19. Moore
Moore
Jacob
"Where is Summer?"
The words scrape out of him, half-drowned in his own breathing, shredded by whatever they pumped into him to keep him under. And the second her name leaves his mouth, everything in me pulls wire-tight. He doesn't get to lie in that bed with her name in his mouth like he has some claim to it.
"Where's... is… she?" His eyes drift, snap back, drift again—still dragging themselves up out of the sedation, still trying to work out where he is and why the first face waiting for him is mine.
He woke asking for her before he asked where he was. Whether that's because he wants to protect her, or because Jackson put him here to keep eyes on her, I don't much care.
"You tell me," I say, low enough that he has to work to hear it.
Then I stop talking and I watch him, because the mouth lies and the body doesn't. Confusion sits a beat longer than it should.
Fear shifts the breathing before it ever reaches the words.
His breath is coming too fast, his pupils still blown wide from the drugs, his pulse climbing the monitor while he stares at me, trying to read what I'm about to do to him.
I close my hand over his shoulder and grind my fingers down into the muscle.
He seizes, a broken sound tearing out of him, and tries to twist away before he remembers his ribs are already cracked and his body has stopped taking orders.
Good. Pain has a way of making men honest.
"You're the one who's been working with Jackson Moore."
His eyes snap to mine. "What?" The word catches in his throat. He shoves at the mattress, gets nowhere, drops back. "Where is she, man? Is she here?"
"No, she's not here." Adelaide's voice splinters around a sob before he can push it any further. "Moore has her. She... she traded herself for us."
The color drains out of his face.
"No—" He's fighting to get up before the word's even out, one arm buckling under him, ribs seizing, and he keeps trying anyway. "No... no, he can't have her—"
I plant a hand flat on his chest and slam him back into the mattress.
"Stay where the fuck you are."
The air punches out of him, and pain twists across his face—but it isn't the pain that catches me. It's the panic underneath it. Not the panic of a man who's just realized he's cornered. The panic of a man terrified for someone else.
"You don't understand," he gets out, faster now. "She can't be with him. He'll—"
"Tell me who the fuck you are." I already hate the answer coming.
"I... it doesn't matter right now. I need to—"
"Who the fuck are you." Constance, at the foot of the bed, fists balled so tight the knuckles have gone white. "And why are you helping Moore? You owe us that much, you lying son of a bitch."
His gaze moves between the three of us, hunting for a door that isn't there. Then it drops to the blanket twisted around his waist, and when he finally speaks it's barely more than a whisper.
"My name is Kurt." His throat works around the next word like it's made of broken glass. "...Moore."
Everything inside me goes white.
Not red. Not black. White.
"Moore?" My own voice doesn't sound like mine. Then I laugh—one flat bark, then another—because nothing in this room is funny, and somewhere in the last ten seconds reality quietly stopped making any kind of sense.
"You're related to that fucker?" Constance snaps.
I'm already moving.
I take the front of his gown in both fists and haul him clean out of the bed. The cannula rips free of his hand, the monitors erupt, and he hits the floor folded around his own cracked ribs. The sound he makes doesn't slow me down by an inch.
"Jacob—stop! Jacob!" Tamara's voice comes from somewhere behind me. I barely hear it under the noise going off inside my own skull.
Kurt drags himself up onto one elbow, every inch of it costing him, and forces his eyes back to mine.
"Jackson," he rasps. His eyes screw shut. "He's... my—" He drags it up out of himself. "My brother."
The room falls away.
Brother. Jackson Moore's fucking brother.
I came in here braced for an associate. A lieutenant. One of the animals who move women in and out of Rivers Ridge for him. I'd have believed almost anything sooner than blood.
And right behind it comes another face—the busker with the guitar. Benny. The one Summer used to smile at like he was the only safe thing for a hundred miles. I spent six months hating him for wanting her, and never once thought to ask the only question that mattered: what he actually was.
"She can't be there," Kurt says from the floor. "You don't understand—"
I crouch, take a fistful of his hair, and drag his face up to mine.
"What he'll do?" My voice comes out flat—the voice I keep for men who aren't going to be a problem much longer. "What the fuck do you know about what he'll do? Tell me fucking everything before I start removing your body parts."
Something in him folds.
And then Summer's there in my head—that house, his hands in her hair, not one person left in the world standing between her and him—and whatever's been holding me together tears clean loose.
My fist is through the wall before I've decided to throw it. Plaster caves in. The skin splits across my knuckles. I pull back and drive it in again, leaving blood on the paint, because she's in that place right now, tonight, while I stand in a hospital room running my mouth.
The door bangs open behind me. Two guards.
"Sir, you need to—"
I turn on them, and they both freeze where they stand.
"Get." Blood drips from my knuckles to the floor. "The fuck. Out."
Neither of them moves.
I take one step. "If either of you motherfuckers comes near me right now, I will put you through that fucking wall."
One of them swallows hard. Then they're both backing toward the hall.
"Understood, Sheriff."
The door shuts behind them.
I brace my bloody hand against the wall and force air through my teeth until the room stops swimming. Behind me, Kurt coughs, wet and broken.
"You want to help her?" I don't turn around. My voice comes back cold. Dead. "Then start fucking talking."