23. Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-three
Wyatt
I have had a full, blissful day of fucking off and not being followed. I didn't even see two similar cars behind me at any point. I stopped for lunch and dinner without any reason to suspect anyone was paying one tiny speck of attention to me. I took every back road the surrounding five counties can boast. I stopped at a fucking produce stand and bought fucking apples because they're in season and I thought Larken would enjoy them.
So why the fuck am I seeing my front goddamned door wide the fuck open when I turn off the main road and onto my driveway?
Shaun better be dead. That's the only excuse I'll accept for this twaddling bullshit.
I take the driveway a little faster than I probably should, but anxiety is making me rash. The door isn't just open. It's destroyed. I jump out of the car and run to the house without shutting it behind me, terror making my vision tunnel. I should have been here. I shouldn't have fucked off all day. I should have come straight here.
I take the stairs two at a time but pause in front of the door, common sense and self preservation finally catching up to the panic seizing me. I don't immediately see anyone. I don't hear anyone talking. I take a tentative step just inside the door and stop to listen. The house is quiet. No one is here.
My heart slams in my chest.
No one is here.
She isn't here.
Would Shaun have taken her? No. I mean, yeah, he probably would take her, but he wouldn't need to break the door down. Something happened. Something bad. I step across splintered wood and broken glass to go further into the room. There has to be a sign, a note, something.
There is something. It's Shaun, laying in a heap of wrong angles and blood on the floor. I couldn't see him from the door because of the couch and overturned coffee table. I rush to him, dropping on my knees and shoving him onto his back. He looks like shit, like he's been hit in the face with a brick. I lean over him, putting my fingertips on his neck where I better find a pulse. He doesn't get to be dead. He's the only person who can tell me who took Larken.
The husband. No, that coward wouldn't have the nerve to come take her himself. He'd send someone.
There. There it is. It's faint, but it's there. If he's got a heartbeat, he's not dead, and he needs to wake up. I shake him, but don't get a response. I shake him again, still nothing. I drag him over the side of the couch and prop him up, then firmly slap his cheeks. He cracks open bleary, unfocused eyes but they slide closed again.
“Shaun!” I yell, slapping him again, and his eyes slowly blink open and they focus on me but only briefly. His head lolls back and I put my hands on either side of it to keep him upright.
“Shaun, wake up? Who took her?” His eyes open once more and I shake him. “Shaun! Who took her? The husband?”
He blinks at me slowly but he doesn't respond. I can't tell if he recognizes me or is even aware of anything around him right now. “Shaun! Come on!”
Shaun's eyes flutter shut and his head drops to the side. I slap him again, hard and he groans, wincing in pain but his eyes stay closed.
I close my eyes and pull in a long breath through my nose as my heart picks up pace. I need to get Shaun help, otherwise I'll never find her. I can't exactly take him to the hospital. I don't think he has any warrants or anything, but it's never a good idea to take someone from our world to a hospital. A morgue, sure; but not an emergency department. They ask too many questions that we can never answer, and besides, my face was on TV recently. If I know anything, I know that emergency department waiting rooms have a TV that plays nothing but the news. I'll have to call Conner. He still owes me a favor and I'm calling it in.
It takes way too much time and effort, but I get Shaun into the backseat of the car. I turned off all the lights and pulled what was left of the door shut after I got him loaded in and now I'm driving as fast as I dare to the city. Conner lives with his girlfriend. It's late. He doesn't like to do work if it's late because the girlfriend has some hugely important job, but he's going to have to get over it. He's the closest medic I have open and safe communication with.
I dial his number and put it on speaker then toss it onto the seat beside me to ring. Conner picks up on the fourth right in a hushed, thick voice. “Somebody better be dead.”
“Somebody might be if you don't let me in when I get there.”
“Wyatt?”
“Yeah,” I confirm. “I'm about forty minutes out.”
“You?”
“No.” I take a breath to collect myself and adjust my speed back to something that won't get me pulled over. “My partner.”
“I thought Jesse was in for a while?”
“He is. I had to get someone else for a job.”
“How bad is it?” he asks. “Knife? Gun?”
“I don't know,” I answer truthfully. “He's bleeding from his side but I didn't take the time to look. I should have looked, that's on me. But he keeps losing consciousness and his face is a mess, so possible head trauma on top of the bleeding.” Fuck. Why didn't I look under his shirt? I should have looked.
“It's late, man. Can't you take him to Bakerton?”
“No,” I clip. “I'm dealing with something else, too. You owe me, Conner.”
“Is it bad?” he asks. “The bleeding?”
“Bleeding is always bad, Conner. Just assume the worst.”
I listen as his girlfriend asks him what's going on. “Listen, baby. You know how I told you I used to work at a vet's office? Yeah. So a friend is coming by in a little bit and I need to help him. Yeah, no, baby. Everything's fine. It's just a situation I need to help with. Yeah, if you could, I would appreciate it. Thank you, baby.”
“That was a sickening number of baby's,” I say flatly. I don't know why I say it. Maybe because I almost had a baby and now she's gone and listening to Conner coddle his baby makes me want to hit something.
“Be nice to her, Wyatt. She's going to help tonight.”
“Right. I'll text when I pull up.”
“I'll come out to help get him inside.”
Forty minutes feels like forty years, but I finally pull onto Conner's street and pull into his driveway. I send the short text letting him know I'm here and get out of the car and run around to the back passenger side door to start maneuvering Shaun out of the car.
Conner appears just as I start lifting Shaun out, swearing as he grabs his feet. “Are you sure he isn't dead?”
“He's not dead,” I grunt. He better not be fucking dead.
We get him inside and his girlfriend gasps as she shuts the door behind us. “Conner! This isn't a dog! What the hell?”
I start to drop him onto the couch, but she yells to stop me. “Wait! Not there. Take him to the kitchen and put him on the table. The light is better. I'll be right there. I need to grab more towels.”
Fine. Better light would be better.
“Through there,” Conner grunts, gesturing with his chin toward a door behind me.
We carry Shaun into the kitchen and lay him out on the table. Conner gets to work immediately, wiping away dried blood and pressing in various places. I get out of the way, stepping back to give him more room. I've worked with him often enough to know that he has no problem delegating or asking for help if he needs it.
“Here,” the girlfriend says, walking in with a stack of pristine, white towels. “I'll put them on the counter. What else do you need?”
Conner pulls on Shaun's arm and hip to turn him onto his side and hisses. “Fuck. I need the kit from the back of the linen closet and the bottle of alcohol from under the sink in the bathroom, the big one.”
She turns to go back out, but stops. “The first aid kit, or that black toolbox behind it?”
He gives her a quick smile. “You snoop. Bring the toolbox.”
She blows him a kiss and goes to get the supplies. I'm going to be sick. I can't watch them flirt over Shaun's bleeding body. Watching them be sweet with each other makes my anxiety and worry-fueled anger boil almost to a fever pitch.
“Towel,” Conner orders without looking up from his task. “Two.”
I cross to the counter and hand him the towels and then stand back out of the way again to watch him work. The girlfriend returns with the toolbox, the alcohol, more towels, and the first aid kit. She doesn't step out of the way. She stands beside Conner like any good nurse would, ready to provide fast helping hands.
Conner works on Shaun for a while. When he's finished, all the towels have been used and Shaun has a clean and bandaged gunshot wound underneath the wrappings around his ribcage and a few stitches on the back of his head. The girlfriend has kept the work area as tidy as possible and now she's gathering bloody towels and wondering aloud about washing them or throwing them out.
“Wash them,” I tell her. “You can still throw them out if you want afterward, but wash them first. Use bleach. A lot of it.”
She nods and finishes gathering them.
“Wyatt,” Conner says, “this is Regan. Regan, Wyatt.”
I don't care. Her name isn't important. I'm sorry that I've invaded her home and her world with my life, but I can't bring myself to care about her name. I just need Shaun to get stable enough to tell me who took Larken.
“Coffee?” Regan asks.
“Yes, please,” Conner answers for both of us. “He should wake up in a few hours. What happened?”
I don't have a few hours. I need Shaun awake right now. I roll my shoulders and neck, willing it to relieve some of my tension with a nice pop. “The job took a turn. Several. I don't know what happened to him. I wasn't there. I need him to wake up soon. I'm running out of time. He has to tell me what happened so I can fix it.”
The coffee pot sputters and Regan puts two cups on the counter in front of it before she leaves the room. Conner and I stare at the floor while we wait for the coffee to finish. I don't want coffee and I doubt I'll be able to drink it, but I don't know what else to do. I can drive all the way back to the house to look for clues, but I doubt I'll find anything useful. I just need Shaun to wake up and give me something to go on.
Regan comes back in. “I spread a quilt on the couch and put down a couple pillows,” she says. “I don't know if moving him is a good idea, but the table is hard. I wouldn't want to lay flat on a table like that.”
“Right,” Conner agrees, nodding. “Let me go get a clean pair of pants before we move him.”
“I don't care about the quilt, babe.”
Conner smiles at her. “I know you don't. But I wouldn't want to wake up wearing stiff, bloody jeans.”
She comes over to kiss his cheek. “I'll go get a pair of your sweats.” Then she leaves the room.
I'm glad he's got her. I'm happy for their happiness. But fuck both of them. I need to find Larken, and their moony behavior makes me want to scream.
Conner pours the coffee when the pot finishes and hands me mine. I hold it, letting the warmth seep into my hands, but I can't drink it. Just the smell of it is overwhelming. Regan comes back with a pair of gray sweatpants and a green button-down flannel shirt. She puts it on the counter and kisses Conner's cheek again. “If you don't need me, I'm going to go to bed for a few hours. I've got a tough client first thing in the morning.”
“Okay, babe. Thank you for helping. I'll see you in the morning.” He takes another swallow of his coffee after she leaves and puts the cup on the counter next to the sweatpants. “Help me get him changed and then we'll get him to the couch.”
A few hours later, Shaun wakes up suddenly, gasping and falling back against the pillows when he tries to sit up. I'm beside him in a second, but I don't get an opportunity to ask him anything because he grabs a handful of my shirt and pulls me down closer to him. “Did you get her?”
I shake my head. “She was gone when I got there. I brought you here.”
“Go. Hurry. He took her. You have to find Larken.” His eyes pinch shut and his head lolls back.
I grab his shoulders and shake him, forgetting about his injuries. “Shaun! Stay with me. Who took her? Was it the husband?”
He blinks at me but he doesn't pass back out and he slowly shakes his head. “No. A big guy. Mean. Had a big scar on his face.”
All the blood in my body turns to ice. “What kind of scar?”
Shaun's eyes flutter shut and his head drops to the side. I slap him awake and he groans, wincing in pain. “What kind of scar, Shaun? Tell me! What did it look like?”
He lifts a finger and traces an X over his eye. “Here. Like this.”
I close my eyes and pull in a long breath through my nose as my heart drops away from me. Tabor.
Tabor took Larken.
Fuck.
Conner leans down and pulls my hands off of Shaun's shoulders and settles him back down. When I look at him, there's no color in his face. “Did he say Larken?”
I nod. “She's the job.” I close my eyes and take another breath. Something Shaun said comes back to the forefront. “She's not a job. Not anymore.”
“What do you mean, she's the job?” He lowers his voice to a hissed whisper. “Not anymore? What do you mean?”
“Why do you care?” I counter. “It's just a job.”
“The fuck it is,” he hisses. “There's only one person on the planet with that flowery fucking name. She's blonde, right? Tall but not too tall? Light eyes? Athletic build? Immune to common goddamn sense when it comes to men?”
I just stare at him, processing the fact that the world could possibly be this small.
“Married to a slimy fuckhead named Adrian?” Conner continues.
“Yes. How do you know her?”
“Fuck you. How is she your fucking job?”
I shake my head. “She's not a job anymore.”
“Yeah, probably because she's dead by now. What was the job?”
“How do you know her?” I'm not telling him anything until I know.
“She's my friend. I mean, she's Regan's best friend. They're like sisters.”
Rage billows, making my skin feel like it’s going to peel back from my skull. “If they're like sisters, why did she let that mother fucker try to starve Larken to death? How did she miss that? It's only completely obvious. What about the drugs? How did she miss that?”
Conner sits down in the chair on the other side of the couch, his offense deflated. “Drugs? What drugs? What do you mean, starving her? Jesus christ. I have to wake up Regan. She's going to freak out.”
I drag my hands down my face and give him the abridged version of the timeline of events since Adrian hired me, watching his face grow more serious with each thing I divulge. I take a breath, shaking my head again, defeat and despair threatening to render me useless. “And now Tabor has her.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah.”
“He hates you.”
I nod. “Hence the urgency.”
He does hate me. I don't think I have ever been hated by anyone as much as Tabor hates me. I'm glad he hates me. I hate him right back. He's an evil son of a bitch. I at least have a few morals, but he doesn't have any. That's why he hates me. I've ruined his shit in the past, one time in particular. And that's why he's got that big X on his face. I put it there to remind him every single day of his life that children are off limits. It won't bring back that little boy, but Tabor will think of me and what I did to him and why I did it every time he looks in a mirror or catches someone staring.
“You have to go,” Conner says. “You need to go now. Do you know where to start looking?”
I force my mind to quiet so I can actually think. Tabor doesn't work with other people. He doesn't build relationships or partnerships. He's cold. Calculated. But he's also arrogant. He considers himself to be the biggest and meanest asshole who ever lived. He's probably right, but that kind of arrogance leaves plenty of room for mistakes and stupidity no matter how calculated a person is. I'm owed favors by a few other people in this area. I'll know where he is by tonight, hopefully sooner.
“Can he stay here?”
“Of course, man. Don't even worry about it.”
I raise my brows. “Your girlfriend won't mind?”
“Listen, Wyatt. We'll be lucky if she doesn't go after Tabor herself after I tell her he's got Larken. She'll take care of this guy out of spite. Actually, I'm going to ask her to take care of him. It's going to be all I can do to keep her from going for Adrian. She hates his ass anyway.”
“Shaun,” I tell him. “That's his name.”
“Okay. You really have to go. The longer he has her …”
“I know.”