Chapter Twenty
Caitlin
Consciousness came back in groggy snippets. The pain in my head. My screaming wrist. The cold, hard cement beneath my cheek.
I just lay there, heart a sluggish thud, body nothing but sparks of pain, for a long second.
Then it came rushing back.
My father in my apartment. The plan for the cabin. The trip to the garage. Watching my father pull away.
Then something striking me on the back of the head.
Had something come loose from the ceiling?
I reached back, feeling the sticky wetness of blood, my stomach lurching hard enough for me to gag.
Panic surged through my system too quickly to fight.
My heartbeat thundered in my chest, wrists, and neck.
My blood raced through my veins so fast I swore I could track it from my heart through each of my limbs.
My face and fingers felt tingly, and there was a cold sweat spreading across every inch of skin.
A head injury.
Was that going to mean surgery? Half my head shaved and stitched back together? Would I remember how to read and write? Would I have to learn fine motor skills all over again?
I sucked in a shaky breath that ended in a small sob as I tried to push myself up.
I had to get my purse so I could call for help.
I wasn’t even sure how the hell it could have come off my shoulder in the fall if I’d been bracing myself for impact.
“She’s awake,” a female voice said, breaking through some of my anxiety.
And all I could think was: good. Someone likely already called for an ambulance. An EMT would load me onto a stretcher and reassure me that my brains weren’t leaking out all over.
“Where the fuck are they?” a man growled, and I heard items hitting the ground. Like something was being dumped out.
Like my purse was being dumped.
“Check her,” the voice demanded.
Something shot up my spine, sharp enough to force me to focus.
Because I knew that voice.
The man, not the woman.
A hand slipped down my butt pocket, making me yelp and whip around and stare up at the person feeling me up.
Not the man.
A woman.
No.
No.
I was choking on my heart as I looked up at a round face, blue eyes, and black hair.
My father’s girlfriend.
“Hurry up,” the man demanded.
The woman reached toward my front pockets as my gaze tracked the voice until I found it.
Cold sliced through my heart, chilling me from the inside out.
Because, no.
Not him.
Not the only other person who served as a family member to me.
Not Ira.
Ira… and my father’s girlfriend.
Working together.
Searching me for… something.
Likely striking me on the back of the head, knocking me down, making me do something even worse to my already-aching wrist.
Ira.
Who made me chicken noodle soup from scratch when I caught the ick that my father had, the one that sent us to his couch and guest room.
Ira, who once tied balloons to every tractor in the yard for my birthday.
Ira, who let me use his home address to get a library card so I could get free e-books when I had no actual permanent residence.
He was like an uncle.
But now, now he was hurting me.
For what?
Realization dawned slowly.
My father said he’d been mixed up with some bad people. Knowing what I knew about his deal with the Costas, I’d filled in the blanks with them.
What if it hadn’t been them at all he’d been running from?
What if it was Ira and his girlfriend?
What if Gavino was innocent in all this?
The hope that built in my chest would have been embarrassing if anyone else could see it.
“Stop!” I snapped, slapping the woman with my good hand as her hand went to my chest.
“They have to be on her somewhere,” Ira growled. “He would have given them to her, knowing we would never suspect her.”
Gave what to me?
“Ira, I don’t like this. Someone could come by. They’re probably in her apartment somewhere.”
“No. She loses things too easily. He would have given them to her in something she carried all the time. Where are they?”
Ira lunged forward, grabbing me by the front of my shirt, lifting me up off the ground.
“What?” I asked, my belly dropping to my feet.
“Don’t play dumb. He gave them to you. Where are they?”
“If you tell me—” I started.
I didn’t even get a chance to brace before I felt his fist colliding with my face.
The impact started at a central spot on my cheek but spread outward like a crack in glass until I felt it in my nose, teeth, eye, and jaw.
Tears sprang to my eyes, flooding down my cheek before I could even try to blink them away.
“You’re just making this worse for yourself,” Ira said, dropping me back down. I had just enough presence of mind to tuck my chin to my chest so the impact didn’t make the head wound situation any more horrific than it already was.
“Ira, I think I hear someone,” the woman said, glancing back over her shoulder.
Traitorous bitch, I shouted mentally.
My poor father.
Finally took a chance on someone after so many years only to find out she wasn’t loyal to him anymore. If she ever had been.
“Where are the keys?” Ira snarled.
“I don’t—”
The kick came out of nowhere, making me gasp and groan.
“Seriously, Ira…”
“Then go!” Ira shouted.
The woman looked back at me, turned, and ran.
“Give me the fucking keys to the units!”
I curled in tight, trying to block myself from more blows.
But it was right then that I heard what the woman heard: a man and a woman approaching, voices raised, playful. Oblivious.
I didn’t stop to think.
I sucked in a breath and screamed.
Ira straightened, eyes going wide.
“What’s going on?” the man yelled, footsteps inching closer.
Ira had no choice but to turn and run.
“Hey!” the man yelled when he finally came upon me.
“Don’t chase him,” the woman begged.
“Are you okay?” he asked, inching closer to me.
“I’m going to call the police.”
“No!” I yelped, the sound of my own voice slicing through my brain, making my growing headache worsen. “No. I’m okay.”
“You’re bleeding,” the woman said, inching closer.
“I’m okay,” I insisted again, crawling over to the spilled contents of my purse and frantically tossing it all inside.
“Really, I think you need an ambulance,” the man said.
“I’m okay.”
I was so far from okay that my lower lip wouldn’t stop trembling.
But I clutched my bag to my chest, rushed past them, and fled the garage.
I didn’t need the police.
I didn’t even want the hospital, despite everything hurting more with each passing moment.
I just wanted Gav.
That was all I could think of.
Getting to him.
Head ducked to ignore any looks from strangers as I walked down the street, I fumbled in my bag, shuffling through my various items. But my phone wasn’t there.
I couldn’t call Gav.
I choked back a sob, trying to hold it together.
I wasn’t that far from his place.
I could tolerate the looks and the pain just a little longer if it meant that when I got there, I could feel Gav’s arms around me. Could hear him reassuring me that I was going to be okay, that he was going to take care of me.
That was all I could focus on as a migraine knifed through my skull, making the setting sun feel like it was carving its way into my brain.
My stomach ached.
My wrist throbbed.
My face was like a deep, aching bruise.
But I managed to keep myself walking all the way to his front door, where I stabbed my finger into Gav’s intercom. To no avail.
Desperation had me hitting half a dozen other units and, finally, the door unlocked.
I surged inside, cursing Gav’s antisocial ways as I fell against the wall in the elevator. My legs were starting to shake.
The relief of being close to help had the adrenaline flowing away, leaving nothing but the anxious, unsteady aftermath.
I threw out my good arm to use the wall for support as I crept along the hallway toward Gav’s apartment door.
Where I knocked.
And knocked.
And called out to him.
But no one came.
On a cry, I turned and slid down the wall, too exhausted, too in pain, to do anything but sit on the floor, legs pulled to my chest, body curled forward, and cry.
I don’t know how long I sat there just like that, my mind shooting off in a million different directions. None of them leading anywhere good.
My father.
His girlfriend.
Ira.
The Costas.
I couldn’t imagine a single situation where my father, me, and Gav could walk off into the sunset together. A happy, strange, safe family.
Because who was Ira, really?
Was he working with someone worse than the Costas?
How was my father in trouble with them?
Was there some way to just… make everyone happy?
Could Gavino and his Family help me somehow? Or were we on our own? Were things too new with him to ask for something this big?
The more my thoughts turned to Gav, the harder my sobs started to rack my body, big silent heaves so the neighbors didn’t freak out and call the cops.
Maybe what I needed to do was get up, get myself cleaned up, find a phone, and call my father.
Beg him to stop driving, to wait for me.
Then catch a train and a car and meet him.
Go to the cabin. Hide out until I didn’t feel so raw—physically and emotionally—and could think through this whole thing clearly.
I was about to unfold and try to force my body off the floor when I heard the hiss of the door to the stairwell, then the airy click as it closed again.
Footsteps started toward me.
Then stopped.
It could have been any of the neighbors.
There was no reason to think it was Gav.
But my heart fluttered anyway.
“Caitlin?”
Somehow, the soft way he said that had the dam breaking again, tears flooded down my cheeks as a pathetic whimper escaped me.
“Caitlin, what’s going on?” he asked, coming closer. “Look at me,” he demanded.
I sniffled and glanced upward.
He was wearing a pair of black basketball shorts, a black ribbed tank, and sneakers. That’s where he’d been. In the building’s gym.
I saw the emotions play across his features.
The shock.
The concern.
The anger that manifested in a muscle ticking in his jaw.
“What happened? Who did this to you?”
All I could manage was another cry.
“Okay. It’s okay,” he murmured as he came closer, pausing to unlock and open the door, then leaned down to reach for me. “I’ll take care of it. Whatever it is. I just need to get you inside and look you over. Okay?”
He didn’t wait for an answer as he lifted me into his arms, cradling me tightly to him, then carrying me across the threshold.
He lowered me down into a dining room chair and started to straighten. But froze when he felt something wet on his bare shoulder.
“Cait, where is this coming from?” he asked, tone careful.
“My head,” I told him.
That made him tighten all the more.
But he must have seen the way I tensed at his reaction because he paused, took a deep breath, nodded, then gave me a tight smile.
“That’s all right. We’re going to get you all fixed up. I have it from here.”
But would he, when he knew the whole truth?
I guess only time would tell.