Addicted (Outlaws Book 2) (23 page)

Pike took a step forward, but Reese stopped him. “Just her, Pike. Any extra weight will eat up more fuel. Connor will have to stay at the camp.”

Lennox wasn’t holding his breath about that happening, but Pike nodded and stalked off.

Reese wasn’t done giving orders. “You’re on cleanup,” she told Sloan. “We need to take care of the bodies before rigor mortis sets in. The scene needs to look right.”

Rylan frowned. “What scene?”

She gave an impatient shake of her head. “Don’t worry about it. Sloan will take care of it.”

“I’m going with him,” Rylan said before shifting his gaze to Lennox. “You’ll stay with Kade?”

“I won’t leave his side,” he promised.

With a look of gratitude, Rylan clapped his hand over Lennox’s arm, then glanced at Sloan. “Let’s go.”

The two men disappeared down the hall, and then both medics ducked into Kade’s room, leaving Lennox alone with Reese.

“What kind of retaliation can we expect?” he asked quietly. “Dominik and Ferris will know something’s up when Charlie and his crew don’t report back to headquarters.”

“They’ll report back.”

Her mysterious response made him frown. “What the hell does that mean?”

“For fuck’s sake, why do I need to explain myself to everyone? I know what I’m doing.” Reese jammed her finger in the center of his chest. “Save your questions for later, Lennox. Right now your job is to keep Kade alive. Connor will have my head if his man doesn’t survive.” She spun on her heel and marched toward the door, her red hair swinging like a pendulum with each brisk step.

Lennox took a breath and went to check on Kade. John had just replaced the bandage, but already it was more pink than white. Kade was still bleeding, not as much as before, but still fucking bleeding, damn it.

Christ. Tonight had been a bloodbath.

Lennox rubbed his eyes, then raked his hands through his hair as he collapsed on the chair next to Kade. Arch was dead. Kade was hurt. And yet Lennox couldn’t help thanking whatever higher power had spared everyone else. Jamie. Sara. Randy, whom Lennox had tackled to the ground when the guns went off. The boy had still gotten shot, but luckily it was just a flesh wound.

A wheezy noise captured his attention. It was Kade’s breathing. Shit. If Kade’s respiratory system was starting to shut down, that definitely wasn’t a good sign.

Lennox had never felt more powerless in his life as he sat at the man’s side. He couldn’t do a damn thing to help Kade.

He wasn’t sure anybody could.

Bethany didn’t cry.

She didn’t scream.

She didn’t pound her fists against the wall and shout at the heavens for taking Arch from her.

All she did was sink down on the couch, press both hands to her belly, and close her eyes.

Jamie had been sitting with the woman for more than an hour, and she’d reached a point where she truly had no idea what to do.

Arch is dead
.

Those were the only words she’d been able to choke out before Bethany fell into her trance. The longer Bethany stayed silent, the more worried Jamie got, but what was she supposed to do? What was the proper etiquette you were supposed to follow after you had just told a close friend that her man was dead? Should she hug her? Rub her back? Make her something to eat?

Jamie had already voiced each one of those suggestions. Bethany hadn’t responded. Hell, she didn’t even seem to register Jamie’s presence.

“Bethy,” she whispered. “Please. Talk to me. I need to know you’re here with me.”

The woman’s eyes didn’t open, but for the first time since Jamie had entered the bedroom Bethany had shared with Arch, her friend finally spoke.

“Go help Kade.” It was a dismissal. Brief. Hoarse.

The agony stabbing Jamie’s heart only intensified. “No. You shouldn’t be alone right now.”

“I’m not alone.” Bethany was rubbing her stomach almost hypnotically. “I’m with my baby.”

Tears stung Jamie’s eyes, then spilled over and streamed down her cheeks. But Bethany wasn’t looking at her. Bethany wasn’t even in the room. She was somewhere else, somewhere that Jamie couldn’t access.

“I don’t want to leave you.”

“You have to. They might need you in the infirmary.” Bethany finally slitted her eyes open, and the overpowering grief Jamie saw in them ripped her insides to shreds.

“
You
need me.”

“I’ll be all right.” Bethany’s eyelids closed again.

No, she wouldn’t be all right. How could she be? She’d lost the man she loved, the father of her baby. One of the best men Jamie had ever known. Her heart ached at the thought of never seeing Arch again. Never hearing his gruff voice. Never feeling those big bear paws he called hands gripping her waist when he hugged her.

But it was obvious there was nothing she could do for Bethany right now. The woman had completely shut down.

“I’ll come back to check on you in a bit,” she said softly.

That didn’t garner a response from Bethany.

Jamie’s knees wobbled as she stood up. She hesitated, then leaned down and kissed the woman’s forehead. Bethany’s skin was ice-cold beneath Jamie’s lips. Her eyes remained closed.

God, Jamie truly had no idea how Bethany was ever going to come back from this.

It was pitch-black out when Jamie exited the storefront where Bethany and Arch lived. With the torches extinguished and the moon nowhere in sight, it was too dark to see even two feet in front of her, so she clicked on her flashlight and carefully made her way to the building that housed the infirmary. It was alarmingly quiet inside, but as she neared the end of the hall, she heard a murmur of voices. When she turned the corner, she found Lennox sitting on the floor, leaning his head against the cinder block wall.

“How is he?” Jamie asked urgently.

Her heart jumped when he didn’t answer.

She poked her head into the doorway two feet from where he sat, and was overcome with relief when she spotted one of the medics changing Kade’s bandage. He was alive, then. They wouldn’t bother changing the dressings of a dead man.

Lennox didn’t stand up, so she slid down beside him. After a beat, he wrapped his arm around her.

“Where is everyone?” Jamie tucked her head against his shoulder.

“Pike went to get Hudson,” Lennox mumbled. “Reese gave him the chopper. It’ll take him less than an hour to fly to camp.” He checked the watch strapped to his wrist. “They should be back soon. It’s been nearly two hours since he left.”

“And the others?”

“Sloan and Rylan are taking care of the bodies. Randy and Sara are at home.” Lennox’s arm tightened around her. “How’s Bethany?”

Jamie exhaled slowly. “Not good.”

He didn’t ask for more details. In fact, he didn’t say another word. He went silent and stared straight ahead, and each minute that ticked by heightened Jamie’s concern. He was shutting down on her the way Bethany had done. Maybe he was in shock?

But no, she knew Lennox. He possessed the kind of steely strength other men only dreamed of. He didn’t go into shock. He didn’t withdraw after something dangerous had gone down. Just a few months ago their home had been ambushed. They’d watched one of their friends die – Nell, one of the most beautiful, vibrant women Jamie had ever known. Lennox hadn’t shut down then, so she couldn’t understand why he was shutting down now.

His head suddenly snapped toward her, and the clarity swimming in his gray eyes startled her.

“It’s not safe here,” he said roughly.

Her brow furrowed. “Len —”

“It’s not safe here,” he repeated, and then he turned his head and went back to staring at the wall.

Lennox jolted to attention when he heard the slamming of doors above them, followed by hurried footsteps that vibrated in the ceiling. Thank fuck. Hopefully that meant Pike was back.

He and Jamie had been sitting in silence for the past ten minutes. Kade was still alive, but not doing well judging by the increasingly agitated murmurs floating out of his room. John and Frank couldn’t do more than try to control the bleeding and keep him conscious.

Loud thumps sounded from the stairwell. The metal doors burst open and Xander appeared. “Where is he?” the bearded outlaw demanded.

Lennox and Jamie quickly hopped to their feet. There was a blur of blond hair at the door. Hudson flew through it, racing after Xander. Lennox waited for Connor to appear, but the doorway remained empty.

“Where’s Con?” he asked with a frown.

Hudson answered while giving Jamie a quick hug. “Back at camp. Someone needed to stay with Piper and Layla.”

Lennox had been certain Connor wouldn’t let Hudson out of his sight, but apparently the man trusted Xander with her care.

The four of them entered Kade’s room, and Xander’s face paled the moment he saw his friend. He wasted no time touching the man’s ashen cheeks. “Kade. You with us?”

A pair of dark eyes slit open. “Xan?” the patient said weakly.

“I’m right here, man. So’s Hudson.” Xander looked sharply at the medics. “Pike said you need blood?”

John nodded, then glanced at Hudson. “You sure you’re a universal donor?”

“A hundred percent.” She was already rolling up the sleeves of her oversize flannel shirt, which must have belonged to Connor, because it hung all the way to her jean-clad knees. “You have the right equipment to do this?”

“Yeah. Take a seat.”

The medics pushed Lennox and the others out of the way as Hudson settled in the chair next to Kade. They were relegated to the wall, and Lennox’s throat tightened when he saw Hudson reach for Kade’s hand. She squeezed it, her gray eyes focusing on the wounded man’s face.

“You’re going to be okay,” she murmured.

Frank was bustling over Kade, shifting the man’s arm so he could insert a small needle into the artery at Kade’s wrist. A long tube was connected to the needle, and John quickly snapped a second needle to the other end and flicked the inside of Hudson’s elbow with his free hand. Once he found the vein, the needle slid in, and within seconds, Hudson’s blood began flowing through the tube, trickling slowly toward Kade’s wrist.

“How do you know how much to give him?” Jamie asked tentatively.

“We don’t,” Hudson answered in a soft voice, her gaze still glued to Kade. “We just have to wait and see if there’s any improvement.”

“Xan…” Kade’s pained plea was barely above a whisper. “You still here?”

Xander sank to his knees so that his face was close to Kade’s. “Still here, man. I’m not going anywhere.”

Kade let out a breath that sounded distressingly wheezy. “You still have the letter I gave you?”

Lennox saw Xander’s broad shoulders tense, but the man’s tone was gentle as he said, “Yeah.”

“You’ll… give it to him if anything happens to me?”

“Nothing’s going to happen to you,” Xander said firmly. “You’re going to be fine.”

Lennox didn’t share the other man’s conviction. Kade looked like he was knocking on death’s door. There was no color in his face. Maybe because it had all gathered at his side, which was red and swollen. And his breathing was weak and raspy.

“This isn’t going as fast as I’d like,” Frank said, frowning as he studied the sluggish flow of blood traveling through the tube.

“It’ll pick up,” Hudson assured him, but she sounded worried too.

Time passed. Lennox wasn’t sure how much, because his mind was elsewhere. No longer in the room with Kade, but back in the town square. He heard the crack of gunfire. He saw the bullets. He felt the fear. The sheer, absolute terror that had consumed him when he was crouching behind cover, not knowing where Jamie was, not knowing if she was dead or alive.

They needed to get out of Foxworth. There would be retaliation coming their way. There
had
to be. The GC didn’t take kindly to dead Enforcers in the free land, no matter how Reese ended up staging the scene.

“Enough.”

The harsh command jerked Lennox from his internal panic. Pike was looming in the doorway, his impossibly dark eyes narrowed at the center of the room.

“She’s given him too much,” he told the medics. “You need to stop.”

“I’m okay,” Hudson tried to protest, and Lennox was suddenly horrified when he noticed her face.

She was whiter than snow. Her eyes were glazed. And either he was imagining it, or she was swaying in her chair, about to keel over even though she was seated.

“It’s been two hours,” Pike snapped, charging toward her. “Time to stop.”

Two hours? Jesus. Lennox had no idea it’d been that long.

“He’s right, doll.” Xander spoke up in a tired voice. “Con will kill us if we bring his woman back to him in a coffin.”

Hudson continued to object, but the men – and the medics – weren’t hearing it. The needle was efficiently removed from her arm. Pike helped her to her feet. She swayed so wildly that Pike cursed and lifted her up into his arms, but her arms were too weak to wrap around him. They dangled at her sides as he carried her out the door.

“I’ll take her upstairs, make sure she gets some rest,” he barked over his shoulder.

Once they were gone, Xander took the chair Hudson had been sitting on, his gaze sweeping over Kade’s face. “It looks like he’s got some color in his cheeks, no?”

No, it didn’t. If anything, Kade’s skin was gray now. But Lennox didn’t have the heart to say it, so he nodded and said, “He’s looking better.”

He felt Jamie’s hand slipping into his own. Her fingers were freezing. “Now what?” she whispered, her worried eyes focused on Kade.

Lennox swallowed. “We wait.”

Jamie woke up with a start, confused to find that they were out in the hall again. She was curled up on the floor beside Lennox with her head in his lap, but she didn’t remember getting there, or falling asleep. She blinked a couple of times. Spotted Pike and Xander, who’d dragged chairs out into the corridor and were sitting in absolute silence, staring at Kade’s door. She shifted her gaze and found Rylan leaning against the wall a few feet away.

She wasn’t sure what time it was, but she remembered being awake when Rylan and Sloan had returned from their mysterious errand about an hour ago. She’d been too exhausted to focus on the details, but from the low murmur of their conversation, she had gleaned that they’d driven a hundred miles east, where they’d created a visual narrative with the dead bodies from the town square, setting it up to look as if the unit had been attacked by bandits. Then they’d used the radio in the truck to contact Enforcer headquarters and make a desperate plea for backup. But it would be too late. When reinforcements arrived, they would discover that their fellow soldiers had already lost the battle.

Or at least that was the story Reese was hoping they’d buy.

Jamie prayed like hell it worked. That the Enforcers who found the truck didn’t somehow piece it together that their men had died at Foxworth and not on the road.

But at the moment, she was far more worried about Kade, who had been drifting in and out of consciousness since the blood transfusion.

Jamie sat up and rubbed her eyes just as Hudson emerged from Kade’s room to give them another report. Thankfully the blonde was looking steady on her feet again. Jamie had been truly concerned about her earlier. Hudson had given Kade way too much blood, and it was a miracle she hadn’t died herself.

“Xan,” Hudson said softly.

The man shot up from his chair. “Time for another transfusion?” When Hudson slowly shook her head, Xander’s eyes widened in horror. “Is he…?”

“No,” the blonde said quickly. “He’s alive.” There was an agonizingly long pause. “But I’m not sure how long he’ll stay that way.”

Jamie’s heart dropped to the pit of her stomach.
No
. She stumbled to her feet. Lennox did the same, his warm hand resting on her hip to steady her.

“Then give him another transfusion.” Xander’s desperation thickened the air in the corridor.

“It won’t help.”

“You don’t know that! We can at least
try
, goddamn it!”

Hudson repeated herself. Low and weary. “It won’t help.”

The small group followed her into Kade’s room, where she gingerly removed the dressing over his bullet wound. Jamie tried not to gasp when she glimpsed Kade’s abdomen. It was distended. And turning purple. The signs of internal bleeding were impossible to miss, and a strangled sob lodged in her throat when she recognized the implications of that.

Hudson confirmed Jamie’s suspicions. “He’s bleeding internally. I don’t know if even surgery would help at this point, but that’s not an option. We’re not equipped to operate.”

“How long?” Xander whispered, and they all knew what he meant.

“I don’t know,” Hudson said helplessly. “Minutes? Hours?”

“Is he in pain?” Rylan asked from the door. His expression was as stricken as everyone else’s.

“I gave him some painkillers, but…” Hudson bit her lip. “He’s suffering.”

Xander let out a tortured groan. “Give him more, then,” he burst out. “Don’t you have anything stronger?”

“We’ve got some morphine, but not a lot. Which means either we inject him with small doses, which won’t help much with the pain. Or we give him one massive dose and…” She trailed off.

This time Jamie did gasp. One massive dose? That would… fuck, it would kill him.

Her gaze landed on Kade. His face was grayer than the cinder block walls. His breaths were so shallow his chest was scarcely moving anymore.

No, the morphine wouldn’t kill him.

It would put him out of his misery.

At Kade’s side, Xander had evidently reached the same conclusion. His entire face collapsed as another anguished sound escaped his lips. Everyone went silent. It felt like hours. Days. And then Xander’s head turned sharply toward Hudson.

“Give me the morphine.”

“Xan —” she protested.

“Just give it to me and leave,” he bit out. “All of you. Just leave.”

Jamie’s hands began to shake, so hard that Lennox took both of them in his palms and squeezed tightly. “Jamie,” he murmured. “Let’s go.”

God. She didn’t want to leave. But Xander was already pushing away from the table, forcibly shoving everyone but Hudson to the door.

In the hallway, the tears spilled over, soaking her cheeks and prompting her to bury her face against Lennox’s chest. “I can’t believe this is happening,” she whispered.

His shaky hand stroked her hair. “I know.”

There was a loud click. Jamie raised her head to find that Xander had kicked Hudson out too. The blonde looked so ravaged that Jamie moved from Lennox’s arms to Hudson’s, holding the other woman tight. “You did everything you could, Hudson.”

“But it wasn’t enough,” Hudson mumbled.

Jamie heard a low voice from behind the door. Xander, as he spoke quietly to Kade. She was dreading the moment when he stopped talking, because that would mean that he’d…

Another sob flew out, and she released Hudson so abruptly the woman staggered backward. Jamie whirled around to Lennox. “I can’t be here,” she choked out. “I
can’t
—”

He had his arm around her before she could get another word out. “It’s okay, love. It’s okay. We don’t have to be here.”

She didn’t remember leaving the infirmary or heading back to their room. She didn’t remember Lennox pulling a blanket over her and sliding in beside her. She didn’t remember what they said to each other, or exactly when it was that the first light of dawn streamed in through the window.

All she knew was that when she opened her eyes that morning, Kade was dead.