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Anxious to get to Jubilee, he stripped, washed his face and hands, applied antiseptic to the scratches that made them burn like hell, then quickly dressed in clean clothes before going back to check on Ghost.
The big dog had finished his food and had found his way to his bed by the fireplace, near the warmth from dying embers. But to Cameron’s dismay, the bandage he’d put on Ghost was blood-soaked. The cut was worse than he’d thought. He couldn’t leave him like this. He had to get him to the vet.
“Okay, buddy, this isn’t good. I’ve gotta go check on Lili and then you’re going to see Sam. You like Sam, remember?”
Cameron ran out to the Jeep, pulled an old blanket off the back floorboard, grabbed a handful of wet wipes to clean up all the blood, then put the blanket down in the front seat and ran back inside.
Ghost whined again when Cameron carried him out to the Jeep. Then Cameron went back to get his coat and locked the door behind him as he left.
Night was already fading, giving hints to the arrival of another day as Cameron passed the city limits of Jubilee. Streetlights were still burning. Delivery vans were already making rounds.
On a good day, Cameron would be running errands and checking on family who had their own shops here. But not this morning. The charm of the mountain village that had become a thriving tourist destination was lost on him today. The only things on his mind were Lili and Ghost.
Chapter 3
It was just after midnight and Ray Caldwell was in the penthouse of the Serenity Inn, the twenty-story hotel he owned in Jubilee. He was still awake when he began hearing sirens. He got up from his desk and moved to the windows overlooking the town below. When he saw a parade of flashing lights heading up the mountain, he turned away. What happened up there did not concern him.
About an hour later, he crawled into bed beside his wife, Patricia. Careful not to wake her, he soon fell asleep, only to be awakened in the early hours of the morning by more sirens going up the mountain. He pounded his pillow and turned over, thinking some meth head had probably blown up his lab.
Still mentally cursing the noise, Ray settled in and closed his eyes. He’d just gone back to sleep when he began hearing sirens again—but this time coming into Jubilee.
His twenty-four-year-old daughter, Liz, was asleep in her suite down the hall when the sounds of sirens reawakened her, too. “What the hell is going on?” she muttered, and rolled over onto her back. Sirens had been sounding on and off all night.
She glanced at the time and groaned, but when the sirens kept getting louder and louder, it dawned on her that they were coming down from Pope Mountain. Her heart skipped a beat, and then she was flinging aside her covers and running to the windows.
Cameron Pope lived up there—along with a whole host of other people he was kin to. It didn’t have to mean it had anything to do with him. And he didn’t know she existed. But that didn’t mean he was no longer on her radar. Liz Caldwell had never wanted for anything that money could buy—except Cameron Pope. She’d tried flirting once. He’d never even noticed her. But it didn’t stop her fantasizing about taking him to bed.
She watched the ambulance lights flashing red and blue as the emergency vehicles and police cars wound their way through the streets, and then they disappeared. Moments later, the sirens went silent. The ambulance must be at the hospital.
She fidgeted, wishing she knew what was going on, and then shrugged it off, crawled back into her warm bed, and closed her eyes.
***
Across town, Marshall Devon had been experiencing a similar night. He’d been hosting some of his investors in the penthouse of Hotel Devon when the first sirens sounded. Several of his guests went to the windows to look down into the town, wondering if something was on fire or if there had been a wreck. But when they saw the flashing lights driving through Jubilee and going up the mountain, Marsh commented.
“Likely some hillbilly blew up a still or a meth lab,” he said, which elicited a roar of laughter from his big-city friends, and the party went on.
Much later, when everyone retired to their rooms to spend what was left of the night, they were too out of it to hear the second and third round of sirens.
***
Cameron was sick with worry by the time he pulled into the hospital parking lot. He recognized nearly a dozen vehicles, most of which belonged to family members. He parked near the ER entrance, then glanced down at Ghost. The dog was panting and whimpering, his tongue lolling to one side. It was a sure sign of the dog’s pain and anxiety, and he hated that he was suffering.
“Stay, Ghost! I’ll be right back. I just need to check on Lili before we get Sam out of bed, okay?”
Then he got out, locked the door, and ran inside, searching the faces in the lobby as he stopped at the desk. “Lili Glass. Where did they take her?” he asked.
The clerk looked up, recognized him as more of the family, and pointed. “Through the double doors, Cameron. At the end of the hall.”
Still moving in haste, Cameron pushed the doors inward. He saw B. J. Kelly at the nurses’ desk signing paperwork, and Fagan and Billy carrying fresh supplies to their ambulance. And then he saw the family, filling the entire north end of the corridor. All of them standing in total silence, watching the closed door to Room 7.
They turned en masse at the sound of Cameron’s footsteps, then engulfed him with hugs, quick pats on the back, and whispered murmurs of “God bless you.”
Cameron went straight to Marcus.
“How is she?” Cameron asked.
“We don’t know. Rachel and Louis are in with the doctor,” Marcus said.
