Owen’s face tightened. He nodded. “I’ll wait until the morning.”
Val started to follow the guys out of the den, but then he remembered seeing Fiona as Kelan held her. She was going to want her hair back to normal ASAP, otherwise every time she looked in the mirror, she’d be reminded of her abuse. He hadn’t told her or anyone yet, but he was going to make damn sure she got the extensions removed tomorrow. It was a small thing he could do for her. Maybe the only thing. But it was something, anyway.
“Hey,” he said, turning back to Owen. “I’m gonna see if Fiona will let me take her to the salon tomorrow to remove the hair extensions they made her wear. Don’t make a big deal about it and freak her out. She’s already been through enough.”
Owen met his eyes. His nostrils flared. “What did they do to her?”
“Rocco didn’t give you the down-low?”
“He did. I want to hear it from you.”
Val sighed. “They drugged her, then made a spectacle out of what would have been a ritualistic rape—had Kelan and Rocco not gotten there in time.”
Owen didn’t blink. He made a fist and pressed his knuckles against the top of Blade’s desk.
“They held the ritual in a special rotunda. There was a pentagram in the tiling on the floor. Someone, maybe King, sat on a throne, watching the proceedings. There was blood on the knife that Kelan threw at him, so we might have a DNA sample. If it matches Fiona’s and Lion’s DNA then it might be King’s.”
The muscles in Owen’s cheeks bunched. “Was she bound?”
“Not physically, but the drugs they gave her paralyzed her.”
“Is she all right?”
Val shook his head. “Honestly, I don’t know. We won’t know for a while.” He drew a long breath and slowly released it. “I’m not sure how an innocent like Fiona can recover from such abuse.” He gestured between them. “You and I, the team, we have armor we’ve built around ourselves. If something gets under it, we know how to deal with it. She had no defenses, O. Nothing. And Kelan is damn near wrecked over it.”
“I’ll talk to Kit. Kelan needs to take the time he needs to deal with this.”
Chapter Twenty
Wynn brought a bouquet of daisies to her grandmother’s room at the palliative care center in Cheyenne Sunday morning. The room smelled of industrial disinfectant, but it was clean and not a horrible place to convalesce. The staff was nice, but they were often spread thin. Wynn frequently helped bathe her grandmother and change her bedding on her twice-weekly visits.
She would have had no choice but to continue assisting with her grandmother’s care here, if not for her new job teaching and babysitting Zavi. Now, she could afford to move her to a more expensive facility that had better options for her care and rehabilitation. And she could do it without having to surrender the deed to her grandmother’s house. Just the thought of that made Wynn’s heart ache. That house was the one her grandfather had built for Grams when he came home from the Korean War. It was the house where her mother had been raised, and where Wynn herself had lived after her parents died.
She pushed those thoughts out of her mind. The center was doing a fair job caring for her grandmother, but things were going to change for the better very soon. She brushed her grandmother’s white bangs from her forehead and kissed her, wondering how aware of her surroundings she was.
“How about some light, Grams?” Wynn asked as she lifted the blinds, letting sunlight pour into the room—it was the only natural thing in the entire hospital.
“I brought you some new flowers. The daisies were gorgeous, so I selected two bouquets of them.” She threw out last week’s flowers, replacing them with the fresh daisies.
Thanks to Rocco Silas, Wynn now had the income to afford a better situation for her grandmother. She’d just signed the papers to have her released. They’d be moving her Wednesday. Wynn wanted to be there for the move, but the only available time the new home could do it was during the week while she worked. They assured her they’d take great care of her. Wynn was excited for the change. Hopefully, the new environment would help her grandmother recover more of her faculties.
She pulled a chair over to her grandmother’s bedside and took her slim hand. It was so hard seeing her indomitable matriarch in this bed, just a shell of her former self. Grams closed her eyes at the contact. Wynn knew her grandmother was still in there, somewhere, wanting out.
“I found a new job, Grams. Right here in Wyoming. It’s outside of Laramie, not far at all. I’ll be able to visit you every weekend.” She told her grandmother about her new situation, the boy she was hired to teach, his special capabilities.
Near the end of the visit, after brushing her grandmother’s hair, she told her about the upcoming move to a new home.
“I love you, Grams. We’ll get through this, just like everything else. Good things are just around the corner for us. You’ll see.”
*
Kelan woke to the feel of Fiona in his arms. The whole night through, her body had touched his. He smiled. This was the most sleep he’d had in all the days since she’d been taken. To know that she was here, with him, both of them safe…it was a feeling he’d feared he’d never know again.
He watched while sleep slowly released its hold on her. It was late in the morning. Almost ten. They’d missed breakfast and their workouts. He was grateful the team had let them sleep. She opened her eyes, blinked, then squinted from the light flooding the room.
She reached over and touched him. “Kelan.”
“That’s me.” He smiled.
She pushed herself up and frowned as she looked around her room. “I feel as if we’ve slept for a week.”
“Maybe we did—but I think it was only one night.”