“Seatbelt kid,” Bear ordered. Sammy stretched the belt over his lap but was lifted off the seat when it sprang back. Bear leaned over and inserted the belt into the buckle for him and took off down the road.
Pup stirred, just a small moan, and her one eye fluttered before opening slightly. “Preppy?” she asked in a whisper, glancing up at the rearview mirror.
“No Pup, Preppy’s gone,” I said.
“Am I dying?” Pup asked.
“You’re very much alive,” I whispered, pressing my lips to her forehead.
“No, I’m dying,” she argued.
“Why do you say that?” I asked.
“’Cause,” she pointed out. “I see Preppy…” she trailed off.
“Stay with me, babe. Stay with me,” I told her as we pulled up to the hospital. But it was too late. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she slipped back into unconsciousness.
When Bear pulled in under the emergency overpass, he rushed out to open the door for us. He stayed back with Sammy as I ran through the glass doors. A nurse saw us coming and motioned for us to follow her to a room where they placed Pup on a gurney. “Sir, sir are you family?” another nurse came up to ask me as I watched a guy in a white coat cut off Pup’s clothes and push an IV needle into her vein. I didn’t know how to respond. Of course, she was my family, but how the fuck could I make the nurse understand that?
“She’s pregnant. I’m the father,” I said.
She pointed a gloved finger to a chair in the corner. “Sit,” she ordered. She shouted over to the people in scrubs and informed them of Pup’s pregnancy, which erupted into a chorus of voices, all shouting special instructions over one another.
When the nurse noticed that I was still standing she placed a hand on my stomach and pushed me toward the chair. I took a few sidesteps toward it, but still wouldn’t’ sit. When the nurse noticed that her white glove was coated in red she lifted her other hand and pointed to the bloody palms. “Where is this coming from?” She asked, looking more annoyed than concerned.
“Don’t matter,” I spat. “Just take care of her.” I craned my neck around the nurse who then stood up on the tips of her sneakered toes, waving the bloody glove in my face.
I grunted. I didn’t care if I died.
As long as she lived.
The nurse snapped off her gloves and then snapped her fingers in front of my eyes. “I suggest you take a seat on the gurney right there, Mr. King. You can still see her from there while I look you over and patch you up.
She finally got my attention. “How do you know my name?” I asked leaning a little to close in an effort to make her back the fuck off but it didn’t work. The bitch tossed her hair over her shoulder and took a step toward me, trying to intimidate me with all a hundred and ten pounds of pink scrubs.
“How do you know my name?” I repeated.
She rolled her eyes and bent over at the waist. She lifted the hem on one of the legs of her scrubs, revealing a small daisy tattoo on her ankle. “This, you, idiot.”
I recognized my work right away.
She released the fabric and shook the material back in place. Behind her the chaos continued around Pup. They placed a mask over her face and plugged a tube into one of the beeping and blinking machines surrounding the gurney.
“Staring at her isn’t going to make it better. We need to fix you up.”
I shook my head.
She walked over to the glass wall on the far side of the room and out of the corner of my eye I saw her pull a fresh set of gloves out of a dispenser. When she came back up to me she was pulling the latex over her fingers.
A guy in a white jacket, with matching colored hair, cut Pup’s clothes with a pair of scissors. My fists clenched so hard my knuckles were about to pop out of my skin.
The most annoying nurse in the world remained unfazed, refusing to accept that I was ignoring her. “What’s her name?” The nurse asked.
“Doe.” I said, then I corrected, “Ray, her name is Ray.”
“Doe. Ray,” she repeated, her eyebrows questioning the name just as much as her voice did. “Is there a ME in there somewhere? Her family big Sound of Music fans or something?”
“Or something”, I muttered.
“Tell me Mr. King, how the hell do you plan on taking care of Miss. Doe-Ray when she’s better, if you’re standing here in my O.R., riddled with bullet holes, letting yourself bleed to death all over my white linoleum?” she argued.
The annoying bitch had a point. If Pup came out of this. When she came out of this. She was going to need me more than ever. Reluctantly, I backed up and sat on the gurney as the nurse looked me over.
I tried to concentrate on the words I’d just said a few minutes earlier instead of the things they were doing to her that made me want to slam my fist through the fucking wall.
She’s pregnant. I’m the father.
I wished right then and there, with everything I had, to any god from any religion that wanted to listen, that both Pup and the baby were going to be okay.
Our baby.
That my girl was going to be okay. I wished that when this was all over, and she was hopefully stable, that I have the strength left to tear Tanner’s fucking head off with my bare hands.
You do not fuck with what’s mine.
It was a lesson he was going to find out the very fucking hard way.
Chapter Thirty-Three
King
Stable.
It was the word I was waiting for before I could finally let out a long held breath. The nurse who’d finally said it left the room. I sat next to Pup, holding her hand. Making promises to her that I’d never thought I’d utter to anyone. I promised her a home, a life, a family. I promised her a safe place for our kid to grow up. I told her how much I loved her and how much she meant to me.
“Grace is here, in the waiting room,” Bear said, coming into the room. He was speaking to me but his eyes never left Pup. He stood over her with his hands in his pockets. “She’s watching the kid.”
My phone vibrated in my pocket. I pulled it out and was about to hit ignore until I saw who it was on the other end. I pressed talk and held it to my ear. “Got him,” Jake said. “Barn out on 86 passed the We Are God billboard.” The line went dead.
“Jake?” Bear asked.
I nodded. “Stay here with her in case she wakes up. I’ll be back.” I kissed Pup on the forehead and although they’d given her medications to keep her sedated, I’d hoped she could somehow still hear me when I said, “I love you, baby.”
* * *
Blow by blow I reigned down my fury upon the sick fuck who dared lay hands on my pup. His pale white skin swelled and ripped open, spraying red from where my fists connected, over and over again until his features morphed into something unrecognizable.
His deceiving all-American boy bullshit good looks were gone.
The motherfucker now looked like the piece of shit monster he was.
This wasn’t a controlled rage. Far from it. This was me unleashing the pent up anger and frustration I’d been feeling ever since that bullshit fake cop tried to take me to ground.
I looked down at my hand, coated in the sticky red and smiled.
I wanted more.
I needed more.
“Stop. Please. I beg you,” Tanner moaned, revealing bright white teeth coated in even brighter red blood. He rolled his head from side to side, choking on the blood that had pooled in his throat.
“You started this, motherfucker. You can’t reign it in now just because you’re fucking pissing yourself. This is on you. You lay your filthy fucking hands on my girl, burn her skin, try to fucking kill her, and I’m supposed to show you mercy?” I shook my head. “You don’t fuck with what’s mine, and unfortunately for you, you’re about to learn that lesson the hard way.”
I looked up at Jake, who was standing to the side. His eyes were black and intently focused on Tanner. At first I thought he was almost bored, and waiting for me to end the kid and get it over with, but when I looked closer, I realized his expression was not bored at all.
It was lust.
And not for the boy, but for his blood.
“You can’t kill me,” Tanner said, gasping for breath.
“I believe I can, and I believe…I will.” I ran the barrel of my gun down his nose and pushed it into one of his eye sockets, while he squirmed underneath me. “It’s been a long time since I’ve killed anyone for the pure pleasure of it…too long really,” I said whimsically.
“You think Ramie is going to stay with you?” the little twat said. “She’s a fucking teenager. She doesn’t know what she wants. She could leave you tomorrow when she realizes that you’re just a pedophile with nothing to offer her. She’ll remember soon that she’s better than you, and she’ll fucking leave.”
“That’s where you’re fucking wrong,” I said. “You obviously don’t know me very well because her leaving me isn’t an option.”
“Then you’re just as much of a monster as I am. You and I aren’t so different after all,” he quipped, his pupils as big as his eye sockets.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” I corrected.