“Call him,” she said from her place at the kitchen table. “If you don’t, I will. It’s been forty minutes – how long does it take to hand over a bag of cash?”
Not bothering to argue, he dug his phone out of his pocket and dialed Jack’s number. As he listened to it ringing, he shrugged helplessly across the room at Ally.
“Something’s wrong, I can feel it,” she said.
Callum disconnected the call, then dialed again.
“Who are you calling?”
“Maggie and Jane. While I check up on him, you three are gonna have a quiet drink at Barney’s.”
She stared at him blankly.
“You’ll be safer in a room full of people,” he explained. “Trust me.”
Callum pulled up slowly behind Jack’s car, parked outside Tom’s house. He pushed the car door shut behind him carefully, conscious of not disturbing the peace in the quiet street.
So, Jack’s car was here. He wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing yet. Keeping his wits about him, he made his way up the front path. In the darkness, the light from within the house illuminated the fact that the front door was ajar. Odd. He crept up the stairs onto the porch, but nothing else seemed out of place. Still, he couldn’t help the anxiety that sat in his throat. He gently pushed the door open and a cold chill stung the back of his neck.
The hall table had been overturned and lay on its side, contents spewing out of the single drawer.
“Jack?” he called tentatively, panic overwhelming his need for stealth.
No reply. Broken glass crunched beneath his feet as he made his way through the hall and into the living room. “Are you here?”
He stepped over a dining room chair inside the living room doorway. More upturned furniture greeted him. Then he noticed a boot, partially obscured behind an overturned armchair.
His heart stopped as the image sensors in his brain put two and two together.
He covered the short distance in a millisecond, dropping to his knees beside him as his heart threatened to leap out of his chest.
Jack lay face down on the floor, out cold.
Callum checked his watch again. God, how he hated hospitals. The smell of the place was enough to make him feel sick – a peculiar mix of Lysol and misery, wrapped up in one jagged little bundle that scraped away at his insides. He glanced up as the outer doors opened and Maggie, Jane and Ally made their way into the waiting room, blinking in the harsh light. Maggie rushed straight over to him, grabbing him by the arm.
“What the hell went wrong? How is he?” she demanded.
“Keep your voice down,” he warned, eyeballing the deputy who was talking to someone at the reception counter. He had managed to answer all of his questions without once telling him the truth. He didn’t want to foul it up now. Once again, he crossed his fingers that Jack’s insistence on keeping the cops out of it was the right thing to do.
“I knew it wouldn’t be as simple as he said,” Ally said, staring up at him with tears in her eyes. “Why couldn’t he just tell us the truth?”
“I don’t know, but he’s going to be fine, according to the doc.”
He reached down to squeeze her shoulder, conjuring up a smile from somewhere. He could tell from Ally’s face that she could see right through it.
“What did the doctor say?”
“In a nutshell – a bruised kidney, a couple of cracked ribs and a concussion on that thick skull of his.”
“Oh my God,” Ally’s chin trembled, as Maggie reached for her hand.
“Come on, let’s all get comfortable,” she said.
“Good idea. The doc said someone would come and get us when it was okay to go see him.”
They settled down into the bank of plastic chairs to wait.
“The concussion seemed to be the thing they were the most worried about,” Callum said after a few minutes. He wanted to tell Ally that everything would be fine, but with the doctors’ words ringing in his ears, he thought she would be better off knowing the truth. “He said there’s some swelling to his brain. He might be out for 24 hours or so. They’re pumping meds into him to keep him under – something about giving him a chance to heal.”
Ally nodded silently, her gaze wandering to the door that led into the emergency room. Callum read her mind. If they could just see for themselves that he was okay, it would make this whole nightmare seem that much less terrifying.
“So that guy – Jimmy – any sign of him?” Maggie asked tentatively.
Callum shook his head. “None. If I were to take a guess, I’d say they grabbed the bag, did a number on Jack and trashed the place before they left.”
They watched people come and go, mostly in silence. Callum kept a close eye on Ally, but her gaze was leveled on the door. There didn’t seem to be much point in talking. Finally, when he thought he couldn’t wait much longer, a nurse finally appeared, leading them down the hall, through the doors and into the emergency room.