CHAPTER 6 #2
“No!” I said as clearly and fimly as I could. There was no way I could handle being back in a hospital, not after the amount of time I’d been forced to spend in one after I was shot. Just the idea of it had my anxiety rearing up hard and fast.
Next thing I knew we were in Col’s office and Deacon was laying me down on the leather sofa that sat in the corner near the window.
“Ava!” I turned my head and just made out Jack at the door of the office, stood stock still, staring at me.
I couldn’t make out his face, but I knew it was him.
“What in fuck happened?” he growled and then he was moving to me.
He dropped to his knees before me and I felt reassured that he was there.
I didn’t know much about Jack’s life before he came to the US from England, but I knew enough to be sure he hadn’t been quite as clean cut and honest in his past as he was by the time Colt hired him.
He had definitely seen and dealt with some bad shit in his life and as a result I had never seen him panic under pressure.
He was clear headed no matter what came and having him close was a huge reassurance when I knew I was rapidly losing blood and consciousness.
“I don’t know. She called me and I found her like this, around the corner from the club. She wouldn’t let me call EMT’s. I should have called them, right? I should call them,” Deak panicked.
“No…no hospital, Jack. Promise me!” I had to push the words out hard to make them heard.
“Be reasonable, love. There’s a huge fucking knife through your bloody shoulder. I don’t think some antiseptic and a bloody plaster will fix that up,” Jack told me as he sat back on his heels and met my eyes.
“The doctor…Lewis….you have his number. You c-can call him,” I ground out.
“How in the world would you know about Lewis then?” Jack asked as he looked a little taken aback.
“Colt…he…he called him once…th-that night. Please J-Jack. Please…no hospital.” My words were weak and whispered and I was having to fight like hell to remin as conscious as I was.
I felt nauseous and the room around me spun so hard I dare not open my eyes any longer, but I needed Jack to agree.
I could not ever wake up in another fucking hospital ever again.
“What night, darlin’? Was Colt hurt?” Jack pushed.
“N-not Colt. Me…the a…attack…my b-back. Colt w-was scared. I t-told him n…” I don’t even know how much more I got out, but at some point darkness descended and the pain, panic, and anger all disappeared right along with the rest of the world.
MASON
“I want forensics all over this. It links to my missing persons, so if there’s anything here I want to know,” I told the patrol officers I had called in to guard the crime scene around the corner from Temple.
I was still reeling from arriving at the club in response to Jack’s demand I get my ass there fast, and finding Ava unconscious and covered in blood.
I had no idea why my girl was so terrified of going to the hospital, but there was no way I could avoid calling in what had happened.
It obviously all linked back to Colt and any forensic evidence we could pick up there could lead us right to him.
It was a lead I desperately needed, since I had shit so far on what happened to my best friend since we were fucking kids.
I was truly starting to worry wherever he was, we were going to be too late.
Colt was more like my brother. He was all of the family I had left in the world and there was nothing I wouldn’t do for him, juts as I knew he felt about me too.
We’d had each other’s backs since we were tiny fucking kids and that would never change.
Losing him was not an option for me, and not only because it would mean I would lose him, but also because I knew losing him would kill Ava, and she most definitely was not strong enough to deal with that in the state she was now.
I’d done some digging on the system at work, and found the piece of shit that had shot her.
She’d been investigating the kidnapping of two nine year old girls.
They’d been missing for over a week when her and her partner got a lead that took them to a warehouse outside of the city.
Screams from the girs when they heard the car approach had Ava and her partner going in and not waiting for back up.
The partner, and older guy who Ava had been working with for three years was shot first. Ava was shot as she tried to go to her partner.
Three in the back. She still managed to get a hold of her gun and taking out the perp before she lost consciousness, likely stopping him from fleeing with the girls before the cavalry arrived, but she was injured so badly her career was over.
It made me feel physically sick to think of all she must have been through since that day.
Surgeries and physio. According to the quick search I did online she probably had to learn to walk all over again, and was lucky to have been able to do that.
Worse still she’d been through ever minute of it completely alone because she hadn’t even told her own brother what had happened to her.
It pissed me off too that she’d done that.
Didn’t she know how much Colt loved her?
Didn’t she realize there was nothing he wouldn’t so for her?
Didn’t she realize how much Jack and I had cared for her before she ran from us?
Didn’t she feel for us the way we felt for her?
We would have gone to her too had we known.
Jack and I would have been right there with her and Colt every step if the fucking way and she had denied us that.
She had suffered alone and it made no fucking sense!
It did maybe explain why she didn’t want to go to the hospital though.
She was likely stuck in one of those shit hole places for months after the shooting.
That was why Jack had called in a favor from one of his contacts that hailed from darker times in his life – a doctor who was willing to treat Ava under the table.
The fact he was there attending to her was the only thing that had made me able to leave her side to make sure the crime scene was being taken care of.
I just hoped I’d be able to take care of the fact Ava hadn’t been taken to the hospital for treatment in my report.
At the nod of agreement from the patrol officers to my request I left the scene in their hands and walked as fast as I could back to the club, slamming past the security at the door and leaping up the stairs to the office three and four at a time, just needing to see for myself how Ava was doing.
“How is she?” I demanded the second I walked into the room and locked eyes with Jack. He and Deacon were stood close to the sofa where Ava still lay, the doctor knelt beside her and leant over the stab wound. The knife was out and laid on a tray on the floor beside him.
“The knife’s out and I’ve stopped the bleeding. It hit some nerves, so this arm is going to be weak and painful for a while, but it didn’t hit anything vital,” The doc explained. I was pretty sure he was stitching her up, which was a good sign.
“Did you figure out what happened?” Deacon asked.
“She fought. There’s definitely prints from a scuffle in the snow. I think whoever it was, was looking for something. Her backpack had been tipped out onto the sidewalk,” I explained.
“Of course she fought. She wouldn’t go down without a fight, but she’s not as strong as she thinks she is, Mace.
We need to do a much better job of protecting her.
Whoever has, or is looking for Colt, is clearly a threat to her,” Jack told me as he stood looking anxious, his heavily tattooed arms folded over his chest.
We had been friends for so long that I knew every nuance of his body language by now.
It was why we worked together so well when we did a scene at the club.
It was why what we had with Ava was so perfect before she fled.
She was made for us, and I was happy to pend the rest of my life sharing her with Jack.
It had been the plan over a decade ago and that plan had never changed for wither of us, but it obviously had for her.
“I know. You’re right,” I nodded.
“That might mean you have to stop being such as asshole to her,” Deak added.
“I know that too.” I didn’t even know why I was being the way I was with her.
We used to have banter between us before, but it was always just fun and playful.
Since she came back I had been a complete shit with her and I knew it.
It just hurt that after all of these years she came back, but didn’t want us.
We had been waiting o long, neither Jack nor I ever really moving on or even seriously considering another relationship with anyone else, always in the ever lasting hope that one day we would get her back.
Now we finally had her and she was pushing us away.
More than that, she seemed to hate us and I had no idea why.
It hurt. It hurt so fucking much and I was pretty sure my asshole comments to her were because of that pain I felt inside.
“Doc, Ava knew your name. She told me you treated her before for Colt. When was that?” Jack asked thoughtfully. I turned to him with question and he held up a finger to halt my questions. “She said it was the night she was attacked?”
My entire body went cold and my heart started to pound at those words. Ava had been attacked? What did that mean and why the hell didn’t Jack and I know about that either?
“Yes, that’s right,” the doc replied as he worked away to stitch the front of Ava’s shoulder. “I still see images of her injuries that night. They were some of the most barbaric I’ve seen in my career. Did they ever capture that mad man?”
“I’m not sure,” Jack uttered, now looking as pale and unsure as I was feeling. “Her injuries?”