Page 8 of Crucified By the Dark
The thought of Dean had him wondering what the hell had happened. Jeremy hadn’t seen Dean in what felt like forever. Dean hadn’t communicated what he wanted Jeremy to do with the landscaping business, his and Yasmine’s house, or anything else. He was simply gone.
He’d gone to work for Dean for a week or two and was coming down the street as Dean, Yasmine, and the kids all piled into a massive black stretch limo that looked like one you would see coming and going from the airports. The limo drove past him, but the windows were so dark that he couldn’t see inside.
Concerned, he pulled into the house’s driveway and went inside, but everything was normal—no sign of a struggle, blood, note, or anything else. The guy was a trained killer and could take care of himself. If he hadn’t wanted to go somewhere, there would be a sign. Wouldn’t there? Wouldn’t he have called one of the other members, like Morry? It wasn’t like her took his Hummer. It was still parked in the locked garage with a tarp on it, just the way Dean left it.
Shrugging it off, he figured Dean and Yasmine had planned a family trip to travel the world and forgot to tell him. He took the list of clients that needed work done and set off to continue, and that was how it remained. Every two weeks, he went to Kansas for three to four days, completed the contracts he knew needed to be done, and took any messages off the machine to answer before coming back here.
It was getting to the point where he should tell Morry. He would give Dean one more chance, and if he wasn’t there again when he visited, he would tell her and see if she was concerned.
The thing was, he wasn’t sure he should bother coming back to the club anymore. It hurt to be here and see Morry with someone else. With her never glancing his way, never noticing what she meant to him. Turning down any little advance with a metaphysical slap on the wrist. His anger had also reached its boiling point. Every time the thought of someone else touching Morry snuck into his mind, all he could picture was slitting their throat and burying them in a grave in the desert. He knew all the good spots now.
Morry twitched in her sleep, and her hand tightened on his as she mumbled the wordno. That was new. As many trips like this as he’d been on, he never saw her dream. She twitched again, and this time, she grabbed his hand hard.
“TK,” she mumbled.
“Shh, you’re safe. I’m here,” he whispered to the top of her head before daring to kiss her. Closing his eyes, he breathed in her scent. It was sweet and feminine and always had a dash of diesel and oil mixed in. Fuck, he loved that scent. Could he bottle it and spray everything with it?
“It’s okay, I promise. I’m not going anywhere,” Jeremy said, and his heart swelled as her twitching lessened until she relaxed against him. Morry cuddled a little closer, and it was all he could do not to wrap her up in his arms.
He didn’t know who TK was, but he felt it had to do with her time overseas. That was a topic she never talked about. It was literally a no-fly zone. She changed the subject or shut down. The only thing she would ever say was it was the place where she’d gotten the scar on her face.
Most of the time, she seemed totally at ease with the long gash that stretched almost the entire length of her jawbone to the corner of her mouth. But when she thought no one was watching, Jeremy would see her run her fingers along the scar, her face dark with pain. That look on her face was something he couldn’t understand but wanted to. Jeremy wanted to understand every part of her the way she did for him, how she seemed to know when he needed a firm word or a kind touch. It was a gift…She was a gift.
Jeremy didn’t even care that a big portion of her life she wasn’t allowed to share. He wouldn’t have known about Wolf if they hadn’t gotten the emergency call. The entire Righteous organization was beyond secretive, but it was her thing, so he went along with it without question.
The metal doors at the end of the hall opened, and the sound had Morry sitting up straight like a gun went off. She looked around before finding his eyes and then looked down at their hands. He swallowed hard, expecting awhat the hell do you think you’re doingremark, but instead, she ran her thumb over his hand before pulling away to greet the doctor coming down the hallway.
He rose to stand beside her to listen in.
“So, what’s the word,” Morry asked.
The doctor pulled off the surgical hat he was wearing and crossed his arms over his chest. “Wolf is in a medically induced coma. He hit his head pretty good, and he had some swelling. Of course, we won’t know for certain until we wake him up, but he is responding well to the medication, and I’ve alleviated the pressure that was building.”
“How long will he need to be in the coma,” Morry asked as she chewed her bottom lip.
“Hard to say for certain, but if he continues to progress well, it could be a few days, maybe a week. He does have some other injuries that are not life-threatening but should be mentioned.”
“Okay, lay it on me.”
“Wolf had a gunshot wound to his arm, but it was a through and through and missed the bone. He had a dislocated knee, which I’ve reset, but he will need rehabilitation as the muscles and ligaments were partially torn. There was bruising down the left side of his body, but so far, no internal bleeding that I could find. Three fractured ribs. Luckily, none of them broke or shifted. Also, his right elbow and hand have fractures like he was trying to hold on to something and took a blow to the area, or it was simply the force of the rolling vehicle. I would say he was lucky, but when he wakes up, he may not think so. He's got a minimum of six weeks of healing before he will be up and around.”
Morry snickered. “You don’t know Wolf. He’ll be up and training in three tops, if not sooner, if he can get away with it. I saw him carry Duke over his shoulders and across a desert for miles with a gunshot wound in his shoulder. Trust me. The man is used to pain. He will cause us a shit ton of hassles.”
“Will he remember the crash,” Jeremy asked, and the doctor shrugged.
“Hard to tell. The hit to Wolf’s head may not hinder memory, but everyone processes and heals differently. If it was extremely traumatic, he may suppress it or wake up screaming about it.”
“Okay, when can we move him, and how is Duke?” The doctor also doubled as the Legion’s vet.
“Luckily, we won’t have to worry too much about jostling with the special suspension, so it’s safe in forty-eight to seventy-two hours. As for Duke, he was pretty banged up, and I had to repair the bone in his right leg,” he paused. “That’s strange.”
“What is,” Jeremy asked at the same time as Morry.
“I saw the old bullet wound on Wolf, and it was Duke’s left side that got hit with a bullet at the same time, I’m presuming. Now they are in a wreck together, and Wolf’s right knee and Duke’s right leg are injured. Just odd. You would think the two were connected.” Shrugging, the doctor turned around to walk away. “Oh, and you better come with me. Duke is awake and whining. I don’t think he’s happy about being separated from Wolf.”
Morry smirked and followed Doc Henry, then stopped to look back. “Are you coming?”
“Do you want me to?”
