Chapter 19
She’d gotten to the hospital as fast as she could, her crews were just minutes behind her.
Madison was doing her best to keep things together here.
This was Powell. And Powell’s family. People Madison had known for years.
She’d kissed all of Powell’s brothers at one time or another—and then had to rate them for the rest of their friends so they would know.
Mac and Alex and Brandt had been more than willing to help her out with that.
And Melissa, Powell’s mother, was wonderful.
She coddled all of Powell’s friends whenever their paths crossed.
Thank God Powell’s family had escaped without major injuries.
Madison didn’t know what else to do—so she supervised the second-shifters as they processed each of the Colesons who had been out there at the scene.
She couldn’t believe the things Hope’s family was saying.
But they had been out there tonight. And people were alive because of it.
She still wasn’t sure exactly what had happened.
Just bits and pieces from the people around her.
All she really knew now was that Heather, Daniel, and Gunnar had been seriously hurt tonight. So bad the chopper had been called in—to Hughes Heights, the most exclusive neighborhood in this part of the state.
There were far more questions than answers now.
It took too long. She felt it, they did. But eventually, they were upstairs in the surgical waiting room.
Powell was there, curled up in a chair. Next to her mom. Waiting.
They were all just waiting. But Powell looked okay. She looked okay. And that meant…her baby was probably okay, right?
Madison sank down next to Powell. Powell’s brother Alex was on his mother’s other side. Mac was pacing. Agitated. He was on his phone, giving updates or something. And angry. There was so much anger on his beautiful face.
There was duct tape on his ankle. Tape covered with glitter and pink and purple hearts. Madison almost asked why, but…at the expression on his face as he pulled it free and just stared at it, before he tucked it into his pocket, she stopped.
There was just…something in Mac’s blue eyes…when he looked at that tape she just didn’t understand. Madison finally looked away when the baby cried nearby. She turned.
There was a baby there. Madison just stared for a long moment. At that baby girl. At Heather’s baby girl.
Powell held Heather’s baby as she slept.
That beautiful, precious little girl who only existed now because of what Steve Wilson had done to Heather that night.
That baby was the spitting image of Hope, right down to the sweet little grin.
She had a little hat on her head, just like the one Hope wore all the time.
She was wrapping one little fist in that hat. Powell just held her close.
There was another baby there, too. Madison looked at her, until she recognized that precious baby girl.
Hope still held Commander Rodriguez’s baby close. Hope was just rocking, a terrified look on her face. Hope looked so…frail and confused. It hurt to see the younger woman hurting like that. Hope had been through extraordinary hell in the last month—and now this? Why?
“What’s the word?” Madison asked, when Powell’s older brother Alex came back in with Bonnie. Alex looked more upset than Madison had ever seen him before.
“Heather is holding her own. The bullet hit something in her leg. And she was bleeding badly,” Alex said, quietly. He seemed to be sticking close to Hope’s family, as well as his own. “She is stable now, though. In recovery. Dr. Stockton said she should be okay.”
“And Gunnar? Daniel?” Madison asked, as people walked by the waiting room door. People in TSP polos, uniforms. In groups of three and four and more. Acting all official. And like they cared, like it was an attack against the entire TSP to have three wounded now.
It was all a show.
Of course—when a cop went down, there was a media circus. She’d seen it before. And tonight, there were three cops injured, including one related to the governor himself. The odds they’d all be okay…she refused to let the fear take hold.
They were people she cared about in surgery right now.
Someone sat down next to her. Madison looked over.
Into Haldyn’s blue eyes. Madison wrapped her fingers around Powell’s free hand.
Powell cradled the baby in her uninjured arm.
Haldyn’s wrapped over Madison’s free hand.
They were connected, then. Zoey and Shelby were there now—they’d just come in together. Crowding close. Surrounding Powell.
Protecting. They protected each other, her and her best friends. They always would.
The man Powell loved was in critical condition.
Of course they were going to stick close.
Madison would too, even though she was also coordinating what she could with the forensics teams now.
Officially, it would be Tom and Pete and Ashlie who were assigned this case, as they were next on the roll.
But Madison was going to supervise very, very closely.
They weren’t screwing around with this one. They just weren’t.
They all took care of each other now. Since the night Madison, Shelby, Zoey, and Charlotte had almost been killed. By members of the TSP. The TSP was supposed to protect people. Madison didn’t think the TSP had been doing that for a very long time.
“Gunnar is in surgery now,” Zoey said, quietly, as Powell shifted the sleeping baby in her arms to Hope’s niece Cara.
That precious baby girl. Madison wished she could hold her, too.
If just for a little while. That baby girl—her mother was back there in surgery now.
How was this fair? Madison had been around long enough to know fair didn’t really exist. But how she wished it did…
then, maybe, then, the world would make sense.
“Rafe came out and updated us a few minutes ago. Gunnar had lost a lot of blood out there. And the second bullet caused some cavernization that did significant damage. But he’s doing okay, Mads.
We’re still waiting on word for Daniel.”
Cavernization—so many people believed a bullet traveled a straight line from entrance to exit. But that wasn’t always the case. Sometimes, the force of the hit, the energy itself, would cause a larger injury inside. It could be deadly. “And the men who did it?”
“We have three,” Miguel said. He stood near Hope now. He’d changed clothes, out of his blood-soaked ones from before. Now he just sort of hovered over Hope and her sisters. “Three or four escaped. Including Timothy Grundenman.”
Timothy Grundenman.
She recognized the name. The man had been there in the warehouse. Where Powell and Heather had been held hostage before.
He was the husband of Heather and Hope’s late sister Angela. The father of three of Heather’s nieces. She looked at those women now—they had hurt and confusion on their faces, too. The nightmares…they just kept getting closer and closer. Until it felt like…suffocation.
Like no matter what you did, you drowned in the end.
Finally, the surgeon, Dr. Macomber, came out. “For Gunnar Erickson?”
“That’s me,” Powell hopped up. “How is he? Is he going to be okay?”
“First, he’s going to be just fine.”
Madison listened as he explained the damage. It would take him a few months to get back up to full strength, but Gunnar was going to be okay.
Now they waited on word about Heather and Daniel.
The minutes just kept ticking by.