Page 41 of A Dead Man's Pulse
“I did. The second I saw Gina’s body.” He stepped toward the door Novik was blocking—he was done for now, and only one thing mattered. “I’ve got to check on Dakota. I have to see her.”
The female agent glanced at her superior who nodded. “Let him go. We’ll get the full report in a little while.” His gaze returned to Logan. “But it has to be done today, Reese.”
Novik sidestepped and opened the door for him. In the short amount of time he’d been giving the abridged version of what had happened, the number of people in the emergency room had increased dramatically. There were uniformed and plain-clothes officers and agents all over the place. Logan’s own teammates, McCabe, Foster, and Morrison, along with the Alpha Team, had arrived and were talking to Mitch and Tiny. Foster and McCabe hurried over when they saw him emerge from the room with the Sawyer brothers.
“You okay?” McCabe asked, eyeing the blood on Logan’s hands and arms.
He shook his head. “No. Not until—”
“Where’s my daughter?”
Logan pivoted to see a pale, older man, dressed in sweatpants and a T-shirt, being escorted by two police captains in full uniform. Although he’d been younger in a newspaper photo, after he’d delivered a baby on the side of the road about ten years ago, Logan knew this was Gavin Swift, Dakota’s father. Logan had been curious one day and Googled Dakota. He found her name mentioned several times for various police department calls and awards—like the time she’d interrupted a domestic violence incident, saving a woman’s life and arresting her husband, all before backup arrived. Her father had also popped up a few times.
Stepping in the man’s path, Logan growled. “If you say anything to her other than you’re glad she’s alive and you’re proud of her, I’ll kick your fucking ass.”
The man’s eyes went wide. “Who the hell are you?”
“Dakota’s boyfriend.”
He scoffed. “She doesn’t have a boyfriend.”
“You obviously haven’t even asked if she has one lately. You’ve been too busy making her feel like she’ll never measure up to your fucking expectations.”
His ashen face turned red. “What? Get the hell out of my way!”
If Ian and Dakota’s friend and former partner, Ric Hernandez, hadn’t picked that moment to get between them, Logan wasn’t sure he could’ve held back from decking the man. Ian pushed his employee back a few steps. “Easy, Cowboy. We’re all worried. Now’s not the time to get into this.”
Glaring at her father, who was giving it back in spades, he finally moved out of the man’s way. He’d made his point. There was no way he’d allow anyone to put his woman down ever again.
After the elder Swift joined a few older officers down the hall, another man stepped forward, looking like he’d also just rolled out of bed, and shook Ric’s hand before addressing Logan. “I’m Dakota’s brother, Gerry.” He tilted his head in his father’s direction. “Thanks for standing up for her to the old man. He’s been tough on us all our lives, but, to be honest, I think it’s his way of saying he loves us—he just doesn’t know any other way to express it. Do we know how she is? All they were able to tell us was she was shot by the Kink Killer and she’s alive.”
Unable to admit to Dakota’s brother that he’d been the one to shoot her, Logan replied, “She also got beat up a bit. Her blood pressure was low on the way over here, and she’s still unconscious, but the medics said she was holding her own. Just waiting to hear what the doctors have to say.”
The door to the trauma room swung open, and the ER physician stepped out. He was immediately surrounded by the brass, Dakota’s family, Ric, and Logan, while the others held back, giving them room. “She’s stable. We’re sending her up to the OR in a few minutes. The bullet is lodged just under her left shoulder and doesn’t appear to be life-threatening, but it put a small fracture in the collarbone. She’s still unconscious but responding to painful stimuli. I think that’s the result of the assault—she took a few blows to the head. Everything else appears to be superficial. We’ll clean up the wounds from the whip while she’s still in the OR. While she may have a few scars from them, I think most will heal completely.”
“She’s my daughter. Can I see her?” The man’s voice broke, and it wasn’t until that moment that Logan realized her father was terrified he’d almost lost her. But that still didn’t mean he could make her feel as if she’d let him down.
The doctor nodded. “For a minute, and then you’ll have to wait until she’s out of surgery.”
Gavin Swift moved toward the entrance to the trauma room, then paused, glancing over his shoulder at his son and Logan, his expression somber. “Gerry, grab whatever-his-name-is and come with me. She’ll need to know you’re both here for her too.”
Dakota winced as she tried to get comfortable in the hospital bed. She couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there. Three days of being constantly monitored and prodded was worse than getting whipped and shot in the first place—well, almost. At least the nurses had removed the damn urine catheter last night.
She still had the on-demand morphine drip hooked up to her IV, but she didn’t want to push the button, even though the wounds from the whip burned white-hot. The drugs made her woozy, and she wanted to stay alert for when Logan woke up. He’d been glued to the recliner in her room since she’d come out of surgery, only disappearing to use the bathroom or take a quick shower down the hall. The nurses had taken pity on him and allowed him to use it after one of his teammates had brought him a change of clothes.
She studied him from her bed. His dirty-blond hair could use a trim, and whiskers covered his jaw and lip. She kind of liked the scruffiness—she’d always been a sucker for the bad-boy look as long as the persona didn’t go with it.
Yesterday, he’d filled her in on everything that’d happened. She was still shocked, as everyone else was, that the Kink Killer had been working at The Covenant under their noses all this time. He’d been hired as a bartender about a year after the club had opened but hadn’t been in the lifestyle before that. His training to be a Dom began a few months after he’d started working there.
“They found a shit-load of evidence at his apartment,” Logan informed her while he held her hand, as if he couldn’t bring himself to release her for a mere second. “Apparently, three women on the missing persons’ list had been his first two kills and a recent one—Lily Stokes. According to a journal he kept, he’d dumped their bodies out in the gulf and regretted it after the first two. He found he got a greater thrill when the other bodies were discovered. As for Stokes, she died faster than he’d expected. He was pissed about it, so that’s why she wasn’t posed in public like the others.”
“Do they know what started it all? Usually there’s a trigger.”
He shook his head. “Not that they’ve found yet. Dr. Suki Ralston and Parrish are pouring over everything they can find on him, but they still don’t know what set him off. Suki said they may never know. It’s almost like the lifestyle—some people don’t know why they need it, they just do. Same goes for sociopaths.
“Hardwick called his victims his masterpieces. Believed he was immortalizing them or something. You could have been one of them.”
Logan swallowed hard as he stared at their joined hands, and she cut him off before the next words flew out of his mouth. “If you apologize for shooting me one more time, Cowboy, I’m going to hit you over the head with the bedpan.” She’d been hearing “I’m sorry” from him for the past three days—ever since she’d awakened after the surgery. “I never would’ve gotten hit if I hadn’t been scared out of my mind that he was going to shoot you. It happened. I’m still alive because of you, while he’s not. I love you and don’t blame you, so cut the bullshit and stop feeling guilty.”
