“No, shit,” I confirm.
“We should meet up sometime before you ship out again. I’ve got someone to introduce to you and I gotta meet this girl you’ve been telling me about.”
“Definitely. I’ll get up with Ben and we’ll make a day of it.”
“Sounds like a plan. Talk at you later.”
“Later.”
I put the phone down on the receiver and wonder if I might have time before the boys are done at their friends house to take a soak in the sauna. The tension brewing in my shoulders is something wicked. My gut tells me nothing but catching the bastard before he gets to Sofie is going to relieve the festering knots, but at least it will soothe them for a minute.
Fuck.
I get to my feet to pace off the energy and hear another sound, a cry, come from the back door. My control snaps and I stride down the dark hall and slap a hand against the door, shoving it open.
A keening wail erupts from the woman at my feet as she slumps back against the wall. I get to my knees, recognizing her as one of the club members, and a girl I’d slept with about a year ago.
“Emma?” I say. I brush back her hair to try and get a better look at her face. Hissing out a breath, I rock back on the balls of my toes, the wounds on her face steal a vicious litany of curses from my chest. “Emma, honey, can you hear me?”
She moans, covering her face with bruised and bloodied hands. I can’t tell where all the blood is coming from, and Jesus Christ, there’s a shit ton of it. Not wanting to cause her more pain than she’s already in, I take out my cell from the pocket in my shorts and dial 911.
“Hang on, help is coming. I’ve got you,” I tell her.
The ambulance comes and loads her in the back. Past and present collide as I imagine Sofie a few days after she was attacked. Sofie. My fingers fumble with my phone as I dial her number.
“Hey, Jack,” she answers immediately. “I can’t really talk right now, but—”
“Can you pick up the kids later?” I interrupt.
“Sure, yeah. Are you okay?” she asks. “You sound weird.”
I curse when the siren blares outside my window as the ambulance takes off.
“Jack?” There’s an audible tremor in her voice.
“A woman was hurt at the gym,” I say, pulling out behind the ambulance.
“Oh my God. What happened?”
“Baby,” is all I can manage.
Her silence says a thousand words.
“Don’t—” I start before she cuts in.
“It was him, wasn’t it?”
She was always too goddamned smart for her own good.
Before I can answer, she says, “I’ll have the boys go to a sitter or Livvie if I can’t get one on such short notice. I’ll be there in ten minutes.” I hear her speaking to someone in the background. “Fifteen minutes, tops.”
Then the line goes dead.
What feels like hours later, a nurse comes to my side. “Mr. James? She’s asking for you.”
I toss the stale, cold coffee someone forced into my hands in the trash. “Thanks.”
The nurse gives me a sympathetic smile. “Room 118.”
The room is quiet except for the steady beep of the machines next to the hospital bed. After Livvie was attacked by her birth mother, I hoped to never see a hospital again and it makes my already tense shoulders draw up tight as bowstrings. Emma’s tiny form is a ball in the center of the bed, like she can’t get warm enough, or small enough, to make herself comfortable.
“Emma,” I say, keeping my voice low.
The nurses have the lights lowered and the curtains drawn, casting shadows on everything. At first, I think it’s because they’re trying to entice her to sleep, then Emma sits up on the bed and turns to face me and I realize it’s because she doesn’t want me to see exactly how bad her injuries are.
I don’t hold back my curse and Emma smiles, wincing at the same time. “What the hell happened? They haven’t told me anything. I followed you here. I couldn’t leave you. I know your parents don’t live in town.”
“Thanks, Jack.” Her voice is barely more than a croak, and it draws my eyes to the dark bruises around her neck in the shape of handprints. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“The hell I didn’t. What happened to you? Who did this to you?”
“I thought he was a nice guy,” she says.
I sit beside her on the antiseptic-looking hospital sheets. Her left arm is bandaged with a cast and done up in a sling so I sit on her right side and take her uninjured hand. “Who?”
“I don’t—I can’t exactly remember his name. I mean, I’m sure he told me, but the doctor’s say I’m experiencing a bit of amnesia due to the attack. Not just the blow to the head, but trauma.”
“Oh, honey,” I say, squeezing her hand softly. She’s a client, someone I’ve seen naked, vulnerable. She meant something to me once, is still a friend now. Seeing her hurt so soon after Sofie’s confession is almost unbearable and I wonder if this is what she looked like after Damian attacked her.