“What do you want to do about it?” he asked.
“Nothing.” She slid her hand up his thigh. “I want to take it as it comes, enjoy what we have now, have a little faith for a change that things will be okay.”
“Is that all?” he asked, nuzzling her cheek. “Because that hand of yours is making me harder than I already was.”
She laughed, low and throaty. A private laugh. A bedroom laugh. “Sounds like it’s time to leave.”
He spotted the waiter and lifted a hand. “I’ll pay the bill.”
Five minutes later, they were sliding out of the booth, heading for the front of the hotel with the speed of a couple teenagers who couldn’t wait to tear each other’s clothes off.
They were waiting for the valet to return with Max’s car when Abby’s phone rang.
She reached into her bag and glanced at the display with a puzzled expression, then put the phone to her ear.
“Hello? This is Abby Sterling.” There was a note of alarm in her voice that made him turn to look at her. “I don’t understand… Is he all right?”
Alarm rang inside him as her hand shot out to clutch his arm.
“Just tell me if he’s all right!”
She was practically screaming. An elderly couple turned to look at her, questions written on their lined faces.
Abby shuddered as she drew in a breath, obviously fighting to regain control. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll be right there.”
She removed the phone from her ear and he took her face in his hands.
“What’s going on, Abby?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s my dad,” she said, her voice shaking. “There’s been an accident. I need to get to the hospital.”
Fifteen
Abby thought about her father on the way to the hospital, turning over the possibilities in her mind. The police officer on the phone had said it was a car accident, but that didn’t make sense. Her father would have been on his way home from the ranch, a long stretch of desert highway that led right into the city where there was too much traffic to go fast enough for a serious accident.
Unless he’d been drinking…
But no. She didn’t believe that. He’d been sober almost four months. He was doing so well. He seemed happy, at peace for the first time in ages.
Someone else drinking then. This was Vegas. People came here to party.
A lot of the people who lived here came here to party.
There must be thousands of people drunk or hopped up on drugs driving around, causing accidents.
Max reached for her hand over the console. “Everything will be okay.”
She let the sound of his voice seep through her thoughts. He was right: everything would be okay. It had to be. Whatever had happened, they would make it okay. She didn’t like relying on Max for money, but she had some of her own saved. Whatever her dad needed in the way of rehabilitation or physical therapy, they would get him. And if he needed more help than that, maybe Max would let him move into the house for awhile. Max wouldn’t like it, but he would do it for her.
She knew he would.
“Abby?” She looked over at the sound of Max’s voice. “We’re here.”
She looked through the windshield and was surprised to see he was right. They were parked at the side of the hospital, the ER sign bleeding its scarlet reflection onto the pavement.
She opened the car door and they hurried across the parking lot.
He’ll be okay. He’ll be okay. He’ll be okay.
The words were a prayer.
She blinked against the harsh white light when they left the dark behind and stepped into the emergency room.
Max immediately went to the main desk. She saw his lips moving, heard her father’s name as if from a distance, but everything else was fuzzy around the edges.
Fuzzy words and fuzzy people and fuzzy things.
Max took hold of her arm and led her to a quiet corner of the waiting room. She sat in one of the chairs and looked up at him.
“I want to see him,” she said.
“They’re going to get the doctor,” Max said. “I gave them your name. We’ll wait five minutes and I’ll harass them again.”
She settled back into the chair and glanced around the room. She had no idea what time it was — it felt like a lifetime had passed since she and Max had left the Wynn, although it couldn’t have been more than a half hour — but the room was full of people.
A young boy across from her held a white cloth over his index finger, his eyes dark and wide. Near the window, a woman and three men spoke in hushed whispers, their faces creased with concern. Abby’s gaze skimmed across them, continuing to the others in the room, all of them waiting for help or some kind of news that might change their lives forever.
“Abby Sterling?”
The sound of her name made its way through the layers of cotton that seemed to be stuffed inside her head. When she turned toward it, she found a woman in scrubs scanning the room.
Abby stood and headed toward her. “I’m Abby Sterling.”
The woman nodded, her expression grave. “I’m Doctor Patel. Let’s go over here where we’ll have some privacy, shall we?”
Max’s arm slid around her as they followed the doctor into a private room off the hall. This was okay. She was going to get news about her father. He’d probably been in surgery and was recovering at this very moment.
The doctor shut the door behind them and gestured to a pair of chairs against one wall. “Please, have a seat.”
“I just want to know about my father,” Abby said.
The woman nodded. “Your father suffered serious head trauma and internal injuries as a result of the accident,” she said. “He was airlifted as soon as the accident was reported, but I’m afraid we weren’t in time. We did everything we could, but he didn’t make it through surgery.”
Abby blinked. “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
The woman glanced at Max before returning her eyes to Abby. “I’m afraid he died on the operating table. I’m so sorry.”
She was only vaguely aware of Max’s arms tightening around her, the cool cotton of his shirt against her cheek, the whisper of his voice against her hair.
“I’ve got you… I’ve got you, Abby.”
Then there was just a humming in her ears, the room receding as her vision narrowed until there was nothing but darkness.
Sixteen
Max paced the living room and looked down at the glass in his hand, surprised to find it empty. It had been the second drink he’d poured himself since he and Abby had gotten home, the one he’d poured after he’d gotten Abby to sleep.
It was the first time in a while he was tempted to anesthetize himself with liquor. He couldn’t do it — he wanted to be one-hundred percent for Abby — but fuck if he didn’t want to.
The sum total of his knowledge of Abby’s father was a few flashes from childhood — a mean drunk who sent Abby scurrying with his rage — and what Abby had told him. Max had never cared to know him any better, and while he hadn’t exactly wished the man well, he wasn’t dumb enough to ignore the impact his death would have on Abby.
He paced back to the bar and considered the bottle of whiskey, then left his empty glass there and stepped onto the terrace.
The air was crisp and clean, the scent of the desert a kind of primal calming, a reminder that even when the world went to hell, some things never changed.
He leaned on the banister and sucked in a deep breath. He couldn’t think about Abby without remembering the look on her face when the doctor in the emergency room had given her the news.
She’d turned so white her face had almost blended in with the sterile hospital walls. Her eyes had gone glassy, and she’d swayed on the cold plastic chair until he’d put his arm around her shoulders to steady her.
The rest of it had been a blur — instructions for identifying the body and making arrangements to have it released after the autops
y, brochures on grief and grief counseling, offers to call her nonexistent mother and siblings.
Max could see that Abby was in shock and not fully cognizant of what was going on. By the time they left the hospital, dark circles had already formed under her eyes. She hadn’t shed a tear, but her devastation was written all over her face.
He’d poured her a stiff drink the minute they’d walked in the door, then ran her a hot shower. When she got out, he’d helped her dress in warm leggings and a sweater. Then he’d given her a second drink and put her to bed like a child.
Through all of it, she hadn’t said two words.
His heart had felt like it was cracking in his chest. He’d sworn to protect her from harm, to keep her from anything that could hurt her.
But he couldn’t keep her from this.
“Fuck,” he muttered into the night air.
He’d been close with his father. There had been nothing unsaid between them, no unfinished business. Max had loved his father and had known he was loved in return. Losing him had left a gigantic hole in his life, but he’d had no regrets about the relationship he and his father had shared.
Abby would live with this loss the rest of her life. She’d established a certain peace with her father, but she’d never gotten the closure she really needed and deserved. She’d never know if her father would own what he’d done, if he’d put his arms around her and say he was sorry, if he’d spend the rest of his life making it up to her.
She would replay a million phantom conversations in her head over her lifetime, would imagine it turning out a million different ways. She would wish she’d said more to him before he’d died. She might even wish she’d forgiven him, allowed him to pass with the knowledge of her forgiveness.
It would haunt her, in the short-term at least, and there wasn’t a fucking thing Max could do about it.
He’d called Nico as soon as he’d gotten Abby settled. Nico had been shocked by the news and had offered to send reinforcements to Vegas if Max needed to step back for a few days.
Max had declined. The only thing worse than what had happened to Abby’s father was knowing she had to worry about Jason at the same time. He couldn’t do anything about the former, but he damn well could do something about the latter.
Dealing with Jason wouldn’t be easy in the aftermath of the accident that had killed Abby’s father, but it gave Max an even bigger incentive. She would need time and space to process her loss.
She would need to feel safe.
That wasn’t possible with Jason alive, which led Max to a very simple conclusion: Jason had to die — and the sooner, the better.
Tomorrow he would help her with funeral arrangements. They would take care of her father, see that he was properly laid to rest. Then Max would wipe Jason off the board, the only way he knew to give her any peace of mind.
He sighed, his eyes scanning the shadows in the brush around the house. The hospital, the doctor, the silent house filled with a new reality… it all reminded him of the night his father died.
He’d been alone then, the shine of the city twisted and surreal in a world without his father. He and Jason had already been estranged thanks to Jason’s takeover of Cartwright Holdings. There had been nobody to call but Abby, although he hadn’t called her until the next day, not knowing how to say the words, not wanting to make it real.
She’d raced over to his father’s house, had sat with him for two days straight, making and ordering food, keeping the coffee coming, helping him make plans for things like caskets and press releases, the suit his father would be buried in, the words that would be spoken at the service.
She’d been an island of calm in the worst storm of his life. Now it was his turn to do the same for her.
Not a day went by that he didn’t think of his father in some way. It might be a restaurant they’d liked frequenting together or the passing scent of cologne that would have Max turning his head, half expecting to see his father striding into the room, commanding and confident, the way he’d been before he lost the business.
He would have been thrilled that Max had finally pulled his head out of his ass and fought for Abby. His father had always loved Abby’s strength, her backbone, her independence. He’d been happy to fund Jason’s college education, but Max had seen the glint of admiration in his father’s eyes when Abby had turned down the anonymous scholarship — amid profuse gratitude for the thought — that she’d known had come from him.
Now they were both orphans.
He turned away from the desert and returned to the house, closing the terrace doors for the first time in months. He passed the bar, ascended the stairs, and made his way down the hall to the master suite.
Abby was still out, curled on her side, her knees pulled up, as if even in her sleep she was trying to protect herself against the onslaught of emotion that was undoubtedly coming.
He pulled the covers up a little, wanting her to be warm, then lowered himself into the chair near her side of the bed. Her face was the last thing he saw when sleep claimed him.
Seventeen
Abby was still shaking twenty minutes after she’d identified her father’s body. She sat in a long white hallway on a cold plastic chair, the pale blue light of the morgue casting a ghostly pall over everything around her.
Max had offered to identify the body, but it didn’t feel right to pawn it off on someone else. Besides, Max hadn’t really known her father. She asked him to wait in the hall while she’d stepped into the sterile room alone.
Her father had looked almost peaceful, laying on the table. If it hadn’t been for the bruising around his forehead, she might have thought he was asleep.
Except he wasn’t asleep. He was gone.
She’d shaken off the morgue worker who tried to lead her out of the room after only a couple minutes. She would never see her father again. She didn’t want to look back and wish she’d spent more time with him at the end.
“Abby, the doctor wants to talk to you.”
She looked up to find Max leaning down next to her.
“Doctor?” Why would a doctor want to talk to her?
Her father was dead.
“The doctor who performed the autopsy,” Max said gently.
“I don’t…” She shook her head. “I don’t know if I can do that.”
She didn’t want the gory details of the autopsy. It had been bad enough to see his battered body.
“I can ask him if he’ll release the information to me,” Max said.
“Information?” She might have felt stupid for repeating simple words if her head had been clear enough to care.
“About the cause of death.”
Through her own pain she could see how it hurt Max to use these words with her. Could see how much he wanted to fix this. To change it.
“Will you come with me?” she asked him.
He held out a hand. “I’m not going anywhere.”
She took his hand and he helped her to her feet. He led her to a room at the end of the hall. It was small, the decor outdated but tidy. A man with glasses and a shining pate sat behind the desk. He stood when she entered.
“I’m Doctor Kowalski,” he said, holding out his hand. “I’m so very sorry for your loss.”
She was on autopilot as she shook his hand.
He gestured to the chairs in front of his desk. “Please have a seat. Can I get you something? Water? Coffee? Tea?”
“No, thank you.”
He nodded and opened a file on his desk. “I was the doctor who performed your father’s autopsy. There were some… inconsistencies I’ll need to refer to the police. I wanted to give you the information first.”
“What kind of inconsistencies?”
She was glad Max had asked the question. She was barely making sense of the words coming from the doctor’s mouth.
“Mr. Sterling died of blunt force trauma to the back of the head,” Doctor Kowalski said.
“Was he wearing his seatbelt?”
Max asked.
“Officers reported he wasn’t wearing a seatbelt when they arrived, which could account for the trauma to the back of the head, but his other injuries aren’t consistent with the speed of the crash and the lack of a safety harness.”
“Can you be more specific?” Max asked.
“Typically an accident victim not wearing a seatbelt will have injuries over his or her whole body,” the doctor said. “In this case, Mr. Sterling had two fractures to the back of the skull and an injury to the knee consistent with his leg coming in contact with the dashboard.”
“How would his leg come in contact with the dashboard if he wasn’t wearing a seatbelt?” Abby asked. “Wouldn’t he have been thrown?”
The question came from some part of her mind she didn’t quite have access to, a part of her mind that was still firing and making connections, that could discuss the details of her father’s accident with the clinical distance of a bystander.
“Exactly my question,” Doctor Kowalski said. “And if he wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, why were there no lacerations on his face, his arms? At the speed he was traveling, he likely would have been thrown from the car, or at the very least, thrown around inside the car.”
“And he wasn’t,” Abby said.
“Not according to his injuries.”
“Which were at the back of his head,” Abby said.
The doctor nodded. “A strange place for impact given his position in the driver’s seat when he was found. And there’s one other thing.” He hesitated. “Your father had alcohol in his stomach. A lot of alcohol.”
Abby shook her head. “My father’s been — had been — sober for four months.”
“Normally, I would say that’s not much of a reassurance, but in this case, there’s an anomaly I can’t explain.”
“What kind of anomaly?” She was alert now, her mind sorting through the details of the conversation. There was a thread of expectation, an ominous anticipation that had every system of her body on high alert.
Surrender to Sin (Las Vegas Syndicate Book 3) Page 8
