“Look at me,” Spider says. The softness of his voice takes me aback as much as the concern I swear I see in his eyes. “You all right?”
I nod, wrapping my hand around his wrist, feeling the trembling in my body stop as his presence grounds me.
I only half register that Diesel is in the room now. He sits on the bed with Penny and Ben, wrapping Ben in his arms and holding Penny’s hand. I hear Striker and Reaper talking in hushed voices out in the hall with Pip and Dee. I catch Gary’s name once or twice, and they say the name as if it’s a curse.
“I’m good. It’s just a cut.” I’m still pressing the towel to my head.
“What happened?” Spider takes the towel from me, glances at the blood on it, and then looks over the cut on my temple.
“He pistol-whipped me. It’s not a big deal.” I take the towel from him and press it to my head again.
The situation could have been so much worse. How close had I come to getting shot? How close had Penny come to losing her son, or her own life? Anger with Gary and guilt for his escape crushes me. “I tried to stop him,” I add lamely.
“Of course you did.” The light in Spider’s eyes seems to go out, and his hands drop from my face.
The bite of anger in his voice throws me.
“Can’t leave you for five fucking minutes, can I? Fucking Wildcat.” His face suddenly closes off. He knifes to his feet and whirls from me, marching across the room to the door.
“Spider…” I feel as if someone has reached into my chest and is crushing my heart in a tight fist.
He ignores me, wrenching the door open and stalking from the room.
The ride back to Casper’s probably only takes less than an hour, but it feels ten times longer. Pip drives the van with Dee in the front seat while I ride in the back alone. I keep the cloth pressed to the side of my head, longing for something to deaden the throbbing in my skull, but Dee wants Axe to examine me before I take anything.
There is a bright side to the pain, I suppose. It makes it harder to dwell on the ordeal with Gary, which threatens to wash over me in a consuming wave. It makes it easier not to consider what could have happened to little Ben or Penny. Or me. If I hadn’t been able to trip Gary, would he have gotten a hold of Ben, even with Pip in the hall? If Gary had decided to shoot Penny or me…
She’d be dead now, and so would I. There could have been no way for either of us to escape the bullet if he’d fired at us.
I let my head drop back, closing my eyes and pushing the thought aside. It doesn’t do me any good to think like that. But putting the memory aside only drives my thoughts toward Spider, toward the way he’d stomped out without a word of concern or comfort.
Abandonment twists my insides. Instead of concerned, he’d been angry. The accusation I’d seen on his face before he’d left imprints itself on the inside of my brain, leaving behind a confusion that sends my thoughts spinning, and a sting that eats at my heart like a corrosive poison.
Spider loves Ben and Penny, and I know he’d be crushed if anything happened to them, so why would he be angry at me for this? His reaction makes no sense.
The van finally stops, and the front doors open and then thump shut. Voices drift from outside—Pip’s, Dee’s, and Axe’s—but I can’t make out what they say. Pip unlocks and opens the back doors.
“Took a good one on the head, eh?” Axe says, taking my hand and helping me out of the vehicle. “Come this way.” He steers me toward a side door to the clubhouse and down a set of steps to the basement, where Cap was probably taken when he was shot.
While Axe examines my head, he has me go over everything that happened. He doesn’t think I have a concussion, but it turns out I need five stitches, and he insists I take it easy, not working for a couple of days.
Pip and Dee both wait while he works, Dee agreeing to give me the time off, no matter how hard I try to tell her or the doctor