CHAPTER 95 JAMESON
JAMESON
Avery. Someone forced Jameson’s body down onto a stretcher. Heiress. A light was shined in his eyes. Heiress?
“Pupils are dilated,” a distant voice said. “He’s in shock.”
“Jamie.” Nash’s voice cut through everything else. “Jamie.” Calloused hands cupped Jameson’s face. “I’m here.”
“Nash.” The real world crashed back down around Jameson the second he said his brother’s name. He surged up off the stretcher. “Avery.”
Always Avery.
With the force of that thought, Jameson shook off the remainder of the shock, violently, like a bull bucking a rider. He tore himself away from Nash and pushed roughly through the medics and truly saw the world around them for the first time.
Vantage was the only thing of value that Jameson had ever earned for himself, the only thing he’d ever owned that had felt like it was truly his. And now, Vantage was nothing but a sinkhole and debris, and Jameson didn’t even care.
All he cared about was that Avery was under all of that debris somewhere. Buried. He had to get to her. Always Avery. More than anything else, Avery. Jameson had known she was special, right from the start. She loved him, scars and all, and she’d told him once that he made her bold.
Men, plural, tried in vain to restrain him, tried to keep him from going to her—wherever she was. But no one could stop him. Not the medics. Not law enforcement, shouting out orders. Not search and rescue, blocking his path.
I’m coming, Heiress. I will find you.
“Let’s give the lad some space, shall we?”
Jameson immediately recognized that not-rough, not-smooth voice, and apparently, so did every law enforcement officer and medic and search and rescue worker present. Hands dropped immediately to sides.
Everything in Jameson wanted to take advantage of that, but some instinct had him pausing long enough to turn toward his uncle and ask, “What are you doing here?”
“What I do.” Bowen clapped an arm around Jameson, seemingly in an embrace.
Key word: seemingly. The man’s hold was ironclad.
Before Jameson could even try to break it, Bowen leaned forward and spoke directly in his ear.
“Look up.” Two words. And then, after a beat, three more.
“At the sky.” No muss. No fuss. And yet, every single word out of Bowen Johnstone-Jameson’s mouth carried with it the force of a threat. “What do you see?”
“Let me go.” Jameson kept his voice low, kept up the pretense.
“What do you see?” Bowen murmured. “Or more specifically, what don’t you see, young Hawthorne?”
Jameson glanced overhead and realized the sky was clear, not of clouds, but of press.
There wasn’t a single news chopper up there getting aerial shots of the rescue mission as it unfolded.
If there ever had been, they’d somehow been cleared out.
Jameson didn’t see so much as a single drone, and it took him only a second or two longer to register the broader landscape, the way that rescue vehicles and equipment artfully blocked large chunks of the disaster site from view, just how far down the isthmus the barricade that held onlookers off was.
“Is this the part,” Jameson said, speaking directly into his uncle’s ear, “where you extract another favor from me in exchange for whatever it is you’re doing right now?”
It’s not just the press. Jameson let that realization roll over him. Law enforcement is answering to him. The medics. Search and rescue. Every instinct Jameson had was suddenly sure that there was one man calling the shots of this entire operation.
“You think I’m here to bargain with you?” Bowen said, his words for Jameson’s ears and Jameson’s alone.
“You already made a deal,” Jameson realized. “With someone else.” Possibilities flashed through Jameson’s mind: The duchess? Alice? Katharine Payne?
“What exactly are you here to do?” Jameson asked his uncle. All of this, he thought, all of it was planned.
“There’s a good boy,” Bowen said, letting loose of Jameson now that he’d established who was in charge here.
“Have at it, then, if you insist.” Bowen nodded toward the utter devastation largely and strategically blocked from onlookers’ view.
“Your brothers are welcome to join the search, too. It’s treacherous work, but that’s your business, not mine. ”