“This would have been serious by morning. Did you know all it takes is a little staph infection to put you down?”
“I honestly didn’t notice.”
“That’s the adrenaline talking. And probably not very loudly anymore. I have to get some debris out.”
“Do what you gotta do.” Logan hunched his shoulders forward. “I just need to see her. And make sure that the guard is set up.”
“Should I worry about my staff?”
“Yesterday I would have said no. Today, I just don’t know. She’s never done anything like this before.”
“A fan did all of this?”
He tensed as she pulled his skin closed with tape. “No. She’s an ex.”
“Wife?”
“God, no.”
“I take it she didn’t take the break up well.”
“You could say that.”
She dabbed on some sort of ointment and his tight skin eased. A thick pad of gauze was next and then some tape. “All set.”
He stood and untucked the shirt from his back pocket and eased it over his head. “Now, where can I find Izzy?”
“She’s on the third floor, room 309.”
“Thanks for patching me up.”
“Don’t tell anyone I was nice to you. I have a reputation to uphold.”
Logan huffed out a laugh. “Your secret is safe with me.”
“Good. Now get out.”
“Thanks, Dr. Marra.”
He hit the door running. Caught Zeke’s gaze as he nodded toward the elevators. He met him at the doors.
“All patched up?”
“Yeah. Even better, I have directions to Izzy.”
“Lead on, brother.”
When they got to the third floor, Logan hung a left out of the elevator and strode down the hall. There was a lean, tatted-up guy sitting in a chair in the hallway. At first glance, he looked relaxed and even complacent, but his eyes scanned the space and each face as they came near the door.
“Mr. King.”
Logan glanced at the kid. He didn’t look over twenty-five. “Are you with Roth?”
He nodded. “Marcus is inside.”
Zeke flashed him a raised brow and followed Logan in. He halted in the doorway. Her hair was pinned back and gauze was wrapped around her head from forehead to ear. A gossamer thin layer covered thick pads over her eyes.
Her hands were wrapped in similar gauze. Her elegant hands were bright pink and spread on little wedges to hold her fingers apart. A blanket was pulled up over her torso and half a dozen tubes and wires were attached to her.
Logan backed out the door and bent at the waist. He hadn’t been prepared for that.
“Hey, buddy. Breathe.”
Logan sucked in a breath through his nose and then out his mouth. “I’m all right. I just wasn’t prepared to see her like that.”
“She’s okay. The doc said she’s a fighter, right?”
“Right.”
He stood up, straightened his shoulders, and walked in again. The blow to his gut was no less vicious, but he took it. Forced himself to walk forward and sit down next to her.
Dammit, he wanted to touch her and everything about her looked fragile. He drew one long, dark lock of hair away from the white gauze. “Hi, baby.” He brushed a light kiss against the crest of her cheek. “You come back to me Izzy, mine. If you think you’re getting away with saying yes to marrying me and skipping out on the ceremony, you are sorely mistaken.”
She didn’t answer.
Not even a blip on that stupid machine counting out her heartbeats.
The beeping was back.
Loud.
Annoying.
Voices this time, too. Logan?
It sounded like him, but didn’t smell like him.
Why couldn’t she see him? Why couldn’t she open her eyes?
She turned her head and the red came back and then the black.
So heavy.
Logan?
Why couldn’t she see him?
∞♦
∞
Somewhere between dawn and noon he’d crashed in the chair beside her. They tried to kick him out, but Dr. Marra had taken pity on him.
She was still so damn still.
The nurses checked her vitals, kept changing out some sort of special blood bag, redressed her hands, but wouldn’t answer any of his questions. Especially about her eyes.
He stretched and winced. His six-two frame was not built for these chairs. Even the one that was supposed to be a sleep chair.
It was too far away from her anyway.
The only way he’d been able to get a little sleep was when he’d passed out with his hand on her upper arm. One of the few areas not burned, cut, or bruised. He pressed his forehead to her shoulder and breathed her in. Jasmine lingered under the acrid soot and the clinical hospital scents. It was the same smell he looked for at night, and the one that filled his head as he opened his eyes each day.
Marcus ducked his head in and gave him a
c’mere
gesture. Logan dropped a kiss against her forehead. She jerked, and he stopped.
“Iz?”
Her heart rate spiked and she rolled her head toward him.
“Baby?”
“Mr. King, back up.”
The harried nurse pushed him aside and pushed a needle into her IV bag. Izzy calmed and her face went slack again.
“Doesn’t the doctor want her to wake up?”
As usual the nurse ignored him, made a mark in Izzy’s chart then left again. Logan tipped his head back with a disgusted breath and followed her out the door. She’d be out for hours again. Whatever they juiced her with always took four hours to come around from.
Even if they didn’t let her stay awake, dammit.
Tattoo guard duty had been replaced with a mountain of a man wearing a hideous Hawaiian shirt in teal and white.
“Logan, meet Felix Sanchez.”
Felix nodded. “Sir.”
“What happened to the other guy?”
“That’s Bishop. They rotate out every six hours.”
“Good.”
“How is she?”
Logan sighed. “I don’t know, man. They keep pumping her full of drugs.”
“Probably because of the burns. One of the guys on my team got third degree burns out in the field—it was awful. No other pain like it. They had him sedated for the first few days while he started healing.”
Logan’s stomach lurched. “Then no, I don’t want her awake for it.”
“I talked to the WFPD and their initial findings were faulty wiring.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Hang on.” Marcus held up a hand. “They agreed to bring in the state Fire Marshall. Especially since there were casualties. I’ve got my people digging into her financials to see if there’s a money trail. So far, nothing.”
Frustration climbed up into his shoulders and neck, tightening already abused muscles. “Do you have eyes on her at least?”
“She’s making it easy to do that. If I see one more selfie with her and that dumb as a brick hockey player, I’m going to shoot her myself.”
“Go ahead. Save me the trouble.”
Marcus’s eyes sharpened. “That is not an option, Logan.”
Logan crossed his arms, but said nothing.
“Do not make this a revenge thing. We don’t have the proof and you will go to jail. Somehow I don’t think your pampered rockstar ass would do well there.”
Logan’s nostrils flared and he clenched his jaw.
“Seethe all you want. You hired me to do things right. Roth Defense may skirt some laws to get things done, but we aren’t mercenaries. Ever.”
“If something else happens to Isabella, there is no place on this earth that Aimee Collen can hide. I will find her and I will kill her.”
Marcus’s face went stony. “Then let’s make sure it doesn’t come to that.”
“Contact me when you have something.” Logan turned on his heel to return to her room. He found the change of clothes and new phone in the sleep chair. The Zeke fairy had come through.
He went into the small bathroom in her room and peeled out of his clothes. He took a few minutes to brush his teeth and washed up. He was willing to hand over his royalty check for the month for a shower, but didn’t want to leave Izzy that long.
When he returned to her room, Dr. Marra was checking on Izzy’s hands.
“Hey, doc. How’s she doing?”
“Good. She’s tried to wake a few times, so that makes me very optimistic.”
“They keep drugging her as soon as she comes around.”
“I’m going to lighten her meds today and see if we can get her to come around. If she’d had no movement, I would have worried. I’m sorry I didn’t make myself clearer.”
“And her eyes?”
“She had some minor scratches to her corneas from heavy glass debris. I’m here now to take off the bandages. You’ll see a nurse every two hours for drops. Eyes are amazingly resilient, but not if they’re dry.”
“So she’s not blind?”
“No. She’ll look like she was on a weeklong bender, but then again so do you.”
Logan couldn’t help but smile. Relief took a few of the bricks off his chest that he’d been carrying around. “I think they’d frown on me smuggling beer into the hospital.”
“You’d be surprised.” She pulled out scissors that had an odd angle to them and started snipping the fine gauze. She gently pulled away the socket-sized pads and dumped everything in the biohazard bag.
Izzy’s face had a little extra pink to it, like she’d been out on the water for an afternoon, but otherwise she only had some minor cuts. Dr. Marra pulled out drops from her lab coat and quickly checked her eyes and did the drops at the same time.
“Healing nicely.”
“And the rest?”
“Her hands will take a little longer. It was a flash burn. We got to her in time that I don’t think she’ll need skin grafting, just a lot of careful bandaging for a few weeks.”
“I’ll make sure she has it.”
Dr. Marra gave him a quick look, but didn’t comment. “We’re pumping her full of platelets to get that liver back in shape. Be patient. The fact that she’s alive is pretty much a miracle.” She moved her blanket aside and checked the bandage along her right side.
Logan swallowed. “I know. Her best friend wasn’t so lucky. I couldn’t get to her.”
“I wasn’t aware that rockstar equaled superhero. Must have been a different movie.”
“Nic was literally ten feet away.” He sighed and brushed away a lock of her hair. “I could only get to her.”
“I’ve seen the footage of that explosion. We’re lucky there were only a few casualties. If her store had been full of people, it would have been far worse.”
Logan lowered himself into a chair beside Izzy on the other side of the bed. “No one was supposed to be in the store.”
Had it been on purpose? Had whomever set the explosion done it because Izzy had gone back to the store? Or had they done it counting on the store to be empty?
Right now, it didn’t matter to him.
Isabella had gotten hurt, regardless. But it could help figure out motive. Had Aimee just wanted to scare him into compliance again? Or had she wanted Isabella dead, period?
The fact that she’d been behind the counter was the only thing that had saved her.
Logan swiped his hand down his face.
“I’ll be in to check on her tomorrow morning. The nurses will page me if anything happens.”
He nodded.
“You should go home and get some rest.”
“I wouldn’t be able to.”
“She’ll probably be moved into a regular room tomorrow. Our ICU isn’t that large and she’s definitely out of the woods.”
“I’ll talk to the hospital about a private room.”
“I wouldn’t guess anything less,” she said with shake of her head. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Mr. King.”
He collapsed against the back of the chair and stared at the drop ceiling above him. Between the uncertainty of what Aimee was going to do next and worrying about Izzy, he couldn’t settle.
Tired didn’t cover it.
Exhaustion was child’s play. He was used to that from a tour. Hell, even from trying to juggle a relationship with his fiancée and the tour—that was exhaustion.
This.
A whole new animal.
He swiped his hand over his face and the scraggly beard he was sporting. He should probably just shave the whole thing off. Go from head to neck and buzz the lot of it. He didn’t even want to think about what the fire and smoke had congealed into.
“Dude. Shower. For the good of all.”
Logan huffed out a groan. “Reading my mind?”
“No, I could smell you as I walked in.”
“Fuck off, man.”
Zeke waggled his eyebrows from above him. He held up a bag. “I come bearing Valentine’s turkey club.”
His stomach roared.
“Impressive. I figured you had done nada for food. How’s Bellamina?”
“Improving.”
“That’s what I like to hear. She’s much less…bandaged.”
“Yeah, the doc came in.” Logan sat forward and took the bag. He juggled out a quarter of the sandwich and stuffed half of it in his face. “Dee is a goddess.”
“She likes being told that as well.” Zeke held out a cup of coffee. “This is an Americano only because I love you.”
Logan rolled his eyes and popped off the top. “I’m not going anywhere, so I might as well be caffeinated.” Nectar of the gods.
“Has she woken up?”
“No. Not really. They knock her out pretty quickly when she comes around.”
“Well, if she doesn’t know you’re here, then go and take a shower at least.”
“I’m afraid once I get in there, I’ll never get out.”
“And that’s a bad thing?”
Logan sipped his coffee and met his friend’s gaze. “I don’t want her to find out about Nic from anyone but me.”
“Ah, fuck. I don’t know how you’re going to tell her, man.”
Even if there was a slim chance that she’d come around, he wanted to be the first face she saw. He was going to destroy her. And God forgive him, it was his fault. How could he ever make up for that?