Forty-Four
S omeone had parked a car on my head. It was throbbing with pain, and I had no idea what had happened to me, but if this was hell, I could totally believe it right now.
“He’s waking up, thank fuck for that. Jesus, look at this mess. Look at his fucking colours.” I recognised the voice, but I couldn’t pull a name from my consciousness because it was barely there. I felt someone checking me over, and then someone touched the back of my head, and I passed out again.
When I woke up, I was in a room that was too bright, and I was surrounded by frantic faces. Doc, Reacher, Stitch, and Ryder. My eyes were burning, and my head was throbbing and heavy. Too heavy.
“What… Jesus… my head.”
“Stay still, you fucking idiot, you’ve got to keep still.” There was a buzzing sound, and then I realised what I could feel. Someone was shaving my fucking head!
“Stop! Jesus… fuck… that hurts.” I lunged to the side, just as I threw up everywhere and the throbbing intensified. As I hung over the side of the bed, dizzy and feeling like hell, I realised I could see something on the floor, scattered ropes of orangey red stuff. What the fuck?
“Let’s get you back up here, man.”
“I need to fucking talk to him!” Stitch sounded agitated as fuck, and that was when I realised who was missing from my bedside. Where was my fucking old lady? Suddenly I knew she’d be the only one who could ease this agony, and save me.
“Elise?”
Stitch grabbed the front of my clothes.
“Was she with you?”
What? Oh god no. Was she? I couldn’t think, because of the throbbing in my head. I reached up, grabbing at my head, as the room spun on me.
“I… where is she?”
Reacher grabbed at Stitch as he came at me again.
“She’s gone, brother. She must have opened her door when the alarm went, and by the time we got out of our rooms, she was gone. We’ve searched the entire clubhouse and grounds.”
What the fuck? How the hell… what the hell?
“Alarm? I… I have no fucking idea what’s going on here! Elise is missing?”
“Fuck’s sake, he’s worse than useless right now!” Stitch picked up one of the folding chairs and tossed it across the infirmary, crashing it into a glass cupboard and destroying a whole bunch of who the fuck cares.
“Pres, how long was I out?” Someone was still shaving my fucking head. My dreads. My fucking dreads were gone. I wasn’t an idiot, those ragged red orange things on the floor were my fucking dreads, because some fucker had dumped my paint in them.
“We have no idea. We were all woken by the fire alarm, and that’s when we realised the doors were jammed, well… some fucker had poured superglue into the locks. By the time we got through the doors, her room was open, and she was gone. We figured she was outside, but she wasn’t. That’s when we found you.”
Fuck! “There was a fire? I need to…” I leaned over and threw up again, as my stomach rebelled against, hell, everything happening right now, and probably the head injury. I don’t know.
“Who hit you?” Reacher at least waited until I was sitting up again, while a prospect grumbled and tried to clean up after me.
My head felt weird. The throbbing was still there, but now it felt too light. Weightless, even. Was that a side effect of the head injury?
The buzzing had stopped, and that was when my foggy brain caught up. My hair was gone. The lightness was because I no longer had my dreads weighing my head down.
“Fuck. I need to get out there and look for her. How long has she been gone?”
I lunged up out of the bed, as everyone tried to catch me, and the dizziness swirled as I damn near faceplanted the second I was up.
“He’s concussed, so he can’t go racing around right now. Get the fuck back in that bed before I sit on you to keep you there.”
“Not my type, Doc.” I groaned as my stomach roiled again, and someone shoved a bowl at me. I wasn’t sick, but I got the point.
“What’s the plan?”
Stitch was practically pulling his hair out, and Reacher was checking something on his phone.
“Ice has Grease helping him with checking cameras and tracking phones, because we’re missing three club members too right now. Any one of them could be the culprit.”
What the fuck? “WHO?”
Stitch cursed, kicking the rest of the chairs across the room.
“None of this is helping us find her, dammit!”
Ice burst in through the door then.
“Fuck! We found Torch, and it definitely wasn’t him.”
What the hell did that mean? He looked like someone had just died, and he was the one breaking the news. Torch? Or Elise?