Chapter 46

Andrew

“You’re sure?” I asked, clenching the phone tighter.

“That’s what the hospital’s blood work shows us, Mr. Marx,” Officer Dean replied from the other end of the line.

I held my breath, tired of the painful inhales and exhales, and looked over at Raven. Nothing had changed since I last checked her over a minute before. Same machines hooked up to her. Same bruised hands. Same cast on the arm. Same closed eyes.

She looks dead.

I hated myself for that awful thought, but it couldn’t be helped. I’d carry the image of Danica’s lifeless body with me for the rest of my days. I didn’t want to have to carry a mirror one featuring my daughter as well.

“Things are looking good.” That’s what the doctor had said. There was a high chance Raven would wake up sometime in the next few days. Hopefully.

Part of what the doctors fed me seemed to be bullshit, carefully-polished phrases and words meant to stop me from becoming hysterical. I wasn’t a fool. I knew nothing was certain and that, at any moment, Raven’s health could take a turn for the worse.

“There was no alcohol in the young man’s system,” Officer Dean was saying. “But there was in Raven’s.”

“Huh?” I blinked at that, my back going straighter.

“It appears your daughter was the one who had a drink or two,” he said slowly, talking to me like I was a little kid. “If anything, Jason was being responsible by foregoing drinking.”

“Responsible?” I hissed. “You call what he did responsible? He ran off the road. He almost killed my daughter. You do know he’s a seventeen-year-old boy, officer? If he wasn’t drinking, he was doing something else. Did the hospital test for everything? Pot? Cocaine? And when the hell did they take this test? If he was drinking, he could have been sobering up by the time they got around to taking his fucking blood.”

“The hospital tests for most common drugs,” Officer Dean replied, an edge to his voice. He conveniently didn’t answer my other questions.

“What about pills? Huh? I shouldn’t have to tell you teenagers are taking drugs out of their parents’ medicine cabinets now. Think about how many kinds of ways there are to get high!”

“Mr. Marx, if you’re interested in continuing this conversation, I’m going to have to insist you calm down.”

I snorted, fire and soot rumbling deep in my chest like I was a dragon. I shut my damn mouth, though. I could do that for a few seconds.

“We talked to a witness who lives in the neighborhood the crash happened in. Her house is right across the street from where the car spun off the road, and she’s the one who called for help. According to her, a dog ran in front of the car, and Jason jerked to avoid hitting it. It was an accident, Mr. Marx. Nothing more.”

I cast another glance at Raven, praying she showed some sign of movement. I’d take anything. An overturned hand. A twitching eyebrow. But nothing had changed.

I sat on the edge of the chair in the corner of the room. I’d slept in it the night before, the blanket and pillow Lanie brought me only providing a small amount of comfort.

“Why are her injuries so much worse?” I questioned. “Jason has a broken arm, and Raven nearly fucking died. He must have intentionally turned the car so that her side hit the tree. He saved his own ass.”

A silence followed, and Officer Dean cleared his throat. “Just a minute,” he told someone else on his end.

“Officer Dean?” I pressed. “This is an important conversation we’re having here. I need your full attention.”

“And you have it,” he snapped back, “but I can’t offer you anything that doesn’t exist. The reason Raven has sustained worse injuries has to do with the airbags in the car. There were none on the passenger’s side. Only the driver’s had them.”

I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose. A painful throb had been between my brows the second I woke up, and it hadn’t abated all day.

“And you’ve talked to Jason,” I said slowly.

“We have his statement, Mr. Marx. What else do you expect us to do?”

“I expect you to do your fucking job,” I growled, conscious of the pounding in my temples and my shaking hands.

“This isn’t a murder case. The Seattle Police Department has real issues to attend to. Have a good night, Mr. Marx.”

I opened my mouth to retort, but he’d hung up.

“Shit.” I slammed the phone onto the small corner table, realized I’d done it too hard, and picked it back up to inspect the screen. No cracks. I needed to get a hold of myself, though. I didn’t like losing my temper. It was a trait no one wore well.

Sighing, I leaned over my knees and stared at Raven. Beyond her bed, the blinds were open enough to show some of the lights sparkling across the street.

Two days going into two nights. That’s how long I’d been at the hospital. In that time, nothing had changed.

How long had it been since the nurse came in to check on her? Twenty minutes? Thirty?

I considered pressing the call button to get someone in but finally decided I was being paranoid. Needing a distraction, I picked my phone back up and debated calling Lanie. She’d spent the night before in the hospital with me, sleeping in one of the cramped chairs, and I’d sent her home in the morning. Our romantic weekend had ended in a fashion quite the opposite of what I’d planned, and I didn’t want her to suffer more than she already had. For me, there was no leaving the hospital. Not yet.

But I figured it would be good for Lanie to get out of the place for a while.

Closing my eyes, I thought back to two nights before, when we’d been caught up in each other’s arms. Everything had seemed perfect like the whole world was finally bowing down to me. Things I’d never known I wanted were coming my way, namely, things Lanie provided.

I’d wanted to tell her I loved her that night, but I’d held back. It was too soon, and I didn’t want to ruin what we had. The drama with her dad had just happened, and things still felt a little delicate. I figured I had all the time I needed to tell her how I felt.

Opening my eyes, I looked at Raven, a reminder that time was an illusion. You always think there’s going to be more of it, but it often doesn’t work out that way. A person can make all the plans they wanted to, but in the end, their lives weren’t theirs to command. There was some higher force at play. Whether it moves with an intention or not, well, I was one of the last people who could answer that.

I only knew that shit happened, and life was short.

My wife’s death showed me that, but I failed to remember it for long.

It won’t be a lesson I easily forgot again.

My thumb hovered over Lanie’s name on the phone’s screen. I wanted to hear her voice just to remember that she still existed, that she was still there if I wanted to go to her. I was too afraid of what I might say, though, too afraid of breaking down. She hadn’t even known me two months yet. To her, I was still strong and capable, the man who built a billionaire-dollar corporation from the ground up, a person who took care of things and stuck to his word.

I didn’t want her to see me falling apart, to know I wasn’t as strong as I acted.

So, though it hurt like hell to say no to temptation, I put the phone back down. Going to Raven’s bedside, I smoothed some hair away from her forehead. Her eyelids were soft with no sign of movement beneath them.

“Raven,” I whispered. “It’s me. It’s Dad. Can you hear me, honey?”

My throat tightened before I could say any more, and I bit down on my lip. That strangled cry that wanted to come out wasn’t going to. Not on my watch.

After a few deep breaths, I tried again. “It’s going to be okay, Raven. You’ll wake up soon. And I’ll make whoever is responsible for this pay.”

I didn’t say the name of the perp, but we both knew who had put her in that hospital bed. And I meant what I said. If Jason did have something to do with Raven’s injuries—and I was almost certain he did—he needed to brace himself for what was coming next.