The machine monitoring Zeke’s heartbeat bleeped out a steady rhythm, her own pulse wearily thrumming in sync. Thirteen hours she’d waited, not the least bit interested in sleep. At least she wasn’t relegated to the waiting room anymore. Shortly after Zeke’s release from Recovery, the men had informed the nurses she was more than a visitor and had a right to be beside Zeke while they waited for him to wake up.
Not a visitor, but not welcome. At least not if the guarded looks Jace and Axel cast her way every now and then were a guide to go by.
“Hey.” Danny leaned up from the long bench beneath the room’s window and motioned longwise along the cushion. “Pretty sure this thing folds out. How about you lay down and get some sleep?”
“No.” It came out sharper than she’d intended, but the tension and the lack of sleep were making her jumpy. No way was she closing her eyes until she could see Zeke was awake. Until she could hear his voice and know with absolute certainty he was okay. She swallowed, cursing herself for the hundredth time for not listening to Zeke the day before. For not trusting him. “They really killed Dad?”
“Yeah, Sugar Bear. The only thing we need to do now is prove it.”
She still couldn’t wrap her head around it. From what they’d gleaned in Lakeside’s files, the execs had presumed Dad’s past due mortgage payments would send the house right back to the bank upon his death. They sure hadn’t counted on Danny coming up with enough money to bring the account current and pay off the note.
Two quick knocks rapped against the door before it eased open.
Trevor and Jace shot to their feet only to nod and drop back into their seats when Beckett and Knox walked through.
Beckett chin-lifted toward Zeke and stuffed the tips of his fingers in his pockets. For a heavily muscled guy who looked like he could take out any threat bare-handed, he seemed surprisingly uneasy. “Any change?”
“The doc was in about an hour ago,” Trevor said. “Between the anesthesia and pain meds, he said Zeke would be out of it most of today.”
Axel pushed off the wall where he’d kept to his feet for the better part of the past hour, his voice as grated and rough as the scowl on his face. “What’s the news on our shooter?”
Knox scanned the room, his gaze landing on hers long enough to make her want to curl up in an invisible ball. She averted her gaze instead, focusing on Zeke, willing him to wake up.
Jace’s menacing voice sounded from behind her. “It was almost her instead of Zeke. He’d want her to have the facts.”
Funny, because she wasn’t sure she wanted them. Wasn’t sure she could juggle any more ugly realities beyond what she’d already learned in the past twenty-four hours.
Knox shrugged and slid one of the industrial chairs around so he could straddle the back. He crossed his arms on top, his supersized Starbucks dangling between his fingertips. “Shooter was a midlevel thug. The wound Trev gave him was superficial enough they treated and released him to short-term holding. With the info Beck handed off to Rockwall’s homicide guy and the kind of sentence they had to hang over him, the guy rolled on a plea deal quick.”
“The search warrant was a no-brainer at that point,” Beckett said. “They’re moving on the offices now.”
“What about the records?” Axel said.
“Contained,” Knox said. “With one suspected and one attempted murder, the cops moved fast. The building was on lockdown before the execs even got up this morning.”
Trevor shifted and held out his hand to Danny. “Congrats, brother. Looks like you and your neighbors are safe.”
“Brother.” Danny shook his head, bewilderment and relief mingling with his obvious fatigue. “Still weird hearin’ that.” He clapped his hand against Trevor’s and shook it hard. “Appreciate you guys havin’ my back. And Gabe’s.”
Laughter filled the room, low and respectful of the place they were in and Zeke still asleep, but easy and relaxed all the same.
Brother.
The room fell away, her thoughts tumbling over each other and crashing into a new reality. Danny had finally gotten what he wanted. Not just friendship, but family. Support in a way she could never give him. Not really. And where did that leave her? Especially after the way she’d reacted to Zeke’s honesty the day before.
Alone.
Unless she dared to changed things.
If she wanted to be a part of Zeke’s family she’d have to offer them the same open acceptance and care they’d shown her. To trust and support them the way Danny and her father had supported her, even if her mother was AWOL. They’d always been there, even when they didn’t agree with how she’d approached life.
They’d also taught her to own her mistakes. To suck it up and do the right thing even when it terrified the ever-loving crap out of her. She lifted her chin, a little of the fledging determination she’d nursed during her drive around the lake the night before pushing up on wobbly legs. “Zeke and I fought yesterday.”
The room fell silent, the weight of every man’s stare slicing straight to her.
“He told me what you were going to do and I freaked out. It terrified me.” She licked her lips. “I was wrong.”
“You get what we did was for you, right?” Jace said. “For your brother. For your neighbors.”
She jerked an awkward nod, but didn’t dare meet Jace’s penetrating stare. “Now I do, but then all I could see was the bad. Every worst-case scenario. And rightly so. Look what happened.”
“Sugar.” Jace’s command was soft and low, but it was a command all the same, demanding her attention.
Gripping Zeke’s hand tighter, she lifted her gaze.
“I get you not understanding or even agreeing with how he planned to go about it, but it was his choice to make. His love to give.”
Another chunk of the wall she’d begun to build that day she’d watch her mom hauled away in handcuffs crumbled, powerful fractures creeping to the very base of the archaic structure. Zeke loved her. Had said it as plainly as possible, but until Jace’s words it hadn’t registered this heavy. This powerful. He didn’t love her only on the surface. He loved her enough to risk.
Jace stayed rock still, his eyes steady and calm. “I know all about your past. Every one of us do. As to Zeke and the danger, it was his call.” He cocked his head, considering. “Were you hurt?”
“No.”
“Right. Because he kept you from it. That’s our way. The way we do things might not always line up with your or society’s idea of what’s right, but they won’t touch our family. The seven of us? Maybe. But the ones we claim as our own? Never.”
Claimed.
Part of a family.
Loved.
“Can I ask you something?” she whispered.
“You can ask,” Jace said. “If it’s ours to give, we’ll share.”
She didn’t have to ask. Could simply try to pick up the pieces and mend things with Zeke and ignore the suspicion slithering through her thoughts. But if she could face the truth—all of it, no matter what it looked like—wouldn’t that make a better foundation to build on? “This wasn’t a one-time deal, was it?” she said before she could change her mind. “Taking matters into your own hands...the people you deal with...that’s the norm for you, right?”
For the first time since she’d waded into the conversation, Jace broke his stare and traded looks with his brothers. Not a single word was spoken, and yet the room crackled with tension.
Jace refocused on her. “If you’re asking if we get up every morning looking for ways to juke the system, no. Doesn’t mean we live confined to it either. If there’s an action that’s in the best interest of family or our livelihood and it doesn’t fuck with an innocent, then we won’t shy away from it. But I’ll tell you this. There’s not one thing, not one decision or action we take, we can�
��t honorably get behind or have a damned good reason for doing it. We follow what actions we deem are right. Not the path society tells us we have to walk.”
Truth. The unvarnished underbelly laid bare.
Only the steady beep from the monitors beside Zeke broke the deafening white noise, and every man watched her, waiting.
Uncurling his arms from across his chest, Axel leaned a hip on the arm of the long bench. “Need you to understand somethin’, lass. The only reason Zeke didn’t lay this out for you was fear of outing us. You askin’ direct gives us the chance to do it for him. We’re doing it here, in front of him, to the woman he was willing to die for. It might scare the shite out of you, but hope to God it doesn’t, because we want you right where you are. Beside him. That’s what would make him happy.”
It absolutely did scare the shit out of her. Not so much from the usual fear of abandonment so much as the danger it implied. But what was the alternative? Life without Zeke? Going back to the empty existence she’d essentially plodded through her whole life?
No. She didn’t want that for herself. She wanted more. Wanted the promise of all that was her and Zeke together. Wanted not just the safety of her blood relationship with Danny, but the security and warmth that came with a family built by choice. Her choice. All she had to do was find the courage to claim it.
Chapter Thirty-One
A slow steady beep and the chatter of a television program wiggled through Zeke’s consciousness. Neither of them were loud, more background noise than anything, but enough to drag him up from the bowels of some seriously deep sleep.
He shifted beneath the covers, the plastic-coated groan of the unforgiving mattress beneath him and a whole lot of stay-the-fuck-still from his body halting him in seconds. Jesus, what kind of bender had he gone on last night? Even the prospect of opening his eyes made him want to sink back down into sleep.
The all too familiar scent of disinfectant coalesced with the sounds all at once.
The hospital.
His muscles unwound on a heavy exhale. Just a shift. A long one, judging from the way he felt. Must have been a helluva trauma to knock him out this hard.
Except monitors weren’t in the doc’s lounge.
And he damned sure never slept this hard on shift.
Shit. The shooting.
His eyes snapped open. Trevor, Jace and Axel were parked on one side of the room, their focus locked onto the latest CNN report, while Knox tap-tap-tapped away at his keyboard on the other.
“What...” He coughed to loosen the thick congealed gunk at the back of his throat. Man, but he could go for about ten Big Gulps of H2O right now. “What time is it? And where’s Gabe?”
The question jerked his brothers out of their boredom induced comas. Trevor tossed the remote to the bench beside him and stood, stretching as he went. “About damned time you woke up. You were out all day yesterday. You got any idea how shitty hospital TV is?”
“I told you I’d stream you some good stuff.” Knox shut his laptop and set it on the rolling table he’d commandeered as part of his mobile command center.
“Not sure the nurses would appreciate your Jenna Jameson compilation as much as we would.” Jace uncrossed his booted feet from the chair he’d propped them in, swiveled for a full upright, and zeroed in on Zeke. “How you feeling?”
“Better if I knew where the hell my woman is.”
“Relax, brother.” Unlike the rest of them, Axel kept his semireclined pose and laced his fingers behind his head. “Gabe said she had somethin’ to do this morning, but she’d be back soon.”
She had something to do? Like her nails or hitting the mall? Christ, she must be really pissed off. If she were the one in a hospital bed, they’d have had to pry him away from her. Talk about a kick in the nuts.
Trevor swiveled his chair and positioned it a little closer to Zeke’s bedside. “Thought I told you to get out of the line of fire, not into it.”
“Yeah, well, the laundry room was smaller than I remembered it.” He tentatively shifted his shoulder only to have it bark a demanding STOP! And wasn’t that just the perfect way to get his mind off a disenchanted woman. “We get what we needed out of the shooter?”
“And then some,” Trevor said. “Beck hasn’t copped to it, but rumor has it he sweet-talked one of Rockwall’s finest into a brief, but unguarded chat with the guy before the cops took over with interrogation. Spilled everything he knew as soon as he figured out his canoe was up Shit River. The cops got a warrant, swarmed the offices and have Lakeside’s top dogs in custody already.”
Damn. Talk about sleeping through the good part. “An unguarded chat, huh?”
Knox snickered. “Everyone needs a little time to reflect. Beck’s good for muscling people toward the light.”
On Knox’s side of the bed, the room’s computer hovered on an oscillating arm mounted to the wall. Funny, he’d never considered working for a hospital might score him access to his own records on demand. He motioned to it with his uninjured arm. “Swing that thing around here, would ya?”
“Yup.” Unsurprisingly, Knox manned the keyboard and started typing on the login screen.
“My user name is—”
“I know what it is.” Knox hit the enter key and stepped back, moving the computer into Zeke’s line of sight. “I also know what your password is. You use the same one on all the networks.”
Axel snorted and shook his head. “Nosey bastard.”
“That’s fucked up,” Trevor said.
“Nah, that’s just Knox,” Jace added.
Zeke scrolled through the patient history. Two transfusions. Clean entrance and exit of the bullet. Limited bone fragmentation, but the drive-by the bullet did through his lung had done a number. “Damn, no wonder I was out. At least I got Moen as a surgeon.”
“Christ, he’s a cocky one,” Axel said. “Only understood about every third word he said.”
“Some people say the same about you,” Knox said, leaning in toward the screen for a look over Zeke’s shoulder.
“Only the ladies, brother. And that’s because I use ma brogue ta get ’em thinkin’ of all the naughty things I’ll say when ma mouth is between their thighs.”
Fucking Axel. Always thinking about sex and his next conquest. Normally he’d appreciate the levity, especially considering he was stuck in this hospital bed for at least one more night, but right now all he wanted to do was get up and pace. Too bad the pain meds and the level-ten ache in his upper back meant that was a shaky idea at best. “Gabe say where she was headed?”
Trevor and Jace glanced up at the television screen.
Knox kept his gaze rooted to the computer.
Axel shrugged, but something in his expression looked a little off. “Wasn’t all that talkative. Went outside just after eight this morning, made a call, then came back saying she’d be back as soon as she could.”
Eight o’clock. On a Monday. But she couldn’t have gone to work. Not if she’d said she’d be back soon. “Who’s got my phone? I want to call her.”
Jace looked to Trevor, who shrugged and kept avoiding eye contact. “I left it at Danny’s house.”
“Fine.” Zeke held out his hand to Knox. “Give me yours.”
“Why mine?”
“Because you’re an information whore, which means you’ve got her number and every other detail you might need in a pinch on the damned thing.”
Knox rolled his eyes, but unlocked it and handed it over.
Sure enough, Gabe’s number was there. He punched the call button and waited, every ring sounding louder and longer.
“Hi, this is Gabe. You know what to do at the beep.”
The long tone sounded. Zeke opened his mouth to speak, but hit the end button instead. Something was off. Really off. He scanned his
brothers, every one of them suspiciously pre-occupied with everything from the television to some vague happening outside his window. “Someone want to tell me why you’re all acting like you just got caught robbing a blind old woman?”
A whole lot of back-and-forth eyeballing between the four of them commenced.
“Not going to ask this again,” Zeke said. “Where’s Gabe?”
Jace cleared his throat. “Not exactly sure, but Beckett and Danny are tailing her.”
“Why would they need to tail her?”
Knox spun the computer out of reach and settled back in his seat. Trevor glared at Jace, and Axel nodded.
Jace dragged a toothpick out of his pocket, a dead giveaway without a single word spoken Zeke wouldn’t like what came next. “Because we’re worried she might be sharing information she shouldn’t and want to be prepared if she does.”
He looked to Trevor. Then Knox. Then back to Axel and Jace. “I want details. Now.”
“Well, for starters,” Trevor said, “she knows about her dad.”
“That wouldn’t make her run to the cops. That would prove what we did was right. What else?”
Jace lifted his chin, the hard lines on his face making it look like he was braced for a right hook. “We laid everything out. Who we are. How we operate. If she thought this was a one-time deal before, she doesn’t now.”
Fuck. Of all the shit ideas he’d heard in his lifetime, going full confession with Gabe in the frame of mind he’d left her in had to be a bullet to the top of the list. No wonder why they were antsy. With her mind and enough time sitting in one place to stew, let alone a hospital with a bullet hole in his shoulder, there was no telling what her mind had conjured up. He tried to force himself upright and out of bed, but the pain slammed him back against the mattress, echoes of the foolhardy action reverberating out in all directions. He gritted through it and shot a mean glare at Jace, now standing by his bed. “She wasn’t ready.”
Wild & Sweet (The Haven Brotherhood) Page 31
