32. Knox
Chapter thirty-two
Knox
Rule #15: Rook takes out the trash.
I carried Gemma from the garage to the stairs, not bothering with the elevator. She was so small in my arms, so fragile, it nearly broke my heart the rest of the way in half. It had fractured just seeing her on the floor of that demon's house, bloodied and sobbing and desperate to escape. And when my heart had cracked open, it had unleashed an unholy torrent of red rage I'd never known before. I'd almost killed that man. I still wished I had.
When I opened the door to our apartment, Gemma stirred, lifting her head from my shoulder and looking around. "Mini?" she slurred.
"Kennel, sweetie. Remember?" I didn't know if her incoherent words were from drugs or trauma to the head, but I needed to find out right away. I wouldn't be taking her to the hospital unless we absolutely needed to. The last thing Gemma needed was a summons from court for a domestic dispute she never should have been involved in, in the first place. I was determined to make sure she had nothing more to do with that nightmare beyond healing from it. I had a bucket of medical supplies pinched between my fingers that held everything I could think to grab from the hospital before we came home. Thankfully, no one had questioned me pilfering them, but in case they did, I'd make sure to pay for them in full and erase any probing the hospital might do into where they had gone.
I maneuvered us through the door, across the living room, and to the bedroom at the back of the apartment. It was just as dark, just as empty as I had left it. She was nearly naked, with a torn bra revealing one of her breasts and her underwear ripping at the seams. I didn't know yet if he'd raped her. I didn't know what he'd drugged her with. I had sent the bottle off to the lab for testing, and I'd requested that the nurses keep it confidential under ORS, which would protect Gemma from having to reveal her identity. I'd have a better idea of how to treat her once those results came through.
I laid her on the bed and drew the comforter over her, and she sighed, eyes still closed and bruised lips open. She still had that bastard's blood all over her mouth. More than anything, I wanted every molecule of his existence off her, but she had more pressing medical needs at the moment. I put the bucket of supplies on the bed next to her and unzipped my coat, then performed a fast perusal of her visible injuries.
The right side of her face had bruising and one impact-induced laceration along her cheekbone, and she was bleeding somewhere from her head. She had blood all over her lips, but I didn't think it was hers. Her fingernails were bloody, and she'd lost two nails in the process of fighting him. The left side of her body had bruising along her arm and ribs, and those were just the injuries I could see at first glance.
I quelled a surge of fury. Now wasn't the time. I would have to process my blind rage another time, not when Gemma needed my help. I went into the bathroom and wet a washcloth with warm water. When I returned, she had opened her eyes, and she watched me with bleary questions shimmering in their depths. I sat on the bed next to her and gently wiped at the blood trail on her head, smoothing the washcloth up to follow the path to the injury. Gemma closed her eyes in gratification until I found the laceration on her scalp, and then she hissed in pain. It was two inches above her temple, and considering the bruising around it, I was almost certain it had been caused by blunt force trauma.
Anger resurfaced, and I had to take a cleansing breath to shove it back down. Fucking. Bastard. "Sorry, love," I murmured, wiping at the blood and doing my best to clean the area.
The laceration extended past the dermis and to the subcutaneous layer with some significant gaping. Fortunately, Spencer had taught me a trick for head wounds that I much preferred to stitches in that area. He had learned how to tie head wounds closed with the patient’s hair during his peds rounds, and I honestly found it much safer and more effective than sutures, which always had the risk of introducing bacteria and infections.
I dug through the supplies and pulled out the tube of dermal adhesive. Truthfully, super glue would do in a pinch, too. After cleaning the area, I squirted a pea-sized glop of glue into the open wound, and then using tweezers and my gloved hand, I tied a knot with two strands of her hair on either side of the wound. It effectively closed the wound without the need to remove a patch of hair or introduce stitches to the area.
Gemma looked up even though she couldn't see what I was doing. "Did you just… tie my hair?" she rasped.
I smiled faintly. "Yes. Spencer taught me that."
"Weird."
"Better than stitches," I pointed out. I finished with that laceration, and then probed the rest of her head, feeling around the cranial sutures and the base of her skull for obvious contusions or head trauma.
"Is my head cracked?" she asked with weary cheekiness. "I don't think I can handle being crazier than I already am."
I laid her head back against the pillow. "I can handle your crazy, but no, it's not cracked. Did he drug you?"
She nodded. "Roofie in the beer. Although I think you guessed that."
I'd hoped. The only other reason for her slurred words and unfocused eyes would have been severe head trauma. "I'm having it tested, and I'll have the results soon."
"Wasn't much," she grated out, closing her eyes. "He said he didn't want to poison me."
My jaw hardened. "Right," I said through my teeth.
The corners of her mouth tipped up a fraction. "I'm glad you're pissed."
"I'm glad you're alive," I countered. "What happened?"
"He pretended to be Emma," she whispered. Suddenly, she gasped and sat up. I steadied her by her shoulders, but she scrambled around for her phone. "Emma! Knox, you have to make sure she's okay. You have to make sure he didn't… she didn't—" her voice broke, and I pulled her into a reassuring, firm hug.
"Hey, hey, I'm on it. Sweetheart, I'm already on it. I called my lawyer, Azura, and she said she'd have someone make contact with Emma right away. And not cops," I added. "We don't need a legal mess around this thing."
"That sounds shady," she warbled out, her voice thick with tears.
I smiled to myself. "I think… my lawyer might be a tad shady, yes. But she's the best. Let's wait for information before we panic."
She sank against me, her forehead resting on my shoulder. "Okay."
I eased her back down and pulled the blankets away from her body, beginning to palpate her extremities and bruised areas. "Keep going. Tell me what else happened. He lured you there pretending to be your friend?"
Gemma nodded, sniffling. "He did it for months, apparently. When Ruth was… busy," she winced, "I texted who I thought was Emma and asked to come over. But when I got there it was her boyfriend, Dain. Or, at least, he had been her boyfriend at one point. I went into the house because I figured she would be there."
I nodded jerkily, not wanting to say anything that would be unhelpfully vicious about the bastard. I felt around her bruised ribs, and although she jerked away, I didn't think they were broken.
"He offered me a beer while I waited, so I took a few sips, but the whole thing just felt wrong." She screwed her eyes shut, like the memory pained her. "I should have seen it sooner. Once I realized things were fishy, I'd taken I think five sips of the beer, and I locked myself in the bathroom. By then, the drug was working, and I managed to send you a text before I passed out."
My hands jerked, and I had to restrain myself from accidentally adding to her pain as I carefully palpated her stomach and the other side of her ribs. "Did you hurt yourself falling in the bathroom?"
"No, I kind of… slumped over," she mumbled. "When I came to, he was ta—" she choked on the words.
I closed my eyes for a moment, and then gave her a reassuring look. "Keep going. What happened next?"
She swallowed convulsively, putting cracks in the dried blood that had run down her delicate neck. "He removed my clothing. Then he lit a cigarette, and I realized I wasn’t drugged as much, so I could move. I smashed the cigarette in his face and made a run for it. We fought… for a bit. I'm not sure. And then you came." She held up a trembling hand to show me the deep burn in the palm of her right hand.
I gently cradled it and kissed her wrist. "You were so brave, Gem. Exceptionally so." She nodded, swallowing again. "Did he touch you? Rape you? Assault you in any other way?"
She shook her head. "I really don't… think so."
I knew it was hard to account for time when a person was drugged, and the further she got from the incident, the more likely her memory was to protect itself from certain specifics. I wouldn't have forced her to tell me now otherwise.
My phone rang, and I answered automatically. It was the results of the specimen test— flunitrazepam. So, her likelihood of anterograde amnesia was probable. It was possible she didn't remember everything that had happened, but so far, her injuries corroborated what she had said about the event.
I carefully placed her hand burn-up on the bed. "Alright, Gem, so here's what we're going to do. He gave you flunitrazepam, which can be dangerous if not addressed, so we're going to give you IV fluids, and I'll watch your respiratory symptoms. Realistically, I don't know how much you actually ingested, so we just have to be a little careful. Okay?"
She dipped her chin in acknowledgment. "Okay."
"Then I'll treat your other injuries, and you get to take a very long, very deep nap. Yes?" I held her worried gaze, trying to exude calm when I felt anything but. I felt like driving back to that house and ripping that monster’s face off his skull.
"Yeah," she agreed weakly.
"We can discuss the rest when you've had some sleep."
She didn't waver as she whispered, "Thank you."
After I had Gemma set up with fluids and treated the burn on her hand, I washed the blood from her body with the washcloth. She fell asleep then, finally surrendering to the exhaustion and muddled mental state the drugs had put her in.
I cleaned the rest of the mess up, forcing my brain to stay blank, to stay neutral. I threw all the discarded medical supply packages, the bloodied wash rags, and Gemma's stained underwear into the fireplace and lit that son of a bitch for the first time ever. The flames erupted around the evidence, and I hoped this would all end with the ashes. At least, the physical evidence. The emotional scars for Gemma would last a long time, and I cursed myself for the fiftieth time tonight for my part in this.
She never would have gone there if I hadn't been an asshole. She wouldn't have run to a friend she barely knew if she'd felt safe here. I did that. I put her in harm's way, and there was no forgiveness to be found for myself.
I stayed busy, cleaning the apartment until my hands ached, and all the while, I checked on Gemma, monitoring her vitals and watching for any signs that she struggled to breathe. She slept deeply, breathing evenly, and thankfully not waking from nightmares or because of her pain. I was reluctant to give her any pain medication that might further depress her respiratory drive, so I was grateful she was able to sleep through it.
Eventually, my own adrenaline rush waned, and I found myself hunching with exhaustion. As I finally lay down on the bed next to Gemma, mindful of her IV line and the bag of saline she had hanging off the corner of the headboard, my phone rang again. I answered as I lay down on the pillow. "Hello?"
"You're still awake," Azura observed. I grunted in response. "Well, you'll be relieved to know we located your gamer girl. She's alive and well and was completely ignorant of the fact that Gemma and Dain had been talking. Dain had blocked Gemma on Emma's new account, so Emma had assumed Gemma wasn't interested in communicating anymore. She's worried about Gemma now, though, and wants to come see her."
"Uh," I scrubbed my chin, thinking. "I guess that will be up to Gem."
"Perfectly understandable. Also… I have a few connections. It's best if you don't ask too many questions, but my associate will fly to Dain's residence and… ensure a mutual understanding of events going forward."
Shady. As. Fuck. "Sounds great," I sighed.
Gemma's eyes fluttered open, and after a moment of confusion, her gaze lighted on me and she watched me with sudden interest. "What's up?"
She looked much more alert, thank God. "It's Azura," I replied. "She found Emma. She's fine and wants to see you."
"Yes," Gemma said immediately. "Yes, I want to talk to her. I want to make sure he didn't… that she's okay."
I nodded. "Azura, that's a yes to Emma. Does she still live in Portland?"
"She does. My associate will pick her up after his, er meeting, and he'll take her to you."
"Who is this 'associate?'" I asked with an eye squint.
"His name is Ghost. He's discreet, skilled, and perfectly trustworthy. Not to worry." Azura's tone was perfunctory and as energetic as ever, despite the fact that it was three in the morning.
"Alright. Thank you. I don't know what I owe you for all this, but just put it on my tab," I said wearily.
Her tone took on a hardness that brooked no argument whatsoever. "When it comes to helping victims, I don’t charge. We'll handle this for you, Knox."
I blinked. "Okay." The word "we" implied that they had some kind of vigilante team running around the country rescuing people, and as intriguing as that sounded, I also didn't want to know any more than I already did. "I appreciate it."
"Ghost will contact you tomorrow. Get some sleep."
I let the phone drop and rolled onto my side. Gemma had turned on her side as well, her IV arm out straight and her cornflower blue eyes taking me in with visible charmolypi. "Thank you," she whispered.
I reached out and gently caressed her knuckles above the IV port. "Always, Gem."
She gave me a weak smile. "I like that you call me Gem."
I shrugged. "It's fitting."
She rolled her eyes. "Don't tell me it's because I'm—"
"Precious." I skated my fingers up her left arm in a soothing rhythm. "Yes. You are."
Her chest rose and fell with a silent sigh. "My anger at you seems so insignificant now."
"It wasn't." I cupped her elbow and rubbed her skin with my thumb idly. "You had every right to be furious with me. And I'm deeply sorry for it. I made the mistake of not trusting you, and in doing so, I treated you as an inequal and I used you for my own ends. It was unforgivably foolish."
"It's definitely forgivable," she countered gently. "I forgave you for it before I'd even realized it. I was just… lost. Unsure of where I belonged."
"You belong here," I said with quiet insistence. "Whether I'm here or not, this is your home. I'll make sure it stays that way."
"You sure?" she asked, her eyebrows tilting up with worry.
"Absolutely. No matter what else happens, this is your home. Even if you don't want me in it, I won't put you in a position like this again."
“Of course, I want you here." She reached out and cupped my cheek, heedless of the fact that she was attached to the saline bag. I closed my eyes at the gratification of the contact. "Actually, I will be bossy and insist on it."
I turned and kissed her palm. "I won't argue with that. How are you feeling?"
"Better." She let her hand fall, and both our gazes seemed to catch on to the enormous engagement ring. She tilted a scrunched look up to me. "What do we do about this whole thing?"
"Nothing." I took her hand in mine, resting it on the mattress between us. I fiddled with the ring on her finger. "No more games. No more underhanded schemes. I'm buying this apartment outright from my father because he's a spineless jellyfish, and that will be it. Azura will be contacting their legal representation on Monday about their unethical terms, and if they push back, then we will move somewhere out of their reach. We'll make it work."
"You keep saying 'we,'" Gemma grinned. "And I like it."
"I'll be honest," I said with some intensity. "I never intended to let you go, Gem. Not really. I can't imagine one more second of my future without you there. Being alone here tonight illustrated that clearly to me."
Her soft, blond hair had fallen across her cheek and down her shoulder, and she looked nothing short of angelic in that moment. "I want to be with you, too."
I took hold of the ring and slipped it off her finger, snuggling closer to her until I could take her bare fingers in mine and gently bring them to my lips. "Gemma Daise, will you date me?"
She smiled brightly. "I will."