Chapter Seventy-One
Brock
By the time I made it back to her apartment building, Cam was stumbling out of a cab.
“Brock,” he said, rushing forward.
“She wasn’t in her car. Mitchell was tied up in the trunk.”
“Oh, my God,” Cam said, eyes going huge.
“Where would he take her? Your place?”
“No. I mean… no. There’s no privacy there. I can go check, but I don’t. Oh…” he said as something dawned on him.
“Oh, what?” I snapped.
“The studio. I rent him out a studio for his art,” Cam told me.
“Get in the car,” I said, waving out toward where mine was still double-parked and creating a traffic jam, making people lay on the horns and scream at us out their windows as we finally climbed in.
“Brock, I… I had no idea,” Cam said as he frantically dialed his boyfriend again.
“I’m sure you didn’t,” I said, cutting off the traffic that was already pissed at me. It didn’t matter if they were late to lunch or a meeting. My fucking woman could be getting beaten right that moment. Or worse.
“He’s… he’s been off,” Cam admitted after giving me an address, clearly needing to talk.
And I’d been around a lot of clients who got chatty when they were upset or nervous, so I couldn’t blame him for needing to talk it out when he realized his boyfriend was a fucking psychopath.
“Since we fired him, he’s been weird. I thought, you know, that the studio would help.
Let him see that I was supporting him. I never…
he never talked about being angry,” Cam insisted.
“No one is blaming you, Cam. You’re not responsible for his actions.”
“If he… if he…”
“He won’t,” I insisted, because my mind refused to believe otherwise.
“I know she’s my boss,” Cam said, blinking hard. “But I love her.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, nodding. “Me too.”
I felt his gaze on my profile, but he said nothing.
“There,” he told me a few minutes later, pointing toward a building with glass windows painted in a bunch of colors. “That’s it,” he said as I swung the car into a spot. Right in front of a stop sign.
“Call the police,” I demanded as I wrenched my door open. “Call the cops, because I might kill him otherwise,” I insisted, rushing down the street and toward the building.
I hadn’t taken a life in a long, long while. I’d been dedicating my life to the lighter things, the happier things. I didn’t want to invite that darkness back in.
But there was no denying that it was darkness that was moving through me as I ran down the street toward the building, hearing the thrumming of music through the walls.
But just under that, was that… whimpering?
It was blackout dark right then as I lifted my leg and kicked in the door.
There he was.
All I saw was a bloody knife and him towering over Miranda.
The rest?
Fuck.
All it was inside of me was rage and long-buried skills, the types of skills that made me really, really fucking good at hurting people.
“Brock! Brock!” a voice yelled as hands grabbed at me from behind, making me swat them back. “You have to stop!” the voice tried again, and I was vaguely aware of it belonging to Cam.
Cam, who was watching me beat the ever-loving shit out of his boyfriend.
“Brock, you can’t be with Miranda if you’re in prison,” he reasoned.
That seemed to break through the rage.
Miranda.
Miranda whimpering.
Miranda’s blood on the knife.
Turning back, the last of the rage fell away, making me see clearly again for the first time in what felt like ages.
I was vaguely aware of the sirens, then another voice joining us in the room.
“Okay. We have two minutes before this place is getting swarmed,” Lennon said, calm, collected. “If you have a weapon on you, you need to give it to me now,” he said, speaking to me as I made my way over toward Miranda.
“I don’t,” I said, seeing her bloodied, bruised face.
“Hey, sweetheart,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm.
“If you needed some extra attention, all you needed to do was ask. You didn’t have to get yourself all kidnapped,” I added, reaching for the gag at the back of her head, and carefully undoing it.
But then the cops were rushing in, making all of us separate as they tried to assess the situation.
I was pulled over with Lennon after they figured out we had been working a case, questioning us about the details as the EMTs rushed in to look over Miranda and the fuckhead who’d put his hands on her.
They blocked her from my view as they worked on her.
My gaze slid to Cam instead, standing off with another officer, looking shell-shocked and heartbroken at the same time.
He, a lot like Miranda, was always so put together, so in control of himself and his image. It was startling to see him look so wrecked, so broken.
It wasn’t until he rushed away from the cop and toward Miranda that I glanced back as well.
“No, you have to go,” Cam insisted, making me move away from the cop we were speaking to as well.
“I don’t want to go,” Miranda shot back.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“She doesn’t want to go to the hospital,” Cam explained.
“You have to go to the hospital,” I told her, seeing her swollen eye, the cuts on her arms and face. “You have to get looked over.”
Her gaze went to me, watery, scared, and in pain.
“Just a couple hours, baby,” I assured her. “Just to get checked out. Then you can come home. Cam and I will meet you there. Right?” I asked, looking at Cam.
“As soon as we are done talking to the police,” Cam assured her, reaching out to place a hand on her arm. “You have to go,” he insisted again, voice a little firmer.
“Okay,” she agreed, pulling herself together a bit. Cam seemed to have that impact on her.
“We will be right behind you,” I assured her, leaning in to press a kiss to her temple as they came in with the stretcher.
Ritchie was already gone by the time we turned around to watch them roll Miranda out.
“You okay?” I asked, looking over at Cam.
“No,” he answered honestly. But then he was reaching for his phone.
“Where are Miranda’s things? She’s going to need her wallet with her medical cards and her phone and charger,” he said, slipping into assistant-mode.
Whether that was to assuage any unnecessary guilt he felt, or because it helped him think past his confusion and grief, I had no idea.
But I knew a thing or two about coping mechanisms, so I rattled off the information before moving back to finish the questioning with the cops.
Luckily enough for me, Lennon had a long history with one of the cops that was there, so the usual need to have me down to the precinct for questioning was removed, thanks to the active case we were both working on, Mitchell being gagged and stuffed in the trunk, and the clear evidence that Ritchie had been brutalizing Miranda when I’d come in.
“Go see to your girl,” Lennon insisted, giving my shoulder a squeeze. “I’ve got the rest of this.”
I didn’t need more than that, I turned and ran.
Somehow, though, Cam managed to beat me to the damn hospital, even after stopping to grab her stuff.
“What’s the word?”
“They are doing some scans right now. We can go in after,” he told me, clicking around on his phone. “I’m clearing her schedule for this coming week,” he explained. “She needs some time off to process this.”
“Hey, Cam?” I called, waiting until he looked at me.
“Yeah?”
“You do too,” I reminded him.
“I know,” he agreed, and for a second, the facade fell. “We are going to go down to essential work only for the next week,” he said, still tapping away at his phone.
“Cam, the fuck are you doing?” I asked after having updated Sawyer and Tig on the developments, only to find him still working.
“Setting up care packages, wound supplies, and food to be delivered to Miranda’s place later tonight,” he explained.
“That’s nice, Cam, but I think you need to stop working for a minute.”
“If I stop working, all this shit is going to hit me. And I need it not to hit me right now.”
“I get that,” I agreed. “I was really good at that for years. But you gotta make time for it to hit you. Or it’s going to eat you up, man.”
“Oh, don’t worry. I have three therapy sessions set up for myself this week alone,” he told me, flashing his phone at me to show me his schedule.
“Good. That’s good. This is a lot.”
“We will get through it together,” he said, tone sure.
It was only a couple of minutes after that when the doctor came out to speak to us, inviting us back into Miranda’s room where she was in the bed looking pale and exhausted.
She had stitches on her arm and butterfly strips on the worst cut on her face.
The bruises had time to really settle in, looking stark against her skin in the unflattering light.
“I’m okay,” she insisted as Cam and I both stood there for a second.
“Hey, that’s my line,” I said, forcing the light, easy smile to spread across my face, knowing that was what she needed from me right then. “You’re okay,” I told her, moving up the side of her bed. “Did they give you anything yet?”
“They can’t,” she told me. “Not yet.”
“Why not?” I asked, brows furrowing.
“Because of the drugs.”
“The… drugs? What drugs?”
“Rit…” she started, then glanced toward Cam, and started again. “He put something in my drink. That was how he got me to the studio. I don’t even remember getting out of my car. Oh, God. Mitchell,” she said, eyes going round.
“Mitchell is okay,” I assured her, putting my hand over hers. “He was in the trunk. He’s shaken up, but fine.”
“Good. Okay,” she said, nodding, trying to figure out what was next on her list to worry about.
Then her gaze was lifting, going toward Cam.
And that, it seemed, was what finally got through to him.
“Randi, I’m so sorry,” he said, tears welling up and spilling over.
“Hey,” she said, glassy-eyed, as she held her hand out toward him. “Come here,” she demanded.
I gave her other hand a squeeze before slipping away, giving the two of them a much-needed private moment.
“How is she?” Lennon asked when I walked back into the waiting room.