“She’s up in my room. This way,” he said briskly, turning and leading the way.
They climbed up the steps and went to his bedroom. It was familiar enough to Brianna that if she woke up, she wouldn’t panic wondering where she was. It hadn’t been too long, not even half an hour, but the fact that she hadn't woken up worried him a little.
After leading the paramedic inside, he stepped to the side and waited as the man pulled the covers a bit lower then examined her. He kept his arms folded, gripping hands clenched tightly as he fought with himself not to shove the man away and protect his sister.
The paramedic spoke as he rifled through his bag, “Can you tell me what happened, Mr. Kane?”
“She was shoved down the stairs,” he said, voice hard. “From the top. She didn’t even roll half way, but there was definitely a loud sound when her head hit one of the steps. I caught her in time, but I’m worried about her head. I didn’t really see any blood where she hit it, but I’m worried because she hasn’t woken.”
The paramedic nodded to himself. “I’ll look for possible injuries and a concussion. We’ll get a stretcher up here and get her in to the hospital for some tests—”
“It’s fine,” Samuel said, cutting in. “If it’s possible to just treat her here, that would be best. My sister went through something traumatic as a child. She doesn’t handle hospitals too well. If she wakes up somewhere unfamiliar and alone, it would worry her. And I can’t leave, either to be with her if she does go to the hospital. If you find she’s not well, I’ll call her doctor and have a trauma team brought in.”
“Very well, I’ll check her over here then,” the paramedic said and then focused on Brianna.
Samuel didn’t plan on moving away until the paramedic was done, until he heard the radio on the cop in the room crackling. His eyes followed the cop as he left the room and answered, then signaled back to him. Guessing it was important news, Samuel followed him out of the room with one last glance at Brianna.
“What’s the situation?” he asked immediately, his nerves on edge as he caught sight of the officer’s expression.
“I… am afraid we’ve lost track of your brother and Ms. Blake,” the officer said, his expression apologetic. “They followed the footprints as far as they could, but then they disappear where there appears to have been a car waiting. There’s no other sign of them anywhere within the grounds or in the surrounding area. There are still people out on the grounds looking, but he must have had this well planned out. We’ve got someone looking over the surveillance cameras of your property as well as your neighbors to try and track them down, but at the moment we have no idea what kind of car—”
He didn’t finish his sentence, and Samuel knew why. Outside of his family estate, there wasn’t much in the way of security cameras this far out of the city. Not that there weren’t any, but a lot of his neighbors relied heavily on private security. And being Adrien came in through the back of his estate, they weren’t going to find much on any of his neighbor’s cameras. And Adrien wasn’t stupid anyway, he would have found a way to avoid being seen on them.
Fuck!
He cursed, but he didn’t do it out loud. He wanted to, though, to curse the way things had played out. He blamed himself. He should have gotten things done by himself ages ago instead of trusting everything to the police. He should have handled his brother himself. In his defense, he never thought Adrien would actually outsmart the police, but that was an oversight on his part.
“What about the copter? Jacobs said we had eyes in the sky,” Samuel recalled.
The officer frowned and looked away. “Yeah, we did. Without knowing what to give him to look for though—”
“Right.” Samuel sighed. He couldn’t do nothing, he’d already done enough of sitting idly by while waiting for them to take care of things for him. He was going to be proactive and take charge of things. He had to. “I’ll have my own people start looking as well,” Samuel said, his voice hard, because he wasn’t asking. “They won’t interfere with your investigations, but I’ll try to get them to work with the police as much as possible. I really need my brother and Camila found as soon as possible. Let whoever’s in charge know this, please.”
“Mr. Kane, I’m not sure that is a wise—” the cop started, but then stopped talking when he caught sight of Samuel’s expression. “Very well, I will tell them.” He gave a nod and walked off, lifting the radio to his mouth.
Samuel watched him leave, and then turned to lean back against the wall. He tilted his head back, hitting the wall lightly a couple of times. Too much was happening too quickly. He was usually good at handling these sorts of situations. If only Camila and Brianna hadn't been the ones involved in it. It tore at his heart that he’d had to choose between his little sister and his love. He knew Camila was strong, well stronger than Bri, and he only hoped that she would be okay until he got to her. With a sigh, he pulled out his phone to make the call to his security team. After that, there were other calls he needed to make, but he wanted to check on Brianna first, so he put them off since they weren’t nearly as important right then.
Just as he walked into the room, the paramedic looked up from examining Brianna, and started to put away his tools.
“How is she?” Samuel asked tightly, hurrying over. “Do I need to call her doctor over?”
“You might want to just in case, but she was really lucky,” the paramedic explained. “There are some bruises here and there, and they’ll hurt, but if you have Tylenol just give her the standard prescription if she feels any pain. It doesn’t appear that you need to worry over much. I didn’t find signs of a concussion, though she does have a slight bump on the back of her head, and you might want to ice it.”
At least one thing is going right,Samuel thought with a sigh, his tension only relaxing slightly, though.
“Is there a reason she hasn’t woken up, though?” he asked, looking at his sister’s face. She looked so peaceful that he didn’t want to wake her, but he was still worried.
“I did wake her enough to give her the concussion test. She was coherent and capable of answering questions using sign language. You didn’t mention she was mute.” The paramedic frowned at me.
“It didn’t occur to me, I’m sorry.”
The paramedic nodded. “She will be fine. I think it’s mostly shock. She’ll be tired, so I wouldn’t recommend trying to wake her again. If you leave her alone, she’ll wake up on her own when she’s ready. That being said, because of her previous trauma, and now this, you or someone close to her might want to be nearby so she doesn’t accidentally hurt herself. And of course you can still call her doctor for a second opinion. For now, please excuse me.” With a nod, the paramedic made his way out of the room with his bag.
Samuel moved closer to Brianna and sat next to her on the bed. He lifted his hand and carefully stroked a lock of hair away from her face.
I’m sorry, Brianna,he thought. But don’t worry. I’ll take care of this, okay? For good this time.
Even if he had to have Adrien put away for life, he didn’t care if it was in prison or a mental institution. Or even a graveyard. He wasn’t going to let his brother hurt the people he cared about just because he wanted to protect his family name as his parents apparently had.