by E. A. Copen
Abe walked back to the car I’d left running and climbed in. The engine roared and the tires spun, sending a wave of dry dirt spraying over me before he tore out onto the road, headed back toward Paint Rock.
My right arm throbbed, useless, but my left was still mobile. I used it to reach into my right pocket with shaky hands and draw out the phone Espinoza had tossed to me. Abe had said he’d call me an ambulance, but I couldn’t trust anything he said right now. I’d have to find my own help. It took me three tries to punch in Tindall’s number. He picked up on the fourth ring, sounding exhausted. “Sheriff here.”
“Tindall?” My voice cracked, and my jaw quivered.
There was a momentary pause before Tindall said in a more alert tone, “Where are you?”
“Four Corners.”
“How bad is it?”
The pounding in my head suddenly got worse. My stomach turned and I rolled over, retching and expelling everything in my stomach. The move accidentally put weight on my broken arm and I choked.
“Stay where you are,” Tindall’s voice shouted from the phone I’d dropped. “I’m sending help.”
Chapter Sixteen
I don’t know how long I fought not to lose consciousness. Whatever Abe had done to my head had been more of a finishing blow than I realized. The broken bones in my arm throbbed, making the nausea worse. Sitting up made it worse, too, so I lay on my back on the concrete floor of a derelict gas station, staring up at the stars.
There’s nowhere on Earth where you can see stars quite like the Texas desert. I was still close enough to Eden that the city lights colored the far edge of the sky, but the deep, palpable blanket of midnight blue still held its dominance over the sky. Tiny sapphires shimmered against the light on either side of a dark cut in the sky, an arm of the galaxy millions of lightyears away. Somewhere out there, it made sense that my partner had just beat the shit out of me. It made sense that the one reliable and stable person in Paint Rock had flipped his lid and started trying to kill people. Mara joining a cult, Ed getting arrested, cats and dogs getting along, all of it made sense somewhere out there. How high would I have to climb to get enough perspective to understand? Could I get the full picture from a mountaintop? An airplane? Maybe Mars would be far enough. Where I lay on the ground listening to an owl hoot and an engine rattle in the distance, nothing made sense.
If I could just close my eyes, I could think through it. Maybe a little sleep. I hadn’t slept in forever. As late as it was, I should have been curled up in bed next to Sal, listening to him snore gently.
Muffled voices and movement in my arm made open my eyes. I hadn’t realized I’d fallen asleep, but I must have blanked. The sky seemed lighter, and the throbbing pain in my broken arm had turned into an adrenaline-fueled numbness that spread up to my elbow. Two shapes bent over me, one of them responsible for the sudden return of pain in my forearm.
“I thought you said you were watching her?”
Sal? What was he doing here? Where was Tindall?
“You know how good she’s gotten at dodging us. The last time we spoke, you said she was with that half-vampire. She had an escort.” The second voice belonged to Bran.
Sal’s grip tightened on my arm. I tried to say, “Ouch,” but it came out more as a pained grunt.
Sal tightened his grip and forced my arm to straighten out, resulting in another hiss of pain from me. “Quit trying to move it, Judah. It’s a good fracture. How’d you manage it this time? Jesus, you’re out in the middle of nowhere with no one around, and you still somehow manage to get hurt. Who did this to you?”
My head spun with pain as a faint pulse of magick spread from his hands into my arm. His healing magick felt weaker than normal, maybe because he was still recovering himself.
I wanted to tell him it was Abe, but I was afraid to. More than afraid, maybe. Ashamed. Here I was, someone who had gone up against ice giants, demons, and zombies. I’d faced down my own death and come out on top. But I had let Abe mop the floor with me. I should have fought harder, pushed more. If I hadn’t hesitated, if he hadn’t hit first, maybe… Whatever I wanted to think was lost in a sea of agony as Sal tightened his grip on my arm even further.
“Perhaps we should let her recover before we drown her in questions, brother.”
I cringed and squeezed my eyes shut. Beads of moisture trailed down my cheeks. “Tindall?”
Bran’s hand came down gently on my back, steadying me in my seated position. “He’s the one who called us. If he’d come himself, it would put him in an awkward position.”
Of course. He’d have to call an ambulance, and hospitals asked a lot of questions. There would be an investigation, inquiries. It would go on record that I’d been injured and I’d have to make a report on how it had happened. That’d be bad for me because it would draw BSI’s attention. Tindall couldn’t have known that, though. He might have guessed something was going on because I had called him instead of an ambulance, but he also might have been called somewhere else. Being sheriff meant constantly being pulled in all directions. Poor guy.
“I don’t know that I can fully repair the broken bone.” Sweat trailed down the side of Sal’s face and neck, and his forehead wrinkled in concentration. Setting a broken bone and mending it was normally child’s play for him. “I can get it started, but it’s still going to hurt like a bitch and be vulnerable.”
I flashed a goofy smile. “Patch me up, Doc. Send me back out.”
Something dark flashed behind his eyes, a memory maybe. He shook his head, and the look was gone. “You still need to tell me who did this. I’m not letting that go. Now, hold still. This is really going to hurt.”
Setting a broken bone is never fun, but doing it with no medical gear in the middle of nowhere is definitely not ideal. Sal’s powers could help mend enough bone together that it’d heal the rest of the way on its own in time, but he couldn’t do anything for the pain, which meant he hadn’t lied. It was going to hurt. A lot.
He had Bran stand behind me, his hands gripping my upper arm tight, tugging it away from my shoulder. Once Sal moved things back in place, that would keep me from jerking away on instinct, which would complicate everything.
Sal grabbed my arm with both hands an inch or so below the break and looked straight at me. “Do it on three?”
I winced at the pain. The fog in my head meant I could barely remember what we were about to do. I tried to focus on it, but I couldn’t do that and talk at the same time, so I just nodded. The move left me blinking away stars and double vision.
“On three. One, two…”
He did it on two, the bastard.
Sal gave my arm a good pull. Bones shifted. Something snapped inside my arm like a rubber band. I ground my teeth and held in the scream until I was afraid I’d break my teeth. When it finally came out, it was more a roar of anger than pain.
Sal finally released my arm and probed the breaks gently with a finger. It throbbed, the pain threatening to overtake the pounding in my head again. “Move a muscle, and we’ll have to do it again. Hold. Still.”
He placed his palm over the breaks and the other under, as if my arm were sandwich meat and his hands bread. Warmth spread out over my skin under his hands. It wasn’t hot like fire, but rather like the sun on a warm summer day—a comforting feeling at war with the pain. Inside my arm, it felt like someone was jackhammering at the bones rather than putting them back together. It lasted for a minute, maybe two, before he pulled his hand away and held one out to Bran. Bran slapped a men’s magazine into Sal’s waiting palm.
I made a face. “You’re going to patch me up with porno?”
“They don’t exactly keep Better Homes and Gardens lying around at the clubhouse, Judah. I grabbed what I could on the way out.” Sal positioned the magazine under my arm and folded it up on either side.
I watched what he was doing, but I couldn’t make sense of it. The memory of what had happened suddenly felt out of reach. “What happened to my a
rm?”
Sal exchanged glances with Bran. “Do you know where you are, Judah?”
I glanced around while Bran handed him some masking tape and he used it to make a makeshift splint for my arm. Bran’s motorcycle sat off to my left a few feet, and Sal’s truck had come in behind it. I was out in the middle of nowhere with no clear reason. “Who’s with Mia and Hunter?”
“Hunter’s got Mia for a few hours.” Sal’s voice was muffled as he ripped the tape with his teeth. “I was at the clubhouse. Emergency meeting. I didn’t have time to call a sitter.”
“Where’s Hunter?”
Frustration crept into his voice, and his hands moved a little faster. “I just told you. God, Judah. You’re really messed up.”
“Did you say something about the club? Were you there? Why?”
Sal paused what he was doing and glanced behind me at Bran, the expression on his face telling me he wasn’t supposed to talk about it.
Bran came to his rescue. “Help for a friend of the club.”
Sal sighed through his nose. Bran handed him the red bandana that he usually wore around his head. Through a series of knots and strategic draping, they fashioned a quick sling for me and eased my arm into it.
I frowned at the awkward silence. “You’re not going to tell me, are you?”
Sal shook his head again. “You’ll have to clear it with Istaqua or another officer.”
Bran cleared his throat.
“You know something?” I tried to scramble to my feet, but the dizziness and Bran’s hands on my shoulders kept me down.
Bran shrugged. “Istaqua and Phil know something. I only know a little, but I know that what they know could be useful. Of course, they won’t be willing to help you for free.”
Something buzzed against my ass and I jerked. It took me an extra-long time to realize it was my borrowed cell phone ringing. I’d somehow wound up on top of the dumb thing. Using my uninjured arm, I fished the phone out from under me. Hairline cracks spread over the screen from the center, but the display seemed to have held up. My fingers fumbled to slide over the broken screen to answer the call.
“Judah!” Ed sounded exasperated. “I finally got two of those video files to work and took a peek at one. I didn’t get far. You’re going to want to see this ASAP.”
“Video files?” Sal raised an eyebrow. Damn werewolves and their impeccable hearing.
I shook my head, dismissing Sal’s questioning. The less anyone knew, the better. If Abe was willing to beat me up to stop me, I didn’t want to think about what he’d do to Sal or Ed. “Ed. Didn’t we just talk?”
Ed was silent a beat. “You okay, Judah? You sound kind of funny. Never mind. This is more important than that. It’s bigger. Seriously, you need to see this.”
Sal’s hand closed around the phone in my hand and he jerked it away. “Someone just beat the shit out of her, Ed. Rattled her brain pretty good. I’m taking her to the hospital. Whatever you have can wait.”
Hospital? Over my dead body. Sal hated hospitals. “I don’t need to go to the hospital.”
I tried to pull myself up and winced at the pain. Even though I hadn’t moved my arm, gravity acted on it, and even the tiniest of shifts hurt. My head spun with the movement. Sudden contractions in my gut forced me to bend over and gag on vomit.
Sal swept me up in his arms. “Bran, an escort?”
“You got it, brother.”
Concrete and sand passed under me as I floated to wherever Sal had decided I should go. I was too dazed to do much objecting. Everything felt surreal, as if I were watching it through a monitor instead of experiencing it. The last time I’d felt that lightheaded, I had died for a full four minutes. Icy fear formed a lump in my throat at the memory of my short stint in the afterlife. Was I dying again?
I floated from a prone position to sitting upright. Warm air struck my face and neck along with the distant smell of burning ash. My eyes saw road moving in front of us at seventy miles an hour, maybe faster, but I had no sense that we were actually going anywhere. Every set of headlights that passed made the back of my eyes feel raw. Every blast of sound ached. When I tried to move my arm to cover my eyes or ears, the nerve endings lit on fire. Pain felt like my only anchor, the only thing keeping me awake and alive.
I don’t recall my initial exam in the emergency room. I remember the doctor coming in briefly and speaking to Sal and not to me. Even when I tried to direct his attention to me instead of to Sal, he barely gave me the time of day, the jerk. Not that I would have understood anything he had to say. His voice sounded like it was underwater.
It wasn’t until I was lying on my back, listening to the rhythmic pounding of the MRI that I had any sense of just how serious my injury was. The fog cleared a little but didn’t lift entirely. I blinked and thought, I’m in a hospital. Sal brought me here when he wouldn’t even bring Mia for her checkup. He must have been really worried about me.
Slowly, things came back to me.
Espinoza was going to be pissed when he found out Abe took his car. I hoped he’d stash it somewhere easy to find at least. Maybe I could report it stolen. It wouldn’t be too much trouble for Abe to get that sorted out, but if I could inconvenience him in the slightest, I wanted to try. I sure as hell wasn’t going to try fisticuffs with him again anytime soon. I’d have to get back at him some other way, at least until I was better.
I stared into the mirror inside the plastic helmet encasing my head. What then? Was I supposed to just go back to work, be his partner and pretend like he hadn’t just beat me up? I couldn’t report him to our superiors, not until I knew for sure about those BSI agents Doc had been hiding. People higher up the chain could be involved, and if I tipped them off that I was poking around…
Judah, you idiot! If I hadn’t been crammed inside a plastic tube and suffering from a concussion, I would’ve smacked myself in the head. That’s exactly why he tried to stop you!
Abe’s intervention proved that Ed’s theory was right. BSI was trying to cover something up, something to do with Reed. Abe didn’t want me to find out. In his own weird way, he thought that busting me up bad enough would put me down for the count. I’d have to spend time recovering. Every moment I was down and out, he got closer to succeeding with his cover-up. I needed to get out of the hospital and fast before he destroyed everything.
It suddenly dawned on me that I’d stripped out of my clothes at some point and put on the oh-so-flattering hospital gown for the MRI. The tooth I’d found at the scene was still in my pocket. I really hoped they hadn’t tossed it out or that it hadn’t fallen out in all the excitement.
An intercom buzzed, and a pleasant female voice filtered through it and into my head. “Make sure you stay nice and still now. We don’t want to have to do this again.”
“How much longer?”
“Twenty to forty minutes, hon. Just try to relax. It’ll be over soon.”
I squared my jaw and stared into the mirror above my head. My eyes crossed, but at least I could see and process information again. Maybe Sal’s healing had given my brain a recovery boost, as well. Whatever time I had left in that machine, I had to use it to try to figure things out. I had to connect Reed to Hector and BSI, whatever the cost. Abe hadn’t deterred me. All he’d done was make me even more determined.
Chapter Seventeen
After an eternity in a freezing, sterile room with little to no privacy, the doctor decided I could go home. There was no internal bleeding or visible damage. All the scans had come out fine, and there was nothing wrong with me that rest wouldn’t fix. I was to go home, rest, report back to the ER if symptoms continued longer than two days or got worse. Sal was supposed to monitor me. Doctor’s orders.
To say I was unhappy about it was an understatement. I sat with my arms crossed, staring out the side window, and refusing to look at Sal all the way home. The night had faded, replaced now by the endless blue Texas sky. I watched buzzards circle in the distance while Kenny Rogers sang The Gam
bler on the radio.
Sal didn’t seem to take the hint that I didn’t want to talk. All during my time in the hospital, he’d barely said two words to me. I knew a scolding was coming, I’d just hoped we’d make it home before he started.
He reached over and turned down the radio. “So, what is this? You trying to kill yourself?”
I shifted in my seat. If I could have turned my back to him, I would have.
“I don’t know what all is going on, Judah, but I know you shouldn’t be out in the middle of the desert, alone, in the middle of the night. And this thing you’ve got Ed looking into… It’s one thing for you to go off and get hurt, but for you to drag Ed into it—”
“Ed involved himself.”
Sal gave me a look, the one he often shot Mia when she was about to do something that’d get her into trouble. The kind of look that made every kid stop what they were doing. The Dad look. What right did he have to throw that look at me?
I shot back. “You saw him at the first fire. You know he’s been involved since the beginning, and you know how stuck on Mara he is, Sal. He’s not going to back off just because someone tells him to. Would you if it were me?”
“That’d be different. Ed and Mara aren’t like you and me.”
“Aren’t they?”
The cab of the truck was silent but for the radio. Kenny Roger’s upbeat tune had ended and Johnny Cash had come on with his rendition of Hurt.
Sal reached over and turned the radio off. “You know, when Ed and Daphne came here, everything was falling apart. Zoe and I were at the height of our fighting, facing down the split that was to come. Silvia’s death was still fresh for Chanter, and Valentino and Nina’s breeding permit had just been turned down. It felt like the whole world had gone to shit. Daphne was quiet and reserved. She smiled a lot, and that helped, but it was Ed who really put us back together. He brought an energy with him so you just couldn’t help but laugh. It’s hard to explain, but that energy really changed us. He’s always been the heart of the pack. Ever since Mara, things have changed. He’s different.”