The Deputy and His Enforcer (Kincaid Pack #3) - Kiki Clark Page 0,109
on the poem.
Finally, they were done.
Marcus took a deep breath and read Mikel’s final message to the room. “I found the original Council charter, and your pack needs to see it. In case this is broken, I won’t share more, but this is huge. You’ll find it at the Red Horse Inn.”
There was silence for several long moments, then Bennett broke it by saying, “That’s it? All this secrecy over the Council charter? How in the hell will that help us?”
Tashmica was tapping at her phone and started cursing. “There are a ton of results for Red Horse Inn. How are we supposed to know which one to go to?”
He opened his mouth to reassure her, but Jamie piped up from the doorway. How he’d managed to sneak up on all of them, Marcus had no idea. “It’s called Longfellow’s Wayside Inn now.”
“Yes, it is. How did you—”
The others started questioning Jamie, but Marcus ignored them as he realized his gut was churning. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.
And then it hit him: Robson was scared.
Robson was hurt.
It took him a moment to realize the room had quieted and everyone was looking at him.
“What’s wrong?” Rick asked, already standing and coming closer.
“It’s… Robson,” Marcus gasped out, stumbling to his feet and patting at his pockets. Where was his phone? Had he left it in his office in his haste to get to the library? “I have to go. I have to find him.”
“Hold on a second.” Rick clapped a hand on the side of his neck, but for once it did nothing to calm Marcus. Instead, it cranked his anxiety higher. His mate was hurt, and Marcus needed to get to him right now.
Jamie stepped farther into the room, phone pressed to his ear. “Yes, sir. Thank you. We’ll be there as soon as we can.”
Who was he talking to? Why couldn’t Marcus hear who it was? Oh. His ears were ringing so loudly he couldn’t hear anything beyond the library. He took a couple of deep breaths, trying to calm himself down before he passed out. Robson needed him calm, not in the middle of a panic attack.
Tucking his phone away, Jamie gave him a grim look. “He’s okay. The sheriff said he was taken to the hospital in Dunport and will be fine. We can go and see him, and we’ll be able to bring him home as soon as he’s discharged in a couple hours.”
“What h-happened?” Marcus had to sit back down, one hand rubbing at the spot where he’d felt the sting even though there wasn’t any pain anymore. That must have been where Robson had been hurt.
“Um.” Jamie looked at Rick, his hesitation sending Marcus’s heart rate through the roof once more.
“What happened?” he asked more insistently.
“He was shot,” Rick said finally, his voice calm, but it wasn’t enough to stop Marcus from going light-headed. “A graze really, according to Craig.”
Craig? Oh, right, the sheriff. Marcus’s brain definitely wasn’t getting enough oxygen because it was taking forever for things to process.
Pushing to his feet, he swallowed the bile back down that was trying to crawl up his esophagus. “I need to get to the hospital. Excuse me.”
Dunport was twenty minutes away and the county seat. Robson drove there for every shift to pick up his deputy’s car, and it had never seemed that far.
Now it felt like he was on the other side of the country.
Rick was saying something behind him, but Marcus couldn’t focus beyond putting one foot in front of the other and getting to his mate.
He was shot kept circling in his brain over and over and producing worst-case scenarios of Robson lying in a pool of blood, of Robson gasping for breath, of Robson dying while Marcus was safe in the manor.
Suddenly Rick and Nico were on either side of him, bracing him as they went down the stairs. Their voices buzzed around him, but he couldn’t hear them, couldn’t hear anything. He wasn’t quite sure how, but from one moment to the next, he was on the steps and then in the back seat of an SUV.
Shaking his head, he tried to get his brain to engage. Nico was next to him, hand on his shoulder, Rick was driving, and Tashmica was in the front passenger seat, though she was twisted around to keep her eyes on him.
“I think he’s coming back around,” she murmured. “Sweetie, can you hear me?”