Chapter 28
“Ifucking failed her, Gage. She was in danger and I just trusted she would be safe with that fucking security system. We need to figure out what happened.” Sebastian ran his fingers through his hair as he sat down in the hospital’s waiting room, pulling at the roots with all the pent up frustration raging inside of him.
“It’s not just on you. We all let her down. The guys and I should have been there. She begged me to leave her alone at Natalie’s so I could talk you into letting her help with getting Marco. I checked over the security system myself and told her to let me know when she wanted to leave. I don’t know how he could have gotten her without us knowing.”
“Has anyone checked on Natalie? Her daughter…”
“I called Hank a minute ago when I was getting a hold of the rest of the team. He’s got a deputy going out to check on them now, and he’s bringing Daisy here. Apparently last year, Emma legally assigned Daisy as the person to carry out her wishes for medical care in the case something happened that left her incapacitated.”
Sebastian nodded.
“The asshole fucking stabbed her. He sliced into her skin so many times I couldn’t count all the wounds. He tortured her, Gage. Fuck! I need to…I don’t fucking know. I need to beat the shit out of something.”
“We’re going to find him, Cap, and when we do, we’ll make him wish he’d never touched a single hair on her head.”
Stone, Hawk, and Nash walked off the elevator, eyes all landing immediately on Sebastian and Gage.
“Why the nine-one-one, Tracker? What’s going on?” Hawk’s gaze darted around the waiting room before landing on Seb.
He couldn’t get the words out. This was all his fault, and he didn’t know how to fix it. How was he supposed to face his team and tell them the woman that he loved suffered such extreme abuse because he hadn’t kept her safe.
Gage clapped his hand on Seb’s shoulder and thankfully began to explain.
“I was on my morning run, and turned onto Main by the office. There was a still form down in a heap on the sidewalk. When I got closer I could see it was…” his voice caught, so he cleared his throat and continued. “I could see it was Emma.”
“What the fuck?” Stone said at the same time as Hawk asked, “What happened? Is she okay?”
“No. She’s not okay.” Gage cleared his throat again. “She’d been stabbed. Abdomen. It was precise enough to cause her to slowly bleed out. And her body was cut up, bad. She also had bruising along her neck.”
All three men sank into the chairs they’d been standing in front of.
“Jesus. What are the doctor’s saying?”
“We haven’t been updated yet.”
“Marco?” Stone asked.
Gage shrugged but Sebastian knew. “Yes. We need…we need to start hunting him. Tracker, I need you to look over everything from the last few days outside the office. Every minute of security footage needs to be looked over. Get the data from Natalie’s system too. Something isn’t adding up.”
“Yeah, Cap. I can do that. I’ll need to run and get my laptop, but I don’t want to be far from here in case there’s news.”
“Get your equipment. I’ll talk to the hospital administrators to see if we can set up in a conference room. And I’ll let you know if anyone tells us anything.”
* * *
“Where is she?!” Daisy’s shrill voice carried through the waiting area.
Seb stood and walked towards her. It had been over an hour since they’d brought Emma in, but no one had come out to update them on her condition.
“I’m her emergency contact. I have to see her. Is she okay? What happened?!”
“Sunshine,” Hank bristled, pulling her into his chest. “Let’s sit down and Sebastian can fill us in on what he knows. Being freaked out like this isn’t good for you or the baby.”
She pushed away from him, still keeping a hold of his hand.
“Hank, the baby is fine. I’m going to be upset. My best friend was attacked and is in the hospital. I’m freaked out! I don’t need to sit. I want answers.”
“We don’t know anything. No one has come out to update us yet,” Sebastian said.
“I don’t think you should be here.” Daisy’s eyes threw fire at Seb.
Sebastian nodded, lowering his head. “I’m not going anywhere,” he whispered.
She took several steps towards him, her finger jutting out to press aggressively into his chest. “You promised to keep her safe. You promised you’d protect her. And the first time she is stubborn and wants to do something you don’t agree with, you leave her vulnerable?”
“This is exactly why I didn’t want her to be in the middle of all this, Daisy. I was trying to honor her wishes, her autonomy, but I won’t ever forgive myself.”
“If she survives this, you better be there for her. You better tell her exactly how you feel about her.”
Fuck, he planned on it. And the truth speared him right through the heart. He loved her, and he hadn’t even fought against her stubbornness. He should have pushed harder. This was all his fault.
And now, would he ever even get the chance? Seb didn’t need to see the haunted look on the faces of the paramedics to know that they didn’t think she had good odds of coming out alive. But there was an ache in his chest that said she would. She was the strongest person he knew and he couldn’t start doubting that now.
“Daisy, you need to sit down.” Hank guided his wife to the chairs where his team was sitting. Walking back to Sebastian, Hank clasped his hand onto Seb’s shoulder. “What happened this morning?”
“Gage found her lying on the sidewalk outside my building on his run. There wasn’t anyone else around. I have him working through the security footage now, but if it was Marco, there’s a very good chance he would have either scouted where the cameras were ahead of time and avoided them, or disguised himself so no one could ID him off of anything captured.”
“Listen, we’ve already got an APB out on Marco, but I’ll touch base with my contact in the Rangers and see if they are able to lend us any resources. You need to get in touch with your contact in the FBI and do the same. I think we need to assume that if Emma comes out of this alive, and I fucking hope she does, she’ll still be a target. I’ll station a deputy to watch over her room and make sure he doesn’t try anything here.”
“I’ll also have one of my guys stay here with me the entire time. The rest of my team will be hunting Marco down.”
“Sebastian, I know you want him to answer for this but there is no way that I can tell you to hunt him. My official stance is that you need to let me handle this through the proper channels.”
“And unofficially?”
“I hope you kill the bastard when you find him. We’ll figure things out from there.” Hank walked back to Daisy and sat, laying his hand on her belly as he kissed her cheek.
They sat in the waiting room for hours. When Natalie walked in, Sebastian tried to reign in his rage.
“What happened? Is Emma going to be okay?” Natalie asked frantically.
“We haven’t heard anything yet,” Sebastian growled. “I thought she was spending the night with you.”
“T-that was the plan, but she said she wanted to go back to the hotel after we had dinner and talked. She said Gage was coming to pick her up. I went in to check on Addie, and when I came back, she was gone. I-I didn’t even think something like this could happen.”
“How did she get past your security without it alarming as she left?”
“I disarmed it for a minute so she could leave when Gage got there.”
Sebastian saw red. It wouldn’t do him any good to lose his temper on Natalie. He got up and quickly paced around the waiting room. When he couldn’t take the emotions boiling up inside any longer, he rested his body against the wall, his head falling into his hands. “Oh no, it’s my fault, isn’t it?”
Sebastian was about to lay into her when a voice at the entrance to the waiting room interrupted him.
“Excuse me.” His eyes whipped up to the doctor. “Are you Emma Sullivan’s family?”
“Yes.” Seb pushed against the wall, racing forward to the doctor. “How is she?”
“Don’t you dare talk to him. I’m her emergency contact, he is nothing to her.”
“That’s not true, Daisy. I love her.”
“Would you prefer we go somewhere quiet to talk?” The doctor asked her, and his heart sank into his stomach when he watched Daisy nod in agreement.
As the two women turned to walk away, Seb reached out, gently grasping Daisy’s arm.
“You have every right to be upset with me. I will never forgive myself for what’s happened. But please, I need to know what’s going on. I have to know if she…” his voice cracked with emotion.
“Please take your hand off my arm, Sebastian.” Her eyes went to his hand and she lowered her arm the instant he released her. “I will find out what is going on, and then I will come back and let you know what I think she would want you to know. Nothing more, until she is okay to decide what information is shared. Got it?”
“Thank you. I’m not going anywhere.”
The minutes while Daisy was away with the doctor were agonizing. He couldn’t help but let his mind scrutinize every emotion that had been painted across the doctor’s face. Was she being calm and cool because she was shutting down her emotions to tell them the worst? Or was she just trying to be stone-faced to not give them too much hope as she delivered good news? Was Emma okay after surgery? Would they be able to tell that now or would she need extensive monitoring for some time before they could determine her outcome?
He should be on the phone to the top physicians in the country right now coordinating her recovery care, but he didn’t know what had actually happened, or anything about the injuries she’d sustained. He wanted to be angry with Daisy, but couldn’t because he completely agreed with her.
He pulled his cell phone out.
“Seb, what’s going on? Why are you calling me this early?” His oldest brother Declan cleared his throat from the other side of the line.
“I fucked up. I fucked up and the woman I love is going to die because I was too big of an idiot to see what was in front of me.”
“Whoa, slow down, Seb. What do you mean the woman you love? When the fuck did this happen?”
Sebastian walked to the far wall of the waiting room and pressed his back into the concrete. Tears fell down his face in a constant stream, but he didn’t care. The guys knew how much Emma meant to him. Hell, he knew how quickly they’d grown to love her like family, too. He held nothing back as he told his brother what happened.
“Shit, Seb. What do you need? What can I do?”
“Can you come down here?”
“Yeah, I’ll get a flight out as soon as I can.”
“I don’t want to take you away from the business?—“
“Stop. Wyatt, Coop, and Sawyer can take care of the distillery. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“Thanks, Dec. I mean it.”
“I’ve always got your back. All of us do. I’ll text you when I know what time I’m landing.”
Sebastian said goodbye to his brother and ran his hand over his damp face. How had he let this happen? To Emma of all people. He was supposed to keep her safe, just like he was supposed to keep his team safe on their last mission. But he failed. Time and time again, he came up short and the people he loved got hurt. It would always be his fault.
“Where’s my wife?” The sheriff’s voice pulled him out of his spiral.
“She’s in with Emma’s doctor,” Hawk spoke up.
“Why aren’t you in there?” Hank asked, looking at Sebastian.
“Daisy wouldn’t let me. She agreed to come out and fill me in on the basics though. Said I don’t deserve to know. Can’t blame her there. I just need to know Emma’s okay…that she’s going to be okay.”
“She can be so stubborn sometimes. I’m sorry about that. Emma will set everything straight when she wakes up. I’m sure she’ll want you in there with her.”
Sebastian was about to respond, but all the breath left his lungs when Daisy returned to the waiting area, eyes bloodshot and tears streaming down her cheeks. He felt the world fall out from beneath him as his knees hit the linoleum.
“God, no. Please, no.”
A strong hand gripped his shoulder. He looked up, tears flooding his eyes, as Stone, Gage, Hawk, and Nash stood beside him. Daisy was wrapped in Hanks arm’s, her sobs filling the waiting area.
“Please, Daisy,” Seb begged. The pain in her eyes as she lifted her head from her husband’s chest and turned to speak to Seb crushed him.
“S-she made it through surgery.”
“Here, sunshine, let’s sit down.” The sheriff was quick to guide Daisy towards the closest chair.
Sebastian stared at her, waiting for more information, and praying she would give it to him.
“They’ve cleaned and dressed all the cuts on her arms and legs, but there is a real worry about infection. She’ll be on high dose antibiotics for that and in case the wound in her stomach causes trouble.”
“She’s going to be okay?” The question came out choked with emotion.
“Her doctor said the next twenty-four hours are critical. The deep stab wound perforated her bowels and although they were able to repair it, they just don’t know right now how her body will heal.”
“Christ. When can we be with her?”
“The nurse told me she can only have one visitor at a time. I sat with her for a few minutes.” Daisy wiped a tear from her eye. “I’m sorry for what I said earlier, Sebastian. She needs you to be there. To make her come back to us.”
Daisy held out her hand, and Sebastian saw the locket he’d given Emma now resided in her palm.
“She’d want you to hold onto this until she’s better.”
Sebastian held the locket for a moment before opening it. His heart shattered. Inside was the photo they’d taken at the pharmacy in Colorado, and a thin piece of red fabric. He moved the fabric through his fingers trying to place it.
A vision of Emma in the siren red dress he’d picked out for her the night of the charity auction flashed in his mind and he sat down, placing his hands, and the locket, over his heart.
“She has to be okay,” his voice cracked as a tear slipped from his eye.