Midnight Exposure (36 page)

An agonized scream shrilled in his ear. Not Jed. His mouth was slack with shock. Nathan turned toward Mandy. He needed to shut her up—fast.

“I can’t believe Jaynie wasn’t there. Where could she be?”

From the backseat of a Honda Odyssey, Danny Sullivan listened to his oldest brother, Pat, bitch and moan.

Main Street rolled by with Hallmark charm and enough wholesome Christmas decorations to make Norman Rockwell gag.

Riding shotgun, Conor added, “I got a bad feeling about this.”

So did Danny. Fear for his sister lay dormant in the pit of his chest like an Iraqi IED, ready to blow Danny’s precariously balanced peace of mind to shit at any second. He just couldn’t take it if anything happened to Jaynie.

Pat continued to complain. Both his Irish temper and his concern for their sister had peaked when they’d driven up to Reed Kimball’s house to find only a supremely pissed-off Siberian
husky in residence. No Jaynie. “It’s only nine o’clock and the place is a ghost town. Where the fuck is everybody?”

Back home, the nightlife hadn’t even hit full swing yet. The bar would be filled up with the tail end of happy hour and the first wave of partiers.

“Just park somewhere. We’ll split up,” Conor barked.

Pat pulled over. “OK. Try to find someone, anyone who might have a clue as to what’s going on. I’m going to drive around and try to find that inn Jaynie said she stayed at. Shouldn’t take long. The whole place is only a dozen blocks each way.”

Conor climbed from the van and pulled his cell from his pocket. “Hallelujah. I got bars.”

Danny checked his display and grunted his assent as his boots hit the sidewalk. Pat affirmed his service had returned as well. “OK then, boys. Text with news or meet back here in twenty.”

The brothers parted.

Conor pointed south. “I’ll go this way. Toward that strip center. Looks like a drugstore, at least.”

“Whatever.” Danny was already headed north. A diner sat at the main intersection, across from the burned-out shell of a building. A glance at the rubble brought a horror of a slide show to Danny’s brain. With long practice, he shut that fucker down.

He was so not going there tonight.

Jaynie needed him here, not tripping off into flashback land. Helped that the tiny hamlet of Huntsville, Maine, was the polar opposite of Iraq.

Danny walked in a quiet that was simultaneously quaint and creepy.

A woman’s scream shattered the silence. Danny sprinted toward the sound, the slapping of his shitkickers on hard pavement painfully reminiscent. A twinge shot up his left arm.

He passed the diner. A man and woman struggled in the shadowed alley next to a midsize SUV. A third figure lay on the ground a few feet away.

“Get in the fucking truck now.” The man pulled the resisting woman by the wrist. She shifted her weight back like a stubborn mule. He raised his free hand and cracked her across the face.

Danny launched his body at the guy, breaking his hold on the lady. Danny and the rude dude went heads over asses. Unable to break his fall with his bum hand, Danny landed in a tangle of limbs while the woman-beating asshole sprinted for his truck. Asshole twisted and pointed at the woman. “You’re mine.”

Danny got his legs under his body and set up for a flying tackle.

Sobbing stopped him cold.

He glanced sideways. The woman knelt at the prone figure’s side. “Help him, please.” The eyes that turned on him were blue as a desert sky and just as captivating.

Shit.

Danny gave up on grabbing the attacker and hurried to her side. Her assailant’s engine faded as fast as taillights in the dark.

Danny ripped open the guy’s bloodstained jacket and applied pressure to a deep stab wound to the belly. Two functional hands would’ve helped.

The stanching of blood threatened to suck him back in time. Imaginary rockets and bullets began to whistle through the silence.
Keep your head in the game.

“You have 911 service here?” He turned to the woman and was struck fucking dumb. Even with mascara running down her cheeks, swollen eyes, a hand-size slap mark,
and
her friend’s blood smeared all over her, she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. An apparition. An angel.

“Yes.”

The warm liquid oozing over his fingers brought him back to the guy bleeding out on the pavement—and vivid memories he’d rather not have. “Call them. If you don’t have a phone, mine’s in my jacket pocket. Right side.”

She dug his cell out and made the call while Danny tried to keep his grip on reality. He was in Maine, not Iraq. That was snow on the ground, not sand. “How far’s the hospital?”

“Forty minutes.”

Danny was no medic, but he had plenty of experience watching guys bleed to death. Which brought him back to his private horror show. The shakes started deep in his gut and radiated outward as the blood kept coming. “He doesn’t have forty minutes. Tell them you need a medevac.”

Cold sweat broke out in the wake of the tremors. He concentrated on her voice, brave despite her terror. The sound of it washed over him like a rush of warm water. “What’s your name?”

“Mandy.” Her voice quivered.

Mandy.

“Please keep talking to me, Mandy.”

Reed raised the head of the bed. His eyelids were lead curtains, and the long set of stitches across his ribs pulled. He glanced at the next bed, where Scott slept off the stress and the residual effects of the tranquilizer Nathan had slipped him. The other two boys were down the hall. Like Scott, Brandon was out cold. John was in worse shape, malnourished, dehydrated, and traumatized, but he was alive.

The sound of his son’s deep breathing threatened to lull Reed back to sleep. He forced his eyes open. No sleeping as long as Nathan was still on the loose.

Footsteps scraped. Reed tensed. The man who tapped lightly on the door frame was a stranger. Though his hair was black, his eyes were the same striking shade of turquoise as Jayne’s.

He stepped into the room and glanced at Reed’s sleeping roommate. “I’m Conor Sullivan,” he said in a low voice.

“Jayne’s not alone, is she?” Reed held out a hand.

Conor shook it. Jayne’s brother was tall and lanky like his sister. “Pat’s with her. He won’t leave her alone.”

Reed relaxed. “She’s all right?”

“Mild concussion. They’re keeping her overnight for observation. Thanks for saving her.”

“She saved herself. She’s amazing.” Reed hadn’t meant to blurt that out, but the emergency room doc had shot him full of something
before he’d gone to work closing the wound. Plus, Reed had lost more than a few drops of blood. His eyes ached. He blinked hard.

Conor digested Reed’s comment for a few seconds. “Why don’t you get some sleep, Reed?”

Reed gave his head a quick shake. His eyes were pulled to his son’s sleeping form. “Not as long as Nathan is out there.”

“Jaynie sent me to watch over you two.” Conor crossed his arms and leaned back against the wall. “Go ahead and close your eyes. You rescued my sister. You and your son are with us now, and we take care of our own.”

Danny moved through the hospital corridors. Machines beeped. The bite of antiseptic and the stench of human misery competed for top billing in his nose—and mind. Pain radiated from his injured hand. Images of explosions and shock and blood rushed through his head. Screams echoed in his ears, the inhuman screaming of men who bodies had been blown to pieces. Or whose friends had been blown to pieces.

Danny had been bleeding out too fast to scream, but the horror was clear as a desert day.

The petite brunette was sitting alone in the surgical waiting room.

Mandy.

Danny hesitated at the threshold, just looking at her. What could he possibly do for her? She was wholesome, lovely, and perfect, while he was damaged inside and out.

She was silent, her eyes blank and her body too still. Numb disbelief. That state when the mind cannot process the horrors presented to it.

That
Danny could understand.

He stepped into the room. When she didn’t move, Danny lowered his body into the chair next to her. “Any word?”

She turned to look at him. The deep blue of her eyes swam with sadness. Danny shifted on the upholstered seat.

“Ms. Brown?” A green-scrubbed surgeon stepped into the room. “He made it out of surgery. You can see him for a few minutes.”

Mandy rose, hesitantly, as if afraid of what she was going to see. “Is he going to be all right?”

The doctor stopped and rubbed a hand over a weary face. “Honestly, I don’t know. Right now his chances are fifty-fifty. If he makes it till morning, we’ll reassess.”

Danny tagged along behind the doctor and Mandy. No one challenged his presence. In the intensive care unit, Danny waited outside the glass cubicle while Mandy went inside.

“Five minutes.” The doctor stepped out.

At a counter along the wall, a nurse was reading machines and typing into a laptop. In the bed, Jed was fully automated. Tubes, wires, ventilator. The whole shebang. Danny had seen better color on a corpse. A monitor shrieked. Danny and Mandy both jumped.

The nurse adjusted a dial, and the machine went quiet.

Beep, beep, hiss.

Mandy walked to the bedside and reached out. Her hand hovered a few inches over the sheets like she was looking for a place to touch Jed that wasn’t connected to something. A sob hitched her breath. She pressed a fist to her mouth.

She must really love that guy.

Danny rubbed a tight spot in the center of his chest.

Pat would stay with Jayne. Conor could look out for Reed and his son. Someone needed to guard Mandy.

You’re mine
, the knife-wielding lunatic had said.

Like hell, Danny thought. If there was a breath left in his body, crazy-ass Nathan Hall would never get within a mile of Mandy. From Jayne’s story, Nathan didn’t seem like the type to give himself up quietly. No, eventually, someone was going to have to hunt that crazy-ass down.

“Are you sure you’re up to this, Jaynie?”

“I am.” But as they walked to Reed’s room, she leaned on her brother’s huge chest. Pat wrapped a beefy arm around her and half-carried her through the doorway. He hadn’t left her side since her brothers arrived at the hospital.

Inside the room, Conor was leaning on the wall. Scott was snoring from the bed by the window, and the state police detective was standing at Reed’s bedside. The policeman was fiftyish, with salt-and-pepper hair and a sharp face that didn’t seem to miss much. Pat went to stand with Conor. Danny had gone to check on Jed.

“Still no luck finding Nathan Hall or his son, Evan.” Reed’s eyes shifted to Jayne.

Nerves fluttered in Jayne’s belly.

“Ms. Sullivan.” Detective Rossi motioned to a hospital-issue recliner next to him. “Please sit. I was giving Mr. Kimball an update.”

Jayne had given her statement to the cop an hour ago. She collapsed into the chair and tried to focus on the state detective’s
words. But frankly, she was too tired. Aaron had killed himself. Nathan had gotten away. Maybe the details would matter tomorrow, but right now she just wanted to crawl into a quiet bed with Reed and sleep for about a week.