Now his face was freshly shaved and he seemed to be moving okay even though his right arm was still bandaged.
“You about ready?” he asked. “Vigo brought the car around.”
“I think so.” Cassie moved around the room, gathering the last of the things she’d brought from home to keep me comfortable in the hospital.
“Great.” Jagger opened the door wider and pushed in a wheelchair.
My recoil was instinctive. “I’m not getting in that thing.”
Paulette, a no-nonsense nurse with dark skin and eyes, entered the room. “You are if you want to leave here.”
She was my favorite nurse, her Jamaican accent pleasant and soothing, but I knew better than to argue. I’d tried that exactly twice and had my ass handed to me both times.
“Fine,” I muttered, getting to my feet.
I sat in the wheelchair and Paulette wheeled me into the hall.
Two of the nurses waved as we passed the nurses’ station, and Roland, my favorite dude nurse, gave me a high five as we continued down the hall, Cassie walking alongside the wheelchair while Jagger followed us.
Bram’s goons — the ones who’d been stationed outside my room — were nowhere to be found, probably pulled from duty because he knew I was going home.
Paulette wheeled me into the elevator and Cassie and Jagger crowded in around my wheelchair. Cassie rested her hand on my shoulder and I wondered how I’d ever gotten through a day in my fucking life without her.
I spotted the G-Wagon on the other side of the sliding glass doors before we ever exited the hospital. That thing was obnoxious as fuck — kind of like Vigo — but I had to be honest: I was fucking happy to see it.
Happy to see Vigo leaning against the side of the car, the cuts still healing on his face, his goofy hair pointing every which way.
Happy to see Jagger look around like he was expecting another ambush right there in the hospital lobby, walking withme to the car even though I knew that fucking grenade had taken a slice out of his back and a good layer of skin off his arm.
And especially happy to have Cassie by my side, fussing over every move I made and scolding when she saw that Vigo was twirling his bat.
“How the fuck did you get that back?” I asked him as Paulette wheeled me through the glass doors.
He walked toward us. “Just ducked under the crime-scene tape. No biggie.”
Cassie looked like she was about to have a seizure. “You went back to the paper mill alone?”
“Going alone would have been stupid,” Vigo said. “I took Jagger with me.”
Cassie looked accusingly at Jagger, who just shrugged.
Paulette bent to flip the footrests on the wheelchair up so I could stand, but before I could get to my feet a figure pushed off the hospital wall on my left.
I turned, my body tensing, half expecting to see another one of Dimitri Kaprolov’s thugs take another shot at us.
But it was Bram.
I got to my feet, determined not to meet Bram from a wheelchair. Stupid, I know, but what could I say? My pissing contest with Bram was practically a tradition at this point.
Bram stopped in front of me, and for a long moment, neither of us said anything.
Then he held out his hand.
I hesitated, then shook it.
“Thank you,” Bram said.
I knew what he was thanking me for.
