Chapter 24
Jaxon
“JAXON!” I hear Melody scream, but everything is so heavy I can barely lift my head. I’m out of it and can barely think straight. I smell smoke and burning rubber. I try to move my hand over to the passenger seat to check on Melody, but my hand meets nothing but air.
My eyes snap open. Where is Melody?
“JAXON!”
My head whips to the sound of her scream, only to see a masked man placing something over her mouth and nose. She looks at me once more before her eyes close and her whole body slumps in his grasp.
“MELODY!” I scream, my voice hoarse from all the smoke spilling into the car.
He takes her, before I can even try to get out of the car, he takes her. My world starts to spin and it’s only then that I notice a chunk of metal sticking out of my abdomen, blood quickly pooling through my shirt and soaking my jeans. I tilt my head back against the headrest, trying to find the strength to fight the impending darkness, but it’s no use.
I succumb to the darkness with Melody’s name dying on my lips.
There are people talking in hushed whispers around my bed. I can’t make out who it is, but at the mention of Melody’s name I’m stirring. The events that landed me here come rushing back, and I’m sitting up so fast I have a sudden ripping pain in my stomach, and I scream out.
“Whoa whoa, Jax, calm down,” says Franklin to my left. “Page the nurse,” he says to someone I can’t see just yet.
“I already did the moment his heart rate accelerated.” It’s none other than my brother, James. I’m relieved that he’s here, he’ll know what to do, how to fix this.
“But he took her, Franklin. She’s gone.” I’m barely holding it together, tears are streaming down my face just remembering the terror on Melody’s face. I couldn’t protect her when she needed it the most.
“Jax, we know. We have all our men looking for her. So far we haven’t turned up anything, but we aren’t giving up,” says James.
“How long have I been out for?”
“It’s been four days…”
“WHAT?! He’s had her for four days?” At this point I start ripping out my IV line and start undoing my gown.
“Jax, you need to wait, you’re bleeding. You probably ripped open your stitches,” pleads Franklin.
James puts his arms on my shoulders and gently pushes me back down on the bed. “He’s right, you know. There is nothing you can do right now except get better so that we can all put our heads together to find her.”
“You guys have no idea the torture she could be going through right now.”
They both look at me with pity in their eyes and a look of defeat. Not defeat like they are giving up at finding her, but defeat at realizing I speak the truth. Who even knows the horrors Melody has been going through for four fucking days.
“I’ve been combing through the class list from her graduation, but I’m not turning up anything, Jax. I’ll keep looking but it might be a dead end,” says Franklin, trailing off.
“No… no… I won’t accept that. We’re missing something, it’s at the edge of my mind, but I don’t have a fuckin’ clue what it is.”
“I definitely feel like this is someone that knows her on a personal level of some sort. We just need to make a connection. The dots are there, it’s up to us to connect them the right way,” replies James, ever the level headed one of the bunch.
The nurse comes into the room rather hastily and exclaims when she sees the blood blossoming through my gown, “Now what happened here?”
“Sorry, ma’am, didn’t mean to rip them like that,” I reply, accepting that it was indeed my fault.
After the nurse calls in the doctor, he redoes my sutures. Once finished, he gives me the all clear to be discharged, so now I have to anxiously await the paperwork.
Once I get through all the formalities, the three of us make our way to Franklin’s jeep. Since we were kids, he has always wanted one, so I surprised him with one two years ago for his birthday; it’s all he drives now.
Given the somberness in the air, the drive is mostly quiet while we all try to connect invisible dots.