He looked at me and I could tell he was a mix of mad and scared.
“I did the best I could but I recommend going to a hospital. Though, I’m assuming that won’t happen. Whatever you choose, we never met.” He stood as he finished his words.
“Thank you, Harry,” Grace said as he placed a kiss on her cheek.
Then he was gone.
“Rest. If I hear anything new, I’ll let you know.”
“I can’t do that,” I told her.
“I promise to warn you before I call the police on you. How does that sound?”
“Fair enough,” I breathed out with a sigh. It wasn’t like I had much of a choice. I’d be lucky if I made it out to the street before collapsing. Plus, I had a good idea that there were still cops around. I didn’t know how long I’d been out, but I imagined they hadn’t finished processing the crime scene yet. There was quite a lot.
One huge fucking mess.
That was what this had turned into.
But I found her.
The whole thing had been unexpected and strange.
As much as I wanted to downplay the feelings that shot through me the moment she looked into my eyes, I realized that I couldn’t. And it certainly wasn’t anything that I felt when she’d been nine. I didn’t know what I expected when I found her. I didn’t see her as a woman in my mind. Not even after I’d seen that picture. But the moment it all became real right in front of me, it was like it slapped me in the face. She was a grown woman now. She was twenty years older and it was almost like my brain couldn’t even put the two together. Like the nine-year-old girl I’d lost wasn’t the same as the twenty-nine-year-old one I’d found.
Fuck, my body hurt.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been this bad off. I never got rattled on a job. I was fucking good and never got taken off-guard. I suppose that the situation wasn’t really a normal one though.
Actually, nothing like this had ever happened to me before. Not even fucking close.
I fumbled in my pockets searching for my phone. It’d be a miracle if the thing still worked after that beating I took. The screen was cracked to hell but it still lit up. The combination of my blurred vision and the spiderweb lines made it hard to see what was going on. I tapped my messages. I instantly saw that I had a few from Hunt but I couldn’t really read anything.
Oh, now he was trying to get a hold of me. A little fucking late. I was ready to call him back and tell him that I beat him to it.
“It looks like I’m an even better tracker than you are,” I said as soon as I heard him pick up.
“I didn’t know you had a job,” he said. The speaker on my phone was fucked up and his words seemed to echo and crackle.
“I take it you’re here, then?”
“I followed her to the police station. I’ve been trying to get up with you for hours.”
“She’s still there?” I asked with anger laced in my tone.
“As far as I can tell, yeah. What the hell happened? When I saw you go over that railing, I was sure you were a goner.”
“Don’t even ask. Shit went sideways. I didn’t know she was there. Well, I didn’t know the woman was her until I got up close.”
“Not like you to get in that kind of trouble,” he said and I could have sworn he sounded like he was disappointed in me.
“Yeah, it turned out to be more than I bargained for.” Or something like that.
“You fucked up,” he said pointedly.
“I saved her, didn’t I? Target is down. That’s all that matters.” Even as I said those words I knew it was bullshit.
“So, how bad is it?”
