Gavin and Bray rushed to the ER, along with several policeman, doctors and pediatric specialists. Everyone was notified and paged.
Where the hell were the kids? Gavin looked around.
An ambulance pulled up. Media vans still camped outside. The doors whooshed open.
“Daddy!” Tori yelled from behind them. Everyone turned to see Tori rush to get to her father. Bray caught her up and held her tight. Gavin heard her crying, saw his brother’s tears.
Thank, God.
He looked back down the hallway to see Ryan leaning against the wall, a nurse beside him.
Chills raced through him as he looked at his son.
Gavin shoved several people out of the way.
“Ryan?” He wanted to grab him up in hug, but Gavin was afraid he’d hurt him. Damn Nina Fisher to hell.
“Ryan?” he asked again.
His son blinked as if trying to focus. His pupils were dilated. Shock. “Dad?”
Gavin didn’t know if he sobbed or laughed and he didn’t care. He reached out and gently gathered his son to him. “Yeah, Ryan.”
Dad
. “It’s me. I’m here.”
Bruises fade.… Love heals. Gavin stood and cradled Ryan against his chest.
Ryan’s lips were busted. “Where’s Mom?”
“She’s upstairs.”
“Dr. Kinncaid.”
Gavin followed a nurse to an exam room. He didn’t want to let Ryan go, but they needed to check him out. Gavin could see a bruised bump forming on Ryan’s forehead above his eyebrow.
His cut eyebrow.
Carefully, he laid Ryan on the bed. Gavin held his hand. Wires were attached and X-rays were quickly taken.
Thank God, he had his child back. That his brother had his child back. That was all that mattered. That was all that mattered.
If he could take away all the pain, change it all, Gavin would, but he couldn’t.
“Where’s Tori?” Ryan looked around. “Tori? Where’s Tori?”
“Shh….” Gavin grabbed his hand, held it between the both of his. “She’s with her dad.
She’s fine.”
Ryan nodded and closed his eyes. “My shoulder hurts.”
“I know, we’ll give you some medicine to take the pain away then we’ll fix it.”
Gavin just watched him, couldn’t take his eyes off of this brave, amazing boy. People worked around him, orders were given and followed. Minutes passed.
“Where the hell’s my grandson?” Gavin turned as the curtain was jerked back. His parents
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stood there.
Gavin could only shake his head at his dad as tears filled his eyes. His parents walked to the bed.
His mother’s hand squeezed his arm, and his father nodded. For the first time in years, Gavin felt like sobbing like a baby. Taking an enormous breath, he quelled the emotions running through him by swallowing hard.
“Oh, poor, baby,” his mom said, reaching a hand out towards Ryan.
“Look, just look what she did to him, Mom,” Gavin said. The tears fell anyway. “I didn’t stop her. I promised him he would always be safe. I swore to protect him and that she’d never hurt him again. And look….”
Gavin bit down until he was sure his teeth would shatter.
His mom wrapped her arm around his waist, hugging him. She whispered, “It’s going to be fine. He’s a strong little boy, incredibly strong, and so is his mother. This is just a dark time for your family right now, but it’s going to pass.” She leaned up on tip-toe and brushed a tear away.
“It’ll pass.”
“Right, she’s right. My Kaitie lass has always known what she was about.”
Gavin nodded at his father’s words, not looking up when he heard his father clear his throat.“Pops?” Ryan opened his eyes.
Jock moved to the other side of the bed. “Yes, Ryan, it’s me.”
“Thought I heard your bark.”
They all grinned at that, except for Jock. The old man’s jaw muscle worked, and he only patted Ryan’s hand. Gavin noticed his father’s eyebrow were doing the ‘v’ thing they did when he was trying not to cry.
Jock turned his attention to his wife. “Kaitie, can’t you talk to someone to get him moved to a private room? Too much damn noise down here.”
She nodded, rubbed Gavin’s back and turned to walk away. Gavin grabbed her hand. “I’ve already got rooms for both him and Tori on the fourth floor. As soon as they’re finished down here, they’ll be moved. We’re waiting for the pain meds to kick in. He’s got a dislocated shoulder,” Gavin told them.
“Is Tori okay?” Ryan asked.
“Yes, Ryan. She’s fine,” Gavin told him again.
“She tried to shoot her, but she missed. Missed me too. I dove into the railing.” He gave a small smile. “Those baseball guys make it look easy.”
Gavin didn’t want to think about that--what it meant. Instead, he said, “You did great.”
“Is Tori really okay? You’re not lying to me are you? Where is she?” Ryan’s eyes were glazed, probably from a concussion, but still they searched frantically around.
Gavin laid his hand on Ryan’s chest. “She’s fine, Ryan. She’s with her father.”
Ryan looked as if he were trying to compute that, when another doctor came up. Gavin’s parents stepped outside to the waiting room. He stayed by Ryan’s side while the doctor went through the run down of his son’s injuries. Concussion, contusions, abrasions, two bruised ribs and one dislocated shoulder.
Gavin bit back the oath on the end of his tongue.
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Dr. Lopez was a nice pediatrician. She talked to Ryan about what hurt, what procedures she would take and how bad it might hurt. Not hiding anything, she told him what meds she was going to give him and that the first batch would make him relax. They couldn’t let him sleep just yet because of the concussion. Ryan listened to every word.
When she was finished, she said, “We’ll relocate your shoulder, just pop it back into place, and then we’ll move you to a room upstairs. Any questions?”
Ryan nodded. “Where’s Tori? Is she okay?”
Dr. Lopez smiled. “You know, she asked me the same thing about you. I’ll be right back.”
Ryan turned to him. “What did she mean by that? Is Tori okay or not?”
This was going to be a problem. Again he assured his son. “Ryan she’s…”
“Ryan!”
Gavin glanced up to see his brother holding Tori. She squirmed out of Bray’s arms and hurried to the bedside. Giving a sidelong glance at Gavin, she climbed up onto the bed to sit beside Ryan.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “Oh, look at you! She is just mean. Mean! I should have stayed. I never should have….”
“You still talk too much,” Ryan muttered. But he’d relaxed Gavin noticed. “Are you all right? They never told me.”
Her smile was hollow. “Of course. I’m fine. Though Daddy says I have to spend the night here in the hospital.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“I hate hospitals,” she leaned over and touched his cheek.
“Yeah, me too.”
Gavin noticed Ryan’s breathing was easier and the lines around his mouth weren’t so tight.
The pain meds they’d fed into Ryan’s I.V. were starting to work, thank God. About damn time.
Looking to his twin, Gavin started to ask….
Bray answered Gavin’s unspoken question. “She wouldn’t calm down. I finally had to bring her down here to see that he was okay.”
* * * *
The next day, Gavin wheeled Ryan into the I.C.U. room. He’d told him that Taylor was still sick, hooked up to monitors and machines so that the doctors would know immediately if anything needed to be done. Gavin himself wasn’t sure this was such a good idea, but Dr. Petropolis had come at midnight to talk to the kids and again at eight this morning. Between talking to the police, the doctors and their parents, the kids detailed everything that happened in the last couple of days.
Every time Gavin so much as thought about it, or heard another word uttered about it, he was so pissed off he couldn’t see. In any case, Dr. Petropolis now had one new patient and had recommended for the kids to spend time together. They needed the reassurance, and Ryan and Tori both needed to see Taylor was alive. They’d been through several traumatic experiences.
Traumatic. That sounded so damned tidy. Traumatic. She also recommended family counseling once Taylor was up and about. Gavin figured they would all need it and vowed to do whatever he had to make certain his family healed.
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“Is she going to wake up?” Ryan asked.
“Sure she is. They’re keeping her medicated right now so that she’ll get plenty of rest. She needs to sleep.”
And he needed to see her light brown eyes again. Gavin needed to see those dimples peek at him from the corners of her mouth.
He sat back as Ryan started talking to her, much as he had that first night. Their son told her story after story. Gavin would let him talk for a while, but not too long. Ryan needed his rest too. “And then this horse came and.…” Ryan stopped.
“What?” Gavin asked him, brushing a strand of hair back off his wife’s forehead.
“She squeezed my hand, Dad.” Ryan smiled. “She squeezed my hand. Mom’s gonna be okay.”Gavin looked down at her, the hand holding his faintly tightened. He looked at his son.
“Yes, she is, Ryan. Yes, she is.”
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Three months later
Nina Fisher sat in a jail in D.C. It was the same as all the other damn cells she’d been in, though maybe there were more guards. She was still waiting on transport back to Texas where she was now incarcerated for life.
Yippi-fucking-who. Endless days of monotony and submission. Anger burned bright in her for the injustice of it all.
The slot in her door opened and her meal tray came in. Solitary sucked. Eat and breathe in this freegin’ cement hole. Every damn thing was made out of cement.
Made it hard to find readily available metal objects.
Sighing, she got off the mattress and limped over to the door. Her knee, or what was left of it, hurt like a bitch. Damn the sonofabitch who pulled that trigger. On a muttered oath, Nina grabbed her tray off the small ledge.
Sludge. It was all sludge. No damned variety. Nina tossed it on the small outcropping that was supposed to be a mini table or desk or some such shit. She wasn’t hungry, not really.
Not there was anything else to do. Hell, might as well. Nina dug in. All of it finger food, not even a freaking fork. Like she’d stab herself with a fork.
No thank you. She’d find another way.
Halfway through the meal, she realized there was something in the salad, something under the lettuce. Picking it up, she carefully shifted her body to block the camera’s view.
A plastic bag.
Hot Damn! She could see the pale blue powder. Oh, thank you God. Someone loved her after all. As naturally as possible, she slipped the bag out from under the lettuce and dropped it down the front of her jumpsuit.
* * * *
Later that night, in the dark, she pulled the package out. With the tip of her finger, she tasted it. Ambrosia. Sweet. Since she’d spent the last few months in this hellhole, she knew it like the back of her hand. Carefully, she turned over and shook some of the powder out onto the ledge by the wall.
The darkness hid her, or the guards would be in confiscating it.
Reaching gingerly around, she found her one book she was allowed. Ripping out a random page, she rolled it up.
For a split second she wondered where this came from.
Who the hell cared? When would she get any more?
After the first line dropped, she railed another. Hell, they’d search her cell in the morning,
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might as well enjoy the shit.
Halfway through her fourth line, she knew something was wrong.
Pink dots danced in front of her, shaping, shifting. They changed green and blue….
Something wasn’t right….
Before she could figure out what it was, it was too late.
* * * *
A man sat back in his hotel room, a glass of orange juice at the side of the plate of fruit. The paper told him nothing as yet. With one hand he flipped through the channels on the TV with the remote. He was waiting on the news.
It seemed Notre Dame was on a winning streak. Never much of a sports fan, he turned to the business section of the paper and checked his stocks.
“.…On a local interest this morning. Nina Fisher, the woman charged with kidnapping Ryan and Victoria Kinncaid, the children of prominent D.C. brothers, Dr. and Mrs. Gavin Kinncaid and Brayden Kinncaid, was found dead this morning in her cell. Authorities say she died of an overdose.
The search for Hammal….”
Overdose. He folded his paper and picked up his fork, spearing a strawberry. It crunched in his mouth.
Yeah, pure blue crystal meth laced with a little J.C. acid would do that to a person.
He finished eating his breakfast, thinking of the day ahead.
Ryan would never again have to worry. After all, he’d given the boy his word. He might be a lot of things, but if gave his word, he kept it.
The man packed his bags, and cleaned the room, wiping it of prints. Once outside, he disappeared into the crowd.