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He felt a hand on his arm. “I’ll go out and wait with you,” Gia said. To Tasha, she said, “Unless you need my help?”
“I think it’s better if it’s just Zelda and me right now. Right, honey?”
Zelda remained quiet.
Zaxx narrowed his focus to his sister. “I’ll do what you want, Peach. If you want me here, I will not leave.”
“Go,” Zelda muttered—and then her head came up a bit, and her eyes opened enough that he caught a flash of their blue. “Not far. Be close.”
The most words she’d said since he’d found her on his sofa.
Tasha turned again to Gia. “You can use my office instead.”
Zaxx didn’t want to leave his sister. But Gia was pulling on his arm, Tasha was giving him a stony, determined look, and Zelda had told him to go.
Shaking Gia’s hand away, Zaxx crouched beside the gurney and put his head near his sister’s. “I’ll be right outside, and back here in a flash if you need me. You are not gonna get rid of me until you tell me you’re sick of me. Okay?”
She nodded and relaxed on the gurney again.
Gia was at his side again. She wrapped a hand around his wrist. Zaxx stood and let her draw him backward to the door and out.
The last glimpse of his sister’s broken, defiled body as the door closed between them almost took Zaxx to his knees.
The first responsibility he’d ever known in his life was his sister. For her whole life, he’d made sure she had what she needed, she’d done what she needed to do, that she had steady ground to stand on in the present and things to aim at for the future. He’d made sure she ate fairly healthily, that she had clean clothes in decent repair, that she got to school, that she did her homework, that she was on a good path. Their parents had been there, but not in any reliable, productive, protective way. Tyler and Brittany Bello were cool friends who hung out in the same place more than they’d ever been parents.
It was Zaxx who’d taken care of Zelda. Who’d kept her healthy and safe.
And he’d failed worse than he’d ever imagined he could.
Chapter Sixteen
Stunned and vaguely nauseated, Gia led Zaxx from the procedure room and closed the door. He stopped dead, staring at the door, and for an instant she thought he’d drop. She tightened her hold on his arm and waited, letting him process whatever he needed to process.
She didn’t belong here.
She’d been at Tasha and Len’s most of the afternoon, collecting stories from Len’s expansive mental archive—he was a delightful storyteller whose colorful anecdotes were great data and would also add sparkle to her dissertation—when they’d gotten a call from the Humane Society that they’d found a placement for one of their foster horses. Tasha had volunteered to take Hermione, a bay mare getting on in years, to the farm outside Rolla and asked Gia if she wanted to ride along.
On the way back, Len had called with word that Zaxx’s sister was badly hurt. Tasha hadn’t taken the time to return Gia all the way back to their ranch, where Cammy was still parked, so here she was, as reluctant a witness to Zelda’s trauma as she was an unwelcome one.
Zelda—a girl Gia knew only in the loosest sense, someone she understood was attached to the Horde, someone to see on Main Street and maybe exchange a greeting of that tight, close-mouthed smile of politeness programmed into all Americans, but no one she’d ever spoken with—had been brutalized so intensely that Gia could almost feel the pain of her injuries.
There weren’t many situations in which the word ‘brutalized’ could be considered a euphemism, but this was one of the few: Zelda had been raped. That was vividly obvious. Based on the extent and variety of only the wounds Gia saw, and her psychological state, Gia wondered if more than one man had been involved. Thankfully, it was not her responsibility to determine the answer to that monstrous question.
Gia had had her share of bad dates and unpleasant interactions with men, and she’d had one bad scene at Trader Moe’s when she was fifteen that could have been extremely bad if she hadn’t been rescued. Her friends all had some kind of traumatic story about a guy—including, for Kathie, a date rape when she was in high school. But Gia herself had never really been harmed more deeply than a nasty word could cut. Her safety on that point could be ascribed to the inherent protections of being Isaac Lunden’s daughter, whom no one remotely acquainted with the Horde would dare date, much less hurt, and of being Lilli Lunden’s daughter, who had been thoroughly trained in multiple deadly ways to protect herself and anyone else she cared to protect. And also, she liked to believe, on her own damn self, knowing how to stay clear or get out of dangerous situations. Mostly.
Or hell, maybe she’d simply been lucky.
Still staring at the closed door like he wanted to burn it out of his way with the fire of his rage, Zaxx twisted his arm from her grasp and put both hands to his head, digging his fingers deep into his long hair and dragging them through so the tie holding his ponytail broke, and his hair dropped over his shoulders like a stage curtain.
Any resentment or animosity Gia felt toward him was forgotten, washed from her mind by his manifest horror and worry, by the pulsing power of his rage.
“Motherfucking Christ,” he muttered, and his voice cracked the words in half. “Christ!” He started to fold over on himself, and Gia again worried he might actually fall down.
She hooked her arm around his waist. “Hey. Let’s go to her office. There’s a good sofa where we can wait.”
Zaxx shook his head, but when Gia tugged, he allowed her to lead him away from the procedure room, around the corner to Tasha’s office.
The lights were already on in here; Tasha and Gia had come here first so Tasha could grab her lab coat and explain how Gia could help set up.
