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“Bre-bee…”
She sniffled and tried to quiet her tears. Between her father’s relapse and Pierce’s shocking captivity, she felt as if she’d been weepy all week. Knowing the man she’d fallen for might die was simply too much.
“I’ll be fine. I promise.” She hated lying to Cutter.
“You don’t have to come here. Really.”
“I do.” She needed to be with Pierce. “I’ll see you soon. Bye.”
Brea ended the conversation before he tried to talk her out of coming again.
In under twenty minutes, she called Mrs. Collins, dressed, threw a few things in a bag—just in case—promised to call later, and hopped in her car. As she pulled out of the driveway, she waved at the widow who’d vowed to take excellent care of her father.
Then she sped down the road.
Brea hated driving in the middle of the night. Some of Louisiana’s highways were a little narrow and a tad scary. A lot of it was over water, and she always had visions of accidentally driving off a bridge and into a swamp to become gator food. But now, she refused to let any of those fears stop her.
She would reach Pierce before dawn.
By the time she hit Lafayette’s southern outskirts, her phone was ringing. She and Cutter chatted off and on for the next two hours. No change in Pierce’s condition that Cutter knew of. He was in ICU. They were running tests. What he’d heard so far didn’t sound promising.
“I need to prepare you,” Cutter insisted. “His face is almost unrecognizable. But that’s nothing compared to his back, which may have significant scarring. Those were the injuries I could see. I’m still waiting to hear about the rest. He’s in surgery now. I don’t know what for since none of us are family…”
Every muscle in Brea’s body tightened as she tried to hold herself together. “Thanks for the update. How are you?”
“I’m fine. A few stitches aren’t going to stop me for long.”
“I’m grateful you’re safe and relatively unharmed.”
She ended the call, pleading the need to focus on the road. Just over an hour and a stop for coffee at a twenty-four-hour drive-thru later, she made it to Tulane Medical Center. Immediately, she tore into the parking garage, slung her compact into the first available spot, grabbed her phone, and ran as fast as her tired body would take her.
When she found her best friend in the emergency room’s waiting area, her first two thoughts were that it looked like a larger, more crowded version of University’s in Lafayette. The second was that Cutter, Hunter, and Joaquin all sat clustered together, seemingly big and out of place and obviously exhausted. She hadn’t thought to bring them coffee and breakfast muffins or any of the other “nice” things she usually delivered in times of crisis. But she couldn’t spare any regret as she dashed over to them.
“Any news?”
Hunter’s and Joaquin’s confusion showed as Cutter stood slowly, looking disheveled and weary, then wrapped his arms around her. “Other than he’s out of surgery, no.”
“No idea what they repaired? Or where they’re taking him next? Or his long-term prognosis?”
“We’re not family.” And Hunter sounded bitter about that. “Logan has medical power of attorney documents back at the office. Once he gets there…”
Brea understood a patient’s right to privacy, but right now Pierce needed people who cared about him. He needed her watching over him, holding his hand, advocating for him. He didn’t need to be fighting for his life alone. “I’ll be right back.”
It took some polite asking, a bit of cajoling, and a whopping lie she didn’t regret at all to convince his surgeon and the nurse in charge that Pierce had no one he considered family except her. Once they were on board, she finally got the lowdown on his condition and resulting surgery. What they told her was incredibly frightening to hear. It was beyond hard not to lose her composure. She also got permission for the others to see Pierce as soon as he came out of recovery. Suddenly, Hunter, Joaquin, and Cutter were really glad she’d come.
“The surgeon said he had broken ribs, which he can’t do anything about. But Pierce had a punctured lung and some swelling of the brain, along with a broken jaw, sprained knees, and a dislocated shoulder. They also say he’s going through some sort of detox.”
“I think those fuckers addicted him to drugs,” Hunter groused. “Pardon my language.”
Brea shook her head. She had the urge to call those animals something even worse. “Speaking of…what happened to them?”
Their downturned expressions grew darker. “Emilo Montilla, the slimy bastard, got away. We took out a number of his cohorts. The polícia were arriving to arrest even more as we pulled out. We also rescued a woman named Laila in the compound, who was instrumental in helping us arrange the rescue mission.”
