Page 97 of Rebel Obsession

“Your best?” I spat out at him. “Your best is trying to make sure they’re safe? That isn’t good enough! You have a gun, Hayden! Get it! Use it. Shoot him in the head!”

For half a second, I thought he was going to do it too.

“Is that sirens?” Caleb screeched. He peeked out the window again, and red and blue lights lit up the room.

Hayden stood and shouted to the other men in the house. “None of you so much as touch those paramedics, you hear me? I don’t care if all hell is raining down on you, you don’t touch them. Get them down here now.”

Hayden knelt again, checking on Nova who had stopped convulsing but hadn’t regained consciousness.

“Where’s the patient?” a man asked from somewhere down the hall.

Caleb waved the gun in our faces. “One word and you get a bullet. You hear me? You want to end up dead like your friend there? Don’t try me.”

Winnie wailed harder.

“She’s not dead,” I assured her. “She’ll be okay.”

I was reassuring myself as much as her. Nova didn’t appear to be in good shape at all.

Hayden’s gaze flickered to the baby and then to me. He smiled tightly. “When you get to the hospital, call someone to come pick you up. Then get the hell out of Saint View, Kara. Nothing good happens here. Take your daughter and don’t look back.” He stroked a finger over the baby’s soft pink cheek. “Have a good life, little rosy-cheeked girl. I really fucking hope you don’t remember any of this.”

There was a click-clack of wheels along the hardwood floors, and two men came into the room. They did a double take at us all huddled on the floor, but I pointed at Nova.

“Please help her. I don’t even know if she’s breathing anymore.”

The two paramedics knelt over Nova’s lifeless body, poking and prodding and doing all sorts of things I’d never seen anyone do before.

“Let’s get her loaded. Make way, please.” He dragged the gurney closer and took a backboard from the top of it.

Caleb tore his gaze away from the window outside. “Not her. Take the one with the baby.”

The paramedic glanced over at me and down at the tiny baby in my arms, who’d cried herself to sleep.

“How old is she?”

I shook my head. “A couple of days.”

“You had her here?”

I nodded.

“She seen a doctor?”

I shook my head.

He peered over at my clearly healthy daughter and then back at Nova. “No. We only have one gurney. We’ll call another ambulance, but this woman is the priority.”

Caleb pulled out the gun again, pressing it hard into the back of the paramedic’s head. “The priority is whoever I say it is.”

The man flinched. “Sir. Please put the gun down.”

“Then load the woman carrying my daughter.”

Hayden looked at me sharply. “His daughter?”

I could feel the gazes of the other women too, each of them silently questioning me.

The paramedic let out a shaky breath, raising his hands when he turned to talk to Caleb. “This woman will die if we don’t take her now. Her vitals are plummeting. Do you really want a dead body on your hands?”

---