Chapter 35
CHAPTER
THIRTY-FIVE
LINDY
Butler’s voice boomed, “LET’S GO! LET’S GO! LET’S GO!”
The men heaved Wes up in their arms, and I led them to the truck.
The van doors slammed shut with my father inside, along with an unconscious Minty.
Finger and I climbed into the cab of the truck alongside Wes. I laid down next to him and kept whispering in his ear the whole ride while Finger kept compressions on his wounds. Finally, we got to a hospital.
Stab wound to the lateral torso.
Punctured lung.
Surgery.
That blood-soaked chaos played over and over again in my head as we sat in the hospital waiting room for word about Wes’s condition. All we knew was that he’d needed a chest tube to restore negative pressure in his chest cavity and inflate his lung.
Inflate his lung?
“Drink the tea, Lindy. It’ll do you good.” Tania held out another cardboard cup filled with dark liquid, and this time I took it and sipped. But the tasteless hot tea did nothing to relieve the ice in my veins. The waiting room was filled with One-Eyed Jacks and Flames. With Catch and Drac on either side of him, Finger stood still like a statue against the far wall, his arms crossed at his chest, his jaw set.
Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go!
A punctured lung. A most basic organ that one couldn’t live without had been slashed and deflated. Wes was bloodied and bruised and fighting for his life. My stomach churned.
Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go!
The heat of the tea spread through my chest as Tania rubbed my back. “Thanks, Tania,” I whispered as we both watched Alicia, stiff and pale, sitting with Grace, the two of them holding hands tightly, Grace whispering to her. Ronny spoke quietly on the phone, a hand on Alicia’s leg.
My heart screwed tightly in my chest. Alicia was suffering because of me. She’d lost Wes’s dad to club violence, and now their only child was hanging on by a thread? And Grace? Reliving her past hell and being strong for her friend.
Wes pull through, pull through.
“He’s strong, he’ll pull through,” Butler muttered as if he’d heard my thoughts. His hands curled into a fist at his mouth.
“That’s right, baby, he will.” Tania’s voice was firm. Her arm slid around her old man’s shoulders. “He will.”
A nurse entered the doorway, and silence zipped through the room. “The family of Owen Reynolds?”
“Yeah?” All the men moved forward in a wave, and the nurse’s eyes widened, her mouth dropping open at the dark tsunami of burly manhood rising before her.
My heart skipped a beat. Wiping at my eyes, I gave the tea back to Tania and darted forward. The men parted for me, and I raised my hand to get the nurse’s attention. “I’m Mr. Reynolds’s daughter.”
The nurse’s shoulders eased at the sight of me. “You can see your dad now.”
“Tell him we’re here, Lind,” said Catch.
“I will.”
My heart thudded in my chest as I followed the nurse down the hallway to the ER. She updated me on Dad’s condition. His finger wound had been cleaned and he’d only been scraped by the bullet to his back. I asked her about Minty, and she told me the two bullets had been removed successfully, his wounds had been treated, and he was now asleep. She came to a stop and pulled back a curtain, revealing my father in bed, hooked up to an IV, his right hand bundled in fresh white bandages. Stitches and bruises marked his face.
“Daddy?”
He raised his head. He was unusually pale, his face ravaged. He reached out to me, and I ran to him, sinking my face into his throat. “Dad…”
“Baby, how you doing? You okay?”
I pushed my hair back from my face. “I’m fine. But you?—”
He lifted my chin. “You’re anything but fine after what that fuck did to you.”
“It’s just cuts and bruises. They’ll heal. What matters is that you’re alive. Minty’s alive. And Wes…Wes is in surgery…” My breath hitched.
“Any word on him yet?”
I swallowed past the lump in my burning throat. “Not yet. Hopefully soon.” My eyes filled with water, and I looked away.
“Honey. Look at me.”
I met his gaze, my lips trembling.
“You love him, don’t you?”
“I love him.” Tears streamed down my face. “But this is my fault, Dad. I told Wes about the Dip, that I wanted to go see if you were there, and he insisted on bringing me. Now he’s having surgery on his lungs. And if he makes it, he’ll be hooked up to a ventilator breathing for him and all sorts of tubes and—and?—”
My father gripped my arm, shaking me. “Baby, slow down. Come on. It’s okay. The doctors are working on him. They know what to do.”
I only nodded my head.
“Why didn’t you tell Finger? Why did you two go out there on your own?”
“I thought there was a chance you’d teamed up with Raptor to leave the Flames, so I didn’t want to say anything until I knew for sure.”
Dad’s bruised eyes widened. “What are you talking about?”
“You’d disappeared without a trace in Blade’s territory, and there was no word from anyone claiming to have taken you. Minty was concerned that it was a possibility, and I had to agree with him. We wanted to protect you. I thought since the Flames had taken off for Kansas City, thinking the Guns had you, I had plenty of time to check out the Dip, and at the very least see if Raptor was using the place, and then I’d let the Flames know…”
His head fell back on his pillow, and he let out a long groan.
I bit my lip. “But that wasn’t what happened, was it?”
“No, it’s not.” His lips pressed into a thin line. “You put yourself in danger, Lindy.”
“I had to make sure, no matter what the truth was.”
“I’m your dad, and I’m supposed to protect you .”
“You always have.” My voice broke. “This time I wanted to protect you. I had to. I had to…”
“Lindy…” He pulled me into his chest, and my body sagged as I cried. All the worry, all the frustrations, all the questions poured out of me.
I stroked his arm, my watery gaze settling on his bandages. “How’s your hand? Was it infected?”
“Almost, but they cleaned it up.”
“Fun times.”
“Oh, yeah.”
I sat up and met his gaze. Not knowing what to say first, all of it a jumble, all the emotions jumbling the words.
He touched the side of my face. “Everything he said about me and your mom and him…”
“You don’t need to explain anything. It doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter. We?—”
“You know what matters to me? Just like that fucker said—you raised me. You took care of me and Mom, you kept us safe. You did that. We were a family, and you loved us and you showed us that love every single day.” My breath hiccuped in my chest, and I squeezed his good hand. Dad was my rock, always my rock. I cleared my throat. “And I need to tell you that I’m sorry about being distant since Mom died. I didn’t know how to handle losing her. I wanted to be strong for you...”
He wiped the wet from my face. “We both miss her. Every morning I open my eyes and I know I got to get up and face another day without her. Don’t know I’ll ever get past that.”
I slid my hand over his. “There’s no getting over Mom, but we should try to get past the horrible awfulness of her being sick and her dying.” I gave him a watery grin.
He kissed my hand. “Yeah. We can do that.”
“I can’t lose you, Dad.”
Wincing, he shifted his body to sit up more. “Honey, you want to get a DNA test, see who your real father is? We’ll do that.”
“I know who my real father is, and I don’t need scientific data to tell me the obvious. Some piece of paper is never ever going to change that fact or change how I feel about you or how I feel about me. In my blood, in my soul, it’s you, Dad. We’re a family.” I let out a rough sigh. “If once upon a time Mom loved both of you, and the three of you were happy together, that’s good enough for me.”
“She did. And yeah, it was good once upon a time. But I want you to know, it going wrong wasn’t about you like he made it sound. He had his eye on becoming president, and he wanted to make his mark fast, make it deep. It was his choice to leave and go underground.”
“And you got on with your lives.”
His lips curved in a grin under his mustache. “We sure did. Best thing ever. The very best.”
My heart swelled. Dad and Mom had made a conscious choice to love, to bring me into their world. “The very best,” I repeated.
“Honey, what he did to you, what he tried to do to you…that’s on me…”
“No. That’s all on him, Dad. That’s fucked up. He’s dead now, and me and you and Minty and Wes put him in the fucking ground. He’s nothing but ashes, and he can’t hurt us or anyone else ever again.”
“Never again.” His fingertips stroked my cheek. “How did you figure out we were at the Dip? How the hell did you remember? Was it Minty?”
“It was Wes. He found those accounting notebooks of his dad’s hidden in their house, detailing Jump’s under-the-radar business with Zed and Raptor from years ago. The Dip was a drop-off point for them because Jump had it listed. Wes asked me if I knew what it was, and that’s when I realized it would be the perfect hideaway for Raptor. That he could still be using it.”
“So why didn’t you tell me about it?” Finger’s deep, scratchy voice rose from behind me, and my body jerked off the hospital bed.
“Finger.” Dad held out his good hand, and Finger clasped it and they shook.
“Good to see you alive, brother.”
“Thanks for getting us out of there.”
“How is it you got back from Kansas City so fast?” I asked Finger. “Flames of Hell have a helicopter?”
“Lindy…” Dad warned.
‘Never went.” Finger crossed his arms.
“You never went to confront the Smoking Guns?”
“The message they sent us was too obvious. Whoever had Pick wanted me to go to the Smoking Guns, not only to waste my time so they could gain time but to put salt on that wound for shits and giggles and fireworks. So we pretended to go there and laid low instead. When Minty took off last night, we followed him.”
“Leaving Minty in Nebraska and sending me to the Jacks clubhouse was part of the plan?”
“I was sure Raptor had your dad, and that he’d try to get to you somehow. Must sound cold?—”
“Makes perfect sense to me, and it’s what I asked for anyhow,” I said.
“You did.” Finger glanced at Dad. “Your girl is something else.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” I murmured.
Dad only let out a groan.
“Dad, after I opened that damned box at the shop, there was no time to waste. It was worth looking into the Dip while the Flames were gone to Kansas City.”
“Practical.” Finger tilted his head. “Yet so fucking dangerous, young lady.”
My dad let out a grunt. Alpha man agreement.
“Finger, no matter what I found at the Dip, I was going to contact you right away and let you know.”
“I get it,” said Finger. “It was a bold move.”
“Did you count on me and Wes doing something stupid?”
“I didn’t say stupid. I said dangerous and bold. You got a lot of fight in you, Lindy. So does Wes. I figured if someone didn’t try to get to you, maybe you knew something you weren’t telling and would make a play.” He shot a look at Dad and back at me.
“I should’ve told you.”
Finger dipped his head. “Thank fuck Wes texted the cabin’s location to Butler.”
“He did?” I blew out a breath, my shoulders sinking. “I’m sorry, Finger. You and Lenore took me into your home, you both offered me protection and…and the trust of being with your family. I’m so grateful to you for that, and for not giving up on Dad. And now you probably don’t trust me anymore.” My eyes filled with water. “And Wes is fighting for his life…I’ll never forget seeing you run in there and bring him out.”
“Wes is a good man.” His lips tipped up ever so slightly. “He may have One-Eyed Jacks blood in him, but he’s family.”
That word settled over my chest like a thick warm blanket. “He is,” I whispered. My family.
“Even before that damn package arrived, Butler was sure that you and Wes would come up with some sort of plan to do something.”
My face heated all over again. “He did?”
“Butler has good instincts. He put a tracker on Wes’s truck.”
“Wes found it.”
“Wes has got passion. Showed his creative streak years ago when he assumed the Blades killed his dad, didn’t he?”
“What are you talking about?” said Dad. “What did he get up to?”
My pulse jammed, my gaze shooting up at Finger. His hand reached out and squeezed my shoulder. Was that assurance? “After Jump got killed, didn’t you all have some petty thefts on Blades property and firebombs thrown at your chop shop?
Dad’s eyebrows shot up his forehead. “That was him?”
“That was him. When Wes is on a mission…”
I shifted my weight. “This time I was the one on a mission.”
“Lindy,” said Finger softly, his hand cupping my chin. “ You are his mission.”
My heart stopped. “I’m going to go back to the waiting room and see if there’s any word on Wes. I’m sure you two need to talk anyhow.”
“We do, but not here.” Finger’s hands settled on his waist.
Dad’s jaw tightened. He was going to have to tell his prez why Raptor took him and what he gave him, and why he never told the Flames about the Blades’ stash to which he’d held the keys, or about the Dip. Would Dad be punished somehow?
My brain couldn’t compute any of that now, but what I knew for sure was that Dad and I were Flames of Hell. I was a part of something bigger than me, something solid, real, and true that I finally embraced with all of my heart, not only a piece of it.
Like I could embrace the One-Eyed Jacks too.
The curtain rustled. Tania stood there, her face bright. “Sorry to interrupt. Lindy?”
“Tania? Is there news?”
“Wes is out of surgery. Everything went well.” Her gaze met Finger’s, and they both grinned.
As my and Tania’s quick footsteps echoed down the hospital hallway, I felt that ancient knot of grief and uncertainty, suspicion and wariness, loosen in my gut. Relief flooded through me, lifting me on a euphoric high. Gratitude and a flicker of something else had me smiling.
Hope.
No more looking back. There was only now and moving forward.
I ran.