Page 15 of Sinful Deception

He sniffles and looks up at the woman he once loved. The one who chooses death over sobriety, time and time again. “She’sbeen into surgery already,” he rasps. “Last time was bad. But this is so much worse.”

“Booth?” Archer stops on the other side of the bed and looks down at the woman whose face is unrecognizable to anyone who doesn’t already know her. The stitches holding her lip down at the left, and her cheekbone, I can guess just by looking, shattered from something other than a fist. “Who brought her in? And are they picking Booth up for it?”

“Cops are already onto it.” His eyes go to Arch, so I move to the foot of the bed and quickly scan the whiteboard at the head. Unfortunately, other than her name, date of birth, and her surgeon’s name, there’s no new information to glean. “She’s really stepped in it this time.” Sniffling again, he glances up. “They had to repair her spleen and liver. Ruptured both. And she was calling me all day. So maybe?—”

“Don’t go there.” Archer pulls up the chair on her other side and sits, pinning his best friend with a fierce stare. “She’s here, and she’s busted up. But she’s alive, and now we can get her into rehab. This was a decent outcome, remember?”

“Not like this.” He studies Jada’s face, but turns and wipes his cheek on the shoulder of his shirt. “No one should go through this. Not once, and definitely not twice. She never even has the chance to get clean before she’s put back on opioids for pain relief.”

“But being here, and later, in a clinic, she’s closer to being better than she is when she’s out on the streets. Sometimes bad things have to happen before good things can come.”

“Says the guy whose wife is safe and healthy.”

“She’s not your wife! She’s someone you used to know, and she doesn’t want the same life you want anymore. You’re incompatible. You can still want the best for her, without sending yourself to a grave in her place. Remember that stuff we talked about justyesterday? You don’t have to save her, forher to be saved. You don’t have to run yourself over like your suffering could somehow make things better for her. You can both be happy, and it doesn’t require you to be together, or even in the same state, for that to be true.”

“Just shut up.” Defeated, he brings his focus back to Jada and stares, tears shimmering in his eyes. “Stop talking about her.”

“You told me to remind you!”

“And right now, I want to smash my fist into your face every time you speak about her.” He looks my way, then to the whiteboard with narrowed eyes. “Don’t read her files. Don’t stick your nose in. It’s none of your business.”

Archer snarls. “We are here for you! We’re here in the middle of the fucking night because we love you. That means we’re not gonna sit back and watch while you punish yourself for something you didn’t do wrong.”

“Oh… um… Sorry.”

I turn in time to catch Fifi’s horrified expression. But I don’t tease her like I normally would. I don’t taunt her for coming tonight.

“Aubree called me,” she croaks desperately. Too quietly. “I heard she… She said Jada…” Frustrated, she snaps her lips into a firm line and draws a long breath. Then, finally, she meets Fletch’s red, swollen eyes. “I wanted to make sure you were okay. And that Mia was?—”

“I can’t do this right now.” He drags his focus away and goes back to Jada, picking up her hand and flattening her fingers across his palm. “I don’t want to cause more damage. And I’m not in a place where I can talk to anyone without blowing shit up.” He swallows and nods, ever so subtly. “Mia’s fine. She’s sleeping.”

“Aubree?” I hold my colleague’s stare and tip my chin in her direction. Since it would be cruel to talk in front of a man hurting so badly. “Come into the hall with me?”

“Minka?” Archer bites out, his brows sitting high on his forehead in question. “Stay.”

“I’m just going into the hall for a minute. I won’t be more than fifteen feet away.” I circle the bed and press a kiss to the back of his head. But then I go to Fletch and do the same. And though I risk him smacking me away, or worse, rejecting me, he allows me this moment of comfort for us both, before I step away and stride through the door.

“What do you need?”

“There’s no file in her room. And nothing useful written on the board.” I turn at the door to the room beside Jada’s and fold my arms as Aubree comes to a stop in front of me. I’m not even sure if I’m horrified or pleased, but Fifi follows suit, fleeing from the hospital room rather than staying behind with a man who loves someone else. “I don’t have a way to access the computers without breaking the law. But I get the feeling you know more than I do. So what’s going on?”

Gritting her teeth, Aubree looks down at her feet. “Ididbreak the law. And I just so happen to have friends on this floor. Her attacker?—”

“Booth? Or one of his men?”

“I can only go off the whispers I’m hearing, and those whispers lean toward Booth doing the work himself this time. He stabbed her three times with a serrated blade. Injuries are consistent with not only fists and feet, but what the detectives think was a plank of wood or something similar, approximately seven inches wide.”

“Which is what shattered her face.”

“Yeah,” she sighs. “He crushed her internals, so it looks like she fell off a damn cliff and splattered to the ground a hundred feet below.”

Fifi’s cheeks turn the kind of white I see only in the morgue. “He was cruel.”

“Surgeons had to repair her spleen, kidney, and lung,” Aubree continues. “Her ribs ruptured the right, and the left is filling with blood slowly, so they already know they’ll have to take her back again in a few hours to drain it. She has swelling to the brain and isn’t expected to wake for a day or two.”

“Any cluewhyhe did this?” But then I shake my head. “I mean, besides the fact he’s a prick whose day is coming.”

“I don’t know. But the damage is pretty bad. Last time she ended up here, it was three against one. This time, it was one on one, and yet, so much more vicious. He re-broke her wrist, so they’ve had to pin and add it to the ‘we’ll fix that later’ pile, since her head is more of a concern right now. Her kidneys are struggling to function; the doctors are keeping a close eye on it.”

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