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Several times, he’d reached for his cell phone to call her and stopped. She hadn’t even been gone thirty minutes. He didn’t need to worry until she’d been gone more than an hour, right?
He was on his twentieth pass across the room when his cell phone rang. He glanced at the screen. Hank Patterson’s name came up.
His pulse speeding up a notch, Cliff answered the call. “Cranston here,” he said.
“Hey, Cliff, how’s the young mother holding up?”
Cliff glanced at a sleeping Brittany. Her eyes were closed, but her body moved beneath the sheets, and her head rolled side to side on the pillow, as if she was ducking blows. His heart hurt for the woman who’d just given birth and then had been brutally attacked. “Resting as well as can be expected,” he finally answered.
“I’m sure she’s distraught over losing her baby,” Hank commented. “And the sister, the FBI agent?”
“She made a run to her house for her laptop and left me to watch over Brittany.” Cliff glanced at his watch. She’d been gone thirty-five minutes. His hand tightened on the phone he held.
“Have you heard anything from the detectives working the investigation?” Hank asked.
“Nothing so far. Special Agent Jenkins and I plan on asking some of our own questions as soon as we get her sister settled with her neighbor to watch her.” He looked at the woman, sleeping fitfully, the bruises getting more colorful than they’d been the night before. “Although, I’m not sure the neighbor will be enough.”
“Do I need to send someone over to keep her sister safe while you and the Special Agent work on finding the baby?”
Cliff didn’t like making decisions about Brittany and Jenna without running it by them first, but better safe than sorry. “That sounds like a good plan.”
“I’ll see what I can do. If the stars align, I could have someone there within the next hour.”
“Great. Have him check in with me when he gets to the hospital. The nurse expects the doctor will release Brittany today to recuperate at home.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Swede and Kyla have been up all night, combing the internet, looking for anything on Sutton and Waters. They should have a report to you soon.”
“Thanks,” Cliff said, just beginning to understand why Hank’s business was growing so fast. The man cared about the people they were protecting. Hank took a personal interest in the cases and used all his assets to the best of their abilities to make things happen.
“Glad you joined us,” Hank said.
“Me, too,” Cliff responded. The Brotherhood Protectors might just be the team—no, the family— he hadn’t known he needed when he’d left the military.
As soon as he ended his conversation with Hank, Cliff brought up Jenna’s number and called it. She answered on the first ring.
“I’ve only been gone thirty-five minutes,” she said. “Miss me already?”
He smiled. The sound of her voice slowed his heartbeat back to a more normal pace. “As a matter of fact, yes. I missed you.”
“All is well with Brittany?” she asked.
His gaze went back to Jenna’s sister. She was still thrashing and emitted a low moan.
“I think she’s having a nightmare.” He crossed to stand beside her bed. “Do you want me to wake her?”
“No, I will when I get there,” Jenna said, the voice in his receiver echoing in the room. “I’m here.”
Cliff spun toward the door to find Jenna standing there, pulling her cell phone away from her ear, a backpack slung over her shoulder.
“You could’ve told me you were in the building,” he said, only mildly irritated that she’d startled him. He was happier to see her than he would have thought he could be, having known her for such a short amount of time.
Brittany moaned again and flung an arm over her face as if shielding herself from imaginary blows.
Jenna was at Cliff’s side in seconds, dropping the backpack in a chair.
As she leaned over her sister’s bed, something in her hair glistened in the light shining down on her head.
Cliff reached out to capture the shiny object and plucked it from her hair. When he’d first spotted it, he’d thought it was glitter. Once he had it pressed between his thumb and forefinger, he realized it was a much harder material and clear. “This is glass,” he said.
