Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 102903 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 515(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 102903 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 515(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
“She confessed, by the way,” Shane says, and I turn my attention back to him. “Edith Lewis confessed to Heather and Gwen’s murders. When Officer Marks took her to County to be booked, she broke down and told him everything. It’s going to be quite the high-profile case,” he adds. “News media is already hanging around the station like parasites trying to get Chief Willis to give a statement.”
My mother’s words echo in my mind: Always suspect the wife.
My NCIS-obsessed mother with Alzheimer’s helped solve a murder case. If I weren’t so worried about Dom, I might actually laugh at the irony of it all.
“Wait . . . high-profile case?” I ask, and Shane pops a toothpick in his mouth.
“Felix Lewis owns Platinum Nash.”
“Platinum Nash?” I question, the familiarity there, though I can’t quite figure out why.
“One of the biggest labels in country music.”
“Holy shit,” I whisper, and he nods.
“Tell me about it.”
“Shane?” a male voice calls out, and we both look over toward the main hallway of the hospital that leads to the surgical area.
Dom’s father, Jared, is striding toward us, concern on his face, and the rest of the Dunn family follows quickly behind him—Dom’s mom, Laura, and his sister, Dakota; his grandpa Louie and his uncle Patrick. The whole gang is here, and the vision of them only reminds me of how serious this situation is.
Shane stands up to greet Dom’s family, and I have to force myself to do the same. It’s not that I don’t want to say hello, but the fact that I’ve been trying to hold it together and seeing them has a ball of emotion sitting in my throat.
“Oh, Hannah,” Dom’s mother whispers and pulls me into her arms. She hugs me tightly and I hug her right back, and for the first time since we arrived at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, I let the tears stream down my cheeks.
Dom got shot.
Dom is in surgery.
Dom might not survive.
48
Dominic
8:30 a.m.
My entire body hurts like a motherfucker, and when I squint my eyes open, my reality isn’t much better. It takes a few blinks to clear the woozy fog, but it’s not long before I realize I’m lying in a hospital bed with IVs stuck in my arms and beeping machines providing medical white noise.
“Hey, Tony.”
Sherry is standing beside my bed, staring down at me.
“Hey, Sherry.”
“Not going to lie, this was almost as bad as that time we almost lost you from the pneumonic plague,” she says and purses her lips as she looks around the room.
Funny enough, I actually know what episode she’s referring to. It’s the one where a woman sends a letter filled with genetically altered Yersinia pestis to NCIS and Tony opens it.
“Glad you’re okay.” Sherry reaches out to tap my hand. “Ziva was real worried about you, but I told her you’d pull through.”
“She was?” I ask, but Sherry doesn’t answer this time.
“She was.” Hannah is at my bedside now, and it’s only then that I realize my room is also filled with Shane and my mom and my dad and my sister. Grandpa Louie sits in a chair, a smile on his face.
“You think now is a good time to make a career shift, Dominic?” he asks, his voice teasing and warm at the same time. “I hear the coffee business is a hell of a lot safer.”
A laugh escapes my throat, but it results in a shooting pain that radiates from my chest to my shoulder. The shoulder I realize is currently bandaged up and immobilized by traction. A vague memory of my surgeon talking to me while I was in the recovery room fills my head. I was still heavily drugged from anesthesia, but I remember him saying the bullet was lodged in my shoulder and had just barely nicked an artery. He said he got it out without any trouble, but if it’d been even a millimeter to the right, I would’ve been a dead man.
I meet Hannah’s eyes, and I see emotion shining in their gorgeous depths. Thank everything, she’s okay. I want to reach out to her, I want to pull her into my arms and hold her, but my mom and dad and sister step in front of Sherry and Hannah to give me gentle hugs.
“Glad you’re okay, son,” my dad says, smiling down at me. He clears his throat of emotion and squeezes my hand. “Definitely had us a little worried there for a minute.”
“A little worried? More like out of our minds,” my mom whispers into my ear as she hugs me again. “Don’t ever scare me like that again.”
“Yeah, Dom,” Dakota agrees and moves my mother out of the way to point a stern finger in my face. “I swear on everything, if you try to die again, I’ll kill you myself.”