attorney, could he? Bellamy had heard the name in certain circles at the bank, and while his offices didn’t specialize in real estate, per se, everyone who was anyone in the world of business had at least heard of the law firm. His name was in the papers on a regular basis, in both local news and on the social page.

  But of course she hadn’t connected the dots. Why the hell would she?

  Shane’s voice, loud and argumentative, yanked her focus back to the garage. “I’m going with you,” he insisted, following the paramedics and the stretcher to the door.

  “Standard operating procedure, Mr. Griffin. No passengers.” The female paramedic’s words were curt and suggested zero wiggle room.

  Shane didn’t seem to care. “Like hell. I’m going.”

  Bellamy sprang into action, shoving her fist into the pocket of her jeans where she’d stashed Shane’s truck keys, and they all moved toward the door in a bustle of movement and sound.

  The paramedic stared him down. “What you’re doing is wasting precious seconds of my time. I get that you’re worried, but if you want me to save his life, you have to get out of my way and let me do it.”

  Shane stopped short at her order, helplessly watching in defeat as she and her partner loaded the stretcher into the back of the ambulance. Bellamy passed the keys to Jackson, who wordlessly went to start Shane’s truck. Out of sheer instinct, she put her hand on Shane’s shoulder, realizing only after the fact that he might not want her to.

  He clutched her hand for a second before slumping into her, and she barely got her arm around him in time to hold him up.

  “Okay,” she whispered into him, biting back tears with every breath. “Okay. Jackson’s waiting, Shane. We’re going to follow them the whole way there. Come on.”

  The redhead jumped out the back of the ambulance, slamming the doors to the rig with finality before turning toward the driver’s side.

  “I’m sorry,” she said over her shoulder. “I really am. But I promise we’ll do all we can to keep him safe.”

  Shane’s eyes surged with raw emotion as he looked at her. “I’m holding you to that.”

  With a nod, the woman climbed into the ambulance and pulled out into the dead of night.

  Shane fought the urge to vomit as Jackson navigated the turns on
the main road down the mountain. His head reeled with unanswered questions and impending dread, only one of which he could do anything about.

  “How . . . how did you know about Grady?” he asked Jackson, whose stony blue gaze didn’t move from the road as he answered.

  “After I left your place, I stopped by the Double Shot to see what was going on. It was pretty dead, so I decided to take off, and I saw the ambulance pulling in as I passed by on my way home. Teagan said Grady called nine-one-one, complaining of chest pain. That’s when I called you.”

  Shane reached behind the seat for Bellamy’s hand. She’d managed to squeeze herself across the narrow bench in the back of the truck, which couldn’t be comfortable, but she hadn’t even hesitated to get in.

  “He was working on that tranny, doing the job by himself,” Shane realized out loud. From the looks of things, Grady had gotten a good deal of the work done, too, so he had to have pulled a ten-hour day, maybe even twelve, considering Lucky Gunderson’s Cadillac. That kind of day would’ve turned even the healthiest guy into a zombie.

  Shane swallowed past the Sahara desert in his throat. What would it end up doing to Grady?

  “He said he would call me. He was supposed to call me when that stupid tranny came in.” Shane let out a low curse under his breath, and Bellamy’s hand froze in his.

  “This isn’t your fault, Shane.”

  “This is absolutely my fault,” he snapped, his gut triple-knotting. “He’s my responsibility, and I should’ve been there.”

  “Okay, take it easy. Getting upset sure won’t fix anything,” Jackson said with care. “Let’s just get to the hospital. Do you want to try my cell to call your, uh, father?”

  Oh, fuck. This was going to go from bad to worse. Shane pinched the bridge of his nose. “No.” No way was he having that conversation with the two of them in the car to overhear it. It was going to be bad enough as it was. God damn it, he hadn’t had a chance to tell Bellamy the truth.

  But he couldn’t worry about that now.

  “My father hasn’t wanted to see Grady for twenty years. A few more hours should suit him just fine.”

  As soon as his father showed up, every secret Shane had ever kept would be out in the open, and there would be no hiding from any of it.

  With that, he let Bellamy’s fingers slip from his, letting her go before she could beat him to it.

  Bellamy stared into the Styrofoam cup of cold coffee in her hands, catching her distorted reflection in the dark liquid. The clock on the wall showed half past midnight, and although she was weary down to her bones, sleep was the furthest thing from her mind. She rubbed her forehead as if the motion would jump-start her brain into making sense of the last few hours.

  Shane had bolted inside the hospital doors the minute Jackson pulled up to the glass and brick façade of Riverside Hospital two hours ago, and they’d met him in the waiting room of the ER. All of their questions had been met with the polite yet firm assurance that the doctor would come out and speak with them shortly. As soon as it had become clear that shortly was a rough translation for a dog’s age in hospital-speak, Shane disappeared for about ten minutes, presumably to call his father.

  His father, who Shane had gone out of his way to avoid mentioning. He had to have something to do with why Shane hated the city so much—Charles Griffin was a paragon of Philadelphia high society. Even his money had money, for God’s sake. Bellamy’s family was well-off, sure, but they didn’t hold a candle to that. Her head pounded between her temples, and disquiet squeezed her chest into tightness.

  He’d lied to her.

  Shane prowled the ten by ten path of linoleum in the waiting room on a restless loop, his work boots echoing a hollow thud into the squares with each step. Jackson had given up on trying to sardine his large frame into the hard plastic chairs in the waiting room, opting instead to lean back across the entire row for a better fit. A year-old Car and Driver magazine sat in his lap, untouched, as he stared at the walls, and Shane did yet another abrupt about-face in the corner of the waiting room. The steady clomp-clomp of his steel-toed Red Wings alternating with the deafening silence set Bellamy’s teeth on edge, but she said nothing. Finally, the doors leading to the ER hissed open on automatic breath.

  “Shane Griffin?” A tired-looking man in pale green scrubs stared at the trio with kind yet serious eyes.

  “That’s me,” Shane said, nearly hurdling the row of chairs between him and the doctor. Bellamy’s heart beat so wildly against her rib cage that she half expected it to break free.

  “I’m Dr. Russell. I’m taking care of your grandfather.” He extended his hand for the obligatory one-pump man-shake, then flipped an electronic chart from under his arm. “As I’m sure you suspect, your grandfather suffered a myocardial infarction, which is the medical term for a heart attack. We’ve ruled out the need for angioplasty, but we have him hooked up to the ECG to monitor his heart rhythms. He’s also getting oxygen, so his body won’t have to work so hard at breathing.”

  Oh, sweet Jesus. Just breathing on his own was too hard? Bellamy slammed her eyes shut over the pool of tears forming there. She would not cry.

  “We’re also giving him some beta-blockers, which help to lessen the strain on the heart, and some pretty heavy-duty painkillers to ease his discomfort. I want to get him in for an MRI so we can see what we’re dealing with here, and he’ll probably spend some time in the ICU, just to be on the safe side.” The doctor paused, probably to let everything sink in for a minute, but Shane didn’t waste a single second.

  “I want to stay with him.”

  Dr. Russell shook his head. “Visiting hours are strict in the ICU, and nearly one A.M. doesn’t qualify. I’m sorry. Plus, what he needs above all else right now is rest. The first twenty-four hours after a heart attack are the most precarious. We’ve got the best cardiac unit in the area, so he’s in great hands. But he’s not out of the woods yet. After he’s stable, we’ll see what the MRI says and go from there.”

  Shane nodded in defeat. “Thank you, Dr. Russell. Come get me if he needs anything. I’ll be right here.”

  “Do yourself a favor, Mr. Griffin. Go home and get some rest. He’ll be here with us for a while, so you’re going to need it. We’ll be sure to call you if anything comes up.” The doctor shook Shane’s hand one more time before disappearing behind the double doors.

  Bellamy stood, unmoving, on the green and gray flecked linoleum, torn between wanting to ask a billion questions and throw her arms around Shane. His usually warm brown eyes fell on her with dull sadness, and she felt a distance stretch out between them as it slipped under her skin to invade every part of her.

  “Why don’t we go back to the cabin to lie down for a bit? Then we can come here in a few hours to see him,” Bellamy said. She fully expected Shane to protest, and had already made up her mind that she wouldn’t push it if he did. Those chairs in the waiting room weren’t too bad, and anyway, she’d do anything to ease the pain on his face.

  “Okay, yeah.”

  Jackson jumped to action. “I’ll go pull the truck around, buddy. Just hang tight.” He hustled his gigantic frame out the lobby doors and into the frigid night.

  Bellamy wrapped the sleeves of her shirt over her hands, curling the edges over her fingers and into loose fists. They’d been in such a hurry that she’d snapped Shane’s flannel from the floor of his room, and she just now noticed that she’d missed a button in her haste to get dressed.

  “I’m really sorry, Shane.” Maybe it was lame, but the apology was what she’d been thinking, and apparently her speak-your-mind habit didn’t have a crisis mode. Plus, she had no idea what else to say.

  “For what?” Shane asked, but he didn’t look up. His face had aged fifteen years in the last few hours.

  “I wish this hadn’t happened to Grady. To you. Why didn’t you tell me he’s your grandfather?”

  The question felt so utterly benign as it left Bellamy’s lips that she was unprepared for the
reaction it brought.

  “Because it’s none of your business. It doesn’t have anything to do with you.”

  Bellamy recoiled as if she’d been slapped, the words reverberating in her skull so hard she’d swear they’d leave a mark.

  “But I . . .”

  “Forget it.” He cut her off. “I just want to go home.”

  “O-okay.” Bellamy wrapped her arms around herself to suppress the shudder working through her. Shane was stressed beyond measure, and she knew she should cut him some slack. But now she didn’t know if that meant staying close or leaving him alone, and the confusion rattled her brain. She turned toward the lobby doors, trying to hide the sting of his words. “I’ll just see if Jackson’s here yet.”

  “Bellamy, wait.”

  She hovered a few steps between Shane and the doors, not moving toward either. Her disloyal legs refused to move her one way or the other, even though she commanded them to just head for the damned door.

  “It’s fine,” she managed to croak. “Let’s just get you home.”

  Shane exhaled a shaky breath. “Listen, I . . .”

  “Shane.”

  The word came from behind them, a deep baritone that sang of seriousness and quiet power. Bellamy turned toward Shane, who didn’t move except to close his eyes. The man stood in the mouth of the hallway leading from the main hospital, his stance still and imposing. His face was a perfectly sculpted older version of Shane’s, with the exception of the steel-gray eyes coldly fixed on Shane’s back. Bellamy blinked in surprise, too shocked to speak.

  Shane squared his shoulders and opened his eyes to give her one last, fleeting look before he turned on his heel toward the man.

  “Dad.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  All of the breath and blood in Shane’s body felt as if it had been replaced with permafrost the minute he heard the familiar timbre of his father’s voice behind him. Leave it to Charles Griffin to come up behind Shane and catch him off guard. Even in a crisis, he was all about strategy.