Tess nodded her understanding. “Yeah, that all sounds okay.”
The doctor was professional and thorough. He asked a lot more medical questions, alongside the nurse who was checking boxes off of a stack of papers on a clipboard. He examined her from head to toe, more than she was expecting from concussion. He also stuck a weird device in her nostrils to look up there.
It was a relief when he asked her again if she was okay seeing Mr. Saxton and his sons now.
“Can you let Bastion and Warrick in as well? I need to make sure they’re okay.”
The doctor nodded. “The police might not like it, but this isn’t the station. We’re a hospital and you’ve been through a trauma. My orders take precedence.”
Tess gave the doctor an appreciative smile. Her headache made talking over the events, especially with any detail, a daunting task to face. She needed to see for herself that all of the guys were okay. Any help she could get from Mr. Saxton would make things easier, although she would rather not deal with him alone, either.
War was the first one to rush through the doors. He didn’t run, but his long legs got him across the room fast. He looked her up and down as he walked, pulling her into a big hug, while being careful of her blood pressure cuff and the other various equipment strapped to her body.
“Never again,” War whispered into her ear. “I’m never letting you face danger without me by your side again.”
Tess teared up. “I was scared,” she confessed. “But I knew you were listening, would send help for me. That helped me cope.”
Bastion found her other side. He kissed her forehead. “Damn concussion. I’m so sorry. I didn’t protect you right, Pumpkin.”
He’d saved her by playing along and acting as a buffer between her and the dangerous men, including the gangsters and Greg. Bastion hadn’t chosen the rough rapids their boat had been steered, but he got her in a lifejacket and stopped her from drowning.
“You are my heroes,” Tess told them both. “Thank you.”
“Turns,” Keir piped in.
War growled, surprising Tess. “Wait for your turn, Trouble. I won’t rush you.”
“We want to stay while you talk with Mr. Saxton. Is that okay?” Bastion asked. “I gave my statement to the police already. We wrote a rough statement for you based on my version of the events, so it’ll be easier to modify that one and have you sign it to minimize the time you have to spend talking to the police while you are hurt.”
That had been thoughtful. The drugs were starting to hit her and she had to admit she wasn’t thinking 100% clearly.
“Thank you. That’s a good idea. They gave me the good drugs, so I don’t know how long I can keep awake to talk to the police. Stay, please,” Tess said.
“Of course,” Bastion assured her.
“Guys, let's have Tess talk to Dad while she’s still feeling up to it,” Kade said.
Finally, War and Bastion let her go and backed up. The twins took their place, giving her kisses one after another, right on the lips. They were closed-mouth and short, but she knew Mr. Saxton was watching.
Her face was blushing hot as they pulled away.
“We talked to Dad,” Keir said. “He knows everything. He wants to help.”
“Keir, I’ll talk to Tess about my possible role if you don’t mind. Could you help her sit up in the bed? Pull up chairs for all of you around her. Ms. Sinclair, I would appreciate if you stayed next to your daughter even though she is technically an adult. She is under the influence of medical drugs and a concussion that can affect her understanding and recall.”
Mr. Saxton sounded strict, but there was a confidence in his tone that she appreciated. He was clear in his meaning. He knew what he was talking about. His expertise was about to be used to aid her.
“Thanks, Mr. Saxton,” Tess said.
Keir used the bedside controls to get her sat up with the back of the bed up to support her. Kade adjusted her pillows. Maddy pulled a chair next to the head of the bed on Tess’s right side.
Mr. Saxton sat on the foot of her bed. He took her hand between both of his and patted it in a soft, reassuring matter. His voice might be cold but his hands were warm.
“Thank you for talking to my sons about Haunani when we were struggling to communicate. They told me about your concussion last week, and the incident that led to it. Now this terrible crime by Jensen’s gang. I must tell you, young lady, I’m amazed by your strength and resilience.”
Wow. Tess felt her jaw drop a bit in response to Mr. Saxton’s compliment.
“You need a lawyer. Your mother needs a lawyer. I suspect your father also needs a lawyer. It would be a conflict of interest for me to represent your father given the charges the police will be laying on him. The least of those charges would be in regards to his kidnapping you from school while wilfully breaking the restraining order still in effect against him. I will arrange good legal counsel for your mother pro bono. Your counsel will be by me if you’re accepting. Your father has coverage for good counsel through his previous employer that is accessible to him despite his early retirement.”
“I understand, but doesn’t my mother need better legal counsel than me? I really didn’t do anything illegal,” Tess said.
She winced as she realized she was implying by omission that both her parents had committed illegal acts. It was true, but no need to be a snitch. She’d be horrible on the stand if she had to take it.
“The counsel I will obtain for Ms. Sinclair specializes in women committing crimes with extenuating mental health circumstances and spousal abuse. I feel this lawyer is better suited for Ms. Sinclair and she has already met briefly with her counsel and agreed.”
“Mr. Saxton got me a good lawyer, Tessa. Let him help you.”
“What about Greg? Are you sure?” Tess asked.
“That man got what he deserved,” Maddy said. “He mighta been misled by that tramp he’s with to take things too far, but he’s still your father and it was wrong of him to forget it for even a minute. His biggest weakness has always been laziness. Letting others do his dirty work, then enacting a desperate plan that involved you because he was frantic not to burn bridges with Larry. I don’t want to hear his excuses. He had a good enough lawyer for what he needs to do: confess and pay up.”
Maddy was making a lot of sense. It sometimes slipped by Tess when her mother was ill that she’d gotten most of her smarts from Mom, not Greg. Maddy was the reader, the one always thinking and looking for inspiration. The parent willing to change and better herself to protect her children.
“Okay, Mr. Saxton. We got ourselves in trouble. How much do you know?” Tess asked.
Mr. Saxton let go of her hand and picked up a leather briefcase from the floor. He put it on his lap and started pulling out papers, as well as a tape-player and tapes.
“I listened to the pertinent recordings provided by the Stewart’s security team. I will bring the rest home to review in detail. None of them will be presented as evidence unless you sign a waiver, which is a consideration for when you are out of hospital. I also have the written statement here for us to correct. Please review the paper copy, which I will read out loud to you and modify on my laptop. I have a mobile printer to make a clean copy for the police.”
“This might take a while,” Tess said to everyone else in the room. She eyed the heavy looking stack of paper that Mr. Saxton was handing out to her.
“It’s only a few pages. This is enough copies for everyone to help us review. All of the people in this room were involved, or connected in some way or another to this incident.”
Maddy cleared her throat. “I can’t say I know all the details. Like Tess probably feels right now, I wasn’t fully there in my mind the last few weeks.”
Her mother said it with an unspoken apology in her tone.
“You’re here now,” Tess said. “I’m glad you’re here.”
Mr. Saxton pulled out a small, light Mac computer. He set it on top of his briefcase and
opened it up.
“Sebastian, if you could start reading the statement since you helped the most to create it. Kade, please do the deletions on your copy in the red marker. Keir please do the additions on your copy in blue maker.”
Everyone nodded. They went through the statement without emotion, focusing on the details that were legally important. The morality was left out. Still, Maddy sniffled and held Tess’s hand.
“Where are the drugs?” Kade asked.
He interrupted Bastion’s reading when Bastion got around to telling how he’d gotten her to sniff naloxone instead of the real cocaine to fool everyone into thinking she was getting high.
It had been a bold but brilliant choice. The drug use would have excused a lot of behaviours from her. A way to get them out of a tight spot if she’d faked a seizure or just didn’t want to cooperate with Jensen and Larry when they’d come down to rape her.
Cooperate? Hell no, they’d wanted screams. Another defilement of her will, forcing her to fear every frightening moment of their planned assault.
Greg hadn’t wanted her to feel.
Somehow that made her even sadder. He’d messed up so bad, yet in the end, he’d done something completely against his own lazy, selfish personality and tried to put her first. He’d saved her, shoving her under the table.
A bullet wasn’t something all the money in the world could reverse.
Her guys would have been devastated. Maddy and the kids left all alone with nothing but questions, regrets.
“Tessa, are you paying attention?” Maddy asked.
“Uh, sorry, I think it’s the medicine working on me,” Tess excused, leaping on the excuse since her mind had been focused on the drugs she’d thought she’d been forced to take in that basement hideout. “When I faded out of the conversation, Bastion was saying what happened to the cocaine shipment that was accidentally intercepted.”
She blinked suspiciously wet eyes.
“Bastion has worded his statement to say he knew Larry and Jensen were looking for cocaine. He’d prepared naloxone for a substitute, if the circumstances made it necessary to use the drug. It was as close to a placebo as he could think of in short notice,” Mr. Saxton said. “The actual cocaine the gangsters lost is a mystery. I see no benefit in anyone confessing intercepting any drugs, accidental or not. It was more naloxone that was found in Larry’s car.”
Tess nodded.
It didn’t take them much longer to get through the statement. Her headache actually felt better, the medications truly working.
Maddy nodded slower at Mr. Saxton when he asked if the statement seemed ready to everyone for printing.
“Your father really took a bullet for you, Tessa?” Maddy asked.
“Yeah, I think so,” Tess agreed.
“He protected me too,” Bastion said. “He’s gonna live, Tess. The doctors says he’s a tough sonofabitch.”
“Yeah,” Tess agreed with a harsh laugh. “Fucking asshole Dad of the Year. But he’s not a complete degenerate like Larry. Is it bad that I’m grateful?”
“Nah,” Bastion replied. “You don’t choose your parents. But you can pick how you feel about them, and complicated is fine. We’ll take you down to see him if you want later.”
“I would like to go first,” Maddy said, surprising Tess.
“I prefer to accompany you when you go,” Mr. Saxton said. “Tess, you do have a restraining order against your father. Do you wish for it to be rescinded?”
She didn’t answer right away, thinking upon it. This wasn’t something she could play and change her mind, like a card for the reject pile. Once thrown, it was gone for good.
“Unfortunately, those charges are likely to stick against your father. At least, until the prosecutor offers up any plea bargains for testimony against Larry or Jensen,” Kade said.
“He’ll be in jail. The restraining order won’t matter anymore,” Keir added.
“Okay, remove it, please,” Tess said.
Mr. Saxton nodded.
“Let’s welcome the officers that have been patiently waiting in, Kade. Everyone else will have to leave the room. Tess’s mother may stay. Keir, I will let you and your brother take turns assisting me on this case. You can come with us to the station when we provide a more complete statement since this one was done under less than ideal circumstances.”
Mr. Saxton let the others start doing as he’d asked, then he looked back at Tess. “Is that all okay with you?” he asked.
She looked at him with horror. “I’m going to be sick!” she spat out, then slapped a hand over her mouth.
War, turned from the door, snagged the garbage pail from the floor and pulled it over to the bed, taking off the lid.
“In here. I’ll take care of it,” War told her, using one hand to sweep her hair out of the way in time.
“Call the doctor,” Bastion said.
Maddy pushed the call button.
The nurse came and then the doctor. They drew the curtain around her and cleaned her up. The doctor ordered another antiemetic for her nausea. One that slipped under her tongue and left a nice minty taste. It worked amazingly.
When they finally pulled the curtain back again, everyone was still waiting in the room. Ruby and the kids had also come in, all of them with concerned expressions.
“Should we tell the police to wait for another day?” Ruby asked.
“For any in-depth talk, absolutely,” Mr. Saxton answered for Tess. “If possible, handing them this written statement that Tess partially got through, and a brief talk, would help cement her trustworthiness as a witness. Statements are preferred as soon as possible to prevent recall error.”
“I can do it,” Tess said, feeling stronger.
She sipped at a gingerale in a glass that the nurse had given her.
The police officers were called in. The pair of them were given curt instructions by the doctor not to distress Tess, as well as a time limit.
Mr. Saxton did his job professionally, presenting the police offers with her written statement and reading it out loud himself before inviting any questions. It was brief, as promised, and mostly painless if you excluded how Tess’s heart squeezed recollecting the terrifying minutes she’d spent in the gangster’s hideout.
Kade held her hand the entire time she talked.
The officers thanked her for her statement and arranged a date and time for her to come into the station for a more thorough one later on. They left without causing any fuss, not even saying anything to Maddy that could set her mother off. Tess hadn't been thinking clearly when she agreed to have the officers come into the room in her mother's presence.
“Are you okay, Mom?” Tess asked.
“As long as you are okay,” Maddy replied.
Everyone else came back into the room including Ruby and Mr. Wilkinson. Tess was surprised he had been waiting all this time. A busy, rich man should have just forced his son home after the trouble Tess had caused him.
Bastion could have been killed!
Marla wasn’t with Bastion’s father. It let Tess breathe a little easier. Nothing that Bastion’s stepmother said or did now would endear her to Tess. Once you saw someone’s dark side, it wasn’t something you forgot.
A person that kicked a puppy was never changing from evil to good.
The nurse followed the crowd into her room. It was a good thing the hospital had such a large room. It looked like a quad that hadn’t any other patients at the moment. Three other empty beds split off the rest of the room with the curtains left open since they had no occupants.
“Visiting hours are over for the majority soon. Please remember that the patient needs to rest,” the nurse advised everyone.
Tess silently agreed although she didn’t want to say goodbye yet.
The kids were allowed to come up to the bed to visit with her first this time. They each gave her hugs. Tess noticed that they were both stiff.
“Are you guys okay?” Tess asked.
“Worried
about you,” Ashley answered.
“We heard about Dad,” Jason admitted.
“Mom says she wants to see him first, but then, you guys could go too if you wanted,” Tess said, feeling like she was giving them the permission they’d needed to see Greg after he’d hurt her.
Greg had hurt them as well, but his bigger threat had always been to Tess.
That threat had been defeated. All that was left, was their Dad, not the monster he’d turned into over the years. If the twins wanted to see what was left of him, Tess wouldn’t deny them.
She had to admit to curiosity herself, if she could gather up her courage after talking to her guys. Perhaps.
“Let’s go. I’ll check on him first and then you can come in,” Maddy said, standing up from her chair beside Tess’s bed.
“Are you going to come back?” Tess asked.
“Yes, of course,” Maddy answered. “I’m going to stay overnight with you. There’s a cot. Jason and Ashley are going to go home with Ruby.”
That sounded good. Tess felt her chest un-tighten. She hadn’t even realized she’d been feeling the strain of worry cranking her chest in a vice until Maddy reassured her she wasn’t leaving her alone for long.
Tess nodded and her family left to check on Greg. Secretly, she wanted to hear how he was doing, and not from impartial doctors and nurses.
“We’re wanting to stay the night too, Tess-girl,” War said, coming closer to the bed. “There are more cots and these hospital beds can be moved.”
“What about if they have more patients in need of beds?” Tess asked, feeling guilty. It would suck if the guys had to leave in the middle of the night.
“We made a donation,” Ruby said. “There’s enough room. It’s only one night.”
They’d bought themselves one heck of an expensive hotel night at a hospital just to stay near her while she was hurt. War’s promise not to leave her took on new meaning.
Duplicity (Victory Lap Book 2) Page 39