Chapter Thirty-Seven
ALICE
Lacey landed smack in the middle of the coffee table, crashing through it in an explosion of glass shards. I froze for a split second, my heart thundering in my chest, lungs tight, gasping for breath.
Lacey didn't move. Blood seeped through cuts on her arms, across her chest and face, striping her with jagged lines of red. Seconds passed, her blood flowing freely, faster with each heartbeat, dripping from her skin to stain the carpet in a pool of red.
Still, she didn’t move.
I bolted to the other side of the couch, away from Lacey and the trap of the seating area. Dropping the lamp, I knelt by the corner of the couch where it met the wall, peering into the narrow, dark tunnel for Petra. “Petra? Come on baby, we gotta run. We gotta run now.”
Petra squirmed through the tight space and popped out on the other side, straight into my arms. My left arm was working again, but it sagged at her weight. I had to get to the front door. I had to get Petra out of here before Lacey got up.
Just because she was down didn’t mean she was out. I’d seen way too many horror movies to believe we were safe.
The door swung open as I reached for the handle. I screamed at the top of my lungs, all reason gone in a haze of terror.
Griffen’s green eyes fell on Petra clutched in my arms, turning to hard, cold emerald when they focused on the floor behind me.
A shiver of fresh horror ran through me as I imagined Lacey, back on her feet, wielding the iron lamp with fresh rage. I turned to see a path of bloody footprints leading from the couch to where I stood at the door. My footprints. I must have stepped in the glass from the coffee table.
My feet didn't hurt. Nothing hurt. Not anymore. Not as long as Griffen was here and Petra was safe.
“Status?” Griffen asked, the emotion in his voice tightly leashed.
“Lacey. We woke up and Lacey was trying to take Petra, going to give her to Tsepov. She— I— She tried to hit me with the lamp, and I swung and… And I hit her, and she fell on the coffee table.”
“Okay, Alice. Take a deep breath for me, okay? Why are you bleeding?”
I did as Griffen asked, trying to calm down. Why was I bleeding?
Oh, the glass. The glass.
My heart wouldn't slow, pounding so hard in my chest I couldn’t breathe. I clutched Petra tighter.
“Glass. Coffee table. She broke the coffee table. I ran for Petra. Must have cut my feet.”
“Are you hurt anywhere else?”
“No. Yes. My leg. My arm. I'm okay, but she's not moving, Griffen.”
Griffen wrapped his arm around my shoulder, pulling Petra and me into his solid strength.
“I need you to hold it together for a few more minutes, okay? Cooper is on his way. He’ll be here soon.”
Cooper was on his way. That meant he wasn’t in the building.
Okay. I could hang on. Griffen let go and crossed the room, walking to the other side of the couch to check on Lacey.
A moment later, I heard him speaking into his phone.
I couldn’t make out everything, but it was enough to figure out he was calling the paramedics.
I thought I should go over there and see. I couldn’t make my feet move. I stood by the door, clutching a silent, shaking Petra, too terrified to do anything, afraid my next choice would make everything worse.
Eventually, Griffen came back. “I need to get you off your feet. Hold tight to Petra, okay?”
I couldn’t hold any tighter than I already was. Good thing, because Griffen picked us both up and carried us to the kitchen. Setting me on the counter, he turned me so my feet were over the empty sink.
Smiling gently at Petra, he said, “Are you hungry, honey? Do you want to eat a cookie in your chair while I fix Alice’s feet?”
Petra looked up at me, a question in her eyes. I curved my lips in what I hoped was a comforting smile. “A cookie would be nice, wouldn’t it? I’ll be right here. You’ll be right next to me.”
Petra turned serious eyes to Griffen and gave him a solemn nod. He wheeled her high chair beside the sink and got her strapped in, placing two big, round chocolate chip cookies on the tray in front of her.
Leaving us for a second, he unlocked the front door, snagging the first aid kit from the pantry on his way back. I didn’t want to think about why Griffen knew where Cooper kept his first aid kit. That thought was almost as scary as the first aid kit itself.
An oversized tackle box, this was no collection of antiseptic spray and band-aids. I was pretty sure I saw needles, glass bottles, and a suture kit in there. Not going to ask.
Turning on the water, Griffen said, “One of the guys will let the paramedics in. I want them to take a look at your feet, but I think you’re okay. Lift the right one up and let me see.”
I did as he asked, only wincing a little as he shone a thin penlight at the bottom of my foot, pressing and probing. I was more worried about Lacey than my feet.
I had to ask. “Did I kill her?”
Griffen shook his head, his attention on my foot. A painfully long squeeze of the ball of my foot and he held up a sliver of glass, pink with blood. It clicked as he dropped it in the sink and went back for more.
“Don’t worry about Lacey.”
“Griffen. Tell me.” Don’t worry about Lacey? Was he nuts? What if I’d killed her?
He shook his head again. “She’s bleeding more than she should be—probably the alcohol. Paramedics will be here soon. Did she try to brain you with that lamp on the floor?”
“Yeah. Got me in the arm but—” I didn’t want to replay how I’d swung the lamp at her, the way she’d flown off her feet and crashed through the glass. I’d be seeing that in my nightmares for the rest of my life.
“It’ll be okay, Alice.” Griffen sounded distracted as he probed my other foot for more glass. “I don’t think you need any stitches. I’m going to wait to bandage these until the paramedics take a look, just in case.”
He poked at my shin. “That looks like it hurts.”
I looked down to see a long gash a few inches below my knee, my shin stained red with blood. Damn. I knew it hurt when I’d slammed into the coffee table, but I hadn’t realized— I winced as Griffen cleaned it, the antiseptic burn almost as bad as the injury itself.
The front door swung open with no warning and chaos streamed in. Two men holding a gurney. A few of our guys who’d been working downstairs. Cooper, followed by Evers, Knox, and Axel.
Cooper met my eyes in a brief, flat glance I couldn’t read. Didn’t want to read.
He was angry with me.
Of course, he was. Why wouldn’t he be?
His mother was bleeding all over the floor, unconscious, because I’d almost killed her. Might still have killed her. Griffen said not to worry about her, but he hadn’t said she’d be okay. Maybe she’d bled out. Maybe—
I wanted to lift my chin and pretend I didn’t care. I couldn’t pull it off. I couldn’t pull anything off. Everything hurt. Lacey had tried to kill us. I might have killed her. There’d been so much blood. Everywhere.
I couldn’t pretend it was okay. I couldn’t pretend anything.
To my utter shame, a tear rolled down my cheek as I watched Cooper and his brothers cross the room to where Lacey lay splayed in the middle of the shattered glass table.
Another tear streaked down my cheek. Then another. Hot and salty, they were a tangible sign of my guilt, of how badly I’d messed up. What if I’d killed Cooper’s mother?
I’d hated Lacey at times over the years, pitied her at others, but never in a million years would I have guessed that I might kill her.
An arm wrapped around my shoulder. Griffen, drawing my tear-streaked face into his chest. I sobbed, shame and sorrow pulling me under.
I couldn’t look at anyone. I couldn’t look at Cooper.
The one time I managed to lift my head he was staring at us, his face so completely blank I might have been a stranger.
It was over. Everything between us was over. He’d never be able to forget this. He’d never be able to love the woman who’d murdered his mother.
Griffen raised a hand to get the attention of a paramedic. The next thing I knew, someone was moving my left arm, poking at my feet, studying them using the pen light, then pronouncing me ready for bandages.
I sat there like a doll, still and silent, while Griffen applied antibiotic goo and wrapped them up.
I watched the scene in the apartment with hollow detachment as if it were a television show, blank-faced as the paramedics loaded Lacey on a stretcher and rolled her out, followed by Evers and Axel.
My breath shallow, my head felt like a balloon floating on a long string, high above everything happening around me.
Knox and Cooper came into the kitchen, silent as ghosts.
Someone said something that ended in “…dilated. Lay down …back soon.” I didn’t catch most of the words.
The world was whirring by me, my ears buzzing with static.
I was freezing cold, heart pounding, sounds coming from a distance as if I sat alone at the end of a long tunnel.
Cooper was saying something, but I couldn’t hear. His hand came up, reaching for my face. That was all I saw as my vision went grey at the edges. Everything wavered as if I was watching through heat waves coming off pavement.
I was falling, pitching forward into nothing as the world went black.
I opened my eyes to see the ceiling of Cooper’s bedroom, his tall, navy-blue headboard rising above me.
How did I get in here?
“You fainted,” said a familiar, amused voice.
Had I said that out loud? I never fainted. Ever.
“Yep, you said it out loud. And you definitely fainted. The paramedic said it was an Acute Stress Response.”
“No.” I struggled to sit up only to find myself pinned to the bed by Petra and bunny. She was curled into my side, her head on my stomach, eyes closed, a smear of chocolate on her chin.
Giving up, I lay back, rolling my head to meet Griffen’s laughing green gaze. “I did not faint.”
“You totally did. I took a picture and everything.”
I swatted his arm with my free hand. “Asshole.”
“I'm kidding about the picture. I wouldn't do that to you. The paramedic said you'd be fine, just the stress and the adrenaline crash catching up to you. Don't worry about it. If anyone had a right to faint, it’s you.”
“Lacey?”
“Cooper and the guys are still with her. She’s alive. Probably already berating the hospital staff.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. I hadn’t killed Cooper’s mother. That was good. I’d killed once protecting a child. I didn’t want to make it twice.
How could I explain what had happened to Cooper? What if he didn’t believe me?
I couldn’t forget his face, so flat and cold. She’d been about to kill me. Hadn’t she? Had I been wrong?
Interrupting my thoughts, Griffen said, “We have another problem.”
“I don’t want any more problems. I’m tapped out.”
“Well, get back on your feet, champ, because I need you on full alert. While Lacey was up here trying to bash your head in and kidnap your girl, Maxwell disappeared.”