16. Wake Up, Motherfucker
Wake Up, Motherfucker
The ghost in the bed keeps drifting in and out of consciousness like a fucking corpse refusing to decide whether it’s dead.
His eyes crack open every few minutes, unfocused and glassy beneath the fluorescent lighting, before rolling shut again almost immediately.
His lips move sometimes, barely twitching around sounds that don’t quite become words, and every second of it is scraping my nerves raw because I don’t have fucking time for this.
Summer doesn’t have time for this.
I shove a hand through my hair and pace the length of the room again before looking back toward Tamara. “I thought this shit was meant to speed things up.”
She barely glances up from the monitor beside him. “I never made any promises, Sheriff. It counteracts one of the drugs in his system, not all of them.”
I let out a rough breath through my nose.
Translation?
Wait.
My favorite fucking thing.
The walls feel closer than they did an hour ago, the ceiling lower, the stale hospital air pressing against my lungs every time I drag in a breath that never feels deep enough.
Heat clings to my skin beneath my shirt despite the relentless hum of the air conditioning, sweat gathering between my shoulder blades until the fabric sticks uncomfortably to my back.
What’s he doing to her right now?
A sudden commotion out in the corridor drags my attention away from the room.
Voices bleed through the door, overlapping with one another until one rises above the rest, cutting cleanly through the muffled chaos.
I don't catch the words at first, but I recognize the voice long before my brain processes what she's actually saying.
"Listen," she says, with the kind of confidence that makes me pity whoever's standing in her way, "I appreciate what you do, and I have no doubt you are an amazing security guard, but if you don't let me past, sir, I will kick you directly in the balls."
Yeah.
That’s definitely Constance.
Despite everything sitting like concrete on my chest, the corner of my mouth threatens to lift. Only Constance could start a fight with hospital security while the rest of the world is falling apart. I push away from the wall and make for the door just as the guard's patience finally gives out.
"Ma'am, you can't just—"
I pull the door open before he has the chance to finish.
"Let them pass."
The guard turns, irritation already written across his face as he starts, "Who do you think you—" The rest dies in his throat the moment he properly looks at me. His Adam's apple bobs as he straightens instinctively. "Sheriff."
There it is.
The authority he'd been so eager to throw around a second ago disappears almost instantly, replaced by the awkward uncertainty of someone realizing they've picked the wrong person to challenge.
I hold his gaze for another beat before stepping aside.
Constance doesn't waste the invitation. She brushes past him without so much as a glance, moving through the doorway like the corridor belongs to her.
Adelaide follows close behind, her movements slower, shoulders drawn tight, the color drained from her face.
The second her eyes find mine, whatever composure she's been clinging to gives way.
Her expression folds in on itself, her lip trembling as tears gather, and the knot already cinched around my chest pulls impossibly tighter.
"Oh, Jacob."
Before I can make sense of the look on Adelaide's face, she's closing the distance between us, her arms wrapping around my neck with enough force to steal the air from my lungs.
Every muscle in my body locks. For a second, I don't move at all.
I don't know where my hands are supposed to go.
Whether I should return it or step away.
The instinct to create distance wars with the knowledge that shoving away a woman who's barely holding herself together would make me an even bigger bastard than I already feel.
So I settle for neither. My arms hover awkwardly at my sides while she clings to me, her fingers bunching the fabric at the back of my shirt as though I'm the only thing stopping the ground from disappearing beneath her feet.
It's over almost as quickly as it begins.
She pulls back, swiping hastily beneath eyes already shining with tears before she has the chance to lose them completely. "Please tell me there's a plan," she says, the words tumbling over one another. "Please tell me you know where she is."
"I have a broad idea."
Broad being the operative fucking word.
I pull my phone from my pocket and unlock it, the satellite map open from the hundredth time I've stared at it tonight. I hold it out between us.
"It looks like wasteland, but there's something out there. The butler called it Rivers Ridge." My eyes drop back to the map, tracing the empty stretch of land that refuses to give me anything useful. "He said that's where she'll be."
Adelaide studies the screen in silence while Constance steps in beside her, leaning over her shoulder. Neither of them speaks, both searching the map as if the answer might suddenly reveal itself.
Then Constance looks up at me. "So why the fuck are you still here?"
There's genuine disbelief in her voice. I don't blame her. If our positions were reversed, I'd be asking the exact same question.
"I know nothing about the layout," I say, the words coming out harder than I intend.
I rake a hand over my face before forcing myself to keep going.
"I don't know the entry points, the exits, how many men are inside, where they're positioned, what security they're running.
We storm that place blind, Jackson will have her gone before we even make it through the fucking gates.
" Or worse. The thought wedges itself beneath my ribs before I can stop it.
"He'll kill her." The words scrape their way out of my throat, leaving a bitter taste behind that refuses to disappear.
"He can't know we know where she is. The second he suspects we're coming, everything changes. "
Constance blows out a slow breath, dragging both hands back through her hair before dropping them onto her hips. Every part of her is screaming to act, to move, to do something, and I can see the fight she's having with herself as logic gradually forces its way to the front.
"Okay," she mutters eventually. "Fine. I get it."
I don't think she does. Not completely.
"What can we do?"
I turn my attention back to the hospital bed, to the man lying there with a machine beeping every time his heart beats. The rise and fall of his chest is infuriatingly steady.
"Nothing," I say quietly. "Not until this son of a bitch wakes up." I let that sit for a beat. "Then I'll carve every piece of intel he's got out of him."
"There has to be something," Adelaide says, desperation creeping into every word.
"With all due respect, Jacob," Constance says, stepping closer, "Summer is our best friend. We can't just stand here waiting."
Before I can answer, her attention catches on the woman standing beside the monitors. She stills. Her eyes sweep over Tamara from head to toe before narrowing with open suspicion. "Hold up." She points toward her. "Who the fuck are you?"
Tamara straightens from where she'd been checking the monitors.
"I'm Dr. Tamara Whittingham. I'm helping bring him around."
Constance's gaze slides back to me with concern written plainly across her face.
"You told her…everything?”
"Yes."
She hesitates.
"And you trust her?"
"Yes." The answer leaves my mouth before I've even thought about it.
She opens her mouth like she's about to ask something else.
"Don't."
Her lips press together, and after a beat, she nods.
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch Tamara looking at me. It's only for a second, but the surprise is there all the same, flickering across her face before she schools it into something unreadable.
Before anyone can say another word, the piece of shit on the bed lets out a low sound from somewhere deep in his chest. Every muscle in my body goes taut as my attention snaps to the bed.
"... Sss..." His face tightens against the pillow, brows drawing together as though whatever he's seeing is happening somewhere far beyond the hospital room. "... Summer..."
Something inside me tears loose. The rush of rage is so sudden, so complete, that it blots everything else out.
The monitors disappear. The voices disappear.
All I can hear is the blood pounding through my ears as my hand closes around the first solid object within reach.
Cold steel. The kidney dish comes off the tray before I even realize I've picked it up.
I can already feel the impact reverberating up my arm.
Hear the crack of metal against bone. See the blood spreading across the white pillowcase as I bring it down again. And again. And again.
"Jacob."
The sound of my name cuts clean through the violence flooding my head.
I blink.
Adelaide's hand has settled lightly against my shoulder, barely enough pressure to register, but enough to stop me tipping over whatever edge I'd been standing on.
"We need the information," she says quietly. "Remember?”
I look at her. The fury loosens its grip, leaving room for something else. Not calm. Not comfort. Clarity. The reminder of why that bastard is still breathing. A muscle flexes in my jaw. I lower the tray onto the cart with a crash loud enough to make everyone flinch.
"Let me try," Adelaide says.
She steps forward cautiously, reaching for the man's hand with the same care she'd probably use around a frightened animal.
"Hey," she says, giving it a gentle squeeze. "Wake up."
Constance snorts. One look at her tells me she's already decided that's a waste of time. She strides past Adelaide without hesitation and plants a slap across his face hard enough to send his head rolling across the pillow.
"Wake up, motherfucker."
Against every expectation, the corner of my mouth betrays me. For the first time tonight, I almost laugh.
"Stop," Tamara says, taking a step forward. "He's a patient. You can't—"
Constance rounds on her so quickly the movement steals the rest of the sentence from Tamara's mouth.
"Unless your best friend has been kidnapped by a murdering, sex-trafficking piece of shit and one of his cronies is lying in front of you, don't tell me what I can and can't do."
Tamara opens her mouth, thinks better of it, and closes it again. Honestly… Fair enough.
I step closer to the bed slowly, wanting my face to be the first thing this bastard sees when he properly wakes up.
My knuckles press hard into his sternum right over the bruised center of his chest hard enough to grind straight through bone.
Hard enough to remind him exactly who the fuck beat him half to death.
He yelps violently and his eyes fly open immediately. Disoriented. Panicked.
Then they land on me. Recognition floods his face instantly, and fear follows right behind it.
I lean down close enough that he can probably smell the violence on me.
“Summer isn’t here.”