39. Travis
39
TRAVIS
T ravis signed over the patient to the nurse at the hospital with a knot in his stomach the size of a boulder.
“Thanks,” the male nurse said solemnly as he took the tablet from Travis. The man couldn’t even meet his eyes. How could anyone carry on a decent conversation after what they’d witnessed?
His partner, Matt, walked around the corner in the gray hallway just as Travis stepped out of the triage room. The older man wore the same defeated expression as he had since they entered the hospital.
There wasn’t anything glamorous about their job. They met people at their worst, and sometimes, they never even got to introduce themselves.
That had been the case today when they’d been called to a residence along with local law enforcement for a domestic disturbance.
An adult female was in critical condition after a heroin overdose, but there was a chance she’d make it.
The adult male was pronounced dead on the scene. Travis wasn’t an investigator, but all signs pointed to suicide.
Neither of those cases were the cause of the somber mood amongst the medical professionals. It was the little boy that had everyone choked up.
Matt lifted his chin as he approached Travis. “Are you ready to head out?”
“Yeah.” Every minute they stayed at the hospital offered more chances they’d hear the bad news about the boy. With a dead dad and a drug addict for a mother, what chance did the kid have if he did survive the night?
Matt took the driver’s seat in the ambulance, and Travis settled into the passenger seat for the long trip back to Blackwater.
The sun was too bright. The air was too crisp and clean. None of it reflected the storm swirling inside him. A defenseless little boy was fighting for his life, and Travis had the luxury of enjoying a perfectly good day.
He closed his eyes and prayed. When the darkness threatened to strangle him, prayer was the only thing that settled his nerves. He’d done all he physically could for the boy, but he could still ask God to heal the kid, or at least guide the medical professionals trying to help him.
“It’s out of our hands,” Matt said after they’d driven for a while.
Travis lifted his chin. “I know.” That fact didn’t make the bitter pill any easier to swallow.
The phone in his chest pocket vibrated and he pulled it out. The screen was filled with notifications of missed calls and messages.
Shoot. How long had it been since he’d checked his phone? Hours. They’d been on the nightmare call for a while, and it had been his sole focus.
He scanned the notifications for anything from Bella or Nathan. Nothing.
The relief was short-lived when he read the other messages.
Asa: Call me.
Anna: Travis! Call me ASAP.
Camille: Don’t worry. I’m with her.
The cause for alarm definitely involved Bella, but none of the messages were detailed enough to tell him what was going on.
“What’s wrong?” Matt asked.
“I don’t know yet, but I might need you to drive faster,” Travis said as he pressed the button to call Asa.
His friend answered on the second ring. “Officer Scott.”
“What happened? Is she okay?” The words tore through his throat like jagged rocks, and his lungs tightened.
“Bella is at the station. She’s under investigation.”
“For what?” Travis spat.
“What do you know about Justin White?” Asa asked.
Travis’s hand clenched into a fist. “I don’t have a clue who that is. Tell me about Bella.”
“What do you know about his alias, Gunner?”
No. He couldn’t have found her. Travis promised to protect her. Nathan was with her. The man knew how to do his job.
“You know everything I know. He was Bella’s ex–the VP of the Iron Fist MC,” Travis stated. “What did he do? Did he find her?”
Asa let out a long huff. “Man, I’m sorry. Everything got complicated today.”
“Spit it out!” Travis demanded, not trying to restrain the frustration burning a hole in his chest any longer.
“We have Bella at the station. She’s being questioned about the alleged murder of Justin White.”
Murder. The single word kicked Travis in the chest, stealing what little air he had left in his lungs.
“If she killed him, it was self-defense. He deserved it.” That was one thing Travis would hang his hat on. Bella wouldn’t hurt a fly.
There wasn’t any emotion for Gunner in Travis’s tone. He’d practically wished for the guy to disappear as Bella worried over the last few months.
“From what Bella is saying, he gave her plenty of reasons.”
“How is she? Is she okay? Did he hurt her?”
“It wasn’t today. It was four months ago,” Asa clarified.
Travis stared out the windshield of the ambulance, not seeing anything. All the fight got kicked out of him in that one blow. “She killed him before we found her?”
“From what she’s saying. From the way she tells it, it’s loosely self-defense at best.”
Travis’s skin heated, and he swiped at the back of his neck where old sweat from his attempts to save the little boy had turned sticky again.
“You’re saying she just killed him?”
“I’m saying it sounds like a premeditated murder with plenty of motive,” Asa said.
The hairs on the back of Travis’s neck stood on end. “You’re saying she’s a murderer?”
“I’m saying Camille is trying her best, but things don’t look good here. It doesn’t help that she was with Anna and her mother when she remembered all this.”
No, no, no. Catherine Harris was the last person he wanted around Bella when something like that happened. Attorney or not, the woman had a way of twisting someone’s weaknesses like a knife to the gut.
“Who else is with her?” Travis asked.
“Anna. But she isn’t Bella’s counsel, so she can’t be a part of the interrogation. The saving grace right now is that his murder or disappearance was never reported, so there’s no body.”
Murder. Bodies. This whole conversation was surreal, especially when it involved Bella. “How is that good?”
“Try not to worry. She has the best counsel, and we’re all here with her.”
There were a lot of holes in the narrative, but it would all make sense when he talked to Bella. “Asa, she’s pregnant. She’s been through a lot. She doesn’t need this kind of stress. Get her out of there until I get there.”
Asa let out a sigh. “I’ll try my best, but because of some of her allegations toward the MC, we’ve called in the local narcotics and vice units from Omaha. Lyric went to get Bella some dinner. I can call for a break when she gets back with the food.”
Matt glanced Travis’s way, and he pointed toward the road ahead, signaling for Matt to pick up the pace.
“Do whatever you have to do, but make sure she’s okay. I’ll be there in half an hour.”
Travis ended the call and dropped the phone. It tumbled onto the floorboard as he threaded his hands in his hair and pulled at the roots.
“What’s happening?” Matt asked.
“Bella remembered killing someone. Her ex.”
It sounded ridiculous. She balked at every violent thing she wrote about in her journals. She was meek and mild, nothing like a killer.
If she did it, there had to be a reason.
Matt exhaled a shaky breath. “Okay. Didn’t see that one coming.”
“Tell me about it. They can’t really think she killed him for no reason. It had to be self-defense.”
It had to be. Nothing else made sense. Could they really believe Bella was a cold-hearted killer? Gunner was her captor. Her abuser. Didn’t she have the right to fight back?
“Try to stay calm. We’ll figure out the truth, and so will the investigators. They wouldn’t punish her without plenty of evidence.”
“It sounds like she remembered it and turned herself in. Why would she do that? Why wouldn’t she wait until I could get there? We could have talked about it first.”
“If anyone can help her, it’s Camille. We both know she’ll take care of Bella.”
That was the only hope holding Travis together. He had to be strong and rational to help Bella. He had to have faith in the friends who had already gone out of their way to help her many times over.
That faith was waning. He wanted to storm in and save her from this nightmare. He wanted to take it all away. He wanted to hold her and remind her to stay strong.
Helplessness sparked beneath his skin, and he shuddered.
“You’re right. Just drive faster.”