“Where is she?” I demanded from the first person I saw, grabbing the front of his shirt when all he did was raise a brow at me and look over my shoulder at the guy I pulled in with. “Listen, mother fucker... I'm not in the mood for your gam...”
“Yo,” the guy behind me said, clamping a hand on my shoulder. “I'll take you. Relax.”
“Maybe you should get him calmed down first, Leo. He can't be charging into the sick room balls out mad...”
“Try to stop me, I dare you. I just fucking blinded the last man who stood between me and Lo. You really want to do this?” I asked, shoving his chest, stepping back with drawn-in brows when all he did was laugh.
“Malc was right,” he said, nodding over my shoulder at Leo.
“Yep,” Leo agreed then moved to look at me. “Come on, let's go.”
With that, I followed him into the storage container maze that was the innards of Hailstorm. By the fourth container, I was certain that if you didn't know the layout, you genuinely could get completely lost. Half of the rooms were all but empty, jutting off into what looked like deadends. Past the barracks-style bedroom, we finally arrived at a door with a small glass window through which I could see a naked to the waist Lo lying on her stomach on a hospital bed while one of her men, dark-skinned, shaved head, wearing a white tee and jeans, sat over her with white gloves on his hands, pressing something into the broken-open welts on her back.
Leo pushed open the door and led me inside. Beside the man bent over Lo, the only person left in the room was Malcolm whose face was in severe lines. The air around him seemed to be buzzing with a mix of rage and concern. It was a feeling I knew well.
“She's not moving,” I said, getting close to the side of the bed.
“Knocked her out,” the guy pressing compresses to her wounds said, not looking up. “She'd skin me if I let us all hear her cry through this,” he added, gesturing toward the suture kit he had laid up beside him.
“Fuck,” I said, looking down at her perfect back ripped to shreds. “I was there,” I said, shaking my head, feeling the realization settle heavy inside. “I had been there and she was one fucking floor beneath me. I could have saved her from this!” I yelled, grabbing the metal stool beside me and hauling it across the room.
“Don't go there,” Malcolm said, shaking his head as he watched me.
“How the fuck can I not go there? I was there. I should have looked harder for a door. I should have noticed the fucking basement windows from outside...”
“It's not your fault some sick bastard tortured her. That's not on you. That's on him. She doesn't need your anger. She needs you to be here for her. She's not a victim. Don't treat her like one. At least... not if you want to be able to be in her life in the future, that is.”
“I'm gonna be there,” I said, a kind of certainty in my words I never usually felt, let alone expressed. I was going to be there, in her future, even if I had to claw my way into it.
It made no sense. True, I'd met her a year... closer to two years before. But I only got to really know her the past several days. But it didn't matter. I never claimed it was rational. All I knew was, she was mine. And she wasn't 'mine for the night' or 'mine for the time being' like women had been in the past... she was mine without an expiration date. Because I had never met a woman like her- a woman covered in steel but so soft inside. I'd never met a woman who liked to fight as much as she liked to fuck. And speaking of fucking... I needed more of that with her. Like... a lifetime of it.
So, yeah, it didn't make much sense. But what in my life did? I'd always made decisions flippantly, recklessly. I always threw myself into whatever felt right in the moment. That was how I lived. I wasn't someone to sit around and write fucking pro and con lists and hem and haw every situation, every choice to be made, every repercussion of each choice. I went with my gut.
And my gut was telling me that I was going to be in Lo's life.
So that was the way it was going to be.
I watched, hands curled into fists, as the guy with the gloves went about stitching Lo back together.
“Relax, Cash,” Malcolm's voice found me, though one look at him and he didn't look much less stressed than I did, “Mike here knows what he's doing. He was an EMT in his life before.”
Feeling marginally better, I sucked in a breath, slanting my head toward Malcolm with a wry smile. “For a bunch of survivalist nutjobs... you all have normal fucking names.”
Malcolm snorted, shaking his head, trying to fight the twitching of his lips. “Hey we can't all be Reign, Cash, Wolf, and... Repo now, can we?”
“Think you maybe want to get your face fixed up?” Mike asked, surprising me because I was pretty sure he hadn't looked up at me since I came in.
“I'm fine.”
“Sure, sure,” he said, nodding. “No big deal. Just a bloody, open wound dripping down your face. No big deal. You probably won't get sepsis and die.”
At that, I felt an unexpected laugh rise up. “Fine, I'll clean up my face. Got any whiskey laying around?”
At that, his gaze finally came up. “Please don't tell me you pour booze on your cuts normally.”
“Okay... I won't tell you that,” I grinned.
“It's amazing you're not covered in nasty scars.”
“Hey... battlefield medicine, man.”
“In what military are the soldiers carrying around alcohol?”
“I dunno,” I smiled, rocking back on my heels. “The Russians. Can't imagine them going into battle without a shit ton of vodka in their bloodstream.”