Page 32 of Creatures in the Night

“Oh, my God!” someone shrieked, and while my body wept with relief that it wasn’t the shooters, my mind was quick to remind me that I was still fucked.

I laid still as my savior yelled into her phone for some help, and I wasn’t even sure if that was a good thing at this point. Noah wanted out of our marriage enough to have me killed, and since this ‘accident’ failed, there was no telling what would happen now. Would he plan something else, or make my life a living hell because he was stuck with me now? After all, another attempt on my life would be too suspicious for even my parents to ignore, let alone Declan O’Brien.

When I felt two fingers press against my neck, I didn’t move. Even if Craig found out that I was still alive, I didn’t want him knowing that I’d heard anything. If I showed my hand right now, then I really would be screwed, and I had only one chance at saving myself. I needed to remain ‘unconscious’, and I needed Craig to believe that I hadn’t heard anything. I also needed to make sure that I remained in the hospital until I could check myself out. Without my purse, it was going to make life a little harder when I finally ran, but at least I’d be alive to run. At this point, I was fine with being homeless as long as Noah couldn’t find me to finish the job.

“Oh, Christ,” a deep voice next to me said. “It’s Shea Burke.”

“Hurry!” another voice yelled.

“Shea, if you can hear me, it’s Dr. Younger,” Arthur Younger said. “We’re going to take good care of you, honey.”

I almost laughed. Doctor Arthur Younger was one of the best doctors at Donza Medical, so Noah was shit out of luck because I was probably going to live.

Chapter 21

Noah~

I raced into Donza Medical, Declan hot on my heels, my heart racing a mile a minute, my mind still trying to process what I’d been told. As we’d been leaving the meeting with the Sartoris and Kotovs, I’d gotten a call about Shea and Craig being shot outside the hospital, and it’d been the longest two hours of my fucking life as we’d driven back to town as fast as humanly possible.

Now, while the hospital staff had been made aware of the fact that Shea was my wife after we had canvassed the area last week, Shea hadn’t put me on any of her emergency contact information, so while they had called her parents, they had also called Lochlan since he was in the physician’s directory. So, Lochlan had been the one that had called me, and while her parents should have also called me, I understood their priority as her parents.

Luckily for my mental health, Lochlan had been able to get to the hospital within minutes, and he’d been good about giving me continuous updates during the two hours that I’d been trying to get to Shea. Knowing better than to argue with Lochlan Murphy, the attending physician had allowed Lochlan into the operating room, and that’s where Lochlan had learned that Shea had been shot in the arm and that a bullet had grazed the left side of her skull.

Lochlan had also informed me that Craig was also being operated on for multiple gunshot wounds, and that simple fact was the only thing that was keeping him alive right now. Of course, with Lochlan refusing to leave Shea’s side until I could get to her, we didn’t really know too much about Craig’s situation, but Craig was replaceable whereas Shea wasn’t. In only a matter of a week, my wife had become a vital part of me, so she wasn’t replaceable in the least.

Armed with everything that I needed to know, Declan and I bypassed the nurses’ station, then headed straight to Shea’s room. Now, whether because she worked here or because she was a Murphy, the hospital had made her a priority, and Lochlan had texted me that the bullet had gone straight through, so it been only a matter of patching her up, which they’d done immediately.

When we finally reached her room, Lochlan was standing outside the door, and the look on his face had me ready to lose my shit. He looked too serious for my liking, but his newest sister-in-law had also just been shot, so he could just be upset like we’d all be in the same situation.

“Calm down,” he said as soon as I was standing in front of him. “She’s going to be okay.”

“How in da feck did this happen?” Declan hissed.

“We’re still trying to figure that out,” Lochlan answered. “Craig is still in surgery, so we can’t ask him anything yet.”

“What about Shea?” I asked.

“She says that she doesn’t remember anything, though that could be from the anesthesia,” he said. “She’s still out of it a little.”

“What about the cameras?” Declan asked. “Have the police been by?”

Lochlan shook his head. “The cameras are a bust. I called Kevin right before they took Shea back, and security let him check the feeds before the cops got here. They got attacked in a blind spot, but that’s all that he could find out before Port Townsend’s finest got here.”

“Have they spoken to Shea yet?” I asked, needing to put that off as long as possible.

Lochlan shook his head again. “No. As her physician, I refused them access to her.”

Knowing where my head was, Declan said, “Go in and see her. I’ll go check on Craig and take care of the cops until you talk to her.”

After a quick nod, I rushed into the room, and my heart skipped a beat when I saw my wife lying on the bed, that incessant beeping filling the quietness of the room. Her arm and head were bandaged, and for whatever reason, it was killing me to not know what her injuries looked like. I wanted to make her wounds disappear, even though I knew that it was impossible.

“Baby?” I whispered when I reached her bed.

Her dark eyes fluttered with the struggle to open for me, and I had to grit my teeth and clench the railing to keep from losing my shit and destroying everything in the room. Someone had attacked my wife, and I couldn’t help but feel like it was personal. Unlike Keavy’s mishaps, this wasn’t a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and at the time of those incidents, she hadn’t been linked to Declan yet. It was no secret that Shea was my wife, and it was rare that someone attacked a woman when accompanied by a man. During one of Lochlan’s updates, he’d told me that her purse had been stolen, but I wasn’t buying it; nothing about this felt random.

“Baby, open your eyes for me,” I ordered, needing to see her awake and aware.

When her dark eyes finally began to focus, I didn’t see relief or even pain in her gaze. Shea was looking up at me blankly, and I knew that it could be the anesthesia at work, but I had a dreadful feeling that it wasn’t. I had only one job as her husband, and that was to protect her, and I had failed in that regard, something that was eating me up inside, though no one could tell. Granted, it could be my guilt seeing things that weren’t there, but still.

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