Page 260 of G.O.D.S Omnibus
“Shhh, we will get them back. Even if it’s the last thing we do on this earth. I can promise you that,” I tell her, and I mean it. We won’t stop until we have them home.
“You promise?” she whispers into my chest.
“Angel, I will take my last breath if that means they come home safely.”
I take her upstairs to our room and gently place her on our bed. Trace brings in a first aid kit, and Case brings me a mild sedative from Chester’s stash.
I draw up the liquid, and she doesn’t even stir when I inject it into her leg. Then I move across the room so Case can check her C-section incision. It should have started to heal before she even left the hospital, though we need to be sure. He lifts her shirt, and the bandage looks like it’s been weeping.
“Should I remove it and make sure she hasn’t popped a staple?” Case asks, looking over his shoulder at me, and I nod. We would have had to check tonight, anyway. The doctor told us the staples would need to be removed once the wound had healed, and Creed would know when.
Creed pops his head in the door, and he takes a step in when he realises she is asleep. I know what happened down in the morgue will be eating at him.
“Can you check her over?” Case asks him when he gets closer. We all are trained in first aid, but Creed has more experience. He may practise on dead bodies, but it all works the same in theory.
Case scoots over, and Creed takes a seat beside Jolie. He peels back the plastic bandage, cleans off her incision, and places another bandage over it.
“It should have healed by now, but it looks like she has torn a portion of it open. I will check again tomorrow, and if it’s not healing, I will call Scarlett to bring us something from Olympia.”
I nod at Creed. “Will you stay with her, try to keep her calm so she sleeps longer? I will come and get you if we have any news or if we need to head out again.”
“On it,” he says, stripping down to his underwear and slipping under the covers with her. Hopefully, she’ll stay asleep until the morning with Creed by her side. Case and I leave the room and shut the door behind us just as Jimmie is walking up the stairs.
“Is she okay?” he asks, worry etched across his face.
“She is sleeping now, and hopefully she stays that way,” I say. Case claps me on the shoulder and heads back downstairs.
“I’m just going to Marlow’s computer room, and Trace is coming up in a minute. Here are the sketches of the men who were there,” Jimmie says, holding them out to me. I don’t recognise them, so I hand them back.
Now that I have seen their faces, I won’t ever be able to forget them. It’s how my brain works; it catalogues every memory, down to the second. Give me a date and time, and I can tell you exactly what I was doing. It’s a pain in the ass most of the time, but I have trained myself to lock them away, so it’s not a constant reel of memories back to back all day, every day.
“Let me know if you have any hits on them,” I tell him. He nods solemnly, and I make my way down to the kitchen where everyone else has gathered. Petra is cooking, while Sinclair,Blayne, and Summer are balanced on the bar stools, and all the guys are sitting around the table. They all pause what they were doing, looking up as I enter.
I take a seat beside Kai. “Any news from Chester yet?” I ask.
“We don’t expect him to contact anyone. Maybe Creed or Jolie. But Marlow sent some files to Jimmie. I’m about to look at the pictures, but I just wanted him to run them first to see if he gets any hits,” Trace says.
I know it’s a lot for him to run faces; it will use every ounce of his energy. If he does this and we get a hit, he won’t be able to come with us—he will need to sleep—and I know he wants to be there when we find them.
“So what the fuck do we do now?” Laughn asks.
I turn to face him. His hair is unkempt, and he hasn’t bothered with contacts. For Laughn, that is a sign he isn’t coping. I don’t think any of us are. We are all useless right now, and there is nothing we can do about it. We should have pulled Paul in and given him a damn tracking device, but we were all so caught up with Jolie having the babies that it didn’t seem like a priority.
Hindsight is a fucking nuisance—as Jolie would say, coulda, shoulda, woulda. Didn’t.
“We wait for Jimmie to run the faces and go over Chester’s information.”
“Fuck Jimmie,” Boston growls. “Trace needs to get his ass up and use his gift to help our children.”
“Don’t you think I want to fucking help?!” Trace snaps, and Boston stands from his chair.
A glass flies over our heads and smashes against the wall. Small shards of glass ricochet and land on the table. “Will you two fucking stop?! Your fighting and bickering won’t bring those precious babies back, so you all need to stick your big-girl panties on and shut the fuck up. If you can’t work together,then get out of this damn house. That poor girl upstairs has just had her heart ripped out. This is every mother’s worst nightmare come true. So sit down and eat some food and figure it out because god knows you’re all way too intelligent for your own good,” Petra spits vehemently.
Half of us have our mouths hanging open, completely stunned by her declaration. I know she may be our housekeeper, but she is so much more than that to us.
“You tell them, girl,” Blayne says, pumping her fist in the air. Petra gives her a pointed look which has her closing her mouth.
“Same goes for you, girls. Eat, and then go upstairs to Laughn’s old wing and get some sleep or go home. You have babies that need looking after too. I don’t want to hear any arguments from anyone else. Also, your parents are on a flight back home as we speak, and Grandma Betty will be here in the morning. I convinced her there was nothing she could do right now. I also notified everyone, minus the she-bitch, because she doesn’t have the babies’ best interests at heart.”
