anticipated. Because at some point in the past twenty-four hours together, I’d started to think of him as a whole lot more than just the guy who’d kidnapped me. I’d started to think of him as a man I cared for…a lot.
Which was exactly why I was sitting here now, holding his hand in an ambulance that was darting through the early evening traffic of Reno, sirens screaming above us as we tried to get to the hospital before anything bad happened to Jack. Well, anything worse. And definitely before he just up and died on me.
I’d never been good at medical stuff, but I could tell from the way the EMT was rushing around the small area and muttering to himself that things were bad. Jack already had several tubes attached to him, and the guy had injected one tube full of something that I assumed was either to fight infection or slow down the bleeding—or maybe just to cut through the pain—as well as packing a whole wad of cotton into the wound and taping it down like they were actually trying to keep his heart from beating right out of his skin.
Maybe they were. Maybe that was what was about to happen. I’d always heard that your heart wasn’t where you thought it was. Could it be that the bullet to the shoulder had actually nicked his heart? Or maybe the bullet entered in one place and got deflected by a bone or something and went down and hit his lung. Maybe it had gone right through his heart. Maybe he was already dying, and it was just a matter of time until the whole deal was formalized.
God, maybe I should actually ask questions instead of getting all riled up and jumping to the worst possible conclusions. One gunshot wound and I’d turned into a woman who couldn’t think straight. That had never been me, and now certainly wasn’t the time to give in to those sorts of urges.
“How bad is it?” I asked, glaring at the EMT and trying like hell to keep my voice steady.
For some reason, though, my voice just wouldn’t straighten out. Instead, it came out a wobbly mess.
The EMT gave me a sympathetic glance and then looked down at Jack. “Bad enough, though we got to him early, and that’s always a good thing. The bullet passed right through a rib and punched a hole in his lung, so he’s having trouble breathing, and we can’t do much about that in the ambulance.”
Trouble breathing. Hole in the lung. Right.
“But when we get to the hospital, they can fix it there?” I asked, trying to keep my mind moving forward. This wasn’t the time to dwell on the bad things. This was the time to get answers. Figure out how we were going to fix this.
Another doubtful look from the EMT.
“They’ll try,” he said. “If we get him there quickly enough, they should be able to. It might not be as bad as it seems, either. Might just be a nick. They won’t know for sure until they open him up and start to repair him. Hope he has some good insurance.”
I just stared at the EMT, words failing me. Because he was right; if Jack had a hole in his lung that needed repairing, then he was going to need massive surgery—plus, I assumed, some really extensive physical therapy afterward, and probably quite some time in a hospital to recover. Medications for the pain and to fight infection. Blood transfusions. He was going to need good insurance to even be approved for a surgery like that.
The problem being that Jack was a criminal. And I just didn’t think the position of kidnapper came with full medical benefits.
Chapter 27
Alice
“And I’m telling you, I’ll be paying the bill. Whatever it is,” I told the receptionist in the emergency room, keeping my voice calm and steady. It was the fifth time I’d said it, though, and I was starting to get really, really annoyed at having to repeat myself.
“But ma’am, the bill could come to over a hundred thousand,” the woman said—for the fifth time. “And without insurance—”
I pounded my fist down on the counter, completely finished with this conversation.
“I don’t care,” I said firmly. I reached into my purse—which I’d recovered from the van before we got in the ambulance—yanked out my wallet, took out a credit card, and slid it onto the counter.
“Run the card for the full amount,” I said. “Plus any