by Nancy Gideon
Because he did.
“Colin?” Mia stepped inside the darkened room. She’d used the key pride had prevented her from using the night before. Need won out over indignation. If he had little time left, she’d spend all of it with him in search of a way to thwart Thorne’s scheme. The risk was worth the reward. She paused at a strange ticking sound, its source the turntable of Colin’s stereo as the needle continually bumped at the end of the final song. She crossed the living to lift the arm and turn off the system. It wasn’t like Colin to so abuse his treasured collection.
“Colin?” A faint light drew her toward the back of the narrow house.
In the center of the kitchen, she noticed the blood, just a few drops on the floor at first, leading toward the bedroom where the bathroom light was on. A larger smear on the door jamb imprinting palm and fingers. Breaths leaving her in quick little pants of dread, Mia turned on the overhead.
Her gaze followed the puddles of crimson across the hardwood, a gruesome trail leading to the figure sprawled face down on the bed, left arm trailing off the side, fingertips resting in a vivid pool of red.
“Colin!”
She raced across the room, slipping, sliding, nearly falling before she reached him. Gripping his shoulder, Mia turned him over onto his back. His head lolled as a wide, unblinking stare turned its unseeing focus to the ceiling. Blood, everywhere, leaking from his ears, his nose, from the corners of his eyes and mouth.
So pale. So damned cold!
Pressing trembling fingers to his throat, she prayed as she felt for a pulse. No, please, God! Colin, don’t do this! Give me time to save you.
A very slow blink broke her paralysis. Relief gave to quick, purposeful actions. She grabbed her phone to call Rico. No answer. She went to the next number down.
“This better be good, Terriot.”
“Silas, it’s Mia. I’m at Colin’s. He’s hemorrhaging, all over. It’s bad. What do I do? Tell me what to do!”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Cale stood at the door for a long, silent moment assessing the situation. Not liking it. Any of it.
Colin was either asleep or unconscious, his eyes bruised by fatigue and pain, his skin so pale it was almost translucent. The sheet barely moved with his breaths. A terrible realization settled. All he'd been told by MacCreedy was true.
Mia Guedry sat at his brother's bedside, her dark head resting on his hip, his hand, tethered by wires and tubing, clutched in her own. And on her thumb, she wore Abel Conroy's ring. She woke suddenly, that change signaled by her sharp intake of breath, not by any betraying movement. Cale knew she was aware of him standing there in the doorway. Her first action was to tighten her grip on those still fingers, her next to check the quietly beeping monitors. Only then did she straighten and turn toward him.
She was a beautiful female with her ripe, pouty features and dark Guedry coloring. The smudged makeup and mussed hair only added to the allure. Her dark eyes fixed on him like double barrels in hopes of holding him at bay, but the slight tremble of her lips conveyed the weakness of her position against brother and king.
"I need to talk to Colin." When Cale saw that mulish set to her jaw, he added, "Don't make a fuss. It'd just upset him."
The combative attitude ebbed. She stood, weariness evident in the slight wobble of her knees as she bent down to brush her lips across one pallid cheek, whispering, "Be right outside."
Cale stepped out of the way to let her pass. Neither looked at the other. He closed the door behind her and went to take the chair she'd vacated and the hand lying slack upon the sheets. Colin's eyes flicked and slowly blinked open, focusing with difficulty and then surprise.
"Cale?"
"Hey, brother. How you doing?"
"Didn't we just have this conversation?" His voice was as thin as Cale’s hope.
"I wasn't in any hurry to come back. I'm kinda pissed off at you about that."
"Sorry.” He wet his lips, the gesture taking a long time to accomplish. "Who called you?"
"MacCreedy."
Colin studied him for a long beat then deduced with a wan smile, "For him to call you, I must be on my death bed."
"I’m so damned sorry. I never should have put you here.” Cale hauled in a breath to steady his words. “A bunch of folks are waiting to see you, but I wanted to get this outta the way."
"Wait. What?" Colin's focus sharpened. "I'm dying? Sonuvabitch! How long . . . how long do I have? A month? Weeks?" He took a hitching gulp, his eyes beginning to fill. "Days? I've got days? Sonuvabitch."
"Dammit, Colin." Cale stood, meaning to pull him in tight, but his brother waved him off.
"No. It's okay. I'm okay. Give me a second." He turned his head away for a few hyperventilating moments then, with a resigned breath, faced his brother once again. "You're sure?"
"I'm sorry. I wish I wasn't."
"Why? How?"
Slowly, carefully, Cale repeated what Silas had told him.
The attack with the silver had only been the beginning, a caustic delivery to breach and penetrate his system. Absorbed or inhaled, the piggybacked toxins would enter the body undetected while all efforts where concentrated on the burns. If those were survived, the nasty cocktail would gain a foothold and spiral into uncontrolled aggression and a hideous death. An uglier version of what Dr. LaRoche had already suggested.
Colin processed the news with a frown of detachment. "Why? If they wanted me dead, they could have just shot me."
"That wasn't their goal. They wanted an example. A highly visible example. A Terriot prince in a foreign territory, seemingly going crazy very publicly, and privately dying ugly."
Dying ugly. That sank in with a deep, stark inevitability.
"My diamonds. For proof. That's what they said. But why? Why me? Why not MacCreedy or Savoie? Or Rico? Or you?"
"Because of what you're doing, trying to gather the clans together. You can see why they'd want to discourage that. Maybe to get back at me." That he said regretfully.
"And to see it work," Colin added quietly, recalled to Mia's claim that those in the North wanted his family exterminated. "Before they use it against us all. That's the plan, Cale. To kill us all."
His king pondered that with a thoughtful scowl.
"Use me to find a cure," Colin insisted, his fervor stirring up the shortness of breath and dizziness that had leveled him when he’d returned home from Silas’s. The surprise at seeing blood dripping into his pristine kitchen sink. That flare of panic consumed almost at once by weakness. Perhaps part of him knew as he staggered to his bedroom, blinded by a sea of red, that he was dying. He refused to go out that way, afraid and alone, an insignificant blip in their family history. "Keep me alive long enough to be a test subject. Cut me up. Keep me in glass jars. Do whatever necessary to keep our people safe. Don't burn me if I can be of help."
Cale reared back in dismay. "But your spirit'll be trapped here if you're not released through the flames! Don't ask that!"
"My spirit will be damned if I don't do everything I can to protect my family!”
His family. His sisters, not his brothers, Cale realized in some surprise. They were the ones closest to his heart. Cale couldn’t find it in him to resent that fact.
“Keep me alive just long enough, and when it's done, you see to me, Cale, like you promised. I can feel it eating me alive from the inside out. Before it gets to be more than I can stand, you see to me, as my brother and as my king."
Cale nodded once. "I will."
“And be that king, Cale, the one I wanted to follow.”
There was something important Colin was forgetting, lingering just outside his grasp. His strength ebbed away, the pull of whatever was dripping into his arm lulling him back into the twilight state of helplessness. Until he remembered too late to do anything more than murmur a name.
"Mia."
It was late afternoon by the time Colin convinced a reluctant Susanna to let him visit one of the day rooms via wheelchair so he
could say good-bye to his family where they’d gathered, silent and grim, waiting to see him . . . perhaps for the last time. He'd be damned if their final memory of him was flat on his back in a hospital bed.
He hoped he’d been drugged enough to withstand the rips of emotion until he saw them gathered in a somber cluster.
"Cale said they all wanted to come, but he had to leave someone at home to guard the doors." Susanna's words were meant to warm him, but instead pushed him off the ledge of control.
"I can't do this," he told her, voice thick and choked with distress. "Not all at once." He’d no idea it would be so hard.
She rubbed his shoulder. "You can use one of the staff lounges and see them a few at a time. I'll have Mia come in first. She can stay for moral support."
Mia. What could he say to her? That he’d driven her away to stop himself from devouring her whole? That would be quite the loving memory to leave her. "Have Rico come with her."
Surprisingly, Mia took it better than he did. Or maybe not so surprising. She crossed to him, knelt, and laid her head on his lap with a quiet, "Don't leave me, Colin."
He didn't dare touch her. "Rico will make sure you're taken care of."
Taken care of. That's not what Mia had signed on for! But now wasn’t the time to argue it. Despite his detached affect, she could feel the seismic tremors of shock and anguish quivering through him. He didn't want to break down, and she vowed to help him stay strong no matter what it cost her.
She kissed him, just once, very gently. Any more than that would have destroyed her. Fingertips straying up his arm to his shoulder, she moved behind his chair, sitting on the couch where she'd be less noticeable to his family, keeping her fingers lightly combing through the hair at his nap, the way she always did after they'd made love. Made love, not just had sex. She knew the difference now. Touching him so he wouldn't forget she was there for him. And he wouldn’t see the tragedy moving in her expression as she watched his in the mirror on the opposite side of the room.
"This blows." Rico summed up all in those two words.
"I wish I'd been a better brother to you, Red."
"Don't go there, Col. We're not going to do this. Okay?"
"Okay. Take a load off." Colin directed him back to the cushions shared by Mia where they sat close, hands clutching fiercely.
The Babineau family came in. Tina wept in his arms unapologetically while Alain and Oscar stood, awkward and sober.
"You take care of this family," Colin challenged his brother-in-law, "or I'll come back and rip you a new one. You make this kid into a man I'd be proud of."
All Babineau could manage was a nod.
He smiled at Oscar. "If I gave you my sound system and music, would you promise not to douche it up with any crap?"
A wavery grin. "You got it, Uncle Colin."
“I’m sorry. I never would have—”
“I know. It’s okay.”
Tina finally sat back, her dark eyes liquid with grief and regret. "You're a good man, Colin Terriot. I'll never believe otherwise. Not in my heart."
There was something more that Mia didn’t grasp in the subtle implication of her apology. Colin obviously understood, for he smiled and murmured, “I’m glad I got the chance to know you. Remember who you are and protect what you have.”
Those words braced Tina. With a quick kiss to his cheek, she rejoined her little family who were replaced by the lanky and teary-eyed youngest of the brothers who grabbed Colin up and wept unashamedly on his shoulder until his older brother grumbled, “Don’t go getting all girlie on me now.”
Kip rocked back on his heels, applying an unsteady hand to the dampness on his face before vowing, low and gruff, “I’ll take care of everything here, just like you asked.” When Colin would protest, he insisted, “It’s my responsibility. If I’d been taking care of things in Nevada, we wouldn’t have Jamie to worry about. I understand now, and you can count on me.”
“I never doubted that for a second.”
“Col, don’t go.”
“I don’t have much choice, but I get to pick how, and I’m making it count. You remember that, okay? And you remember me.” He gave Kip a shove. “Get outta here.”
With a jerky nod, Kip stood and walked away without a backward glance.
Encircling his shoulders with her arms, Mia leaned in to brush a kiss to Colin’s cheek and for a moment just held him tight. “He’ll be fine,” she whispered.
“I know. I just wanted to be around to see it.”
“Colin, I—”
Her long-overdue declaration was interrupted by Wesley, Turow and a stunning redhead who swept across the room to replace Mia’s embrace with her own.
“Hey, Hot Stuff, you’ve looked better.”
Mia reared back, shocked into immobility by the lip-lock planted on him that went on and on until she wondered rather irritably where they found the oxygen. Then the female eased back to regard her with a smile.
“Is this her?”
As she began to bristle, Colin soothed, “Mia, this is Sylvia. She’s my—”
“You don’t have to explain.”
He continued as if he hadn’t heard her brittle remark. “New sister-in-law.”
The absolutely gorgeous Sylvia smiled. “Oh, I do like her.”
“Watch out for her for me, Sylvie. You’ve been there, so you know it’s no piece of cake.”
Green eyes met his and widened. “Seriously? That’s wonderful, Colin, . . . and it breaks my heart. Worse timing ever.” She kissed him again, this time short and sweet on the cheek before whispering in his ear, “I’ll show her the ropes.”
“If that’s what she wants.”
“Let him go, Syl. Leave something for the rest of us.”
She rocked back and, after gently stroking his cheek, deferred to her new mate as he approached and crouched down.
“Hey, Row. Give us a kiss.”
“From my knuckles, maybe. That worked for me last time.”
Smiling, Colin touched his jaw as if he could still feel the impact. “Not so much for me.”
Turow grew serious. “I’m mad as hell about this.”
“You and me both, bro. I don’t like leaving loose ends. Talk to Kip and tie ′em up for me, will you?”
“Absolutely.” He hesitated. “I’m not much of a huggy kind of guy.” Then he disproved that by enfolding his brother in a firm embrace. “I’m going to miss your twisted sense of humor.”
“I’m going to miss your mate’s kisses.”
Turow laughed and gave him a squeeze. “I’ll make sure she doesn’t miss yours.”
Colin hung on, drawing from his brother’s strength as he looked over Row’s shoulder to Wes. “You watch Cale’s back. Take care of our family.”
A nod. “I’ll take care of everything,” Wes promised.
Susanna appeared at the door, a reminder that their time was running out. As Turow released him, Sylvia was wound his neck once again.
“You’re the best friend I ever had, you big sexy thing. I’ll miss all your attractive bullshit, and will love you forever.”
“You two be good to each other. You deserve to be happy. Don’t let past mistakes get in the way of that. Promise me.” That he spoke fiercely.
She blinked away tears before leaning back to vow, “I promise. I’ll do everything I can to make sure of it.”
Susanna came to check Colin’s pulse and tell him that Cale and Kendra were waiting. “Then no more excitement. You need to rest.”
“All I’ve got to look forward to is the Big Sleep.” When she tsked at his wry attitude, he sighed. “Give me a minute here, then send them in.”
Then it was just the three of them—Colin, Mia and Rico.
Colin stopped pretending. His shoulders slumped, and despair rose in a hot flood. “Red?” Rico caught up his good hand between his, pressing tightly. “Could you . . . could you call my mom for me? Tell her . . . tell her I don’t have much time and I’d like to see her,
or at least just talk to her again, just once. Could you do that for me?”
Eyes filling up, Rico nodded. “I will. And the girls?”
His head rolled in a listless negative. “I don’t want them to see me like this. Let ’em remember me from that time in Tahoe.” His breathing roughened, catching painfully. “Thank you for that, Rico. I’ll have those memories to take with me. Take care of . . . everything for me. Please.”
“You know I will.”
“My car. You know what she means to me. I want you to have her.”
“Col . . .”
“Don’t go throwing trash in the back seat. Treat her good, and she’ll take care of you.” He swiped at his eyes. Was he still talking about the car? “Take off. I need to speak to Cale and Kendra alone.”
“We won’t go far,” Rico promised.
“Mia? About Sylvia.”
She crooked a smile at him. “There’s nothing to explain.” She tapped her index finger against his lips and followed Rico out the door.
Shaky, weepy, and too damned miserable to pretend he wasn’t, Colin closed his eyes, trying to gather his strength for his last visitors.
Her palm fit cool and soft to one cheek while her lips brushed the other.
“What did I do?” he asked, broken down beyond pride. “What did I do to destroy your faith in me?”
“Shh. Colin, all is forgotten and forgiven.” Kendra stroked his hair, holding his heavy head to her shoulder, his heavy heart in her hands as Cale stood back, silent.
“Why would you think I betrayed you both? That I betrayed our family? Why?”
“Shhh. It’s all right. We don’t need to talk of this now.”
“There’s not going to be another time to talk about it. I have to know. I’ve given everything I have, every time you asked. Why don’t you believe in me?”
“We’ve never not believed in you, Colin. You’re our strength, our rock. You always have been.”
“And you believed so much you sent Rico to spy on me?”
