Page 71 of Stowaway Whirlwind
When a man I don’t know comes out of nowhere, charging at me, I throw myself to the side, bending my wrist too far back when I break my fall so I don’t crush Lily beneath me. The man crouches in front of me after I get to my knees, and my head and heart are pounding too hard to hear what he’s saying when he tries to rip Lily from my arms.
I go absolutely feral, twisting to brace my back against the side of the car, snarling, ready to rip his throat out with my teeth if need be. He doesn’t have time to react before I kick him rightbetween his thighs in his squat position, and he falls backward at the impact, clutching his dick.
I get my legs under me and push off the car, darting to the other side. The man springs to his feet almost immediately, one hand still over his lap, the other reaching for me. He grabs the back of my shirt to stop me and ends up ripping it halfway down my back when I don’t stop. I swerve around the Buick and sprint toward the Ford, all while more strange men converge on me from every direction, their monstrous silhouettes a horror movie come to life in the blinding, flashing lights.
Terror clogs my throat when someone big grabs me from behind, wrapping huge arms streaked with mud and grass and ribbons of bloody cuts around me and Lily. I throw my head back, nailing them in the chin, thrashing in their arms to get away.
“Goldie!” Davis’s scream is delivered right in my ear, and in an instant, my fight goes out.
* * *
I can’t let my eyes drift closed. Whatever medication the nurses gave me tries to wrap my mind in black cloth, turning my limbs to jelly, but I can’t go to sleep. Not yet. Not until I know my baby is safe.
“Get off me,” I slur, my tongue thick in my mouth full of cotton as I push the nurse at my bedside with the strength of a newborn. I roll off the hospital bed and land hard on the floor on my belly, breathing raggedly as my ribs howl with protest while I try to army crawl toward the door. Toward Lily.
A million hands grab at me, lifting my limp body off the floor to dump me on the bed, a cacophony of urgent shouts and beeping machines. The last thing I remember before the worldgoes dark is the throng of blurry, blue shapes roughly parting to let two older women through.
I suck in a painful breath when the younger one grabs my injured right hand. “Mom?” No, that’s not right. I don’t have a mom. Confusion ripples through my thoughts as my eyelids grow too heavy to blink open.
The woman smooths my hair back from my forehead. “I’ll watch over Lily while they fix you up. Don’t worry, sweetheart. You just let them do their jobs so you can get better.”
Davis
“Good, you’re finally awake. Don’t say a word,” Vincent says as soon as an officer lets him into my hospital room, where my left hand is currently cuffed to my bed, my right hand in a cast, and both arms wrapped in white bandages up past my elbows.
The handcuffs are overkill, considering how much blood I lost after the glass from the broken window sliced my arms to hell and back. I was in and out of consciousness in the back of the ambulance, which the EMTs were only able to wrestle me into after I had found Goldie with Lily in her arms before we were surrounded by officers and pulled apart.
I had roused just enough to unstrap myself from the gurney when I was wheeled into the hospital, shoved one of the EMTs blocking my way, and then ran outside where a second ambulance had pulled up behind us. As soon as I laid eyes on Goldie and Lily in the back of that ambulance, seeing that they were both still alive and being treated for their injuries, I blackedout, apparently cracking the back of my head on the pavement when I fell.
Battling the pain medication making everything floaty, I screw my face up at Vincent, his lean chest bare save for a black blazer thrown on above gray silk pajama bottoms and shiny black Oxfords. I have no idea how long I’ve been in the hospital or how long he’s been here, half-dressed, waiting.
“What are you doing here?”
Vincent approaches my bedside with his cell phone held to his ear before he ends the call and drops it in the inside pocket of his blazer. “As your lawyer, I’m telling you to shut your mouth until I get this sorted. Understood?”
“My lawyer?”
He nods, then motions to the officer guarding the door, who steps out, giving us privacy. Vincent sighs with annoyance, walks away to actually shut the door, then comes back to drag a chair close to my bed so he can sit, purple bags beneath his eyes. “You have no idea the world of shit you’ve gotten yourself into.”
“What shit?”
Vincent eyes me with a frown. “How hard did you hit your head?”
The cuffs clang when I try to raise my hand to touch the patched-up knot on the back of my head.
“Never mind. Point is, if you don’t do exactly what I say, you could be facing some serious time in prison. Amanda and Marigold as well,” he adds, though I don’t know what my sister has to do with any of this.
“Doubt it,” I say. “This is Texas.”
Vincent huffs out an incredulous laugh. “This isn’t the wild west. Texas still has laws—” He leaps to his feet when the door opens, and Sheriff Gibson, Deputy Hernandez, and Amanda stride into the room. Vincent blocks their path, sticking out hisarm to shake hands with the men, introducing himself as my lawyer.
Sheriff nods, then tells Hernandez to uncuff me.
I grin and roll my left wrist. “Told you,” I say to Vincent, and he shakes his head in disbelief.
Amanda, who is just as filthy and ragged as everyone else except for Vincent, leans over my bed to hug me. Not just a two-second half embrace, but a realI love you and I’m glad you’re okkind of hug. It’s been so long since we’ve held each other like this, and though my arms hurt like a son of a bitch, I hold on a little tighter, a little longer, when she starts to pull away.
When I finally let go, I notice Hernandez behind Amanda in his undershirt, his eyes glued to her ass in her tiny pajama shorts beneath the uniform top he must have given her to wear, and he readjusts himself. I clear my throat, shooting daggers at Hernandez, who has no business looking at her like that after breaking her heart right before they graduated high school. He snaps his eyes to my face before winking and sidling closer.
