I got up and went to the hallway, finding Tatum Briggs, the sheriff now with Errant County, standing in the hallway with a couple of medics behind him.
“Gonna need a gurney,” I told the two of them. “She’s as stable as she can get, but she’s low on blood, needs a surgeon to remove a bullet, and she’s hanging on by a thread.”
One of the men turned around and left, the other pushed past Tatum and headed toward me.
I gestured them into the small bathroom, but stayed back, giving them room to work.
Tatum came back out moments later when the gurney arrived with the other medic.
Seconds after that, they were transferring her into the ambulance, and I was once again standing where I was when everything had gone down.
“What the fuck happened?” Tatum asked, looking less than thrilled to be on this fuckin’ street again.
I knew that I’d never live there.
Not after everything that had gone down a few months ago, and now this.
I went on to tell him everything that had happened, gesturing toward the back seat where she’d put her stuff, then explaining how I’d gotten close to her, and then the man that’d been watching her went absolutely ape shit.
My eyes went to the ground where I could see the drops of blood from my mad dash to Crockett’s place, and a black object caught my eye.
Walking over to it, I bent down and stared at the object.
A phone.
Her phone.
Picking it up, my breath caught at the photo on the lock screen.
It was a selfie of Catori and another woman.
Both of them were dolled up.
Catori in a tight red dress that hit her mid-thigh, and the other woman in a black dress that hit her much the same. The other woman was about three inches shorter than Catori, but in a pair of high heels that put her at or around the same height.
The other woman was a brunette with stunning blue eyes.
But it was Catori that held my attention.
Her exotic looks, tanned skin, and chocolate-brown eyes.
Everything about her made me wild.
My heart was beating unsteadily, and my hands were clammy.
God, I hoped that she made it.
“What do you have there?”
I showed Tatum the phone. “Catori’s phone. I’ll take it to her. That’s where I’m headed. Gotta know if she makes it.”
Tatum’s eyes studied me for a long moment, and I was glad when he let it go.
“Do me a solid and call her family then, since you have the phone.”
I didn’t bother to argue.
Normally that would be a cop’s job, but he knew just as well as I did that I’d have more information as to what had happened to her.
I nodded once. “We done?”
Tatum looked at the scene, his eyes going to Zach.
“Yeah, got a few more questions for everyone here, then I’m going to head to the hospital myself. Got a team looking through the area for the shooter, but I suspect he’s long gone. When you call that family, ask them to stay until I can talk to them,” he ordered.
I gave him a two-finger salute and then walked over to where Zach was standing with Crockett, Zakelina nowhere in sight.
I walked up to them and jerked my chin up. “I’m headed to the hospital,” I said.
Zach pulled away from Crockett, dropping a kiss onto her forehead.
“I’m going too,” he said.
That’s when I realized that the rest of our club’s bikes were here, but the club was nowhere to be found.
“They’re helping look,” Zach said, guessing as to my train of thoughts. “They’ll meet up with us at the hospital.”
I nodded my head, understanding immediately.
“Good,” I said. “Let’s go.”
We arrived at the hospital and found that Catori had already been rushed to surgery. Apparently, Zach had done a damn fine job at stabilizing her in the field.
Fuck yeah.
Which left me with the next thing on my to-do list.
With Zach standing at my side in the luckily-empty waiting room, I called the first number listed in the phone.
Daddy.
“Hey, baby. Did you make it through the patient visit?”
I squeeze my eyes shut at the man’s amusement.
“Sir,” I said, sounding sick to my stomach.
Exactly how I fuckin’ feel.
The vibe changes instantly.
“Who is this?”
The man’s voice was steady, but there was an underlying hint of anger riding there.
I swallowed hard, then said, “Your daughter was shot about thirty minutes ago. We’re at the emergency room in Kilgore.”
There was a hiss of air as the man breathed in sharply, then a calmness to him that had me stiffening.
Most people didn’t react with calmness when faced with their child being hurt.
No, they freaked the fuck out.
But not this man.
“Tell me what happened,” he ordered.
I gave him the bare-bones story, knowing that I would be repeating it in detail later when I saw him.
And I knew I would see him, too.
It was only a matter of time.
That moment in time came six hours later.
Six very long, very exhausting hours later, I was led into a room with wall-to-wall people in it.
The two to catch my eyes, however, were the two men standing shoulder to shoulder at the bedside.
Both very tall, very intimidating men.
Both men like me.
Their eyes came to me and held steady.
That was when I saw the lines of stress on their faces.
One of their own had been hurt, and they were not happy with what had happened without them being there to protect her.
The brother and the father.
The ones that she’d spoken so highly of. The ones that got her last thoughts.
“You’re the one.”
I looked to the woman at the other side of the bed. The bed where Catori was laying, and I was trying really hard not to look at.
I couldn’t.
Not yet.
There was something seriously wrong with me.
The last six hours had been the hardest of my life, and I’d been through a lot of fucking shit.
I didn’t know what the hell it was, but I was terrified each fuckin’ time someone came out to the parking lot today. I thought for fuckin’ sure that they were going to tell me that she didn’t make it.
Then five minutes ago, Zach had come out with a damn grin on his face, and I took the first deep breath in what felt like forever.
Which led me to now, walking into a hospital room that was packed to the gills, looking at three adult people and avoiding looking at the bed.
“I’m the one?” I asked.
“You’re the one,” the woman said. “My name is Winter. I’m Catori’s mother.”
I sighed. “She spoke about you.”
Winter’s eyes went intense. “When?”
I hesitated, not wanting to say another word.
Did I relay her words now that she was going to live?
Would she want them to know?
I finally allowed myself to look at the bed, and my heart damn near leaped out of my chest.
Though she’d made it through surgery, she looked worse for wear.
The closest fuckin’ trauma center was over thirty-five minutes away from where we’d been at the time.
According to the medics I’d spoken with on the way into the hospital earlier, she’d coded eight times.