“I’m on my way.”
The knock on the door didn’t seem like it took ten minutes, but I had probably passed out after Reid hung up.
“Paige! Can you hear me?”
“Reid…”
There was some mumbling beyond that I couldn’t make out. I heard at least one other voice, maybe two. But it didn’t matter. I tried to push myself closer to the door. My leg was throbbing so bad I couldn’t see straight.
A second later, there was a snap and pop, and the doorknob fell to the floor.
Alain is going to kill me.
I didn’t know if that was an overall statement or just about the front doorknob.
Reid pushed into the living room and I saw someone follow him in.
Lily. He’d called Lily Haden.
God, I didn’t want her to see me like this.
“Holy shit, Paige,” she breathed as Reid ran over and dropped down next to me. “What the hell happened?”
“Stairs,” I whispered.
“Do not move,” Reid snapped, as Lily pulled her radio off her belt and called for an ambulance.
She didn’t stop there. She also put out a BOLO on Alain and asked for an ADA to meet her at Penn in University.
“Lily get me anything you can find for first aid. I’ll do my best while we’re waiting for the bus. Then get what you think she’ll need immediately.”
Lily nodded, and ran up the stairs.
“God, Paige. He really did a number on you. You look like an extra in Rambo First Blood.”
“Thanks,” I whispered.
“Please, please, tell me you’re leaving this.”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes. Get me out.”
He kissed the top of my head. “Absolutely.”
Lily was back a moment later, dropping the first aid kit I had next to Reid, and kneeling down next to him.
“I’m going to get your purse, and pack a quick bag for you. Basics. I can get a warrant to come back in if you need it, but I’m going to find your important papers and get you the fuck out of here.”
I nodded, and instantly regretted the motion.
“Verbal please,” Reid cautioned. “Your neck and head are a mess.”
Lily stared at me with tears in her eyes. “Vanagloria, it didn’t have to be like this.”
The name, Vanagloria, warmed me inside.
I was going to be okay.
My baby was going to be safe.
I passed out.
Wren
“Where?”
Lily grabbed my arm and pulled me to the elevators. “She’s in surgery for her foot. It’s pretty fucked up.”
“Surgery—she’s pregnant!”
“They know, but the way the foot was broken it was do it now with caution or have to remove the whole foot in three days from gangrene.” Lily stared at me as the door closed. “You knew she was pregnant?”
“She…kind of told us.” The sigh escaped me. “When we lost Ben, she came out of the hospital to go home. Fischer demanded a run down on her, and the nurse told us. She was talking about termination.”
Lily shook her head. “She’s not terminating. She was begging me and Reid in the back of that ambulance to make sure her baby survived.”
I slumped against the side. “Thank fuck.” I straightened back up as the doors open on the floor, and I followed Lily down the hall. “What about Alain?”
“We have a BOLO out on him, but there’s nothing we can do until she’s out of surgery, and she wants to press charges. I just want eyes on him for now.”
Pushing the door to the room open, I was just a little surprised when I found Reid standing there.
He twitched his eyebrow up and shrugged. “She called me. I didn’t have time to really think about what to do other than get there and get her out. Lily seemed the logical choice to call.”
“You don’t even have to explain, but…”
He rubbed a hand down his face. “We had a moment a few days ago. She had some serious shit on her plate, and I offered her my card and my ear. I didn’t think that I’d walk in and have to do some serious first aid on a living body.”
“She’s bad, Wren,” Lily said. “While they have her under they are going to fix her shoulder and do some neat stitching where her skin was peeled back by the bricks.”
“Bricks?”
“As far as we can tell, she smashed face first into the bricks in the stairwell,” Reid said. “I took a quick look while the EMTs were getting her on the stretcher.”
“I sent a whole crime scene team back to check the mess,” Lily said. “I want every piece of evidence we can find on this shit bag.”
Her phone beeped and she stepped out of the room.
Reid sighed. “Wren, she’s a mess. She wants that baby so bad. I promised her that I would help her out of this. Do you think you can help me?”
“I want to help,” I said. “Paige is…”
Reid looked at the door and back to me. “Vanagloria. That’s what Lily said.”
Nodding, I took a deep breath. “She is. The fourth Sin.”
“Pride.” He scrubbed his face with his hands. “God that makes so much sense. She was proud of her agency, but more she’s too proud to leave a marriage that should never have happened in the first place.”
“You said you talked to her.,”
“She…unknowingly bared her soul to me. She’s absolutely typical of the foster system. Alain was the first one who ever showed her any real affection, no matter how fucked up it was, and she went with it. She married him.”
Staring at him, I found a chair by feel and sat down. “How bad? How bad was it, Reid?”
“Oh. It was bad. He treats her like shit all the time. From what I could get, he uses her for sex, for cleaning, for a punching bag.” He leaned back against the wall. “I’m sure if you put someone on him, to tail him, you’re going to find he’s also all about tagging ass.”
My head fell into my hands, and I groaned, “Shit. How did we not see this until she was sitting in a wheelchair with bruises and stitches?”
“Because she didn’t want you to, Wren. She didn’t want anyone to know. Pride.”
“Pride goeth before a fall,” I whispered.
“Indeed, and this fall has taken her to the very bottom,” Reid said.
“Stay here until she’s out?” I asked.
“I wasn’t planning on leaving.” He walked over and sat in the chair next to me. “We need to figure out what to do now. She’s in no position to make informed decisions.”
“I know where she’s supposed to be, so I’m not going to delude myself about this. We have the room. It’s hers.”
“Your house?”
“Keep the sins together. There is strength in numbers.”
The sound of the bed being rolled into the room roused both Reid and me from our totally uncomfortable positions in the chair.
The sky outside the window was showing signs of sunlight, which meant we’d both been there for at least eight hours at that point.
The orderlies set up everything in the room, hooking up oxygen, saline bags, heart monitors, and every other sort of monitoring equipment they thought they might need. The nurses swooped in and started attaching everything to keep an eye on Paige.