Page 6 of Montana Mystery

“Do I ever call you in on an emergency and have it be a joke?” Daniel sighed.

Where Daniel was calm and anticipated needs, Liam was chaos and often saw the needs after he plowed straight through them.

Liam held up his hands in surrender. “I’m here. What’s going on?”

“Brandon Tilbeck,” I said.

“The kid who bolted after a few days?”

I nodded. “That’s the one.”

“What about him? Did he come back?”

This was the part that they’d been waiting for. “Not exactly. His sister is here and wants to know if we had anything to do with the fact that he’s currently in the hospital, beaten to within an inch of his life.”

“What?” Grant sucked in a breath. “Why would she think that?”

“She’s grasping,” I said. “Desperate. He also had my name and number in his pocket. Scribbled on a paper I sent with him before he left here.”

Daniel was sharp and focused now. “What’s his condition?”

“No broken bones. There was some internal bleeding and he underwent surgery for it. According to the doctor, he’ll make a full physical recovery. But his head got battered up good, so they’re not sure what’s going on with his brain yet.”

Silence followed. We’d all had our share of hospital stays, and the pain Brandon was experiencing wasn’t unfamiliar to us.

“So, he’s unconscious,” I said. “They don’t know when they’ll be able to fully wake him up.”

“Well, shit,” Liam said, after I’d told them everything. “That’s not ideal.”

“You don’t say?” I rolled my eyes.

Daniel leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “It’s certainly not great from an optics perspective. To be clear, that’s not what I’m concerned with right now, but it’s worth mentioning.”

It was. People’s lives were always more valuable than optics. But no one would come here if they thought they were going to end up at the hospital and in a coma. “Yeah.”

Lucas was leaning against the wall, arms crossed. “I didn’t interact with the kid much. He wasn’t here long enough.”

“No.” I shook my head. “I think he was here for four days. He left the day after his first meeting with Rayne. Probably would have left without us knowing if I hadn’t gone to check on him. That, ultimately, is why Kate is here. I made him write down my name and number, assuming he’d throw it away. It was in his jacket.”

Jude turned in his chair. “Think he was saving it for something?”

“More likely he stuck it in his pocket and forgot about it,” I countered.

Grant sighed, leaning on the table. “Well, it’s not like we were going to lock him on the property. He didn’t want to be here, so he left. Simple enough.”

“Of course,” Daniel said. “We can’t help people who don’t want it. But I can’t help but feel—”

“Responsible?” I huffed a laugh. “You and me both.”

“What would you have done?” Lucas pinned me with a stare, but it was an honest question. “You didn’t put him in the hospital.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. Maybe I could have reached out and seen if he was really okay. I had his contact information.”

“We all had it,” Jude said. “If you’re guilty, then so are the rest of us.”

“I know. But he’d seen some shit. He didn’t have to tell me that. I could see it in his eyes. Brandon looked like—” I cut myself off before I could fully let the thought out. On top of struggling with my flashbacks, this was icing on the bullshit cake I was going to have to eat today. Finally I found the words. “He looked like me after I came back.”

No one commented on that. Thankfully.

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