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William stands by the window, his back to the door. He wears a pair of slacks and a button-up, with his lab tech badge still clipped at his waist. He turns when we enter.
“Reef.” A rough rasp catches in Will’s throat. Exhaustion shadows him, the kind that comes from too many nights with too little sleep. “It’s not as bad as it looks. I swear.”
My ears ring as I step into the room.
Kain lies in the bed, his complexion pale beneath the harsh hospital lights, a small bandage covering his right temple.
An IV runs into his left arm, clear fluid dripping into the tube. Monitors beep beside the bed, green lines jumping in steady rhythms.
His chest rises and falls in a slow, steady rhythm, but his eyes remain closed.
I shuffle closer. “Kain?”
“He hasn’t woken up since they brought him in,” Will says. “The doctor said his CT scan was clean, and there are no skull fractures. They’re calling it a concussion and some bruised ribs from the struggle.”
Kain’s dark hair is pushed back from his forehead, matted on one side where they cleaned the blood. His jaw hangs slack.
“It was a carjacking, outside Stackers,” William continues. “Witnesses say it was two guys. One of them had a pipe. Someone called it in, and the ambulance arrived within minutes.”
I set the duffel bag on the floor beside the bed.
Kain’s hand lies on top of the blanket. His fingers are curled inward, palm up, as if he was reaching for something.
A high-pitched whine fills the air, and only the vibration in my throat tells me the sound is coming from me.
“They’re keeping him for observation,” William says. “They said we have to give him time.”
I pull the visitor’s chair closer to the bed and sit.
His chest rises, then falls. I count the seconds between breaths.
I try not to think about how much worse this could be.
Or that the person who knows me best has been lying to me for fifteen years.
15
Ican’t turn away from Kain’s motionless form. “Did they find them?”
William turns from the window, one hand resting on the back of a second visitor’s chair, the other shoved in his pocket. “The police are working through it. They’ve got the witness descriptions and the car’s plates.”
“They don’t have shit.” My hands curl around the bed rail until my knuckles blanch. “They never do.”
William opens his mouth to answer, but Ghost speaks from the foot of Kain’s bed.
“We’ll find them.” His mismatched eyes meet mine. “If the police arrest them first, we’ll still get to them. The people who hurt him won’t walk away from this.”
The tension in my shoulders eases. “Okay.”
Ghost turns to Kain. “I’m putting someone on standby. Here, outside the room. In case this is connected to whoever’s been targeting the crew.”
He turns and leaves before I can argue, which is a relief, because I didn’t plan to.
The door swings shut behind him with a pneumatic sigh, and the sound of his footsteps fades away.
My fingers tighten on the rail. The metal is cool under my palms, the polished surface offering nothing to grip.
I want to climb into the bed. The pull of it is physical, a deep, insistent ache behind my sternum, a compass needle finding north. My body wants to curl into Kain’s side, tuck my head under his chin, and rest on the rise and fall of his chest, my own breath matching it.
