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“You find him?” I asked the group at large.
All eyes turned to me and widened.
I looked down at myself and realized that my scars were fully on display.
I mean, they’d assumed that I was fucked-up based solely on knowing what I’d gone through, but assuming and knowing were two very different things.
None of them said a word, and I was thankful.
“No,” Miller grumbled, sounding pissed as hell. “But we’ll find him.”
I knew that he would try, anyway. If they didn’t find him, I would. And when I did, things were not going to be good, that was for sure.
“How is she?” Saint asked.
I looked at him and saw the fatigue, as well as barely concealed horror.
He’d been there, just as I had, when things had gone down earlier. I was sure that the look of her tied to that fucking car would haunt him just as long as it haunted me—for the rest of my life.
“She’s…” I hesitated, not sure what to say. Okay wasn’t even a good enough word for that moment in time. “She’ll make it.”
And she would. I’d make damn sure of it.
It would be a long, hard road, but she would make it.
“She has lacerations all over her body from him pulling her through the weeds to get to where he tied her to the car.” Miller’s throat bobbed as he spoke. “She has bumps, bruises, contusions, a concussion that is quite severe. They believe that she’s miscarrying, though the baby still has a viable heartbeat. We’re playing a wait and see game, there. Her face is so swollen right now that she can’t open her eyes, and each time she wakes up she’s scared because she doesn’t know that she’s safe.”
I saw Bourne’s arms tense as his hands clenched in anger.
“That piece of shit,” Bourne growled. “I hope we find him and roast him alive. Just spit him like the fucking pig he is and burn him over an open flame.”
Booth elbowed him.
“What?” Bourne asked. “I’m so fucking tired of our women getting hurt. This is getting goddamn ridiculous!”
It was.
The only one that hadn’t had his girl hurt, per se, was Sammy. But Sammy had also been hurt instead, so it was definitely not a good time for his girl, either.
“A-fucking-men,” Hastings grumbled.
I crossed my arms over my chest just as a blood curdling scream came from the room behind me.
I was back inside and at Sierra’s bedside in two seconds flat.
“I’m here,” I said to her, getting close so that she could feel me.
My hands on her face had to hurt her, but the instant that she felt my hands, she calmed.
Mercy, who’d been sitting at her bedside holding her hand, looked ravaged.
“I’m sorry,” Mercy whispered brokenly. “It’s just me, baby.”
Sierra sighed and turned her face into my stomach and I left it there as I calmly spoke to her.
I wasn’t really sure what I said for the longest time. Just weird, inconsequential things that would make her laugh. A reminder about something she wrote when she was seventeen. A comment about how she made me laugh last week with something she said. A tease about how she loved pulling my hair.
“That last part isn’t something I really want to hear about,” Sammy grumbled from the other side of the bed. “I mean, do I really want to hear anything about how you and her are doin’ it?”
“Samuel Adams Spurlock,” Mercy hissed from the other side of the bed. “You damn well know that’s not where he was going with that.”
Sammy grumbled under his breath. “I don’t know shit. What I do know is that he’s talking about her pulling his hair. When else would she have done that?”
Sierra turned over, laughing lightly, and held her hand out to her brother.
Sammy took it, his eyes softening.
“I’m glad you’re back, brother,” she said to him. “I just wish I didn’t have to get beat up for you to get here.”
Sammy’s face fell just as Sierra started to snicker. “I’m just kidding.”
Sammy’s eyes narrowed. “Just for that, I’m going to make sure I feed your dog some cake the night that you come home.”
Sierra settled farther into her bed and smiled, cracked lips and all. “That’s just mean.”
“Why is it mean?” Dax asked.
I looked up to find him standing in the doorway holding his infant son. He was asleep with his mouth wide open, drooling on his chest.
My heart gave a painful pang that had me wishing that this day hadn’t happened. That it didn’t mean that I wouldn’t be able to have a baby in my arms for all that much longer.
“Because our dog farts like the dickens when you give him food that disagrees with his stomach. Like cake,” Sierra said, squeezing my hand.
I started to laugh then and recounted a story to them of when Axe was a puppy.
