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“Come on.” I can’t stand to listen to him fighting to breathe and whimper in pain another second. “Let’s get you out of here. Get you cleaned up.”
Only when she tries to stand, a tiny, animal whimper stirs in her throat, and she sucks in a pained breath through her clenched teeth. “I can’t,” she finally whispers, shaking her head, lowering herself to the bottom step. “It hurts too much.”
“What hurts?” That’s it. I’m going to have to kill him now. Fuck the consequences.
“My ribs. He kicked me.” She’s shaking from the pain, and he has absolutely no reason to breathe another second.
It’s what she says next that stops me dead. Lifting her head slowly, she manages to force the words out. “It was him. He did it.”
“Did what?”
“The notes.” She takes a thin, shaky breath. “He told me. It was him.”
The rage that was already roaring in my head explodes into something that goes deeper than violence. It’s betrayal, it’s disgust, it’s even disappointment that I have to be related to this heartless, gutless piece of shit still curled in a tight ball on the floor.
There are better ways to take out the trash. “You’re sure about this?” I ask, pulling my phone from my pocket so I can update Paul Wilder. Her head bobs up and down while a tear trickles from between her swollen eyelids.
Once Paul answers, I announce, “Looks like we found the person responsible for those death threats.” I nudge my father’s back with my foot, and he flinches, groaning. “It was my dad. He told her so.”
Glancing her way makes something squeeze my heart so tight, I’m sure it’s going to pop. “While he was beating the shit out of her in the basement. I should’ve been here. I shouldn’t have?—”
“Don’t do that,” Paul warns. He’s flat, professional, and I appreciate that. There’s a job to be done now. “Take her to the hospital, get her checked out.”
“What about him?”
“Don’t you worry about him. I’ll take care of it.” The way he says it makes my lips pull back from my teeth in a satisfied smile. I only wish I could be around to watch him face his punishment.
But Paul’s right. Wren is what matters now. “I’m taking you to the hospital,” I murmur, sliding one arm under her knees and wrapping the other one around her upper back, under her arms. “I’m going to pick you up, and I’m going to carry you to the truck. I’ll try to be as careful as I can.”
“I don’t need—” A squeak of pain cuts short her weak, useless protests once I lift her off the stairs. Right. She doesn’t need to go to the hospital. That’s believable.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her more than once while helping her into the truck, setting her down as gently as possible, easing the seatbelt over and around her while she struggles to take one pained breath after another. I bet she’s got broken ribs, plenty of them.
It’s almost too tempting, the idea of heading back down to the basement and finishing what I started, but somehow, I manage to stay on task by going upstairs instead of down. Tia is in her room, and she asks no questions once I tell her to put her shoes on. “We need to make a little trip,” I explain. There’s only so much I can hide from her—she’s going to see the blood. She’s going to hear Wren trying to hide the pain.
I did my best. He is the one to blame for my sister’s innocence being lost.
He is the one to blame for a lot of things.
“We wantto keep her overnight for observation.” Dr. Scott glances into the room where Wren now rests in bed. If he wasn’t one of the five families, he surely wouldn’t give me any of Wren’s medical information, but lucky for me he is one of us and has been informed about the situation.
Tia is reading aloud from one of the books she brought along with her to keep herself occupied. Every once in a while, something that passes for a smile touches the corners of Wren’s swollen mouth.
“You think she’s got something seriously wrong with her?” I can’t stand the idea. What am I going to do if something happens to her?
“No, nothing like that. We only want to be sure, since she did hit her head while falling down the stairs. Otherwise, she does have several broken ribs, but her lungs are fine. It’ll hurt to breathe for a little while, but she’ll heal up quickly, as young as she is. There are contusions. Her knees and elbows are a little torn up, but it’s superficial enough that we are confident she can go home tomorrow, barring any surprises.”
Thanking him, I lean against the wall outside the room and release a shuddering breath. Now that the adrenaline rush has passed, and I can actually think again, I’m kind of amazed nobody thought to ask whether I’m the one who put her in that bed. That would be my first thought if I was at a hospital and saw a guy carrying a girl in who’d had her ass kicked. The doctors and nurses wanted to see her alone at first, and I’m guessing they asked her those personal questions at the time. She must have convinced them I had nothing to do with it.
My whole body tenses when I feel the buzzing in my pocket from my phone. We’ve been here at the hospital for a few hours, waiting for x-rays and CAT scans and all that, but the whole time, I’ve been waiting for a phone call. Confirmation that my father is no longer going to be an issue.
Which is why ice forms in my veins when I get the news. “He was gone when we got there.” Paul mutters some choice profanities under his breath while I close my eyes and fight for air. I should have ended him. The fucking coward. Running from the consequences of his actions yet again.
“He can’t have gotten far,” I decide, though I don’t believe myself. Not really. It’s what I need to force myself to believe. “I kicked the shit out of him. He might be dead right now if Wren hadn’t stopped me.”
“Trust me when I tell you he will be found. There are a lot of bodies out there hunting for him. It won’t be long.”
I want to believe that. I have to.
