“She’s in with the doctor now,” Honey told him. “They’re going to take her into surgery.”
“Surgery? What the fuck happened?” he demanded. “What caused all that blood?”
Calm down.
Like fuck. He didn’t want to calm down.
Zander walked in wearing just a T-shirt and there was a suspicious stain on his jeans.
“What. The. Fuck. Happened.”
“See? Told you he would lose his mind,” Honey crowed to Ammo, who just shook his head and handed her twenty bucks.
“I am not losing my mind,” he managed to say calmly.
Well, sort of calmly.
“I simply want you all to stop giving me the run-around and tell me what the fuck is going on!”
All right, so he might be getting a bit loud. But he was not losing his mind.
Nope. Not him.
“Easiest twenty bucks I ever won,” Honey said gleefully.
“Is this funny to you all?” he asked in a low voice. “I walked into that trailer to find stuff smashed, blood on the floor, and no Devi. Is it any wonder that I’m upset.”
Honey grimaced. “Fuck. You’re right. Sorry.”
“It’s our way of coping, man,” Ammo said. “Sometimes you see such bad shit that it’s joke or lose your mind. But there was nothing funny about what happened to Devi. “
“Nothing at all. In fact, when you decide to go hunting for the scum that hurt her, we will all be coming with you,” Zander told him as Honey handed the twenty dollars back.
He didn’t mean to make her feel bad. Hayes understood that terrible things could change you, haunt you, unless you found a way to cope.
Zander’s team was a strange bunch. Quirky and odd. But they were all decent people.
“Hunting? Who are we hunting?” he asked.
“We don’t know,” Zander said. “She wouldn’t tell us and we didn’t want to press her too hard.”
Jesus. She must have been in a bad state.
Do not throw up.
“Tell me everything.”
“Honey and I were just going to scout around,” Zander told him. “There was no movement inside the trailer but all the lights were on. I peeked in a window and saw Devi on the floor. And she wasn’t moving.”
Hayes sucked in a hard breath. The world around him started to grow dark.
“Maybe you should sit down,” Honey said with concern.
He shook his head. “Keep going. Tell me.”
“We decided not to wait and go in,” Zander said. “She regained consciousness while we were discussing how best to move her.”
“Her injuries?” he managed to get out.
