Total pages in book: 147
Estimated words: 136048 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 680(@200wpm)___ 544(@250wpm)___ 453(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 136048 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 680(@200wpm)___ 544(@250wpm)___ 453(@300wpm)
Arriving at the hospital, I drive my truck right up onto the curb at the main entrance before the three of us bail out onto the pavement and race straight in through the automatic double doors. “Update?” I demand from Ace.
“It’s not good,” he tells me as my heart races. “Security is with her now. It seems their presence scared off whoever did this. She was left beaten in the bathroom, but they got to her quickly. I’m not sure how hurt she is.”
“FUCK!”
I push myself faster, guilt tearing at me with every second I’m not by her side. I have preached to her that I will always be there when she needs me, and yet I can’t stop failing her. I can’t stop letting her down.
Bypassing the hospital elevator, we skip straight ahead to the emergency stairwell, tearing the door open before hurrying down the stairs, and before I know it, I’m breaking out onto the basement floor and racing toward the morgue.
The big double doors are wide open, hospital security surrounding the room, but I push ahead, continuing down the hall to the women’s bathroom and pushing past the array of security personnel surrounding my girl.
“Harper?” I call out.
“Knight?” she cries from deeper in the bathroom, the sound of my voice forcing whimpers from her lips.
“Don’t try to get up,” a familiar tone says. “The doctors are coming.”
There are people everywhere, and the more that stand in my way, the more frustrated I become. “Clear out,” I hear Diesel say from somewhere behind me. “Blackstone SWAT. We’ll take it from here.”
The hospital security team finally begins clearing out, and as I’m able to make my way deeper into the bathroom, I finally find Harper on the ground in the last stall being cared for by my friend Carly on the security team, the one who has been there every time I’ve needed something and had my back whenever Harper was in trouble.
“Fuck, doll,” I say, dropping to my knees beside her, looking over her ripped scrubs and the bruises already coming out on her skin. And if there’s one thing I know for sure, after seeing the kind of brutality that I’ve witnessed during my long career, there’s no way in hell she could have sustained these injuries herself. Somebody did this to her.
Tears fall down her cheeks, and she tries to sit up. “Knight,” she cries.
“No, no, doll. Stay here,” I tell her, going against every overwhelming need in my body to pull her into my arms. I don’t know the extent of her injuries, and until a doctor can get down here and assess her, she won’t be moving anywhere.
“She’s not in a good way,” Carly says. “I don’t think anything is broken, but . . . shit, Knight. This guy. It was messed up. He was wearing this creepy mask and screaming at her like she owed him something. I’ve never witnessed anything so . . . so brutal.”
My back stiffens, my gaze shooting between Harper and Carly, my gut twisting with guilt. “Mask?” I ask Carly, my body sagging as I grasp Harper’s hand.
“It was him,” Harper tells me, her voice breaking. “Just as I’ve been telling you.”
“Yeah, it was fucked up. It was like some kind of vampire skull,” Carly tells me, shaking her head as if still rattled by what she’s seen, clearly misjudging the horror in my eyes for what happened here today, and not the guilt that’s tearing me to shreds for not having believed Harper when she needed me most. “He was trying to rip her scrubs off, and I think if . . . if we hadn’t come when we did . . . I don’t know what might have happened to her.”
“Fuck.”
The guilt is like nothing I’ve ever felt, chipping away at pieces of my crumbling soul as I look down at my girl, broken on the bathroom floor, tears pooling in her beautiful green eyes as an overwhelming helplessness washes over me. She was sexually abused in my home, he threw her against our bed and forced his fingers inside her, and I told her she needed to get her meds checked.
She should have left me and never come back. I don’t deserve her.
“Doll, I . . . I’m so sorry. I didn’t. I—”
I cut myself off, unable to find the words to convey just how fucking sorry I am for not trusting her when she needed me the most, for not being there when she was hurting, for not having her back the way I should have. And despite all that, she still offers me a sad smile, as though I’m somehow deserving of her love. “I’m guessing an I told you so probably isn’t going to go down well right now?”
“Fuck, Harper. How am I ever going to make it up to you?”