The Rockers' Babies (The Rocker... Series)

by Terri Anne Browning

  “Of course I fucking want her back!” I exploded and heard the babies whimper, but my concern didn’t even reach to caring if I scared my boys just then. I was too scared, too fucking terrified for Lucy. “How much?”

  “Two million.” I didn’t even blink at his demand. I would have handed over every damn penny I had if it would get me Lucy back. “I want it by tomorrow at noon. I get the money, you get Lucy. A fair trade, yeah? And if you’re smart you won’t involve the cops.”

  “Don’t worry about it, fucker. There won’t be any need for the cops.” It wasn’t like I wanted the cops to witness a murder anyway. Because I was going to fucking bury that bastard as soon as I got my hands on him. “Let’s do this tonight.”

  “You can get that much money now?” He laughed like he thought I had said something incredibly funny.

  “I can’t, but Emmie could.” Emmie would call the president of the bank, get his ass in the vault and have the money within the hour. But Emmie wasn’t here and I had no idea where she was, or how badly she was hurt. That fucker had her phone, had sad that she was still breathing when he last saw her… How long ago had that been? Of fuck, what about the baby? I squeezed my eyes shut. “Where is she?”

  “Probably the closest hospital by now. Fine, tonight it is. You have until midnight.” He told me the place, and I repeated it aloud, nodding.

  “Let me talk to Lucy,” I demanded, when I realized that Grady was going to hang up. I needed to hear her voice again, to know that she was alright.

  “You have thirty seconds to talk to her,” he said before I heard Lucy’s whimper.

  “Lucy? Are you okay, baby?” Where my voice had been full of rage just seconds before it was suddenly choked and broken. I swallowed hard, trying to hold back the tears and the gut twisting fear. “Did he hurt you?”

  “M-my f-f-face,” she stuttered.

  “I’m going to get you back, baby. I swear it. I’ll have you home soon, okay?”

  “D-da-daddy… She was bleeding,” Lucy sobbed, and I knew she was talking about Emmie. “She wasn’t moving.”

  Before I could say anything the line went dead. “Lucy?” I said her name, praying that she would answer me but knowing she wouldn’t. A roar was bubbling up inside of me and I raked my hands over my scalp.

  The rage was building again and it was like nothing I had ever felt in my life. Nothing compared to how explosive I was at that moment. That fucker had hurt Lucy, had hurt Em. He had my baby and I couldn’t get to her. Couldn’t protect her and that was driving me crazy.

  “Jesse?” Layla’s voice made me raise my head and I saw the same emotions swirling in her eyes that were tossing me around on the inside. “What the fuck is going on?”

  “Vince Grady took Lucy,” I snapped, unable to calm down even for her. “He took her and he wants two million tonight. I have no clue where Emmie is but he hurt her, left her bleeding somewhere.” Her already pale face turned alabaster and I saw her start to shake.

  Lana rushed to take Luca from her before she accidently dropped the baby. Then she was placing the baby in the incubator because she was shaking too. “I need Em to get the money because I don’t even fucking know our bank account number…”

  There were a million things I needed to do, but I had no idea how to get them done because the one who was the sane one, the one who took care of me and all my problems was lost to me at that moment. I felt impotent and useless and terrified and that only made the rage burn higher.

  “…Nik.” Shane’s voice distracted me for a moment and I realized he was on the phone doing one of the things I should have already been doing. Calling Nik. Oh fuck, he was going to go crazy.

  “Calm down, Nik,” Shane yelled and I could hear Nik exploding over the line. “You’ll scare Mia. Call a cab, don’t fucking drive, okay? You’ll only wreck and you don’t want to hurt Mia, do you? Good, call a cab and get here… It’s going to be okay. We’ll find her, bro. Her and Lucy both.”

  “This is the closest hospital,” Harper said, already placing Lyric in the incubator with his brother. “If Em was hurt this is where the paramedics would have brought her. I’ll check the ER.”

  She left without me even really understanding a word she had said. It was all surreal to me and I was seeing things with tunnel vision with shades of red all around me. I watched everything around me as if I were someone watching a movie. Lana sitting on the bed, holding a now sobbing Layla. Drake on the phone to someone, but talking in hushed tones so I couldn’t make out much of what he was saying. Shane still on his cell with Nik, talking him down so that Mia wouldn’t be scared. Twin babies lying cuddled in an incubator, curled around each other. None of that really registered to me on an emotional level. I had shut down like I had the day Layla had gone into labor. All I could feel was the rage and the need to make Vince Grady bleed.

  My cell phone buzzed again and I didn’t hesitate to answer it. “Yeah?”

  “She’s down here,” Harper’s shaky voice informed me. “You need to get down here… Bring Shane and Drake.”

  “Is she alive?” Was that my voice, dead and cold?

  “Yes, Jesse. She’s alive and bitching. Just get the fuck down here,” she yelled at me. “Snap the fuck out of it and move!”

  I blinked. Harper wasn’t one to raise her voice but she had just ordered me around in a way that only Emmie would do. Almost as if she had flipped a switch inside of me, I began to calm down a little. “We’ll be right down.”

  I stuffed the phone in my pocket and turned to face Drake and Shane. “She’s downstairs. Alive, and Harper says she’s bitching, so that’s a good sign… Right?” They nodded, giving me tight smiles. I glanced at Layla, still clinging to Lana just as hard as Lana was holding on to her. I wrapped my arms around both of them, kissing the top of Layla’s head. “I’m going to get Lucy back, baby. I swear to gods, I’m getting her back.”

  Her head snapped up. Tears streamed down her white as snow face, but her eyes were hard as stone. “You’d better kill that bastard.”

  Drake grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the door before I could make her that promise.

  Chapter 20

  Emmie

  I woke up on a gurney with some guy shinning a little flashlight in my eyes. I groaned and slapped his hand away when I felt the urge to vomit. “Stop.”

  “You have a concussion, miss,” the man informed me in a concerned voice. “Can you tell me what your name is?”

  “Ember Jameson Armstrong,” I told him without having to think about it.

  “Is there anyone we can call, Mrs. Armstrong?” the doctor asked, noticing my ring.

  I frowned, wondering who I needed to call since I had a concussion… And then the reason for my concussion flashed through my mind and I sat up quickly. “Lucy. Where’s Lucy?”

  “Who is Lucy?” the doctor asked, helping to steady me because I suddenly felt dizzy after sitting up so fast.

  “My niece,” I snapped. “Is she here?”

  “You are the only one the paramedics brought in. Someone found you on the side of the road, unconscious and bleeding from the head. They said it looked as if you had been assaulted since your vehicle was still sitting in the middle of the street with the driver’s window shattered and the passenger door wide open.”

  I swallowed my growing fear. “And the other vehicle? The truck that hit me?”

  The doctor shook his head. “They said they only found your vehicle.”

  “Fuck!” I tried to get off the gurney, but the doctor pushed me back against the pillow. “Don’t fucking touch me,” I snarled, pushing his hands off me. “I have to find Jesse.”

  “You have a concussion. You won’t be going anywhere until at least tomorrow as we need to keep you for observations. Not only do you need stitches but you appear to be spotting too…” His words stopped me from struggling and I just lay there, my hand going to my lower stomach.

  Oh, no! I couldn’t be losing the baby. I couldn’t. Tears burn
ed my eyes. “Am I going to lose my baby?”

  “Right now you are only slightly spotting, but we can’t determine if it is because you are miscarrying or from a blood vessel that burst when you hit the ground. Are you cramping?” I shook my head, because other than my head throbbing in time with my racing heart beat I had no other pain. “That’s good. But you will need to stay in bed for the next day or two until the bleeding stops. I’ll have the tech do an ultrasound to make sure everything is okay.”

  There was a knock on the exam room door and a nurse stuck her head around the corner. “Doctor, there is someone at the front desk asking if we have an Emmie Armstrong. Should I let her back?”

  “Who is it?” I demanded before the doctor could respond. Could the press have caught wind of this already? Or was it my family?

  “She says her name is Harper Stevenson…” the nurse informed me and I breathed a sigh of relief.

  “That’s my sister-in-law,” I told the woman. “I want to see her.”

  “Okay then.” The nurse left and the doctor started moving around the room, apparently gathering the things he needed to stitch me up.

  I lifted a hand to my forehead and found a bandage wrapped around my head. “How bad is the cut?” It wasn’t like this was the first time I’d had to have stitches. Once my mother had pushed me through a window and I had to have stitches on my upper arm. Jesse and Nik had to drive me to West Virginia and make up some bogus excuse about me having fallen. I’d had to have seven stitches then.

  “You’ll need at least ten stitches, if not more. It goes down from your hair line to your eyebrow. Apparently you cut your head on a rock when you fell.” He shook his head. “Of course that isn’t what gave you the concussion. Someone beat the hell out of you, woman. When the cops get here, you’ll have to tell them everything. Including who Lucy is.”

  I glared at him. “I want to see my family first.”

  “That’s not going to keep the cops from asking questions.” The doctor, whose name tag said J. Prescott, glared back at me. “If this was your husband then tell me now and I can have the cops pick his ass up.”

  The idea of Nik putting his hands on me in violence nearly made me laugh out loud. Instead I snorted. “Nik would never touch me like that. This wasn’t him, doc.”

  It didn’t seem to reassure him, because he was still glowering at me when the door opened and Harper rushed in. She took one look at me and a cry of distress escaped her. “Damn it!”

  “Where’s Shane? Jesse?” I was pretty sure that we were at the same hospital Layla was at. It was the closest hospital to Malibu and I had only been a few miles from it when Grady had attacked us. “Is Lucy with him?”

  Harper shook her head. “Jesse just got a phone call. I don’t know the particulars but it isn’t good, Em. What happened?”

  “That fucker rear-ended us at a red light. Then he tried to take Lucy. I tried to get away, to run after her, but he caught me.” I nodded to the doctor who, while trying to appear busy was listening to every word I said. “I woke up with dickhead flashing his light in my eyes and wanting to vomit.”

  Her eyes filled with tears and she carefully wrapped her arms around me. “And the baby?”

  I shrugged. “I’m spotting but we don’t know what it’s from yet. I’m not cramping so that’s a good sign.” I hugged her back, then pushed her away. “Get Jesse down here. And when you’re done I need your phone. I have to call Nik and let him know I’m okay.”

  “Shane called Nik already. He’s on his way with Mia…” I cursed, already worrying that my husband and child wouldn’t make it here if he was driving knowing that something was wrong with me. “…Shane made him call a cab.” I sucked in a relieved breath.

  I tried to call Nik, but he didn’t answer. Instead of leaving a message I hung up and handed Harper the phone back. It took less than two minutes for the door to open once Harper got off the phone with Jesse. Shane entered first with Drake and Jesse right behind them. I glanced at them through one eye, as the doctor had already started prepping my wound to stitch. All three of them looked gray, but it was Jesse who I reached my hand out to. His eyes were pitch black and his big body was shaking.

  “Fuck!” Shane muttered when he saw the cut on my head. He turned green and I could see he was about to lose it. Harper grabbed his hand and pulled him out of the room before he started throwing up at the sight of my blood.

  “Harper said Grady called you. Tell me everything.” He swallowed hard, gripped my hand tighter and told me exactly what Vince Grady had said. I felt tears burning my throat when he told me how scared Lucy had sounded, how she had told him that Grady had hurt her face, and that I had been bleeding when she last saw me. I didn’t want her to have to go through any of this. Lucy was such a sweet, good girl. Nothing bad should ever touch her.

  “I need your phone,” I told him when he was done. He looked ever more destroyed now, with his eyes wet and his face bleak. Drake, who had been standing behind him didn’t look much better, but there wasn’t much I could do for them except for what I always did. Take charge and get shit done.

  “I can’t stitch this up with you moving around so much,” Doctor Prescott grumbled as he put the second stitch in.

  I slapped his hand away. “Can’t you see I’m busy? This can wait a little longer. Go do some actual doctoring while I deal with this. And send the stupid cops back here while you’re at it.”

  “Grady said no cops,” Jesse protested.

  I shook my head. “Jesse… We have to tell them what’s going on. If we pay him off and yet he still tried to get custody…” I wanted this on Grady’s record. No judge would ever give that man custody if he knew about this, and it wasn’t like they would just take my word for it. “We’ll get her back, Jesse. I swear.”

  His jaw flexed but I could see that he understood that I was right. Finally he nodded and handed over his phone. “Do what you have to do.”

  The bank was my first call. Two million was a lot of money, but it would in no way break the bank. The branch manager I normally dealt with decided to be an ass however, so I had to go over his head and call the bank’s president. It wasn’t hard to reach him at home. Nik had played golf with the man’s son a few times. When I told him how much money I needed he was speechless for a moment before I assured him that if I didn’t get the money I needed in the next two hours I wouldn’t find it a chore to take all the Demon’s Wings money that sat in his bank somewhere else.

  “That won’t be necessary, Mrs. Armstrong,” The man rushed to assure me. “I’ll meet with you personally at the bank and we can take care of that for you.”

  “I won’t be able to do that.” There was no way I was getting on my feet unless I absolutely had to. “Jesse Thorton and my husband will be there to handle it. I’m sure you will find dealing with them just as pleasant as dealing with me.”

  I actually heard him swallow hard before he let out a nervous laugh. He had met both Jesse and Nik and knew that neither were pleasant for the most part. “Of course. Of course. Let’s say an hour from now?”

  “They will be there.” I hung up without a goodbye and punched in the number for Brad Horton. It took me ten minutes to tell him what was going on and what I needed him to do. No way was Grady going to just take that money and then try this shit again.

  I had barely hung up with the lawyer when the door opened so suddenly and with such force that the door slammed against the wall. Stupid tears filled my eyes at the sight of Nik with Mia in his arms. He looked wild, more so than I had ever seen him. His eyes were bloodshot, filled with tears of his own. Mia clung to him, obviously scared and not knowing what was wrong with her father.

  Drake stepped forward, taking Mia from him. She went willingly, wanting some space from the craziness of Nik. I bit my lip, taking all of him in when he just stood there. Those ice blue eyes looked haunted, and I couldn’t help but remember the night I had found out I was pregnant with Mia. Our lives had changed so much since th
at night. He was shaking from head to toe and I held out my arms for him.

  In the next second I was in his arms, being held tightly but gently against his chest. His hands were all over me, making sure that I really was there with him. His lips in my hair, on my cheek, then devouring my lips. “I’m never letting you out of my sight again,” he choked out. “I’m was scared to death.”

  “I’m okay, Nik,” I promised him, blinking back my tears. It wasn’t until I had seen him that I had realized how much I had wanted him with me. Holding me like this because he was everything I needed in the world. In his arms I was safe, as I had always been. He had protected me from the scary, high monster that had been my mother and he would protect me from the same one that was Vince Grady. “I’m okay, now.”

  Chapter 21

  Drake

  I hated cops. I had no use for them, and really they only made things worse. Ever since my mom’s death I’ve hated them, and that wasn’t likely to change now.

  A skinny little twig of a man in a cheap suit stood beside Emmie’s hospital bed, asking her questions. His partner, a chubby jerk of a man with a seventies porn star mustache and an attitude watched Jesse, Nik, and me as we stood watching them. All they were doing was taking the report, nodding their heads every now and then and irritating the fuck out of Em.

  Mia wrapped her arms tighter around me, eyeing the skinny cop a little warily. I kissed her forehead, bringing her attention back to me and giving her a reassuring smile. She snuggled closer. “Is Daddy okay now?” she whispered.

  I glanced over at Nik, who had a death grip on Emmie’s hand. He had stopped shaking for the most part, but that wildness in his eyes hadn’t dimmed even a little. If I put myself in his shoes, and it was Lana lying in that bed, I was sure that I wouldn’t have been anywhere close to as calm as he was now. “Yeah, Mia. Daddy is fine now. He was just worried about Momma.”