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“I knew you would be.” She tried to smile, but it was obvious that she’d felt the stitches pull in her lip, so she stopped.
That wasn’t the only place that she had stitches.
There were multiple places.
That one was just the most visible.
“Did you catch him?” she whispered.
Her voice was raw due to the inflammation from the pulling of the rope around her neck.
Luckily, the doctor said that with time, the swelling would reduce, and her voice would go back to normal.
“No,” I said, sounding just as sick as I felt. “We don’t even know who it was. But we think that whoever did this heard us coming and took off before he could…”
“Before he could drag me behind a car?” she finished for me.
Yes.
Before he could drag her behind a car.
God, I felt sick just thinking about it. What could’ve happened. What almost had happened.
“It was Adrian,” she whispered. “Mastings.”
That was what we’d assumed, too. He’d been our first guess after my parents had been questioned.
It’d been six hours now since she’d been found, beaten, battered and bruised, tied to the back of her car.
And we were still no closer to finding the little prick.
Sure, I’d assumed it was him, but without full confirmation from him or Sierra, we couldn’t be one hundred percent sure.
I heard the door close quietly behind likely Miller or Sammy, but still didn’t look up from Sierra’s face.
“The baby?” she whispered. “Is the baby okay?”
I closed my eyes and knew that the time had come.
“No,” I croaked. “You’re losing her, honey. They expect that you’re already miscarrying.”
There was so much blood.
Still, every hour that the nurses came into the room, they changed the pad underneath her. And each time, even more blood soaked it.
There was no doubt in my mind that this was happening.
“No,” Sierra cried. “No, no, no.”
I felt sick to my stomach.
“I’m so sorry, baby. So sorry,” I whispered.
Tears squeezed out from between her swollen shut eyes, and that was the breaking point for me.
My own tears came out then, too.
I just couldn’t quite stop them.
We sat like that for a long time. Her crying. Me crying. Hell, I knew that there were others in the room crying, too. I just didn’t look up to make note of who.
She fell asleep then, her face turned toward me, her lips pressed against my arm.
“I spoke with the officers outside. They’re going to relay what happened, what Sierra said,” Sammy croaked, sounding broken and torn. “We’ve already been looking for him pretty fucking hard. Now that we have confirmation, we can get the parents to cooperate.”
I felt a soft hand on my neck and I turned to see Mercy staring at me with love in her eyes. “There’s a shower in there. Use it. I’ll go find you some clothes.”
I looked down at my still bloody and dirty uniform.
The last thing I wanted to do was let her go, but Mercy was right.
I was dirty.
Really dirty.
And I had her blood soaking into my skin.
I reluctantly disentangled myself from her, and then looked pointedly at Mercy. “You’ll hold her hand?”
Mercy smiled. “Always.”
Mercy, Miller, Blue, and Sammy had come into the ER about five minutes after we’d arrived.
And, since I’d been kicked out of the trauma room upon us entering, I’d been very reluctant to talk sanely to them.
Luckily, my grandmother had arrived in that time, too. She had Axe on a leash next to her, and she very calmly explained what had happened and how we’d found Sierra.
All of them were ravaged, it was plain to see.
“I’ve got her other side!” Blue, who I hadn’t even realized was in the room, said as she caught up her other hand.
I felt like my heart was beating too hard each step I took away from her.
I stopped mid-step and turned to look at her. To assure myself that she was okay.
“She’s okay,” Miller rumbled. “We’ll keep her safe.”
Because that fucking monster was still out there.
That little prick fifteen-year-old that was way too mad for someone so young.
He was still out there, and though I had a room full of protectors in here with her, my heart still fucking hurt. I was still really goddamn scared.
“Okay,” I said as I forced myself to put one foot in front of the other.
The shower was quick, thorough, and refreshing.
When I stepped back out a few minutes later in a pair of my own sweatpants—not sure where they found them and didn’t even care—I was surprised to find most of the room had emptied.
I found out why when I heard the talking outside of the door.
It was as I exited the room, only in a pair of socks and my sweats, that I realized the entire SWAT team was outside, as well as Luke Roberts, the assistant chief Lachlan Downy, and a few other officers I didn’t recognize.
