Page 40 of Dark Side of the Cloth (The Righteous 1)
“It’s okay. It’s just me.” Dean squatted down and gave her a gentle nudge with his shoulder. “Let me take care of the wound. You call 911.”
Yasmine didn’t move. She just stared at Mabel’s pale face.
“I can’t lose you too,” she broke down, the tears taking over as reality set in.
“Yasmine…Yazzy!” Her head whipped around to Dean. Focused on his eyes, she pulled herself out of the hysterical fog surrounding her. “She needs help now. I’ve got the wound. Call 911, now.” Dean’s calm, commanding voice had her moving into action. She stuffed her hand into her pocket and pulled out her phone. Yasmine pressed the emergency button, her nerves so frazzled she couldn’t remember her passcode.
“911, what’s your emergency?” The voice answered on the second ring.
“I’m at Mabel’s diner, and she’s been attacked. Oh my god, is the attacker still here?” She looked to Dean, and he shook his head no.
“Is the attacker still on sight?”
“No, he says no.”
“Who says no?”
“What the fuck does it matter who? Send me an ambulance!”
“Please try to remain calm, ma’am.”
Yasmine sucked in a sharp breath, ready to reach through the phone and shake the person on the other end. “This is my calm. The closest thing I have to a mother is on the floor dying! So don’t tell me to remain calm.”
Dean grabbed her shoulder, and she looked into his worried eyes. She nodded, knowing he was here and everything was going to be okay. Somehow he would make things okay. “I’m sorry, please just get here.”
“The ambulance is on route, and so are the police. What is your name?”
“My name is Yasmine Jacobs.”
The rest of the conversation was a blur. Yasmine couldn’t recall what she said after that. She was too focused on Mabel. Yasmine laced her fingers with Mable’s and refused to let her go when the paramedics arrived. Dean spoke to them. At least, she assumed he was. His lips were moving, but she couldn’t hear him.
“Yazzy, they need to take her to the hospital,” Dean said. His eyes lined up with hers.
“I don’t want to leave her. I don’t want her to be alone,” she whimpered.
“She won’t be. These paramedics are going to take good care of her, and we are going to follow right behind the ambulance. Come on, let them do their job.”
He wrapped his arm around her shoulders, and reluctantly she released Mabel’s hand. Tears streamed down her face as she watched them put her on a board and insert a line into her hand. The two men lifted Mabel onto a stretcher, and they headed out the door when Sheriff Daniels walked in.
“Yasmine, Dean, what happened?”
“The intruder and I fought, he ended up taking off out the back door, but I promised Yasmine we’d follow the ambulance. Can we talk later?”
“Here, come with me,” Sheriff Daniels said, leading them to his Sheriff’s car.
Yasmine didn’t care who took her to the hospital. They could fly for all she cared as she watched the ambulance pull away with its lights and sirens blaring. She rubbed over the sharp ache in her chest. The last time she watched an ambulance pull away like that was to take her mother to the hospital.
“Daddy!” Yasmine could hear his feet pounding down the stairs above her. She screamed for him again, the weight of her mother was too much, but she wasn’t going to give up. Her arms and legs shook with the effort to save her—this was all her fault. If Raquel had lived and she’d been taken, this wouldn’t be happening. She failed her family again.
Tears ran down her cheeks, the salty taste potent in her mouth.
“Oh dear god!” Her daddy stormed the rest of the way down the stairs, tripping on his housecoat and landing flat on his stomach.
“Daddy, help me.”
He scrambled to his feet and ran for the large cabinet that held all his tools for work. He pulled on the handle and cursed as it didn’t budge. He began throwing everything off the large work area until he found the key and ran back to the cabinet. Yasmine watched him out of the corner of her eye as he punched the cabinet.
“Come on, you stupid thing!”
