Chapter nine #2
“Mantis,” he said, already moving. His brother was ahead of him, opening the kitchen door to the lodge room.
“Bring me a blanket,” he said, striding across the wide-plank floors to the closest sofa.
By the time he lowered her down, gently laying her head on a pillow, Mantis had a wool throw ready to spread over her.
“Call the doctor,” he said, pulling a chair over and taking a seat by her side, her hand clasped between his.
Shifting his fingers, he felt her pulse.
Still strong and steady. Steadier than his.
Then feeling her forehead, he tested it for heat.
No fever. For whatever reason, she’d fainted, but at least she didn’t appear gravely ill.
That knowledge eased a tiny fraction of his anxiety, but not enough for him to let go of her.
“Kara’s on her way,” Mantis said. Kara Warwick was an ER doctor at the local hospital and Mantis’s sister-in-law. Although she’d been helping the Falcons long before she married Charley’s brother or Mantis married Charley.
Holding the back of Amber’s hand to his cheek, he willed her to wake up as he watched the rise and fall of her chest. Tension coiled through his body, wanting to pull her worries, her concerns, off her shoulders and onto his.
Footsteps drew his attention, and his gaze flickered up as Hawkeye entered the room. Not a doctor, but damn close.
“She passed out,” Juan said. “Looking at the pictures, she just crumpled.”
Hawkeye didn’t even try to move him from Amber’s side. Working around him, he pulled out his stethoscope and set it over her heart.
“Shock can sometimes do that,” he said.
“The only thing different in that picture was the baby,” he said, shooting Mantis an unspoken question. Mantis nodded and left, returning a few seconds later carrying the photo. Keeping hold of Amber’s hand, he leaned back and took the image from his brother.
The little girl looked around a year, maybe a little older. The drone managed to get a decent close-up, and he could see two teeth as she smiled. One dimple dipped in her right cheek, and her dark eyes were ringed with long black lashes. A mop of loose brown curls fell to just below her chin.
“What the fuck,” Juan said.
“What?” Mantis asked as Hawkeye lifted Amber’s lids and flashed a light in them.
“Tell me who this baby is a spitting image of?” he asked, handing the picture back. Even Hawkeye straightened and turned his attention to the picture.
“Spencer?”
“Amber,” he said, whipping his attention back to her. “Are you okay?” he asked, stroking his hand over her forehead and into her hair.
Still unfocused, her gaze tried to hold his. Movement behind him pulled her attention to his brothers, though. Her vacant stare sharpened, and he didn’t have to look to know she’d seen the photo again. Or the back of it anyway.
“Amber?” His hand tightened on hers, desperate to pull her focus away from the picture.
She swallowed. “Oh god, I’m going to be sick.” She lurched up, but he caught her, lifting her into her arms and rushing to the nearest bathroom. They barely made it through the door when she pushed out of his arms, stumbled to the toilet, sank to her knees, and vomited.
He knelt beside her, holding her hair, stroking her back.
“You don’t need to be here,” she said between bouts.
“I do,” he said, reaching for a towel and handing it to her.
Rather than wipe her mouth, she held it over her eyes as she breathed deeply.
Suddenly, she tossed it aside and purged her stomach again.
Not that there was anything left in it; she hadn’t even had her coffee before looking at the photos.
Tears fell from her face as her body rebelled.
He couldn’t help but wonder if they were more than the usual ones that accompanied being sick.
When she dropped her head, resting it on her arms, he set a kiss on her shoulder, then rose, flushing the toilet as he did. After pouring her a glass of water and a cap of mouthwash he found in the cabinet, he rejoined her on the floor.
He handed her both, and she rinsed her mouth, spat, then, with a shaky hand, reached up and flushed the toilet again.
“Do you want to stay here?” he asked.
More tears fell, sending ripples through the water in the toilet. With a shake of her head, she straightened away, then sat on the floor, her back to the wall, her eyes closed. Desolation written on every inch of her face.
Shifting, he took a seat beside her, his shoulder close enough to brush hers, but not so close as to crowd her.
She kept her eyes closed, breathing deeply, tears still leaking from her eyes. He reached over and grabbed the hand towel, then set it in her hand. Rather than wipe her cheeks, her fingers curled around it, gripping the soft cotton until her knuckles went white.
Abruptly, she dropped the cloth into her lap and blindly reached for him. In a flash, his hand found hers. Her fingers grasped his. Her every move thick and heavy with desperation.
“The last time Anthony beat me, I was nearly seven months pregnant,” she said.
“It wasn’t planned. He didn’t want kids.
” She paused. “But I managed to keep it a secret. I’m tall and it…
hid things. It helped that by then, he wasn’t much interested in me.
Not in that way. He was having an affair with someone.
I don’t know who and didn’t care.” Her eyes opened, but they remained fixed on the opposite wall.
“I was preparing to leave. I wouldn’t raise a child in that house.
But he found out. He always found out.” She paused and when she continued, her voice sounded almost not hers.
“I was mostly unconscious for six days after that…incident.” She closed her eyes again and took a deep breath.
Tears streamed down her face in a never-ending release of pain.
“When I woke, he told me the baby died. A boy. He even showed me a death certificate.”
Juan would kill the man. Anthony Ely did not deserve to live. If that made him the kind of vigilante he vowed never to be, so be it.
“He lied, Spencer,” she said, giving voice to what they both knew. “He lied, and the little girl in those pictures is my baby.”