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Her words stun me, but all I manage, as she brings the phone to her ear, is to push back and frown.
“This is Doctor Mayet,” Minka starts. Then, after a beat, “Oh, Jen. Hi. You called sooner than I expected.”
Pushing away from the desk, an odd sense of confusion washes over me. But I don’t have time to dwell, because Fletch’s voice coming from my phone brings me around.
While Minka talks on the phone and spouts off words I don’t understand, I make my way to the glass door and bring the phone to my ear. “Yeah?”
“We’ve got a mess outside Copeland Memorial,” he rushes out. “I know you’ve got some shit happening down there, but Aubree and I wandered up to see what’s going on with Mellet. Instead, we walked into a fucking shit-show of reporters.”
“So get her out and bring her back here.” I pause with my hand on the office door and glance back to Minka. Her eyes are on me, but her mind is wrapped around the conversation she has with someone named Jen. “Drag her away and bring her back to the George Stanley.”
“Er… I would,” he hedges, “but I think you should come down here and look for yourself.”
“For fuck’s sake.”
Storming back toward Minka’s desk, my fast movements make her eyes widen, but I snatch the pad of paper under her arm, then a pen that lay discarded and forgotten. Writing rapidly, I slap the note back down and wait as her eyes whip to my handwritten scrawl.
Going to the hospital. Something is happening with Mellett and Aubree.
Tossing the pen down so it lands with a slap of plastic against wood, I breeze out of the office and let the door swing shut at my back. Then I cross the floor and slow only when I smack the call button on the elevator.
“I’ll be there in two minutes,” I speak to Fletch. “Is she safe?”
“Yeah. I’ve got her. But I need the backup.”
“Shit.”
I step into the elevator and spin back to catch Minka’s eyes from all the way across the ninth floor. She remains at her desk, hunched over and listening to her caller. Then the doors close and lock me into the cube of steel and truth-telling and whatever the fuck else Aubree called it.
“On my way now.”
* * *
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
The moment I pull up to the curb of the hospital and a swarm of reporters surrounds my car, I climb out and shake my head. Because at the top of the crowd is Miranda fucking London, haranguing Aubree, shouting in her face, and bumping into her enough to risk a citation from the local PD.
Anything for an exclusive.
“Hey!” I boom loud enough to be heard above the clamoring crowd.
Pushing through the mob and shoving cameras out of my face as I pass, I make a beeline for Aubree, only to stop on a skid when I spy my brother standing fifteen feet away with his hat pulled low and his body vibrating for a fight.
Tim leans against the hospital wall, hidden in plain sight and watching over the woman he won’t claim as his own.
He’s not stepping in… yet. Because the moment he does, we have a hell of a lot more than a television exclusive to worry about.
Tim’s eyes lock on to mine for a beat while cameras circle me. He stares, and they shout, and hidden in the shadow of his beard, his jaw tics as rage battles for freedom.
It’s early in the day. He’s tired. And Aubree is being bullied while she’s already feeling pretty fucking low.
Bullied by my former lover.
“I’ve got it.” I say the words. No way he can hear me, but still, I say them out loud and know by the look in his eyes that he understands, because if I don’t, he’s about to mow these assholes down and undo years of us staying out of our father’s reach.
Pushing through the crowd, I pass the familiar faces of the EMTs Minka already tore apart this morning, and after them, I catch the eye of the transport driver, Ethan, as he stares at an almost statue-like Aubree.
She stands by the hospital front entrance with her arms folded across her torso, her pinky nail caught between her teeth, and though it’s cold out here, her cheeks are rosy and hot. She’s waiting for word from the surgical team, no doubt. But while she waits, she’s being harassed for all of Copeland City to see.
