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He walked right up to me, tipped my chin back gently with his fingertip, and studied my face, looking for any signs of injury for a few seconds before stepping away.
His eyes went to Kobe, and I saw something pass through their quiet connection then. One of respect.
“Thank you,” he said to Kobe, his voice raspy and raw.
Wounded. As if him getting a call about me being almost hurt had hurt him.
“I’m okay,” I hurried to add.
Wake’s eyes flicked to me.
“What happened?” he asked. “I only got the message ‘you need to get here’ and didn’t stop to look at anything else.”
As in, he’d rushed to get to me, hadn’t stopped to see anything other than the first message that I needed him before he was hurrying toward me. That was so sweet.
And another reason that I loved him.
“So it started like this…” I said as I explained, in detail, everything that had happened. Or tried to. But he interjected a lot, asking question after question as he tried to clarify everything.
“Kobe,” Wake said then. “How long were you there? Did you hear the sheriff and his sister talking?”
Kobe grinned. “Sure did.”
He had? What the hell? I hadn’t seen him there until the end…
“What did they say?” Wake asked. “I want to hear everything.”
“Your girl recorded it,” Kobe said. “Just watch her video.”
Then Kobe left, leaving me with Wake who hadn’t lost an ounce of his anger in the time since he’d rolled up. “My girl? As in my daughter? My daughter was here, too?”
Shit.
We hadn’t gotten that far.
“Yes,” I said carefully. “She was the one to call me to tell me that they were here.”
Wake drew in a deep breath, then blew it out. “Son of a bitch.”
“Can’t hear a goddamn thing.” Wake grumbled. “If we send this to the FBI, maybe they’ll be able to do something with it.”
“It was taken without their consent,” I replied glumly. “Will they be able to use it?”
Wake shrugged. “Law isn’t my thing. The only thing I can do is send it to them in hopes that they can utilize it in some way. I don’t have the computer skills to make it happen.”
“I might know someone,” Dayden said. “We can send it to the FBI, but I can also send it to this computer guy I know at school. He’s always making movies out of old video clips for TikTok for the other kids. He might be able to help.”
“I’m not involving another kid in all of this,” Wake immediately started to disagree.
I looked at my watch, unable to waste any more time. “I have to get to work. The next patient I have coming in is critical. I can’t reschedule him like I did my first one.” I paused. “And for what it’s worth, I agree with Wake. We don’t need to be involving any more children.”
Wake shot me an approving look, but Dayden and Lolo started to look reticent.
“What?” Wake barked, sounding exasperated.
I was sure he was exhausted.
He’d left early this morning to deal with whatever he’d gone to deal with when it came to his money. Then he’d come home to deal with this. We’d been standing next to my trailer for the last hour talking about what we were going to do.
“We already sent it to him,” Lolo said sheepishly. “We looked the video over and knew we weren’t going to get anything out of it.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose.
Just as I was about to start counting to ten, Wake growled in frustration.
“Get it sent to the FBI,” I suggested quietly. “And sadly, I really do have to go. That’s him.”
Wake followed my gaze, his eyes narrowing. “He’s old.”
“He’s still critical,” I said softly.
The old man shuffled toward the RV, his eyes dead inside.
Last week, he’d lost his wife of seventy years.
He was ninety-one years old, and they’d been married since he’d been twenty-one. Together since they were fourteen. They’d had eight children, thirty-two grandchildren, and multiple more great-grandchildren.
He’d outlived all his children. Two of his great-grandchildren. And his wife had contracted dementia ten years ago to the point where she didn’t even recognize her own husband or family. She’d had it bad, too. To the point where she was combative and confused. Forced to stay at a home where she could have around-the-clock care.
But my patient had always been at her side.
But he was now alone, suicidal, and just wanted to join his wife.
Which, I could understand.
It was hard to even contemplate not having Wake around, and we hadn’t even had anywhere near as long together as the old man and his bride did.
“Gotta go.” I leaned forward and pressed a kiss against the corner of Wake’s mouth. “I love you. See you when I get home.”
Then I was all but skipping off toward the old man, smiling wide when his eyes shifted up to meet mine. “You want to stay outside in the sunshine, or go into the RV?”
