Unfinished Business (13 page)

So we hauled him out of the SUV and between
us, managed to get him through the sliding doors and inside. The
nurse at the desk looked up, and her mouth dropped open.

“
Madre de Dios
!” She crossed herself.
“What happened?”

Nobody answered. First because we didn’t
really know, and second because I didn’t think she actually
expected an answer. She went into business mode, calling doctors
and nurses to the front at warp speed. Less than a minute later,
they had whisked Rafe onto a gurney and through the double doors
into the hospital. “Someone will let you know when you can come
in,” one of the nurses told us over her shoulder just before the
doors flapped shut behind them.

I looked at Dix. He looked at me. Then we
both looked at Mother, who had surely gotten a bit more than she’d
bargained for on this trip. She wasn’t looking at either of us, but
was still watching the door where Rafe and the doctor and nurses
had disappeared.

“I’ll take Wendell,” I told Dix, “if you
take Grimaldi.”

He nodded, already reaching for his phone. I
did the same, and dialed.

Wendell answered on the first ring, and
sounded wide awake at this ungodly hour. “Savannah.”

He didn’t bother with the civilities, so I
decided I wouldn’t, either. “He’s back,” I said.

“In one piece?”

“Mostly. We’re at Skyline Hospital.”

“Twenty minutes,” Wendell said and hung
up.

OK, then. I turned to Dix, who was deep in
conversation with Grimaldi. And then I turned to Mother, who was
still standing there, watching the swinging doors with that tiny
wrinkle between her brows. “We may as well sit down,” I told her.
“This could take a while.”

She nodded. And walked over and sat, but
without speaking a word.

I sat, too, and crossed one leg over the
other. Over by the door, Dix was still talking to Grimaldi.

It was a fairly quiet evening in the ER. I’m
sure they didn’t get many of them, and honestly, I was a bit
surprised, especially considering that it was a Saturday. Then
again, Skyline isn’t the most centrally located hospital in town.
There was a gentleman snoring in a chair over by the wall—his head
tipped back and his mouth open—and two black women with their heads
together in a corner. Other than that, it was just us.

“Are you OK?” I asked Mother.

She glanced at me, and for a second, it was
like she didn’t know who I was. Like I were a stranger sitting
across from her. Then her eyes cleared, and she smiled faintly. “Of
course, darling. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I can’t imagine,” I said dryly. “I’m sure
this happens all the time, that you have to rush someone to the
hospital because he’s been tortured by some drug lord or crime boss
or kingpin or whatnot.”

“Is that what happened?”

I shrugged jerkily. “I don’t know what
happened. But that’s my guess. Rafe has put some very bad people
away. One of them must have decided to get revenge. The truck
driver, before he left town. Or the warehouse worker, before Spicer
and Truman went through the place.”

“Or it could be the third guy,” Dix said.
“The one who hired the prostitute.” He sat down next to me. “She’s
on her way.”

Grimaldi, I assumed, not Little Ginger.

“If it was Hernandez, he has a place other
than the house in Woodbine.”

“Well, if he was planning to kidnap and
torture a special agent,” Dix said reasonably, “he wouldn’t give
his parole officer the address where he planned to do it.”

No, he wouldn’t.

“I’m sure Rafe will be able to tell us who
it was. All the damage was to his front; he had to have seen who
did it. I just didn’t want to ask, with everything that was going
on.”

Dix shook his head. “Best let Tamara and Mr.
Craig take care of it. It’s their job.”

We sat in silence for a minute. “I’m sorry,”
I said eventually.

“You didn’t do anything,” Dix answered.

“I got involved with him.” My lips twisted
as I turned to my mother, and not in a smile. “You always did tell
me he was trouble, and that I should stay away from him.”

She had the grace to look... if not exactly
ashamed, then at least somewhat embarrassed. “Now, darling...”

“I bet you never saw this coming, did you?”
I’m afraid my laughter had a slight hysterical edge. But can you
blame me? I was sitting in a hospital lobby in the middle of the
night—and not just any night, but what should have been my wedding
night—with my mother and my brother, while the groom was being sewn
back together after some sicko had been practicing his whittling
skills on his chest.

“He’s all right,” Dix said calmly.
“Everything’s fine.”

“Everything is
not
fine! You saw what
he looked like. He’s hurt. He’s in pain. He escaped from someone
who would have continued to hurt him, and would undoubtedly have
ended up killing him. Someone who might be back, if we can’t figure
out who he is, and where he is, and how to stop him!”

“We’ll... they’ll stop him,” Dix said. “It’s
what they do. And Collier will know who and where he is. By
tomorrow night, this will all be over.”

“You don’t know that.” I could hear my voice
rising and becoming shrill, but I couldn’t stop it. “You can’t know
that!”

“Darling,” Mother said, glancing around at
the empty lobby, “not in public.”

“No, God forbid anyone sees that I’m upset
because some psychopath with a knife went to work on my
boyfriend!”

“Inside voice, dear,” Mother said.

I huffed and fell silent.

I figured it would be a toss-up who we’d see first: Wendell,
Grimaldi, or the doctor who worked on Rafe. I didn’t know where
Wendell hung his hat when he wasn’t at the TBI, but I knew where
Grimaldi lived—or at least I knew the neighborhood: Charlotte
Park—and it was a good twenty minutes from Skyline Hospital.

But the two of them walked in together, and
they got there before the doctor came back out to update us.

“Any word?”

I shook my head. “They took him in almost
half an hour ago. We haven’t heard anything since.”

“But he was pretty damaged,” Dix added.
“They had a lot of patching up to do.”

“What kind of patching up?” Grimaldi wanted
to know, at the same time as Wendell asked, “What kind of
damage?”

They looked at me. I nodded to Dix, since I
was still feeling fragile, and wasn’t sure I could make it through
a recitation without either having hysterics again or breaking down
in tears.

“Bruises and lacerations,” Dix said.
“Cigarette burns. Cuts. Most of them fairly shallow, but one, at
least, looked like it went straight through his forearm.”

My ears started ringing, and I could feel
all the blood leave my head.

I hadn’t noticed that. My focus had been on
the extremely visible—one might even say flashy—cross-stitch
patterns on his chest and stomach. He’d had a knife stuck through
his arm?

“She’s gonna faint,” Grimaldi’s voice said,
from far away. “Somebody grab her.”

Someone did, and shoved my head down between
my knees. I’m fairly certain I recognized my brother’s grip on the
back of my neck. I gulped in a couple of breaths and the ringing in
my ears subsided. The nausea continued to roil in my stomach,
though, and being bent over made it worse, so I pushed against the
hand and straightened up. “Sorry.”

Nobody acknowledged the apology, so maybe
they thought it was unnecessary.

“Didn’t notice that?” Grimaldi asked.

I shook my head. “There were a lot of other
things to look at.”

Wendell handed me a can of Coke. He must
have run to the nearest machine while I was doing my heavy
breathing.

“Thanks,” I said. It wasn’t the best thing
for the baby, but I could use both the sugar and the caffeine at
the moment, and one can of Coke surely wouldn’t hurt. I popped the
top and took a sip.

Steps in the corridor behind the swinging
doors brought us all around. The doors opened and a doctor came
through, his scrubs stained with blood. “Collier?” he said, looking
around.

We all nodded.

Wendell was the only one of us who looked
anything like he might be related to Rafe, at least on the surface,
so the doctor addressed him. “He’s stable. Medicated. Resting. We
stitched the deeper cuts and closed the others with surgical glue
and bandages. Nothing much we could do about the cigarette burns,
other than put salve on them and bandage them up. As for the knife
that went through his forearm—”

Oh, God
. I sucked on the Coke until
my cheeks were hollow.

The doctor went on, his voice perfectly
calm. “We cleaned it, stitched it and bandaged it. The knife missed
the major arteries, which was a lucky break, but— Pardon me?”

“Nothing,” Wendell said grimly. “Will he be
OK?”

The doctor hesitated. “The cuts and burns
will heal. There’ll be some scarring. The muscles and nerves in the
arm are damaged. He’ll certainly get back to using it, in more or
less of a normal fashion, but from now on it will always be a bit
weaker than the other one. And is likely to cause him discomfort
for a while.”

Discomfort.
Hah!

“When can we see him?” I asked.

The doctor looked at my face, glanced at my
stomach, and moved north again. “Wife?”

“Fiancée.” No need to go into the fact that
if this hadn’t happened to him, we would be married by now.

“I’m not sure he’s awake, but you can
certainly go in and see him for a bit. He’s stable. Not in any
danger. Healthy, other than the injuries.” He looked around. “I
don’t have a duty to report physical abuse other than suspicions of
child or elder abuse, but...”

“Police,” Grimaldi said, flashing her
badge.

“TBI,” Wendell added, flashing his.

“Ah.” The doctor looked relieved. “He’s in
room 210. You can go right up. But if he starts to act tired, for
God’s sake let him sleep. He’s been through a lot.”

No kidding. And we probably hadn’t heard the
half of it.

I looked around. Five of us. Did we need to
go in shifts? Grimaldi and Wendell were certainly going to want to
talk to him about what had happened, if he were awake and up for
it. But that wasn’t something Mother and Dix needed to hear. I
wasn’t sure I needed to hear it myself.

Then again, it might not hurt for Mother to
learn about the things Rafe had dealt with. If nothing else, it
might make her a bit less inclined to think him unworthy of me.

“I’ll wait here,” she offered, and Dix
nodded, indicating his willingness to cede the floor to the rest of
us, as well. I’m sure he thought he was being polite. Mother I’m
not so sure about.

“I’d rather we all went up,” I said. “You
don’t have to stay long.”

Mother opened her mouth, met my eyes, and
closed it again. “Of course, darling.”

“Whatever you want, Savannah,” Dix added,
and extended a hand to help Mother out of the chair.

Room 210 was on the second floor, and not
difficult to find. It was the middle of the night, of course, so
everything was mostly quiet and the lights were low, although it’s
never completely dark or quiet in a hospital. Lights flashed and
machines beeped from behind half-open doors, and we heard the
squeak of rubber soles as the nurses moved behind the desk.

Rafe’s room was a single, so once we were
all inside and had closed the door, we had privacy. Not that we
were going to do anything we needed privacy for, but I thought
there was a chance that Wendell and Grimaldi would prefer it while
they debriefed Rafe.

At first, he didn’t seem to be in a state to
be debriefed. When we walked in, he didn’t stir. I tiptoed over to
the bed and looked down at him.

He’s never really pale. LaDonna was a
blue-eyed blonde like me, so her fair hair and pale complexion did
their part to lighten Tyrell’s brown eyes and skin, but Rafe is
still distinctly what people in the old days used to call
‘colored.’ Golden skin, almost black eyes, and espresso-colored
hair he keeps so short he’s practically bald. During the time he’d
pretended to be Jorge Pena, he’d kept it longer and gelled, along
with a trim goatee, but as soon as he could go back to being
himself again, the goatee vanished, and so did most of the hair,
along with the stud in his ear.

But at the moment, there was a distinct
pallor to his skin. There was no warm glow, no bloom in the
cheeks.

As I stood there, his eyes opened. It took
him a second to focus on me, and then the corners of his mouth
twitched. “Making sure I’m still breathing?” His voice was hoarse,
and he had to clear his throat.

I shrugged. Not so much that he was
breathing. Now that he was back, I wasn’t too worried about that.
It was more like I was taking inventory. Making sure he was still
there, and in one piece.

“Grimaldi and Wendell are here.” I took a
step to the side so he could see them over by the door. “Are you up
for a couple questions?”

The tip of his tongue came out to moisten
his lips. “Don’t imagine I have much choice.”

I shook my head. “The sooner the TBI and the
police know who did this to you, the sooner they can dispatch the
bloodhounds. And we all want that.”

Grimaldi and Wendell came closer. I stepped
back as they crowded in by the bedside.

There was a moment, then— “You look like
shit,” Wendell said.

I didn’t glance at Mother to see how she
took this pronouncement, but I imagine her eyes widened.

Rafe made a noise that might have turned
into a laugh had it been given the chance to grow up. And it must
have hurt him—bothered his stomach—because he winced.

Wendell didn’t say anything, just reached
out and put a hand on Rafe’s shoulder. For the two of them, it was
the equivalent of a warm hug. “Huron?”

Rafe nodded.