Grounded (Up In The Air #3)

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Mr. Desolate

JAMES

I could have wished that the twenty minute drive was just a blur for me, but of course it wasn’t. It was the longest drive of my life. I died a million little deaths on that drive, my mind going to the darkest places.

I even found myself cursing God, when I’d always been the most agnostic soul. Why did he hate me so much? I wondered angrily. First he took my parents, who I’d adored, and now I’d found a home and a family again, one that I coveted and worshipped with a single-minded purpose. I couldn’t bear the thought that I would lose her just when I’d found her. I rejected the thought. This couldn’t be happening. If her father had attacked her, surely the security had subdued him before he could have touched her. There was no acceptable alternative.

I watched the clock on the dash for the entire drive. Clark ran red lights, weaved through traffic, and drove like his life depended on it. He made good time, and we were pulling into her neighborhood less than fifteen minutes after we’d gotten into the car.

I was jumping out of the car before it had stopped, rushing to the front door. It was locked, and I cursed as I dug out my keys. Absently I noted that Clark took another route, jumping the fence into the backyard while I entered the house. It was where she’d been when I’d been talking to her, so I looked inside first.

The first few rooms were empty, and I heard sirens drawing close as I scanned the kitchen.

Clark was standing in front of the back door that led into the yard from the bedroom when I stepped inside. My gut clenched, nearly doubling me over. The back door had been open…

I rushed forward, but Clark moved to stop me. He caught me before I reached the door.

I fought him in earnest. There were no seconds to waste.

“Please, James,” he said in a soft voice I barely recognized as coming out of him. “You don’t want to see what’s back there. No one should have to see that. The paramedics are here. Let’s let them in to do their jobs.”

I heard a horrible whimper of a noise as though from a distance, barely noting that it had escaped from my own throat.

He would only say a thing like that if there was nothing to be done, and clearly Bianca was not in the house.

“Is she back there?” I asked him, my voice breaking on the words. It felt like every part of me was breaking.

He nodded, and a tear ran down his cheek. “You can’t do anything for her, James, but you can save yourself the pain of seeing her like that.”

Of course, I couldn’t stay away. I refused to accept what his words implied, even as I felt my own face growing wet with tears.

“Let me by,” I told him, a quaver in my voice. “I have to be with her.”

He bowed his head and let me pass, seeing my resolve.

The sight that greeted me literally brought me to my knees.

There hadn’t been a second since I’d met her that I felt as though I’d taken her for granted. I’d loved her, I’d treasured her, I’d coveted her, and adored every inch of her, but it still didn’t feel like it had been enough. I’d misstepped with her, I’d screwed up plenty, but we’d been working through it all. Life could have been perfect. All we’d needed was more time…

I crawled to her, only distantly noting that hers was not the only body lying in the small backyard.

She was on her back, her head turned sharply to the side, obscuring one side of her face. What was showing of her face was strangely intact, almost peaceful. Her hair was spread around her, the pale blonde strands now wet and dyed red with blood. I tried to tell myself that she might be fine, that she could survive this, but I could see clearly from where the blood pooled that it must be a head wound.

Raw sounds of anguish tore out of me with every movement as I made my way to her.

Lightly, carefully, as though she were made of glass, I held her hand and sobbed. I wouldn’t survive this. I didn’t want to survive this. There was nothing in the world that I wanted to live for after enduring this.

For the first time in my life, I began to pray. For her life or my death, I didn’t know. I would have taken either just then.

I didn’t even look up as the paramedics arrived in force. I only noticed the body that had been lying beside hers as it was shifted away. Apparently, the paramedics weren’t going to try to help that one, since it was missing a head. Its massive torso was riddled with holes, and I perceived that it had been her father. His death gave me no satisfaction. It wasn’t enough, and certainly, he hadn’t died in time to spare her.


How had it come to this? I wondered wretchedly.

My vision was blurred and I just couldn’t bring myself to focus on anything but that hand. It was limp in mine, but unscathed, and if I looked up, I knew there was a good chance I’d find answers that I wasn’t willing to accept. Somehow, uncertainty was something to cling to when the worst-case scenario was so much more likely than the alternative.

A paramedic was crouched on the other side of her, but I couldn’t look directly at him, couldn’t let myself see what he found as he swiftly checked her vitals.

The paramedic called out loudly. I didn’t catch what he said. My mind wasn’t processing words just then. I was still focused with a single-minded purpose on that lovely hand. There was no telling how long I crouched there, motionless with dread, trying to prolong the moments, telling myself she would be fine, but filled with a stark desolation that made it hard to even breathe.

The paramedic said something else, and I didn’t realize that he was speaking to me until someone nudged me rather impatiently from behind. I blinked at the man, not really seeing him as I tried to hear what he was saying.

“Please move, sir. We need to get her on a stretcher. You’re in the way.”

I moved automatically, so unused to being told what to do that I obeyed instinctively, knowing that no one would dare give me an order if it wasn’t important.

I only shifted back the slightest amount, but a stretcher was being pushed persistently against me until I backed away far enough to give them room to work.

I pushed back with desperation when I realized that they were going to put her on the stretcher.

I won’t let them take her away from me, I thought. I’ll die before I let them put her in a bag.

Big arms circled me from behind, pulling me back. “Let them work, James,” Tristan said gently into my ear. I hadn’t even realized that he’d followed us here.

“Sir, every second you delay us could be crucial to her survival,” the other paramedic said, clear impatience in his tone.

I let Tristan pull me back as I tried to process those words.

Survival, he’d said, as though she had a chance. They weren’t putting her in a bag; they were staunching the flow of blood from the side of her head and moving her.

He’d said survival, I thought again. They weren’t taking her away because she was dead. They thought they could help her.

I hovered close, my thoughts becoming slowly more coherent as I began to realize that she wasn’t dead, and God willing, she might survive. With desperation, I began to let myself hope, every inch of me trembling.

I gave them room to work, but I hovered as close as possible, desperate to see what they would do, fearing that if I so much as glanced away from her I might lose her.

I was moving around her, trying to get closer to her without getting in the way, and so I saw when the first paramedic shifted her head enough to apply pressure to her wound. I whimpered when I saw the bloody hole in the side of her face. It was up near the spot where her jaw met her ear, or at least I thought that it was. It was hard to tell with all of that blood.

I never took my eyes off her, and what they were doing to help her, but I began to hear the other sounds in the yard as still more paramedics arrived. I heard another man sobbing. It had been going on for a while, but I hadn’t really noticed it—I was making so much noise myself.

Javier, I thought, dawning horror making me search him out. He hovered over the fallen form of Stephan. A paramedic was busy staunching the flow of blood from Stephan’s chest, prepping him to get on a stretcher, another man helping him. No, I thought, please no. They both had to live.

I followed the stretcher closely as they moved her, and no one dared tell me not to. I watched her chest as she breathed faintly on the long drive to the hospital. It’s a miracle, I thought. He put that gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger, and if she survives it, I have witnessed a miracle. I made crazy promises to God on that long drive, promises to give him my soul in exchange for that miracle.

I wasn’t myself as I followed her unconscious form inside the hospital. I felt disconnected from reality as they worked on her. I began to fight when they wouldn’t let me follow her into surgery. Clark and Tristan had to snap me out of it. It wasn’t until the world came back into focus that I realized that I had been in shock.

“James, you need to be present for this,” Tristan was telling me, his voice firm, his eyes steady. “Your influence can help them. I guarantee it. You can’t follow her into surgery, but you can call in some favors.”

“Buy the f*cking hospital if you want them to give Bianca, Stephan, and Blake their best chances,” Clark added.

The nurse was putting a blanket over my shoulders, saying soothing things, and shooting Tristan and Clark perplexed looks. Tristan understood me well, though, and his tactic couldn’t have been more brilliant. I didn’t have time to wallow in this, and certainly none to agonize about it. What I needed was action. The more the better. There were things I could do to help.

“Get the board of directors and the head of the hospital on the phone,” I told Clark. “If they ask what it concerns, tell them that someone is willing to donate an obscene amount of money for some special treatment.”

He nodded, and moved away, a small, satisfied smile gracing his mouth. I remembered that he’d said Blake, as well. I was relieved that she at least had a chance. I also knew that the names he hadn’t mentioned were surely dead. Paterson and Henry had fallen in their duty of protecting Bianca. I made a note to pay out the families of both men. It was the smallest consolation, but at least neither of them had left behind children, or wives.

My first call was to my offices in Vegas, and then New York—to my second-in-command. I enlisted all of the help at my disposal to get the ball rolling faster.