Chapter 19
CATCHER
Sound comes back before sight, not clean or all at once.
It comes in broken pieces, sirens muffled through metal walls, voices overlapping, the hard rattle of wheels over uneven pavement, something plastic crinkling near my ear, and a sharp beeping sound that digs straight into the center of my skull and every breath tastes like blood.
My body jerks before my brain catches up. A hand presses down on my shoulder, and I swing, or try to. My arm doesn’t move right. Pain explodes through my ribs, hot and blinding, and the world tilts under me.
“Shit. Catcher, calm the fuck down.”
That voice cuts through the fog.
Riggs.
My eyes crack open, but everything is blurred at the edges, and light stabs into my skull. Faces blur above me. An EMT leans over my chest, one hand braced against me while the other reaches for something near my arm. The fluorescent glare makes my stomach pitch.
Instinct comes first—fight… get up… find the threat—and I shove against the strap across my chest, muscles firing wrong, pain tearing through my side as I try to sit up.
“Hold him,” someone snaps.
“Don’t,” Riggs growls, sharp enough that even semiconscious, I hear the command in it. “You put your hands on him wrong, he’ll break yours without knowing he’s doing it.”
“Then tell him to stop moving,” the paramedic barks.
Riggs leans into my line of sight, face hard, eyes locked on mine. “Catcher,” he says, voice lower now, controlled. “Let them do their damn jobs.”
My breath saws in and out as the ambulance hits a bump, and pain slams through my head so hard my stomach rolls.
Then everything comes back to me—Ruby’s car, the SUV, glass, boots, blood, a man saying ‘we fucked with the wrong people,’ the shot.
My memory doesn’t come back clean. It comes back jagged, all sharp edges and missing pieces, enough to cut me open without giving me anything useful to hold on to.
My heart starts hammering so hard it drowns out the monitor. “Ruby.” Her name tears out of me, rough and broken.
Riggs’ expression changes. Not much, but enough that I see it, and something cold opens inside me, the kind of cold that makes a man dangerous. I try to sit up again, but Riggs plants a hand in the center of my chest, stopping me before I rip something loose. “She’s alive.”
The words hit first.
I drag in a breath that hurts like hell.
“Where?”
“Transported to the hospital.”
My swollen eyes cut to him as much as they can. One side of my face feels thick, tight, already closing in from the beating. My head pounds as if someone is still swinging that metal pipe against my skull. “What happened?”
Riggs’ jaw tightens. “Ruby was roughed up pretty bad.”
The inside of me goes still. The kind of still that comes right before something gets killed.
“Could’ve been worse,” he continues, voice clipped. “Whoever hit you took off when the school security officer rushed out. He called the law. Didn’t see you right away. Found Ruby first.”
My hands curl into fists against the stretcher. I didn’t stop them, and she walked into the violence because I didn’t stay awake long enough to keep myself between her and it.
Riggs doesn’t look away from me. “Don’t let this shit cloud your head,” he says. “Not right now.”
I stare at him through blood, pain, and the kind of rage that doesn’t have a place to go. “I didn’t stop it.”
“You got blindsided,” he says, voice sharpening. “And still managed to drop one of them.”
“All I care about…” I growl, “… is getting to Ruby.”
Riggs holds my stare. “That’s where we’re going, brother.”
The ambulance slows hard as we turn, and my stomach lurches.
The paramedic curses when I shift again. “Sir, you need to remain still.”
I ignore him.
The second the ambulance stops, and the back doors swing open, bright hospital lights flood in, and all I can think is that Ruby is somewhere inside. I’m already moving before common sense gets a vote.
“Shit,” the paramedic snaps.
I tear at the strap across my chest. Riggs says my name like a warning, but I’m past hearing anything when I swing my legs off the stretcher.
The world spins hard, and the pavement jumps under me when my boots hit.
For one bad second, my knees threaten to fold.
Pain detonates in my skull, throbbing so deep my vision goes black at the edges.
I lock my jaw and ride it out because dropping is not an option.
“Catcher,” Riggs snaps.
I stagger one step, then another, forcing my body to remember what it’s built for, moving, fighting, getting to her.
“Sir, you cannot walk in like this,” the EMT argues behind me. “You need an evaluation. You have a possible concussion, lacerations…”
I don’t stop, but I do stop listening.
The ER doors slide open, and the noise hits me—phones ringing, shoes squeaking over polished floors, a kid crying somewhere, nurses talking too fast, the antiseptic bite of hospital air crawling up my nose.
Air conditioning skims over sweat and blood, turning my skin cold in all the wrong places.
I hate hospitals. They reek of fear people try to clean up with bleach.
Security sees me the second I come in. Probably because I look like hell dragged itself through a windshield and kept walking with blood down my face, one eye swollen shut, and my shirt torn.
My gun is gone, probably taken by law or medics, but I don’t need a weapon for what I’m carrying in my chest.
“Sir,” the guard says, stepping in front of me. “You need to check in.”
“Move.”
He puts a hand out—wrong choice. My body shifts before my head decides it should, shoulder turning, hand coming up, ready to put him through the nearest damn wall.
Riggs gets between us fast. “Stand down,” he orders, not loud enough to scare the whole room, but sharp enough to cut through whatever tunnel I’m trapped in.
I freeze. Barely. Every muscle in me is still pointed forward, still ready to hit, still measuring the distance between my fist and the guard’s jaw.
But Riggs is the one man who can plant himself in my path and make me think before I spill blood where it doesn’t belong.
Riggs steps closer, putting himself right in my face. “Look at me.” I don’t. “Catcher.” That tone. My eyes lock on his. “You lay hands on hospital security, you end up in cuffs instead of at her side,” he says. “Use your fuckin’ head.”
“My head’s busted open.”
“Then use what’s left.”
Behind him, the nurse at the desk stands, eyes wide. “You can’t go back there,” she says. “Sir, you need to be seen.”
“I need Ruby.” Her name comes out like a threat and a prayer.
The nurse blinks. “Ruby who?”
I open my mouth, but my fucking head is throbbing, and I can’t think straight.
Riggs gives it to her. “Ruby Starling,” he says.
The nurse checks something on the screen.
Before she can answer, I hear movement behind me.
More boots. More voices. I turn enough to see my brothers and their women.
London’s face is pale and furious. Promise stands close, one hand pressed to her mouth.
Then I see Ruby’s parents. Her mother is folded into her father’s arms, shaking in that silent way that’s worse than sobbing.
Her father’s face looks carved out of grief and rage, one arm wrapped around his wife while his eyes stay fixed on the double doors leading to the back.
My gut twists. I made that man a promise. I said I’d do whatever it took. And now his daughter is behind those doors because I failed to keep standing.
Her father sees me. For a second, neither of us speaks. His eyes travel over the blood, the swelling, the way I’m barely keeping my balance. He doesn’t blame me out loud. He doesn’t have to. I’m already doing it enough for both of us.
The doors behind the nurses’ station open, and a doctor steps out, papers in hand, his expression distracted until he nearly runs into the wall of people waiting.
“Ruby Starling’s family?”
Her parents move first. “We’re her parents,” her father says, voice tight. “Is my daughter okay?”
The doctor’s gaze flicks over everyone, then me. He takes in my face, the blood on my shirt, the fact I’m standing there looking as if I crawled out of a wreck and might still choose violence if he wastes time.
“I need to speak with only Ms. Starling’s family,” he says carefully.
“We are her family,” I say. The words leave me before I think, and I don’t take them back.
The doctor looks at me, then back at Ruby’s parents. Her father doesn’t even hesitate. “Tell all of us if my daughter is okay.”
“She’s stable. She has a fractured wrist, a mild concussion, and several significant contusions. We’re going to keep her overnight for observation, but she’s conscious off and on, and her scans don’t show internal bleeding.”
Ruby’s mother sobs once, a hand flying to her mouth, but enough relief breaks through to keep her standing.
“We’re more concerned about monitoring her due to the pregnancy, but at this time, both Ruby and the baby appear to be okay. She needs rest, minimal stress, and she needs to stay off her feet for a while.”
The room keeps moving. Machines beep somewhere. A phone rings. Someone laughs down the hall like the world didn’t just split open at my feet.
But inside me, nothing moves. The baby?
The words don’t make sense at first. They hit, but they don’t land.
Then they do. Hard. The floor under me disappears, or maybe it rises too fast. I don’t know.
My ears ring again, but this time it isn’t from the hit to my head.
It feels like the whole damn room is breathing wrong, as if the walls are pulling in and out around me.
Sweat breaks cold down my spine under the dried blood.
Ruby’s mother whispers, “Baby?”
Her father turns toward the doctor. “She’s pregnant?”
The doctor’s face shifts, just a little, realizing he’s stepped into something he wasn’t supposed to uncover.
My chest locks.
I can’t pull air in.