According to the motel’s night manager, there was a hospital in a small city about a half hour away, and the guy was kind enough to offer Vaughn a lift. He checked himself in at the ER registration and told the surprised lady behind the desk he might have a cracked rib.
“Aren’t you in pain?” she asked.
“Yeah, a bit.”
She looked like she didn’t believe him, but he wasn’t going to waste time explaining his legendary pain tolerance. He’d always had a high threshold—which his parents found out the hard way when he was four and broke his arm falling out of a tree. He’d been afraid of getting in trouble for climbing and didn’t tell them about it until his mother was getting him and Cam ready for their baths that night. The SEALs had only hardened him more. He’d completed grueling missions with everything from concussions to broken bones.
The lady behind the desk eyed him suspiciously as she handed him a ream of paperwork to fill out. She probably thought he was a drug seeker with phantom complaints, but whatever. He settled into a chair in the waiting area with the clipboard and took his time filling it all out. Since he was up, moving around, and didn’t seem to be in as much pain as he should be, they weren’t going to give him top priority, and he figured he was in for a long wait. Cam would probably even arrive before he saw a doctor.
Outside, an ambulance screeched to halt in front of the ER, and he glanced out the window. Paramedics hustled to unload a stretcher and—
Sage.
A cold hand clamped around Vaughn’s chest. He only caught a glimpse, but he saw a flash of blonde hair and recognized the shirt she was wearing.
Blood stained everything.
He bolted to his feet, met the stretcher at the door, and followed it into the emergency room. There were too many people surrounding her, and he couldn’t get close enough. “What happened to her?”
“Sir.” A police officer stepped in front of him, blocking his path. “Do you know this woman?”
The monitor hooked to Sage flatlined, and for a moment, Vaughn thought his heart stopped beating, too. He lunged past the cop and was caught by two paramedics as a doctor and several nurses took over in an attempt to save her life right there in the hallway. He watched with a growing sense of horror as the seconds ticked by into long minutes and the monitor continued its flat tone.
C’mon, Sage. Fight. I know you can fight. You’re a survivor.
They shocked her three times, continued CPR for nearly twenty minutes. Still no response.
Eventually the doctor working on her shook his head and stepped back. “She’s gone. I’m calling it. Time of death—”
“No!” The word ripped from Vaughn’s throat, a wail that was more animal than human, and the doctor looked in his direction, then nodded at the paramedics.
“Let him go.”
The hands holding him back eased up, and he staggered forward, his legs suddenly numb. All he saw were two bullet wounds that had ripped holes into her chest and his Navy T-shirt underneath her, shredded by a paramedic’s scissors and soaked with her blood.
You’re signing my death certificate.
“Sage.” He gripped her lifeless hand, and his vision blurred as he pushed hair back from her face…
It wasn’t her.
The shock of relief left him lightheaded. For several moments, he forgot how to breathe, and he only remembered to do so because he realized he was about to faint. Finally, he got his lungs cooperating again and exhaled hard, stepped back. “It’s not her.” He scrubbed his hands over his face, looked at the doctor, then the cop. “Thank Christ. It’s not her.”
The cop’s eyes narrowed. The doctor murmured to the nurses, who covered the woman’s body with a sheet. As the stretcher was wheeled away, Vaughn had a moment of panic.
What if he was wrong? What if that was Sage and he—
He needed to see her again. Just to make sure.
He ran after the nurses and tugged the sheet down, stared hard at the dead woman’s face, forcing himself to take note of every detail. This woman was thinner, more angular, with sharp cheekbones and a pointed chin. She had heavy bags under her eyes, and her complexion was mottled with acne scars. Needle tracks bruised the insides of both arms.
It absolutely wasn’t Sage.
The doctor set a hand on his shoulder. “Do you know her?”
“No.” He replaced the sheet over the woman and let a nurse wheel the stretcher into a waiting elevator. “I thought she was…” He hesitated, unsure what to call Sage, then settled on the easiest explanation. “Uh, I thought she was my girlfriend.”
“Why?” the cop asked.
“She’s, uh, wearing the clothes I last saw Sage in. That Navy shirt is mine.”
“But that woman is not your girlfriend? Sage?”
“No.”
“When was the last time you saw Sage?”
“This morning at the motel we’re staying at.”
“What motel?”