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“Margot, let him be,” the doctor demanded, passing them as Margot held her husband’s gaze. “We can deal with this.”
“Why?” She ignored the doctor. “Why isn’t
she in the hospital?”
“Because we don’t know what the hell is going on!” he snapped, pulling her with him as he rushed for the guest room Alyssa had been taken to. “Summer called just before Alyssa’s panic call came through. She’s on her way home from Spain and told Raeg to make certain Alyssa was safe. That’s why Brennan was with us. I’d already called him. The only reason she’s alive is because we were already on our way there.”
Standing in the doorway, Margot stared in at the rushed efforts being made to save Alyssa’s life. Raeg and Crane had placed Alyssa on the narrow bed and were hastily cutting her clothes from her.
The hilt of a knife extended from Alyssa’s side. It looked so big, so lethal, the blade buried completely inside her small body.
The doctor’s wife was unpacking the totes she and the nurse had carried ahead of Raeg and Crane. The RN attaching an IV to Alyssa’s arm, her expression grim as Mrs. Brennan placed several monitors on the bedside table, and attaching electrodes. They moved quickly, the monitors beeping, IV attached, and the doctor striding from the connecting bathroom, his sterilized, gloved hands held up as another nurse strode behind him, her own hands covered with sterilized gloves.
“Who did this?” Margot asked her husband, fighting to remain calm.
She had to stay calm. She had to make someone pay for this.
“Harvey.” It was Raeg who answered her as the doctor motioned them away from Alyssa. “We heard everything after she hit the panic button on her phone. And he knew about Barcelona. He knew too much about it.”
Focusing on her daughter, Margot made herself watch as the doctor removed the blade, the size of it causing her breath to catch. How Brennan managed to do everything required to stabilize the pierced lung, take care of the wound to her side, and keep Alyssa alive she had no idea.
Margot paced the hall, the ice freezing to the depths of her mother’s soul as she listened to the doctor and nurse talking to each other. Dr. Brennan barked out orders to both his nurse and his wife, while monitors beeped too fast and beeped too slow.
“You will not die, Alyssa Paige,” Margot muttered, determined that her daughter sense the determination pouring from her. “You will not.”
Margot watched the clock at the end of the hall as time passed. First one hour, then two. Just before the third hour struck, the door opened and the doctor stepped out, his expression somber.
“She’s alive,” he told them. “And trust me, Margot.” He focused completely on her. “There’s nothing that can’t be done better here than I can do at a hospital. But it’s not good.”
He went through the complications. The collapsed lung, the amount of blood lost, and, most especially, Alyssa’s lack of determination to live.
“If her will to live hasn’t strengthened in the past six years, and I’m not convinced it has, then there’s no way we can keep her from giving up.”
Margot heard every word the doctor said, and what he didn’t say as well. Alyssa didn’t live. She drifted through life as though waiting for a reason to give up and join the child she’d lost.
“The hell she will.” Stalking into the bedroom, Margot paused beside Alyssa’s bed.
She was too pale, her breathing too shallow. The doctor was right: Alyssa could easily drift away from them now.
“Alyssa Paige, I’ve watched you suffer for six years and I’ve had enough of this fight I’ve waged to keep you alive. Do you understand me, girl?” She didn’t speak gently. Her voice was hard, the voice she had used before her daughter had returned broken inside.
“Did you hear me, Alyssa Paige?” she yelled, causing the nurse to flinch at the sound of her voice. “Buck your ass up, girl. I have six of the meanest, best-trained Special Forces soldiers ready to head out the second I give the order. They will suffer, Alyssa. If you die, then I swear to you, they will suffer.”
It was a vow she’d made to herself six years before. Shane Connor and Sebastian De Loren would suffer.
But Harvey Stanhope would suffer first.
Alyssa’s lashes fluttered, an almost silent moan leaving her lips.
“Die on me. Leave me to face this alone,” Margot informed her daughter furiously, “and I will no longer have a reason to allow them to live.”
Her daughter moaned again. The sound was faint and filled with such pain.
“Understand me, Alyssa,” Margot snarled, “as you have never understood anything. Die, and before they take their last breath, they’ll suffer a hundred times more than you have before I’ll allow them to slip away.”
Straightening, Margot turned to her husband. The moment Alyssa was no longer in danger Davis would go after Harvey. She would beat him to it.
“Notify me immediately if she begins to worsen,” she told him.
