Page 179 of Severed Rivalry
“Move.” My one-word directive catches her attention and has her taking a step back. When she does, I reach for his hand that she separated from me in her haste to do whatever she was trying to do.
The nurse fidgets near me, sighing as she has to work around our joined hands. “Petulance is unbecoming.”
The nurse turns aghast eyes on me.
Cian snickers.
Renée comes into view. She’s sporting a hot pink cast on her right arm from wrist to above the elbow. Her face is bruised, and her hair is wild.
Dipping my chin to the cast, I ask, “Have you been here long?”
“We just got here. It took a while to be discharged in Loveland, then Ci and I—” she looks to the man at my side. “Decided to come find you instead of going home. He said you’d want me to go home and rest because of the concussion.”
Concussion?
“But I said I wanted to come, and he said he did too.”
“You two teaming up is a scary proposition.”
The man I love winks at my daughter. “Then you have every reason to be afraid, Angel. Doesn’t she, Renée?”
“Totally.”
“What happened?” I look between the two of them, but settle on Cian’s handsome face, complete with red stubble of a later than five-o’clock shadow.
“We’ll talk about that in the car.” He puts a quick finger to his lips and tips his head toward the curtain. He grabs his phone and types something out, flipping the phone my way.
The kidnapper is in the bay next to you. The police want to question you. I’ll ask that they do so some place private. Let’s get you discharged first.
If that weren’t enough, he turns the phone to my daughter as well. Her eyes go hard and her lips purse. She grabs the phone typing something slowly. She concentrates as evidenced by her tongue sticking out the left side of her mouth.
To Cian’s note, she adds:
Do they know I’m here? I want to testify.
Her gumption and guts never fail to amaze me.
I wink at her, but it hurts like hell when I do.
“Let me get the paperwork going. Guessing that wholeno wallet, no IDthing is going to be a pain. Luckily, Christian knows someone.”
I don’t know what he means, but I don’t care either. I don’t even know if my insurance lapsed with the job. This should be fun.
I pat the bed as Cian slips from the bay. It doesn’t take Renée long to get my meaning and she curls up next to me, tucked intomy side, after a few grunts and groans as we shift. Her arm and head, my whole body… we’re a walking pharmaceutical advertisement.
But she’s alive. And in my arms. And I can’t ask for more.
The police questioned us. That took hours.
Cian managed to arrange it so we could do it at the station. He said it was good faith and payback or pay-it-forward for the officers who helped him. Anything we could do to make it easier on their brother, we would do.
It was well after midnight when we got done. The Chief of the FoCo police and the troop master of the state police were both there personally. It went a long way that we provided what we could.
Ci even asked the officer’s name and what we could do for his family. Apparently, he opened the door just as the kidnapper fired. I fell backward; the officer took the bullet.
I came a hair’s breadth away from losing everything today.
All three of us did.
