Shakedown

by Vale, Lani Lynn

  I felt my stomach all but fall out of my body at his words.

  “Do you have any questions?” Dr. Blunt asked.

  I shook my head.

  I had about a gazillion, but I’d research those instead of listening to Dr. Blunt explain something when it was very clear he did not want to be explaining anything.

  And, honestly, I was okay with that.

  As long as he took care of Bruno—Aryus—that was just fine with me.

  Dr. Blunt nodded at my words and tried to stalk out of the room, but just as he hit the doorway, he nearly ran over a woman with bright violet hair.

  “Sorry,” Dr. Blunt grunted as he veered around her and finished his stalk from the room.

  I stared at the woman in the doorway with curiosity.

  “Can I help you?” I wondered.

  The woman turned her gaze to me and smiled, her lip quivering.

  “Bruno’s my best friend.”

  My brows rose at that. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.” She nodded. “I’ve been giving him a hard time over the last year.”

  I would love to know the story.

  “So I hear you’re his fiancée?” she asked quietly.

  The way she said ‘fiancée’ had me grinning.

  She knew it was fake. Just like I knew it was fake.

  Though, it was starting to feel really un-fake like.

  The feelings that were currently rioting through my system were making me nervous.

  I was feeling things about the man lying in the bed beside me that I hadn’t felt about any man ever.

  “Aryus is mine, yes,” I confirmed.

  Six snorted. “He always hated being called by his middle name. I’ll bet it annoys him to no end to go by that for now.”

  I tilted my head to the side. “Why is that?”

  “It was his real father’s name. He wasn’t very happy with how Aryus left. He wanted to get rid of that name like it was the plague or something,” Six admitted, walking farther into the room.

  I noticed that she looked almost hesitant as she took more and more steps into the room.

  “Why are you so nervous?” I wondered. “Just come in here and sit down.” I paused. “Are you even allowed to be here? Lynn made it sound like everyone was staying away.”

  Six rolled her eyes. “He’s not my daddy or my keeper. He’s my husband. I do what I want, when I want, and he just sits back and rolls with the punches. If he has to do damage control, he has to do damage control. I don’t care. But I’m not going to leave B—Aryus here without knowing he’s in good hands.” She turned her stare directly on me. “Is he in good hands?”

  I showed her my hands.

  Six snickered as she finished her walk around Bruno’s bed and came to a stop beside him. “He’s taking the fall for this so we can find them. I’m sure he doesn’t know that just yet, but even if he did know, he’d allow it. He’s got a special place in his heart for these kids.”

  My curiosity must’ve shown on my face because she said, “Bruno was taken as a young child. Kept for almost a week at the age of six before Texas Marshalls found him in the back of a box van with seven other children around the same age. He doesn’t talk about it much. Hell, I’m not even sure he remembers much of it, but it shaped the man that he became today.”

  That made my heart hurt for the little boy that he used to be.

  Which was quite weird because I was feeling so strongly for someone that I’d literally just met.

  The feelings shouldn’t be this intense. Not yet.

  “What’s with that face?” Six asked curiously, smoothing Bruno’s hair out of his eyes.

  There was caked blood in it.

  My stomach clenched.

  “I have feelings for him and I don’t really even know him all that well.” I paused. “I punched him in the throat on my first day of high school.”

  Six gasped, her head whipping to the side so fast that it looked almost staged. “That was you?”

  I tilted my head. “You saw?”

  She shook her head instantly, her hand dropping from Bruno’s head, which caused me an immense amount of relief.

  So apparently, Bruno wasn’t allowed to be touched by any one of the female persuasion, or it set off my anger meter.

  “I got a secondhand account from Bruno,” she admitted. “He told me all about it when we met for lunch.” Her smile was wide. “He said, ‘some ten-year-old just tried to kill me’ and that was that. I had to find out from a few people later what really happened. It was comical to say the least.”

  My lips curled up in amusement.

  “I was having a bad day,” I admitted. “Not to mention I was still dealing with a lot of issues then. I didn’t like people touching my stuff or me, and he’d tried to help me. I reacted badly, I admit. But to be honest, it’d been a very bad day.”

  Six waved me away. “It’s okay. Everyone is allowed those kinds of days.”

  A commotion in the hallway had us both turning toward it to see a man with an official looking business suit on stuffing something in his pocket, and the two cops from earlier, as well as Dr. Blunt outside Bruno’s room.

  “I should probably go before I’m caught,” she confessed quietly.

  I didn’t disagree.

  There was a reason that the rest of them weren’t here.

  “And, if Lynn catches me here, or I’m caught by someone else, things might go south. And though nobody really knows of me, the right person could figure it out.” She sighed.

  “I’ll keep you updated if you want to text,” I offered.

  She winked. “I’ll text you. No calling?”

  I scrunched up my nose in disgust. “I don’t do phone calls.”

  Her eyes twinkled as she hiked her hair up into a sloppy bun, then pulled the hood of her sweatshirt up over her head.

  That’s when I saw the lettering on the sweatshirt.

  “Dallas PD?” I asked curiously.

  She shrugged. “I found it at the Goodwill. Hopefully nobody will ask me any questions this way.”

  I mean, it was possible.

  But it might also draw more attention to her in the long run.

  “Do you need my phone number?” I asked curiously.

  She shook her head.

  “No. I have Hunt. He can find anything. Do you need anything?” Six asked. “Before I leave?”

  I thought about that for a moment.

  “I need my laptop, a change of clothes, and my medication off the table in my room,” I answered instantly. “But I also really need to go home and shower.”

  She pointed to the room beyond me. “Take one here. I’ll have your stuff delivered.”

  With that, she slipped out of the room, barely noticed by the men in the hallway as they discussed something.

  I slipped out of my chair and stared at Bruno’s lax face.

  He had a five o’clock shadow. Or, more appropriately, a ten o’clock shadow.

  He didn’t look like he shaved every day. But he did look like he kept it somewhat under control so that it wasn’t what one would consider a ‘full’ beard.

  More like a shadow of one that could turn into one very quickly if he’d had a mind to do it.

  My eyes took in the dark circles under his eyes, as well as the bruising on the side of his face that was becoming more and more prominent every single hour that passed.

  The abrasions from what looked like sliding on asphalt on his chin, throat, left shoulder and arms were oozing.

  The blood that was in his hairline hadn’t been cleaned off, and I could see bits and pieces of debris in his hair as well.

  All of which bothered me to no end.

  Which was why I stood up and headed for the door, uncaring that I was walking out into the middle of all the men talking. About Bruno.

  “Ma’am,” the bad cop said stiffly.

  I ignored him and kept walking until I got to the nurses’ station, waiting for someone to look at me.

&n
bsp; None of them did.

  “Excuse me,” I grumbled to the one closest. “I need some clean rags and hot water so I can get him cleaned up,” I told the woman.

  She blinked at me. “I can come in there and do that. I was just waiting for the room to empty out of visitors.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” I told her. “And it’s okay. I can do it.”

  Her eyes said she’d rather argue, but her mouth said something different.

  “I’ll bring it to your room,” she murmured. “Did he need more water?”

  He was in a coma. I highly doubted that water would be helpful to him right now.

  “He’s in a coma and can’t speak to ask for water, nor can he drink it,” I told her. “I mean, I guess you could give me ice chips, and I could allow them to melt in his mouth.”

  She gave me a chin lift that clearly said, ‘okay, go away.’

  Which I did.

  I walked into the room to find the men now standing in Bruno’s room instead of out in the hallway.

  Dr. Blunt had his arms crossed over his chest and he was glaring hard at the jerk from earlier.

  My eyes went to his chest where normally a nametag would reside, only to come up empty.

  I frowned. “Are you even a cop?”

  The guy’s eyes went wide.

  Then, before I could so much as blink, the guy took off running.

  He bumped me with his shoulder on the way out, hitting me so hard that I had no choice but to go to the ground.

  I hit hard just as the fake cop hit the doorway and took off for real.

  There was a loud screech, a crash, and then the sound of water hitting the ground as well as a male scream.

  That’s when the other two cops—the nice one from earlier and the suited one—took off after the runaway.

  Exaggerated reaction much?

  Shaking my head at the whole matter, I got up and took a seat next to the bed and stared at Bruno.

  “Do you think that they were trying to kill you?” I asked curiously. “Because I read a lot of murder mystery, and if I was going to kill you, I’d do it now when you’re in the woods and your health is questionable. Doing it later makes it more obvious.”

  The sexy man didn’t answer me, and I found myself irrationally angry that he didn’t.

  That was one of my problems though. Anger.

  I’d had that issue for as long as I knew. It was something that I couldn’t help, yet I got better and better every year at controlling it.

  That was why I’d become such a recluse. Or, when I did go out, I went out with family or people very close to me that wouldn’t find my anger annoying.

  “So what’s the big deal?” I asked him. “I wonder if they said anything that you could hear? I hear that if you are in a coma, you can still understand everything that is going on around you. I guess we’ll have to wait a few days for your answer, though, since they said they would keep you under so the swelling could go down. They also said that there’s a significant chance that you wouldn’t remember anything. That memory loss was a rather large possibility.” I looked at his arms where the scraping was most prominent. “Probably a good thing you’re in a coma since that road rash probably hurts like a bitch.”

  A throat cleared behind me and I turned slightly to see the well-dressed suited guy from earlier.

  He cleared his throat again and said, “Ma’am. My name is Jarome Gustier. I’m a special agent with the FBI.”

  “Most people introduce themselves as Special Agent Jarome Gustier. Why did you switch it up?” I asked curiously.

  He blinked.

  He was a beautiful mocha-skinned black man that had the most pillowy lips I’d ever seen. I wanted to touch one with my finger to see if they were as soft as they looked.

  His eyes were a warm butterscotch, and he had a black tight beard to the lower half of his face that looked like he’d just visited the barbershop yesterday.

  Though, his hair was much the same. Perfectly cropped and cut.

  I liked it.

  I liked a well-dressed man.

  Though, as I allowed my gaze to drift back over to Bruno, his unkempt look from today, and his ‘fuck it’ attitude with his dirty jeans and black tee from the bar last week, was definitely growing on me.

  “I would have,” Jarome admitted, “but I try not to look like a pretentious asshole to people that I want to like me.”

  My brows rose. “You want me to like you?”

  The nurse arrived with some water in a large pink tub and a stack of washcloths inside.

  She smiled tightly at Jarome, placed the bucket on the rolling table that was at Bruno’s bedside, and then went about checking things.

  His urine output, the blood pressure cuff, and finally the IV lines before she left without a single word.

  My eyes went back to Jarome, brows lifting in question.

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I just get these feelings about people. And my gut is telling me that you need to like me.”

  I snorted. “Maybe it’s your gut telling you that whatever expedition you were sent here to suss out is a joke. And that fake cop that was just here was your primary objective.” I paused. “Was the other guy a fake cop, too?”

  “I’m not,” the good cop from earlier said as he came in. “I was ‘just assigned’ that man as my partner today. Yet I wasn’t told that he was my partner from the head brass. Which should’ve been a red flag, but I’m on hour forty-nine of a twenty-four-hour shift, and my brain isn’t working in tip-top shape right now.”

  I immediately felt sorry for him.

  I knew that if I didn’t get the correct amount of sleep, I was a right cow.

  I couldn’t imagine working a forty-eight-hour shift.

  Or a twenty-four one, for that matter.

  I’d learned early that a structured schedule, with eight full hours of sleep, was best for me.

  The guy standing in front of me looked like he’d had eight full hours of straight coffee.

  My heart would be going gonzo right now if that were me.

  “I’m Officer Dremmel,” he said. “I’m with the sheriff’s department. You’ve met Jarome?”

  I nodded.

  “We’re here to ask you a few questions about your whereabouts last night,” he said. “We know that you’ve already told us what you know, but we’d like to go over it one more time.”

  I rolled my eyes, then went over it not once, but three more times.

  By the end of the third round, I stood up.

  “I know that you’re trying to find justice for children,” I said stiffly. “But right now, I need a break. He needs to rest. I need to get the blood that’s caked in his hair out. I want to clean his scrapes. And you’re bothering me. Don’t make me call my daddy.”

  Jarome shifted, his eyes narrowing.

  “Your father wouldn’t happen to be Nico Pena in Kilgore, Texas, would he?” he asked, seeming slightly alarmed.

  I tilted my head. “Yes. Why?”

  He swallowed. “Your mother Georgia?”

  I blinked. “Yes.”

  Jarome sighed. “She’s telling the truth here. I don’t need any further questioning from her.”

  I blinked. “You don’t? Why?”

  He slowly lifted his arm, then did that sexy thing men do when they roll the sleeves of their dress shirts up. The thing that always drives women wild.

  I was so entranced with the movements of his fingers that I didn’t notice the scar until he said, “Your dad saved me from my own kidnapping when I was four. My arm was caught in a car door and I was drug for thirty feet before I fell free. He sat with me in a hospital for over eight hours before my parents were able to arrive in a private plane he’d gotten for them from Michigan.”

  I understood instantly.

  “You’re him,” I said. “My dad had nightmares about you for years after that.”

  Jarome nodded solemnly. “Not my favorite thing in the world to remember. B
ut I do remember being thankful that Nico was the man that found me. And, saying that, I’m now more than convinced that you wouldn’t be marrying a man that would allow that.”

  I looked over at Bruno’s comatose form.

  “No,” I agreed. “I wouldn’t.”

  Fifteen minutes later, after being informed that the man that’d been posing as a cop had been apprehended, they both left, leaving me alone with the man that I couldn’t stop staring at.

  Picking up the now lukewarm tub of water, I walked it over to the sink and dumped half of it out, refilling it with piping hot water that would counterbalance it out.

  When it was at the desired temp, I brought it back to the rolling table and pulled out a washcloth that felt like a Brillo pad.

  Wincing at how raw it would feel on his wounds, I was almost tempted to go ask for some softer ones, but decided that nothing would feel good at this point in time.

  It was just lucky that he was asleep.

  Bringing the washrag to his face, I paused midway when the thought of causing him pain made me physically ill.

  Hopefully pain wasn’t like hearing, and you could feel it no matter whether you were put under or not.

  Pulling out my phone, I quickly Googled whether coma patients could feel pain.

  Answer: they couldn’t.

  Thank. God.

  After that, I made sure to wash every single bit of blood, dirt, and debris off of his skin and out of his hair.

  By the time I’d finished with his arms, and his lower body, the water was a dingy brown, and I was thinking I needed some baby soap and another full bucket of water to roll over his skin as a cleanse.

  But before I could, I got a text message.

  I frowned and walked over, dumping the water and washing the tub out as best as I could before drying my hands off and walking to the phone that was sitting in the vacated chair on the side of Bruno’s bed.

  Picking it up, my brows lifted to my hairline for a second time in an hour at what I read.