“She called me. I sped over there and found her. And her coworker,” I clarified. “He seemed even worse off than she was.”
“I will ask about him as well. What’s his name?”
“Toll,” I supplied as Edmund put the pedal right down the floor, getting my immediate respect as we flew through Navesink Bank and toward the hospital right on the other side of the water.
“Come with me,” Edmund demanded as he walked into the hospital like he owned the damn place. And if he spent millions upon millions of dollars on a wing, I imagined he probably felt like he did.
“Yes, that’s right,” he said when the lady repeated his name back to him after he explained, in short, the situation, and his desire to speak to either the Chief Executive Officer or the Chief Medical Officer, two people that he knew by name.
I had to admit, him taking the extra minute to toss on the suit was probably helping as much as he insisted it would.
“Right this way,” a doctor said a moment later, coming out to personally greet us.
“And you are?” Edmund asked.
“I’m Michaela Quin, the Chief Resident,” she informed as us she led us through the hospital and into the relative chaos of the emergency room—a place I had been countless times over the years.
“What? You’re not bleeding all over my floor this time?” one of the nurses asked as he walked past, giving me a familiar smile.
“I’ve been here a time or two,” I told Edmund with a shrug when I caught him giving me a look.
“Why don’t you two have a seat here,” the doctor suggested, waving to a small section of seats across from the nurse’s station. “I will go and see how Theodora and Toll are doing,” she said, giving us a tight smile, likely knowing that she’d be in a world of trouble if she had any small misstep over this.
“That’s impressive,” I said, as we sat, but I bounced right back up to my feet, too anxious to sit still when Theo was off in a room somewhere, hurting, alone, in fuck-knew what condition.
“Money can buy a lot of things,” Edmund agreed. “My favorite being the respect of people who are scared you will take your money away from them. So, you’re Theodora’s… friend,” he said, as I just remembered to grab my phone and shoot off a text to Niro to ask Andi to check on Theo’s pets. They didn’t have a key, but that wouldn’t stop Niro.
“We’re more than friends,” I insisted, tucking my phone away.
“Perhaps that is something to fill her in on when she is well again,” he said.
But he didn’t say it.
He didn’t even suggest it.
Somehow, he demanded it. Without actually demanding it.
“That’s the plan. I haven’t had a chance to talk to her face-to-face in a couple of days. I still fucking didn’t tell her about her car,” I said, things starting to click together.
“What about her car?” Edmund asked.
“I got a weird feeling about that accident. So I went to the junkyard to check it out. My friend said the lines seemed to be cut.”
“Cut,” Edmund repeated.
“What do you know about Theo’s life before Navesink Bank?”
“Not much,” he admitted. “Regrettably. But as far as I know, it didn’t involve anyone trying to murder her.”
Yeah, that was the feeling I got too. But she didn’t tell me a fuckuva lot about her ex-boyfriends. Who were criminals and could definitely do the kind of shit that happened to her that night.
“I’m sure Danny has cameras. Hopefully, they caught something. And then I can take it from there.”
To that, he had nothing to say. And I took his silence and his barely perceptible nod to mean he respected that.
I mean, it was no secret in our world that the upper echelon was often just as dirty as we were. The difference was, they hired out the work and kept their own hands clean.
“Son, take a seat,” Edmund suggested a few minutes later. “Pacing won’t make you feel any better. All it will accomplish is annoying the nurses and doctors,” he reasoned, making me drop my ass down onto the chair.
Eventually, Danny and Fallon showed up, waiting with us as both Toll and Theo were taken down for scans.
Only then were we each allowed back to their respective rooms.
“Oh, Theodora,” Edmund said, his shoulders falling, as he walked in the room.
“Hey, baby, looking better,” I said, trying to keep my tone light even as the fluorescent lights highlighted every single scrape and bruise on her.
“Liar,” she shot back, eyes a little slow to focus and voice a bit slurred, making me figure they’d probably given her something for the pain.
“Listen, if you wanted me and your old man to meet, you didn’t have to do something this dramatic. You know I always call when someone rings the dinner bell. Especially in a fancy-ass mansion,” I added as her gaze moved past me to settle on her dad, blinking at him like his presence didn’t make sense.