“Blinding…” Sean’s earlier words echoed in my mind as the golden place settings reflected the lights and made everything around me blur. “You stepped into view, and now there’s nothing but you. Blinding.”
“Mr. Thorne?” There was that voice again. “Are you okay?”
Was I okay? I’d just seen a man shot and killed in front of me, and was now watching my bodyguard—my…Sean—bleed out on the ground. So, no, I was not okay. I wasn’t sure I ever would be again.
As I took a step forward, my knees gave out from under me.
“Shit.” An arm wrapped around my waist, and then I heard, “Look, my name is Nichols. Detective Nichols. I was here tonight with you and Sean.”
Nichols? Yes, that sounded familiar.
“Let me help you,” he said, offering up a grim smile.
But I didn’t need help. Sean needed help. I heard someone count, “One, two, three,” and turned back to see the paramedics shifting Sean onto a stretcher.
“I want to go with him,” I said, my voice barely audible. “I want to go wherever they’re taking him.”
Nichols gave a clipped nod as the paramedics wheeled the stretcher by us. “Okay, then let’s go. They’ll have something in the rig for you to clean up with.”
I looked down at my hands again and immediately tried wiping them on my pants, but it was no use. Sean’s blood was now well and truly staining my hands, just as I had feared, and nothing in that rig was going to wash it away.
“Hey, Martinez?” Nichols called out as we pushed through the lobby doors. “You got room in there for one more? Pretty sure this one should be checked out too. He was the other person involved tonight.”
Martinez looked me over as my body once again pitched to the side.
“Got it. One sec,” she said, as she quickly helped her partner get the stretcher up into the ambulance. Then she came over to me, taking over from Nichols as my crutch. “Let’s get you inside and checked out, Mr. Thorne.”
I wasn’t shocked that she recognized me, but I didn’t have it in me to acknowledge it. She guided me into the ambulance, and my eyes immediately locked on to Sean.
He was hooked up to several machines monitoring God knows what, and the pallor of his skin told me just how much blood he’d lost. He had an oxygen mask in place, the shirt of his tux was cut open, and the blood soaking through the gauze packed into his side made my stomach revolt. A chill raced up my spine despite the suffocating heat of the night, as I stared down at his motionless body and tried to make sense of all of this.
But that was impossible. There was no making sense of the brutally jarring image I was looking at. No connecting the loudmouth boy I’d grown up with, and the gruff but charming man I’d spent the last two weeks discovering, to this bleak picture he now made. It was soul destroying.
I blinked as tears rolled down my face, trying to focus on him. But Sean was a mere shadow now, a familiar picture fading right before my very eyes, so I reached out and took his hand just in case he disappeared altogether.
“You stay with me. You hear me,” I told him as the ambulance barreled along, the sirens wailing as it sped through the downtown traffic.
I had no idea how long it took us to get to the hospital, or even which one we were at, but when the sirens ceased and the doors flew open, I let go of Sean’s hand and watched Martinez and her partner pull the stretcher free of the rig.
When she looked back to me, I waved her off. I could climb out of the ambulance myself if it meant getting Sean into the hospital quicker.
“What’ve we got?” one of the doctors barked.
“Sean Bailey, thirty-eight-year-old male, stab wound to the upper left side, severe blood loss.”
“Right. Tell surgery to prep OR three. Let’s go, everyone.”
As they began rolling Sean off down the hall toward a set of double doors, Martinez fell back and took my arm.
“Mr. Thorne,” she said, as I went to move by her. “Alexander.” At the use of my first name, I stopped and looked at her. “You have to wait here now. You can’t go back there.”
As they pushed through the doors and Sean disappeared behind them, my heart sank. “No, I have to go with him. I—”
“You need to let them do their job. Come with me. We’ll make sure you’re okay and find you somewhere to wait.”
I turned back to see the doors were now shut and there was no movement on either side. He was gone. Sean was gone. And I had no idea if I’d ever see him again.
“MR. THORNE? EXCUSE me, Mr. Thorne?”
A gentle hand and voice had my brain reengaging, and when I remembered where I was—the waiting room—my eyes snapped open.
“I’m sorry,” the surgeon said, giving me a half-smile. “I didn’t mean to startle you, but I know you came in earlier with Mr. Bailey. I have an update for you.”
I sat up ramrod straight and looked around the waiting room for Bailey and Henri. They weren’t there—shit. I knew they’d given my name to the nurses’ station as family, but I wasn’t sure I was ready to hear whatever she was about to tell me alone.
“He lost a lot of blood. The knife nicked his spleen, but he’s a strong one. He’s going to be okay.”
As I tried to comprehend everything she was telling me, the room began to spin, and I clutched at my head.
“Careful there.”
I swallowed and nodded. “I’m sorry, I’m just… I’m relieved, that’s all.”
“I understand. You’ve had a hell of a night.”
Talk about an understatement.
“He’s just come out of recovery and been moved up to his room. He’s still pretty out of it, but if you’d like to come and see him, you—”
“Yes,” I said before she could even finish.
She smiled and turned on her heel, slipping her hands into her pockets as she led me out of the waiting room. I fished my phone from my pants pocket and sent a text to Bailey: He’s awake. Surgery went well. Being taken back to his room now.
“He’s just in there,” she said. I sent the room number to Bailey then stopped outside the door.
I had no idea what to expect on the other side, and I wasn’t at all sure I was prepared for what I would see.
I can do this, I told myself, and took in another breath. I can do this. Finally I pushed down on the handle. When I stepped inside and the door slowly shut behind me, I scanned the room and took a second to adjust to the low lighting, then zeroed in on the machines and IV poles full of drugs being pumped into Sean’s arm.
“Hey there, anchorman.”
My breath caught. I dragged my eyes up to Sean’s face and could barely believe what I was seeing. His glassy eyes were open, and a relaxed smile was curving his lips.
He was awake…barely.
“You really here, or—”
“I’m really here,” I said, and rushed over to him on unsteady legs.
As I reached his side, he took my hand and brought it to his lips to kiss. He whispered, “Good. Don’t leave,” and promptly passed out.
2
Sean