Chapter 26
TWENTY-SIX
MAX
“Max!”
The shout reverberated through my throbbing head, bouncing off the inside of my skull and hurting my sensitive ears.
“Wake the fuck up!”
My eyelashes fluttered, and I winced as light hit my eyeballs. It was too bright.
I was lying on a hard surface, my head turned to the side. Using one hand for support, I rolled onto my back. A wave of nausea swept over me. I squeezed my eyes shut, the overhead light searing my retinas.
“Take it easy.” That voice was softer but still masculine.
“Who….” I trailed off, unable to complete the thought.
“It’s Asher,” the man said calmly. “Maia is with me, and so is Nate, but he’s losing his shit, so I told him to keep his distance.”
Gentle hands patted me down. I hardly noticed it. I doubted I’d notice if my body had gone through a meat tenderizer because that would pale in comparison to the throbbing agony in my head.
“Bailey,” I gasped, instinctively sitting up, but someone guided me back down. “They took her, but I gave her the… the thing. So you can find her.” My words came out as a salad, so I tried again. “I couldn’t stop them, so I gave it to her so she could take it with her and you’d know where to look.”
“The GPS tracker?” Nate asked tersely. “It’s with her?”
“I think so.” I relaxed, relieved he’d understood me even though I couldn’t think of the right damn name for the thing. “I tried to… I….”
Someone poked the tender spot on the top of my head, near the back, and I hissed and flinched away.
“Max.” Asher’s face appeared above me, his features calm, only a slight furrow between his eyebrows. “Slow down. Do you remember what happened to you?”
“Bailey—”
“In a minute.” He held up his hand. “You have a significant head trauma. It’s lucky it isn’t bleeding more, considering how head wounds usually are. What did they do to you?”
“Wooden bat,” I muttered.
“Those motherfuckers.” The curse came from somewhere else.
“Good. Thank you, Max. I’m going to help you up so Maia can see it properly. In the meantime, why don’t you start at the beginning and explain what happened?”
He made that sound so easy, but my rattled mind was having trouble picking apart the order of events.
“You and Bailey left Mum and Dad’s house,” Nate said from wherever he was. “Did you come straight home?”
“Uh, yeah.”
Asher slid his arm under my shoulders and helped me sit. I squeezed my eyes shut and sank my teeth into my lower lip to stop myself from puking everywhere.
“Did she come into the house first, or did you?”
“Um, her, I think.”
“And then someone knocked at the door?”
“No.”
Fingers brushed my head, and it took everything in me not to recoil from the touch.
“So, they were already inside?” Nate asked.
“Yeah. In the, uh, hall. Or maybe the spare room.” The sentences slurred together, but he didn’t ask me to clarify.
“You fought, and they knocked you out with a bat?”
My throat clogged. “They took her. I couldn’t stop them. But I….”
“You what?”
“I got the tracker from her bag and gave it to her.” God, even talking exhausted me.
“So as long as she still has it, we can track her. I’ll let Mehrtens know.”
I stayed still as Asher and Maia assessed me. I could hear Nate speaking but not his individual words. Perhaps he’d left the room.
“We should take you to the hospital to get you checked out properly,” Maia said as she flashed a light into my eyes. “Your pupils have a delayed response. At the very least, you have a concussion, but we should get your head scanned to be sure there’s nothing more serious going on.”
“No.” I clawed at the floor and struggled to sit up. “I don’t want to go anywhere until I know whether Bailey is safe.”
“That could take hours.” Her tone was gentle but firm. “You know how precarious head injuries are.”
“I do, but I’m a doctor. I can tell you’re right about the concussion, but the pain doesn’t feel like more than that.”
“Doctors make the worst patients,” Asher muttered, circling and then squatting in front of me. “Do you think you can stand up?”
“Yeah, but I might need help staying steady.” Even on the ground, my limbs felt wobbly. I doubted they’d support me very well.
He offered me his hand, and Maia hovered at my back as I rose slowly to my feet, then Asher wrapped his arm around me, and I leaned into him, allowing him to support me.
Nate came back in from the kitchen. “Mehrtens has got a location on the tracker. They’re driving down Overhang Road. We’re going after them.” He moved closer and made to touch my shoulder but then hesitated, as if worried about hurting me. “Don’t worry. We’ll get her.”
“I’m staying until you do,” I insisted, despite the throbbing at the back of my head that almost drowned out my thoughts.
Nate crossed his arms. “No way.”
“Actually….” Maia sounded reluctant to interrupt but did so anyway. “Come to think of it, we might also need the ambulance for Bailey. You know we only have one in town. It might be best to wait.”
Nate turned to Asher. “Is it going to be more difficult for Max to recover if you take an hour or two longer to get him to hospital?”
Asher waffled his hand back and forth. “It’s not impossible, but unlikely.”
“Then I’ll leave it up to you to decide. I’ll let you know when we have her.” He backed away, scowling. “I’m getting fucking tired of kidnapping and assault in my supposedly peaceful town.”
He strode out, and Asher motioned Maia toward the door too.
“Let’s get him set up in the ambulance while we wait for news,” he said.
She nodded and hurried out.
“You good to walk outside?” Asher asked.
I took a step forward and tested the ground with one foot. “I think so, but don’t let go.”
Not only would a fall pose the risk of further injury, but it would be terrible for my ego.
“I won’t.”
True to his word, Asher helped me out of the house and boosted me into the back of the ambulance. I was reluctant to lie down because I was capable of sitting, but he insisted, and I knew that I was already treading on a thin line, so I agreed without too much fuss.
“How long do you think it will take them to find her?” I asked as Asher closed the doors and Maia started the engine.
Overhang Road went on for over fifty kilometers, and we had no idea how far along it they’d gone.
“No more than an hour.” Asher took a seat as Maia pulled onto the road and started navigating through town. “They’ll have sent someone to block off the other end of the road, and there aren’t many places they could go other than straight through.”
“They could take her into the forest,” Maia pointed out, and we both ignored her, although based on Asher’s expression, I could tell he liked that idea as little as I did.
“Is there any way we can find out for sure what’s going on?” I asked because not knowing was awful. I kept recalling Bailey’s limp body on the forest floor and imagining how it would feel to find her like that again but this time with no pulse.
My heart battered against my rib cage, and my mind protested the thought. That couldn’t be allowed to happen. Not to her. Not to my Bailey.
Asher cocked his head for a moment, then pulled his phone from his pocket. “I’ll see if there’s someone at the police station who can give us a blow-by-blow, but if it’s going to interfere with their job, we’ll just have to wait.”
“I know.” I’d rather the police rescue Bailey than indulge my anxiety, no matter how difficult it would be to live with the uncertainty.
Asher made a phone call and spoke to one person and then another. I strained my ears, but I couldn’t hear anything above the thudding of my pulse and the low, too-calm cadence of Asher’s voice.
Eventually, he said, “They’ve turned down a side road.”
“Which one?” I dreaded the answer.
He inhaled deeply, his lips pressing into a firm line. “The one that ends with a cliff.”
I closed my eyes, everything inside me screaming at what that might mean. My stomach dropped, and my fingernails pierced my palms.
“Tell me they’re right behind her.”
Asher didn’t reply.