She reluctantly nodded, then cast a look over her shoulder to see the paramedics loading Gabe onto a gurney.
“He’ll be okay,” Tom assured her, but Elle could hear the note of concern in his voice. He’d seen the amount of blood Gabe had lost. He knew they were racing against time. “Now, c’mon. We need to get your head checked out. Looks like you might need some stitches.”
Elle was only vaguely aware of the paramedics inspecting her head wound. She winced when they wrapped it well enough for her to be transported to the hospital, and she was pretty much in a daze as the ER staff cleaned and stitched the laceration just below her hairline, where the bullet had grazed her.
If Mark Monroe’s aim had been any better, she’d be lying dead in the morgue instead of sitting in the tiny exam room that smelled of rubbing alcohol and disinfectant, waiting for a ride home. Elle blinked away tears as she realized how close she’d come to dying that day, how close Gabe had come to dying. Just the thought of it made her physically sick, and she put a hand to her mouth, searching desperately for a bedpan or bowl.
Luckily, a nurse popped her head in at that moment, offering her a smile, distracting her from her churning stomach. “Your aunt is here to take you home, Ms. McCoy.”
Even before the nurse had finished speaking, Aunt Charlotte was pushing into the room and enveloping Elle in her motherly embrace. “Oh, my sweet girl,” Charlotte murmured into Elle’s hair. “When I heard what’d happened at the courthouse…”
Elle managed to swallow the bile that burned her throat and sniff back her tears before being released from her aunt’s embrace. “I’m okay,” she assured her, not quite sure if her words were true. “I’ll be fine.”
Charlotte put her at arms’ length and searched her face, determined to do her own assessment. She must’ve been satisfied with what she saw because she gave Elle a curt nod and turned to the nurse. “Is she free to go home?”
The nurse handed Charlotte a handful of papers that Elle had signed and vaguely understood to be her discharge papers and instructions for wound care. “As far as we’re concerned, but I believe Sheriff Dawson wants to speak with her.”
Charlotte frowned. “Mac? Where is he?”
“Waiting for his son to get out of surgery,” the nurse explained.
Elle slid off of the bed. “Let’s go.”
“Mac can wait,” Charlotte said, her irritation evident.
Elle didn’t care what kind of tension might be brewing between Charlotte and her old friend and one-time high school sweetheart, Mac Dawson. That could wait. All she cared about was getting an update on Gabe.
She turned to the nurse. “Show me where they’re waiting.”
When Elle arrived in the family waiting room with her aunt reluctantly in tow, she wasn’t surprised at all to see the entire Dawson family there. Tom paced the room, his normally unflappable calm clearly overridden by concern for his brother. Their younger brothers, Joe and Kyle, sat in the row of chairs, their respective girlfriends gripping their hands, offering the men their love and support.
Their venerable patriarch, Sheriff Mac Dawson, stood at the window, arms crossed over his chest, his back to all of them. Mac had a gruff, severe demeanor even on a good day, but the scowl on his face was fierce when he glanced over his shoulder to see who had entered.
“How’s Gabe?” Elle asked, her voice tight with apprehension.
“They removed the bullet from his leg,” Tom told her. “Luckily, Monroe didn’t hit an artery or the bone.”
Elle closed her eyes for a moment and breathed a huge sigh of relief. “Thank God.”
“How are you?” Joe asked, gesturing toward her head.
She forced a grin. “I’ll have a scar, but nothing—”
Elle’s words died on her lips as all three Dawson brothers suddenly stiffened, on alert, their expressions deadly. The hair on the back of her neck rose in warning, and she spun around to see a tall, gangly man with a tanned face lined with creases that told the story of his many years working in the sun. Unfortunately, she knew him all too well.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Tom demanded, his hands fisted at his sides.
Jeb Monroe held out his hands in a placating gesture. “Just came to identify my boy’s body,” he replied. “And I heard what had happened to one of yours.”
“Like you had nothing to do with it,” Joe snapped.
Jeb nodded. “I figured you’d assume that, given our…history. I didn’t know what Mark had planned. But I’m sure the idea of his brother being locked away by your government was more than he could bear.”