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A flash of something, discomfort, maybe disbelief shone in Crank’s eyes. “Bullshit,” he said.
Copper just smiled, and if the prez hadn’t been one of Zach’s closest friends, he’d have trembled in fear, because that smile held a promise. A promise of pain. A promise of retribution.
A promise of death.
A faint buzzing sound could be heard from Copper’s pocket.
The boys had arrived.
Game fucking on.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
JAZMINE
Why did all the damn hallways have to look exactly the same? Maybe she should have turned right at that last split. She’d made a left, but now was totally lost and probably as far from Labor and Delivery as she could get. With a frustrated sigh, Jazz continued forward. Next desk she encountered, she’d ask for some help because her normally stellar sense of direction had done shit for her today.
Problem was, she couldn’t concentrate worth a damn. Ever since Shell and Toni had practically flown out of the diner, she’d been on pins and needles waiting to hear from them.
Did they find Lindsey?
Did they even make it to the campground?
The moment they left, panic set in. Who the hell went to a campground alone in the middle of winter?
Trouble, that’s who.
She’d stood in the office, freaking out for about two minutes before remembering Tex in the kitchen. The girls hadn’t even alerted him to what was going down. From there, she’d run into the kitchen yelling like a lunatic. Tex caught her as she slammed through the swinging doors. After giving her a good tongue lashing for letting them leave, he grilled her with a million questions then called a justifiably irate Zach.
Not long after her girlfriends left, snow had begun to fall in buckets, and the few diners enjoying a late breakfast opted to take their meals to go rather than get stuck in town for the afternoon. At that point, Jazz made the executive decision to close up for the remainder of the day. She sent the employees home before the roads got too bad. She couldn’t concentrate for shit anyway, her mind firmly on her friends.
Something was wrong. She felt it deep in her gut.
After Tex told her he’d been ordered to stick to her like glue, Jazz decided to head to the hospital to keep her mind from spiraling to every horrible scenario she could dream up. Izzy had to have that baby sometime, right? There weren’t any cases of women being pregnant for the rest of their lives. At least not that she knew of. Some tabloid somewhere probably ran an article on that very thing.
As luck would have it, she’d pulled out right behind a plow, and had a fairly smooth trip to the hospital.
And now she was freakin’ lost because she couldn’t focus on anything but the worry for her friends.
As Jazz rounded the corner, she finally saw a clinic waiting room with less than a handful of waiting patients. “Radiation Oncology,” she muttered as she read the sign. Whatever, as long as they could point her in the direction of the Labor Deck, she didn’t care where she ended up.
“Excuse me,” she said as she approached the blond twenty-something behind the window, staring at her electric-pink nails. “Um, excuse me.”
The woman jumped then dropped her hand. “Sorry! Slow around here today. Holiday and all that. How can I help you?”
“Can you tell me how to get to Labor and Delivery. My friend is having a baby, and I made about ten wrong turns somewhere along the way.”
With a wide, glossy smile, the woman pulled out a paper map of the large hospital. “That’s so exciting! I just love babies. Congratulations to your friend. Here.” She pulled a yellow highlighter from a cup with some kind of complicated drug name printed on the side. “We are right here,” she said as she put a big circle around a little box labeled two-oh-two. “And you want to go here.” She pointed to another spot on the map, one long, vibrant nail tapping the paper. “Easiest way is to follow this hallway to the end, then make the next two rights. Boom, you’ll be there in just a few minutes.” As she spoke, she traced the route with the highlighter. “Got it?”
“Yes, thank you. Happy Holidays.” Jazz sent her a warm grin then turned, holding the trusty map. As she walked back to the hallway, past rows of vinyl chairs in the waiting room, someone let out a squeak of a sneeze. “Bless you,” she said on instinct as she glanced in the direction of the sneezer.
Her eyes popped wide, and she stopped walking so fast, she nearly pitched headfirst onto the linoleum floor. “Mama V? Viper? What are you…”
She glanced over her shoulder at the receptionist who’d resumed the fingernail inspection. Right above her desk was a sign reading “Radiation Oncology.” Okay, she hadn’t read it wrong the first time. That meant…
