Page 9 of Piece You Saved

Kade refused to go anywhere, and I refused to go with the doctor until he finally agreed to get me a coffee from the vending machine at the end of the hall. Though not before he stared Harley right in the eye and said he had no compunctions about killing renowned heart surgeons.

Harley nodded and smiled, as if dealing with death threats was a daily habit.

Maybe it is. Maybe he’s just a laid-back kind of guy.

I sit perched on the edge of a hospital bed in an empty patient’s room a few doors down from the waiting room, legs dangling, the soles of my bare feet still bloody from—

I yank my mind away from the attic and back to the here and now.

Harley snaps on a pair of blue plastic gloves.

My mind flashes to my strip search at the police station. I wrench it back to the present.

Harder this time.

“When can we see Aden?” I ask, kicking my feet in a vain attempt to distract myself from memories I can’t quite shake loose.

“Visiting hours aren’t until the morning, Jane.”

I frown, parting my lips to complain.

His lips quirk in a half-smile. “But I’ll see what I can do. He won’t be awake for some time, so if you were expecting—”

“I don’t need to talk to him.” I chew on the inside of my cheek as I try to verbalize why it’s so important that I see him. “It’d be for a couple of minutes. Just to hear him breathe. Is he—”

“Breathing on his own,” Harley says, reading my mind.

As he tells me, I remember he already said this back in the waiting room. How could I have forgotten something he only told me minutes before?

I study him closely. “You said there would be complications.”

“I did,” he confirms. “Which we can get to later.”

Since he doesn’t seem worried about those complications, I try not to let them worry me.

He lifts his gaze from the metal tray on the trolley he wheeled in moments before. “It might be easier if you were lying down for this.”

The door is open and nurses’ chatter drifts in our direction from the nurses’ station. The vending machine Kade and Dariel headed toward is maybe a minute away, so I’m safe. IknowI’m safe. But there is no way on this Earth I’m lying down on a bed in a room with a male shifter who is not Kade.

“No thanks,” I say. “This is fine.”

Fine hurts like hell, but it’s better than the alternative.

He nods as if he’d been expecting my response. “Okay, Jane.”

As he turns back to his little cart, I openly watch him. I never thought I’d see him again after I ran from the hospital. Now he’s in front of me, I’m not as surprised as I thought I would be to see him.

“My name isn’t Jane.”

He picks up a tiny flashlight identical to the one Simon Trevor had tucked into the pocket of his white coat and turns toward me. “I know.”

Once he’s finished blinding me with his tiny flashlight, he returns it to the tray and grabs the stethoscope. “How?”

“A news report flashed up on TV one day,” he says casually. “So, I paid the precinct a visit to ask about you.”

His tone might be casual, even if this topic isn’t a remotely casual one. When I remember Detective Bradley and Ferdinand’s greasy smirks, I swallow a shudder of revulsion. They let me go, but they were right to arrest me for Simon’s murder.

Iwasresponsible for it, even if I wasn’t the one who ripped out his throat. As Simon Trevor’s friend, Harley should want to inject me with something agonizing instead of getting to the bottom of why I’m wincing in pain.

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