Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
Shadow Point Security Compound
He’d done his field assessment in the truck.
Airway clear. Pulse fast, but present. No obvious head trauma, no blood. Throat red and already bruising along the right side where the attacker’s grip had been tightest.
Regan hadn’t regained consciousness yet, which he didn’t like, but her breathing was steady. Her color was off, but in the way of someone whose blood sugar had bottomed out rather than someone whose brain had been deprived of oxygen for any meaningful length of time.
He’d alerted Mack on the way, and Mack met him at the rear entrance. “Vivi’s set up in the med bay.”
Garrett came jogging up, yawning. “What happened?”
CB filled him in as he hustled to the medical station with Regan in his arms. Once there, Vivi directed him to an exam table.
CB set her down and repeated the important facts. A crease appeared between Vivi’s brows, and she shooed him out of the way. Reluctantly, he stepped back and let her work, positioning himself just inside the glass doors with Garrett and Mack.
Garrett kept his voice low as he fired questions at him; CB answered, not taking his eyes off Regan.
Vivi checked her vitals, starting with her blood pressure and pulse. She shone a penlight in each of her eyes. “BP is low,” she said, not looking up. “Skin’s sallow. When did she last eat?”
“Don’t know.”
Vivi clucked her tongue. She tilted Regan’s chin, examined the bruising at her throat.
“Bruising is superficial — deep tissue, but nothing structural.” She straightened, pulled about an inch of Regan’s forearm skin up and let it snap back.
It didn’t snap, though. “She’s dehydrated, her blood sugar is low, and her neck is going to be sore.
She needs an IV, food, and rest. She does not appear to have a concussion. ”
He deflated with relief. “Thank God.”
“I still want to take her to the ER.”
“No.”
Vivi stopped fussing with Regan and glared at him. “CB.”
“If she’s not critically hurt, she stays here. She’s safe here. She’s not safe at an ER. They’ll take her for tests, and I won’t be able to stay with her. She’ll be vulnerable.”
A beat. Vivi looked at Regan, then back at him.
“Her throat,” she said. “I want it checked properly if there’s any swelling in the next few hours.”
“I’ll stay here and watch for it.”
“You’ll watch for swelling?”
“Yes.”
Another beat. Vivi reached for the IV kit and pulled on nitrile gloves. “Fine. But if anything changes?—”
“I’ll call you immediately.”
She worked in silence after that, finding the vein on the first try. CB watched Regan’s face while she worked. Still. The bruise along her throat was going to be ugly.
“I’ll start the official paperwork,” Garrett said. “Like it or not, the Hills need our protection.”
“Her mom’s alone at home,” CB said. “We need eyes on her.”
“I’ll go,” Mack said. “You stay here.”
CB didn’t argue. Mack and Garrett left, good men, both of them.
Thirty seconds .
If Sanchez hadn’t pulled into the food stand lot right as CB was about to leave, CB would have been driving to the bar’s parking lot when Regan came out the back door.
Thirty seconds. Maybe less.
Ricardo Sanchez had been with the Sheriff’s Department for years. Three years ahead of CB in school, he and Denny Crue had run together since they were fifteen—same crowd, same campground summers, same orbit as CB.
When Sanchez had pulled in, blocking CB from leaving, CB’s instincts had flared red.
CB had answered his questions. Kept his voice even, his posture relaxed, giving nothing away while the clock in the back of his head ran. The moment Sanchez received a radio call and had no further reason to detain him, CB had been moving.
He’d heard Regan scream from half a block away.
Not fast enough.
“Done,” Vivi said. She capped the line, checked the flow, and stripped her gloves. “I’ll check back in an hour. Call me if she wakes up before then.” She paused at the door. “I can administer pain meds if she needs them.”
“Thanks, Doc.”
Vivi studied him for a moment. “Stop beating yourself up. You got there in time. You might have saved her life.”
He didn’t answer. She left, and he called Lucy from the hallway.
She picked up on the second ring. “Yes?”
“Mrs. Hill, it’s Clive Briggs.”
“Clive? Is Regan…?” She paused.
“She’s safe. She’s with me at the Shadow Point compound. Someone came at her in the parking lot after closing. She’s bruised, but she’s not seriously hurt.”
Silence. He let her absorb it. “It was them, wasn’t it?” Lucy said. “The Outlaws?”
“Looks that way, but I don’t have any proof.”
He did, but he wasn’t going to divulge Denny Crue’s name to her. Not yet.
“Can I talk to her?”
He glanced through the glass door. “She’s sleeping right now. I’ll have her call you as soon as she wakes up.”
“You’ll stay with her?”
“Until she orders me to leave. Then I’ll just be more covert about it.”
A huff of a laugh. “She’ll tell you to leave,” Lucy said. “Don’t listen, you hear me? That girl is going to be her own undoing.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll stick close. Do me a favor? Do you have a security system?”
“I have a hundred and twenty-pound Shepherd mix named Desi. Desi and Lucy, get it? I Love Lucy?” She made a dismissive noise. “Never mind. Before your time. Desi is my security system.”
“My mom used to watch the reruns of that show,” CB told her. “Especially when she was sad or depressed. It cheered her up.”
“It cheers me up on bad days, too. So does Desi. And Regan. The two of them are all I have left. You understand?”
CB heard the grief in her voice. “Yes, ma’am, I do. Be sure all the windows and doors are locked, okay? I’ve sent one of my best over to keep watch on your house. As soon as Regan feels better, I’ll bring her home.”
A pause. “She hasn’t eaten since breakfast. She does that—skips meals. Make sure she eats something.”
“I will.”
“Thank you, Clive.”
He stood there for a moment after he hung up, staring at Regan. Lucy had thanked him for doing something he hadn’t managed to do in time. That sat in an uncomfortable place.
He returned to Regan’s side, pulled the chair next to her bed, and sat down to wait.
She woke a few minutes later. One moment she was still, the next her hand shot out for something to grab, her whole body tensing with the reflexive urgency of someone who’d gone under fighting and came back up the same way.
“Hey.” CB kept his voice calm, taking her searching hand. “You’re safe. You’re at Shadow Point Security. Nobody’s going to hurt you here.”
She went still. Her eyes found his, then scanned the room, the table, the IV line in her left arm, and his hand holding hers. “What the…?”
“You’re dehydrated. Are you in any pain?”
Her other hand went to her throat, and she swallowed hard. “Damn it. Some asshole got the jump on me.” Her eyes narrowed and swung back to him. “Wait, did you…?”
He squeezed her hand. “I was late, but yeah. I stopped him.”
“Who was it?”
“How about you focus on you for the moment?”
She withdrew her hand from his. “I need to call my mom. She might be in danger.”
“I’ve spoken to Lucy, and we’ve got someone watching your house to keep her safe. I let her know you were going to be okay.”
Gratitude and relief flashed across her face. “She’s okay?”
“She’s fine. She’s worried about you.”
Regan looked at the ceiling for a moment. Then she looked at the IV line, her expression making her feelings about it clear.
“Our resident doctor is a psychologist, but she’s had extensive medical training as well. She wanted you to go to the ER,” he said. “I told her no, but if you feel like you want to be thoroughly vetted, I’ll take you.”
She shuddered. “I hate hospitals, and I feel…fine.”
Mm-hmm. Sure, she did. “That’s what I thought.”
She pushed herself up to sitting. “Tell me what happened,” she said.
He told her all of it, starting with the truck he’d spotted at the food stand lot that afternoon. How he’d circled back and kept watch. How he’d positioned himself later in that same lot, planning to make sure she got home safely.
“You were watching me?” she asked.
“For your own safety.”
“Hmm. Go on.”
He skipped to Sanchez pulling in right before one, the nothing conversation that had held him in place exactly long enough. The scream that had reached him half a block away. The man he’d found with his hands on her, masked, big, wearing a canvas jacket with a particular chain at the collar.
“I grabbed that chain,” she said. “Man, he was big.” She scanned him. “Not as big as you, but he had to outweigh me by fifty pounds.”
“More than that,” he said. “He was masked, but I know his build, and I know that chain. It was Denny Crue.”
She didn’t look surprised. She looked like someone who’d just had a suspicion confirmed that she hadn’t wanted confirmed.
“And Officer Sanchez,” she said, nodding. “Sanchez and Crue ran together in high school.”
“You know that?”
She ignored that question. “So Sanchez kept you at the food stand while Denny—” She stopped. Pressed her lips together.
“That’s how I read it.”
She was quiet for a moment. “He said Friday,” she said. “Eight hundred cash, at the back door at nine. He said if I didn’t—” Her voice didn’t waver, but something in her eyes did. “He threatened my mother.”
He held her gaze. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there sooner. I should have been.”
He watched her almost deflect it, and then she didn’t. “I bit him,” she said with grim satisfaction. “I kicked and bit and… Not that it did any good.”
He smiled. “I figured you for a fighter. Sure you don’t want to go to the hospital?”
“Absolutely not. I’m bruised and angry. I want a hot shower and my own bed. But I’m fine.”
He raised a brow.
She sighed. “I will be fine.”
He suspected she hadn’t been fine in a long time. “When did you last eat?”
The brief pause before she answered told him everything. “It’s been a while.”
“Right.” He stood. “I’ll be back in ten. Stay put.”