“I want to go with him,” Starla said. If these were Brian’s last minutes on earth, she didn’t want to see them. But she deserved to see them. She would see them, and she would carry that nightmare with her for the rest of her life as punishment for what she had done. Her fault, it was all her fault.
The paramedics loaded the gurney into the ambulance. She stared blindly until Brian was no longer in sight. A police officer climbed in with them. In case he wakes up, she thought. In case he wakes up and names his attacker before…before he dies.
“We all do, Star, but we can’t.” More police cars were arriving. In a town as sleepy as this one usually was, this was a big night for the local law enforcement, Starla thought bitterly. And, true to Ghost’s word, it wasn’t long before the employees of Dermamania were separated to be questioned. Hell, the boss had been bleeding out in the parking lot from a stab wound while two of his coworkers were covered in blood—the night was going to be much longer than Starla had anticipated.
Chapter Sixteen
Jared woke to his doorbell ringing. And ringing. And ringing. As if someone was outside the front door leaning on the damn thing in the middle of the night.
“What the hell,” he muttered, thrusting back his covers. Someone was about to get their ass kicked. Morning barely stained the sky outside. But as immediately as anger had come, dread replaced it. Ashley and Mia were with their mom, and if something had happened…
Clumsily pulling on pajama bottoms, he stumbled and staggered out of the room heading for the front door, slamming his toe with a stream of curses in the process. But when he took a peek out the side window, all pain was forgotten. His eyes saw what was there, but his brain couldn’t process it.
Starla. Bathed in the buttery glow of his porch light, she was covered in something dark. It streaked her arms and hands and crusted in her blonde hair. In the light’s sickly pallor, it could’ve been mud, but somehow he knew it wasn’t.
Blood. He threw the door open and didn’t even have time to ask what the hell had happened to her before she practically collapsed into his arms as if a puppeteer had cut her strings.
Her limpness terrified him. What had that son of a bitch done to her?
“What happened?” he demanded as she sobbed into his naked chest, her fingernails biting in the flesh of his back. “Are you hurt?”
“It’s Brian. It’s Brian.”
Without another word, he scooped her up and kicked the door closed. Horror for her gnawed at his gut, but he tried to keep a clear head. She needed to get cleaned up, get all this blood off her. So much of it… If it all came out of one person, he wondered how that person could still be alive. He didn’t want to ask yet. He didn’t know if he was ready for the answer.
Jared didn’t know Brian, only knew of him, but he’d seemed like an okay guy. At least Macy had said so.
Starla was featherlight and trembling in his arms. What the hell should he do with her? Leaving her alone didn’t seem the best option, but neither did leaving her like this. He took her into his bathroom and set her on her feet, making sure she could support her own weight before he let go.
In this lighting, she was even more of a fright. Hair a mess and streaked with brownish red where she’d been pushing it back with bloody fingers. She’d apparently changed clothes, wearing a clean but very unStarla-like white T-shirt, but her skin was still streaked a vicious, disturbing dark crimson. He cranked the shower on. “You need to clean up. I’ll get you something else to wear.”
Sniveling, she nodded. “I didn’t know where else to go. I couldn’t go home, I just couldn’t. And…and…”
“Starla.” He drew a deep breath. “Is he alive?”
Fresh tears streaming down her cheeks, she nodded. “He’s alive. He just came out of surgery. They won’t say he’s out of the woods yet, but he’s hanging on.”
Relief swooped through him that there was a chance. “Good, that’s good. Tell me everything.”
“It’s my fault.”
“Starla—”
“Don’t try to say it isn’t! Someone attacked him in the parking lot as he was leaving tonight and stabbed him in the back. The doctors said if the wound had been an inch to the right, he probably would have died before I found him. I know it was Max. I know it was. They tried to tell me, and I didn’t listen. It’s my fault, it’s my—”
What a frigging mess. Sighing, not knowing what else to do, Jared pulled her into his arms again as steam from the shower filled the bathroom. Her warm tears leaked onto his skin, but she was done with sobbing for now—only a thin tremor worked through her as he held her.