Mandy screamed in protest and hatred filled her eyes. Then she stopped and grinned at me with a sinister look on her face that sent chills scattering through me. “If I can’t have him, then neither can you,” she sneered.
“What’s going on?” Dan asked, confused by the scuffle he heard.
Cowboy groaned at her, obviously showing his exasperation. Though I couldn’t see his expression, I could imagine him rolling his eyes at her.
“Hit the nurse’s call button,” the sheriff ordered me, clicking the last cuff on Mandy’s wrist.
“It’s okay, I’m fine.”
He shook his head and I saw the fear in his eyes. “Cowboy isn’t. Hit the damn button.”
Uncertain as to what I missed, I shifted to get a better look and eyed a small pair of surgical scissors sticking out of his neck. “Oh my God!” I fumbled to grab the call button, though the weight of his body on top of mine made it more difficult. When I found it, I pressed the red emergency button over and over as tears squeezed out of my eyes. “No, no, no!”
Ned didn’t wait for someone to come. He ran to the door and yelled, “We need help in here! Someone’s been stabbed.”
A doctor and two nurses rushed in almost immediately and began clearing the room. The sheriff dragged Mandy out, kicking and screaming, while a nurse led Dan to the waiting room, quietly explaining what had happened to Cowboy. Ned didn’t make any attempt to leave. He just stood quietly in the corner, watching the scene unfold.
Once a gurney was wheeled in, a flurry of activity took place. The medical team quickly and carefully moved Cowboy off me and onto the other bed as they took his vitals and wheeled him from the room.
I tried to get up, but a nurse pushed me back down and ordered me to stay where I was as he was taken away. Upset, I began coughing violently, pulled out my IV, and tried to get up again. “No, I need to make sure he’s okay.”
She had at least fifty pounds on me, though, and held me there. “They’re going to assess him first. Then he’ll probably be taken up to the OR for surgery. You won’t be able to see him anytime soon. I’ll find out what’s going on and come back and give you an update,” she promised. “Sit tight.”
The nurse glanced to Ned and he nodded. “I’ll stay with her.”
When she seemed sure I wouldn’t get up again, she told him, “Hit the call button if you need anything.”
I looked down at the white sheets on the bed and shivered. There was no blood. Anywhere. In fact, there wasn’t a single drop on my hospital gown, the bed, or even the floor. Almost like it had never happened. I would have thought I was dreaming, but as the nurse closed the heavy door behind her with an echoing clang, I glanced around the sterile-smelling room and spotted the rolling hamper marked “soiled” on the outside.
Soiled. It was exactly how I felt.
A wave of dismay swept over my queasy stomach, dragging repulsion in its wake. Everything I thought I had known was now tainted by shock, stained with dread, and marked with violence. I wanted to remove any traces of the horror I’d just witnessed. But nothing could sanitize those memories of Cowboy lying helplessly across me, unable to talk, with scissors protruding from his neck.
Without a word, I leaned my head back against the pillow and sank into the bed, letting the tears leak down my cheeks.
God, please let him be okay.
It was an hour later when I finally stopped crying. Ned stood across the room, staring out the window and watching the sun rise. “Are you okay?”
I ignored his question and asked one of my own. “Why haven’t we heard anything yet?”
“I imagine we will soon.”
After sitting in silence a while longer, the door pushed open and I jumped to my feet. Bobbie Jo stepped into the room, followed by the rest of the gang. She rushed to my side, panic-stricken. “Oh, Anna. We came as soon as we heard.”
My gaze flitted from Ox to Judd, then over to Emily standing there with Jake’s supportive arm around her. I could see the worry in each of their eyes. Of course they’d come running the moment they found out about Cowboy.
He was their family.
“We don’t know anything yet.”
“Are they running tests or something?” Jake asked, looking puzzled. “You’ve had to have been here a few hours already. Why don’t they know what’s wrong with you?”
Me? He thought I was talking about…myself?
“And where the hell is Cowboy?” Emily asked. “He didn’t even call us until after you were admitted. We’re going to kill him for not letting us know about this sooner.”
They were here for me? Which meant they didn’t know about Cowboy’s condition. And I had to be the one who told them. “I…thought…you knew,” I whispered, my voice cracking under pressure.
“Knew what?” Bobbie Jo asked, rubbing her hand on my back.
“Cowboy was…injured,” I said, unsure how to break the disturbing news. “Stabbed, actually…in the neck with a pair of scissors.” They blinked as my words sank in and a few of their mouths dropped open. “We think he might be in surgery, but we’re not really sure what’s going on. No one has told us anything yet.”
Emily looked up at her FBI husband with tears in her questioning eyes. “Jake…?”
“I’m on it,” he said, his grim mouth turning down. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his badge as he headed for the door. “I’ll be back when I find out something.”
“What happened?” Ox asked, looking as confused as the rest of them. “Why would anyone go after Cowboy?”
My eyes misted over, but I cleared my sore throat and hoped like hell my words didn’t come out as raspy as I thought they might. “It’s my fault. He was protecting me.” Their eyes widened as I started from the beginning and told them the whole story.
The moment I finished, Ox and Judd stepped out to call Cowboy’s parents, who were visiting his grandmother in El Paso. Ned made himself useful by getting everyone coffee, while Bobbie Jo and Emily took turns wearing a hole in the floor with all the pacing they were doing. I, on the other hand, couldn’t do anything but sit there on my hospital bed, feeling numb, waiting for news to arrive.
Another half hour went by before a nurse entered the room, her face weary and bleak. “The FBI agent asked me to give you all an update on your…er, friend,” she said somberly, glancing at me.
Fear pumped through me. “He’s not…”
“No, no, he’s alive. Once we left here, we stabilized him and then he was taken up to the OR to remove the instrument from his neck. The blades missed a major artery by only a fraction of an inch and he’s still in recovery, but he’s awake and going to be just fine. He’s a very lucky young man.”
“Oh, thank God!” I breathed a huge sigh of relief and blinked back the moisture pooling in my eyes. “When can we see him?”
“It will be a little while. Agent Ward is with him right now and then we have to move him to a room. I’m not sure what your friend did, but if the FBI is questioning him, then he must be in a lot of trouble.”
As she left the room, we all grinned. Jake wasn’t on any official business, although he’d obviously led the hospital staff to believe something entirely different.
Everything was going to be okay.
Chapter Twenty
My airways had been singed and the doctor apparently felt like it was too early to give me any solid foods. So when the nurse brought me a small tray with some orange gelatin and some smelly broth, I sent everyone else down to the cafeteria for breakfast. Just because the hospital was starving me didn’t mean they had to suffer the same fate.
But Ned declined.