It was Torrence. “Hey, what’s up?” he asked.
“Someone stabbed Danny,” I said, hastily. “There seems to be someone after Sloan too. I think someone was after me at Club 9. And I’d like to know where my security is.”
“Just calm down, Lucas,” he said with a slightly aggravated tone which pissed me off even more.
“Calm down?” I shrieked at him. “You have no idea what’s happening. Sloan is on the run from someone. She called the police and they’re on their way to help her.”
“They are?” he asked then I heard the phone make a clicking noise and I couldn’t hear a thing. I knew he had put his phone on mute. Then there was another click when he came back on. “I need you to get somewhere secure. Maybe the person who’s been after you has gone off the deep end. Your office is the most secure place I can think of. You need to get over there as quickly as you can. I’ll come to you.”
“No, I have to find Sloan. I’ll be fine. I need you to try to find out who the hell is chasing her. I also need you to find out who the hell grabbed my driver and stabbed him.”
“Danny was stabbed?” Torrence asked and I could tell he was speaking between gritted teeth.
“Yes, once in the side and on his arm. He’s called an ambulance to take him to the hospital. Whatever this person wants from me, I need to know before anyone else gets hurt. If something happens to Sloan, I’ll stop at nothing to make sure whoever is doing this meets their end,” I said, seething with anger.
“Look, I know you’re mad, Lucas. But you need to do what I’m telling you to. Go to your office,” he said and then I heard a sneeze. A female sneeze.
“Who’s with you?” I asked.
“No one,” he said and his answer made me more than a little suspicious.
“I’ll call you later,” I said and ended that call before he could say anything else.
I knew something wasn’t right. And I knew I had to get to Sloan. So we continued to follow the detective and I sat back and let my brain go to work on what the hell was happening and how I could stop it all before someone got killed.
My cell rang again and I saw it was from Danny’s phone so I answered it, “How are you, buddy?”
It was his wife and she was screaming at the top of her lungs, “What the hell have you gotten my husband into? He’s being taken into surgery and I swear to you Lucas Montgomery, I’ll own everything you have if he dies for being involved with you!”
“Surgery?” I asked as my heart sank with the news.
“Yes!” she shrieked like a banshee. “What kind of shit are you into that has the people around you in danger? Shit! That poor young woman who you merely looked at in that club was nearly kidnapped just for that, Danny told me! So you better straighten your shit out or it’ll be me who you have to worry about and I won’t hide it. I’ll just show up with a gun and blow your head off to stop anything else from happening to my husband. Do you hear me, Montgomery?”
“Fuck! Who didn’t?” I told her. “I’m trying to take care of it. I’m going to tell the detective to keep an officer with Danny until this is settled. Make sure only a uniformed officer is guarding him and check the man’s badge and make sure the name matches his ID. We can take no chances.”
Her voice went soft as I could hear tears in her voice as she said, “Lucas, if anything happens to him, it will kill me. Please find out who’s doing this and make it stop. I’m begging you.”
“I will, I promise,” I told her then ended the call.
The lights from the police car pulled to the side of the road and stopped. “Pull up right behind him,” I told the cabbie.
“What is there’s shooting?” he asked with a quivering voice.
“Then duck,” I said. “I’ll pay for any damages that might occur to your cab.”
“Fuck the cab! What about damages to me?” he said.
“You too,” I told him as he pulled to a stop behind the vehicle and I got out of the car.
Only Sloan’s car was in front of the police car and she was bailing out and falling into Detective Allen’s arms as she sobbed. My whole body tingled with shock as I saw blood pouring down her arm.
Chapter 5
Sloan
I had no idea I had been shot until I felt the blood trickling down my arm. I was sure it was just a flesh wound as there was no pain until I saw the blood, that is.
Once my eyes took in the red line making its way to my hand, which gripped the steering wheel so tight my knuckles were white, I felt a burning sensation near my shoulder.
Thankfully, not long after that, Torrence took a sharp left for some reason and I was left alone. I pulled over and started crying like a baby until the police car came up behind me. When I saw it was Detective Allen, I got out of the car and fell into his arms.
Then I heard a man’s voice and looked up to find Lucas standing there. “Baby,” he said.
I pulled out of the detective’s arms and fell into Lucas’ and cried out, “It’s Torrence, Cecelia, and the little tramp you were with who were after me!”
Lucas’ arms tightened around me as I heard the detective say, “I’m calling an ambulance for her. And I’ll get a team looking for Torrence.”
“The car is blue,” I said as I turned my head away from Lucas’ chest.
Lucas shushed me and his hand ran over the wig and he pulled it off then pulled the stocking cap off me and used his fingers to comb my hair. “It’s okay now, baby. I have you now.”
“Lucas, I know who it is. I know who’s behind the whole thing,” I said through choked sobs.
“Good, baby. Let’s get you to the hospital and taken care of then you can tell me and the detective everything,” he said then picked me up and held me like a baby as I cried on his shoulder.
“I’ve never been more afraid,” I said.
His lips pressed against the side of my head. “I know, baby. You hush now. Just rest. No one will ever hurt you again.”
I tried to move my arm to run it around his neck but pain radiated all the way down it and I shrieked with the pain. “Fuck!”
“Keep it still, Sloan. You’ve been shot. You need to keep it still,” he said with such a soothing tone it made me feel better.
“I’m sorry, Lucas,” I whispered. “I’m sorry for not giving you a chance to explain things to me. Can you ever forgive me?”
“I already have. Do you think you can forgive me for bringing all this down on you, merely because I stared at you in that club one night?” he asked with a chuckle that shook his chest.
“I already have,” I said. “I missed you more than I knew was possible.”
“Me too, baby,” he whispered. “Promise me never to run off on me again.”
“Never,” I said. “Does that mean you still want me? And our agreement?”
“No,” he said.
My heart stopped and my body started to ache. He didn’t want me anymore. He may have forgiven me but he didn’t want me anymore!
I couldn’t speak as the ambulance pulled up and the paramedics had me on a stretcher in no time and in the back of the ambulance as Lucas stood there and watched with such sadness on his face it made me cry again. Not that I had stopped entirely.
He came to the doors and leaned in. “I’ll take your car to the hospital. I’ll be right behind you.”
“Can’t you come with me?” I asked as one of the paramedics put a huge needle into the vein on top of my hand, making me wince with the pain.
“Is he your husband or some other relative?” she asked me.
“No,” I said as I looked at him.
“No one but family is allowed, sorry,” she said.
“I’ll take your car, Sloan,” he told me. “And don’t worry, I’ll get to you.”
I closed my eyes as some medicine she’d put into the IV she’d just attached took me over. “Okay.”
Suddenly, nothing mattered. I guess the medicine was a mixture of pain reliever and calming agent. Whatever it was, I
was feeling very relaxed. Finally, I was calm and the crying stopped.
My words were slurred when I said, “I really messed up. That man doesn’t want to see me romantically anymore.”
The paramedic looked at me with a frown. “For a man who doesn’t want to see you anymore, he certainly didn’t look like that. Don’t worry about a thing right now. Just think about getting better. The bullet is lodged in your bicep. You’re going to need a minor surgery to remove it.”
“Fantastic,” I murmured.
The rest of the ride was quiet and I kept drifting back and forth between being asleep and awake. Then I was being carried out of the ambulance and wheeled into a set of glass doors. There was a lot of chaos going on in the ER but I barely registered it.
My paramedic was on her little walkie-talkie, telling someone that I needed to be in the O.R. stat. Then I heard her say the bullet had lodged in the brachial artery and I would need immediate surgery.
“But it doesn’t hurt that bad,” I mumbled. “Are you sure it’s not just a flesh wound?”
She smiled as she walked alongside of me, carrying the baggie with that wonderful drug in it. “I’m sure. But you’ll be okay. You’re just going to be taken right into surgery.”
“Can I see Lucas?” I asked with a hoarse voice that felt odd as it came on quickly. “Is he here?”
“I have no idea,” she said as she shook her head. “Even if he was, there’s no time for visiting, I’m afraid. And they wouldn’t let him back here, anyway. It’ll be okay. You’ll be out of surgery in a few hours and in recovery for a while then in a room of your own and he can come see you then.”
“Why am I feeling so groggy,” I choked out.
“Because I’ve already administered a bit of anesthesia to help you fall under more quickly when the anesthesiologist gets started on you.” She looked up and smiled. “Here we are.”
The stretcher pushed open a set of stainless steel doors and I found the room freezing cold. Several men were waiting for me in blue scrubs and face masks. Then one of them came up to my side and said, “Hi, I’m Doctor Stan. I’ll be taking this pesky bullet out for you this evening. No need to worry, my dear.”
“K,” I muttered.
Two of the men came to me. One took my shoulders and one my feet and they picked me up and transported me to a very hard surface that was very cold. The thin sheet covering it did nothing to take the cold away from the obviously stainless steel operating table beneath it.
A man came up behind me and the smile he had shown in his blue eyes. “Hi, I’m Peter and I’ll be your bartender for this evening. I’ll be monitoring your vitals and keeping you sedated while he takes out that bullet. I can’t imagine how a nice girl like you ended up being shot, but I bet you have a great story behind it.”
“It’s alright,” I mumbled. “Nothing to write a book about.”
He laughed and placed a clear thing over my mouth and nose and said, “Just take in normal breaths, and soon you’ll be in La Land.”
And just before I closed my eyes, I saw Lucas leaning his head against the glass at the top of the wall. Then I realized this was an operating theater and he was in the room, watching over my operation.
I raised my hand and gave him a little wave and he gave me one back then he blew me a kiss. My insides melted with the gesture and I thought for only a second that it meant he did still want to see me. Maybe he had changed his mind and was ready to go back to our agreement after all.
I hoped so, anyway.
Then it all went black and I fell under the spell of the drugs.
When I woke up, I felt stiff and my arm ached. It hurt worse than when I got shot. A moan came out of me as I tried to move. “Just be still,” I heard a voice say.
It was his voice!
I laid perfectly still and blinked until my eyes focused. Then I saw him hovering over me as I lay in a hospital bed. I tried to talk but something stopped me and made me choke a little.
Suddenly his handsome face was gone and a female nurse was there. She put her hand on my forehead as she said, “Let me get the tracheal tube out.”
I gagged as something large slipped up my throat, making my eyes water. When it finally got out, I tried to talk and the sound was all scratchy. Lucas put his finger to my lips then the nurse pushed some button to raise the top portion of the bed up.
Lucas picked up a large cup with a lid and a plastic straw and held the straw to my lips. “Drink, slowly.”
I did as he said to and felt the cool water go over my now very sore throat. After I popped the straw back out, I muttered, “Ow.”
He smiled and kissed my forehead. Then the nurse took my attention as she began moving things around and calling for someone else over a little box on the bedside. “Now that you’re awake, we can move you to your room. Mr. Montgomery here spared no expense and you’re set up in one of our nicest rooms. He got another one of our very nice rooms for his driver, Mr. O’Brien. I’d say you two are pretty lucky to have this man looking out for you.”
“Danny?” I croaked as I looked at Lucas.
“I’ll tell you all about it later. Right now I want you to relax and heal, baby. No arguments about that. I’m going to take care of you,” he said.
I felt better already, knowing he’d be there with me and for me. But I felt bad about hearing Danny was in the hospital too. An urgency leapt up inside of me as I had yet to tell Lucas the name of the woman behind everything.
“Lucas, the plot against you,” I said but half the words didn’t make it out audibly.
He patted my shoulder and said, “Don’t worry. Your voice will be back by tonight and you can tell us everything you know then.”
A male nurse came in wearing Scooby Doo scrubs and gave me a smile. “Hello, I’m Leo and I’ll be your nurse until the evening shift comes on.” He took the bed and started moving me out of the tiny room and into a large hallway. “We’re going all the way up to the top floor.”
Into a large elevator, we went, with me on the bed and Lucas right beside me. I never felt safer than I did at that time. Lucas was like a rock and he was right there. He looked at me with something in his eyes I had never seen before. I wanted to call it love but this was Lucas I was talking about. Love wasn’t even in his extensive vocabulary.
When the elevator stopped and we got off, my nurse pushed the bed along the wide hallway and into a large room already filled with flowers and get-well balloons. Tears stung my eyes as I knew Lucas had all of this done.
I mouthed a thank you to him and he smiled at me as the nurse placed my bed right in the middle and put a television remote next to my left hand. That’s when I realized my right arm was immobilized. “Hey,” I croaked. “What happened?”
The nurse sat on the left side of my bed and popped a thermometer in my mouth then set about to check my blood pressure. “Oh, honey! Let me tell you how lucky you are to be alive. That bullet was lodged in one of your very important arteries. When the doc took it out blood went everywhere. You had to have a few pints of blood transfused to keep you with us. Your hubby, here, gave the okay for the transfusion, otherwise, the doc couldn’t have given it to you and the outcome could’ve been terrible.”
He took the thermometer out of my mouth and I said, “Oh my!”
“Oh my, indeed!” the nurse said as he raised his eyebrows and took the blood pressure cuff off. “Your pressure is still on the low side but that’s normal after surgery. I’m sure it’ll come around in a few hours. Anyway, if there had been no one around to sign the papers, the doc would’ve had to do the surgery then bring you out of anesthesia to get your permission for the transfusion and then give it to you, if you agreed. It would’ve been very hard on your body.”
All I could do was look at Lucas and mouth another, thank you. He was truly my hero.
Chapter 6
Lucas
When the nurse finally left the room, I sat on the bed next to Sloan and ran my hand over her cheek. She looked s
o weak and helpless lying on that hospital bed. It was my lust for the poor thing that had her there and I knew that without a doubt.
“What do you want, baby?” I asked her. “Anything at all and I will get it for you.”
She smiled, weakly and whispered, “Just you.”
Just me is all she wanted and I was thinking very hard about giving her that. She’d wanted romance and I’d given her very little of that. The room was filled with flowers I had brought in and balloons and I had one more thing I wanted her to have but I was waiting for her to get more lucid before that happened.
The door opened and the detective came in. “I stopped by your office. Your head of security was in the secretary’s office. Neither acted the least bit guilty when I talked to them about what happened last night. I told them Sloan had been incoherent when I got to her and couldn’t tell me a thing. I also told them that she still hadn’t woken up from the surgery to be able to point me in the direction of who it was who’d chased her and shot her. But when I asked Torrance if he could come to the station so we could talk more formally, he said he was unavailable anytime soon as he had a lot to do with a business risk you were having.”
I looked down at Sloan as she spoke with broken words as some just weren’t making it out of her mouth, “It was Cecelia who was shooting.”
“Seriously?” I asked with surprise. I never saw that coming!
She nodded and I got her giant cup of water and held it to her lips. She took a drink then she said, “And the name of the woman behind it all is-”
The door opened again and there stood Drew Torrence. I wanted to fly off that bed and tear him limb from limb but the detective shot me a look that told me to stay calm. I knew we had to get more than just Sloan’s testimony as to what she’d overheard to bring them all down.
Sloan gripped my hand and I felt her stop breathing. She was terrified and who could blame her. So I stroked her hair and whispered close to her ear, “You’re fine. I’m here. Act like you don’t remember a thing about the incident at all.”
Shattered: A Billionaire Romance Series (Contemporary Romance Novels) Page 41
