Chapter 4
“You have the worst timing in the world,” Logan growled at his twin after checking the caller ID and taking the call. His gaze was fixed on August. Her gaze avoided meeting his as she pulled up her sweats before moving to the other side of the room. But Logan saw the flush to her cheeks and the slightly dazed expression in her eyes before she turned her back on him to finish straightening her clothing.
“Interrupted something, did I?” Rourke drawled.
“Mind your own fucking business,” Logan snarled.
“I’d much rather hear all about your ‘fucking’ business,” his brother taunted. “But another time,” he added in a hard voice. “We found Jenna.”
“Alive?”
“Barely,” Rourke snapped. “I’m at the hospital with her now.”
“Is she—”
“I said she’s alive,” Rourke bit out. “Now get over here as soon as you can.” He told Logan the name of the hospital. “Bring August with you,” he added evenly.
“Rourke—”
“Just bring her, okay?” His brother sighed. “Don’t let her out of your sight, not even for a minute.”
“What the hell?” Logan glanced over to where August was now staring at him with huge and apprehensive eyes. Telling Logan that his side of the conversation probably didn’t sound too reassuring.
“Watch your back,” his twin warned before ending the call.
Logan slipped his cell phone back into his jeans pocket before turning to August.
“Just tell me that Jenna is alive,” she demanded shakily, her hands visibly trembling despite the way she gripped them tightly together in front of her.
“She’s alive,” he confirmed, not wanting to add anything else.
Not knowing anything else. Rourke had been annoyingly vague during their conversation.
Besides, Logan needed to see Jenna for himself to give an honest opinion on her condition. Especially considering August’s physical reaction to his last bit of honesty.
He also needed to speak to Rourke and find out why the hell his brother had told him to watch his back and not let August out of his sight.
The latter seemed to imply that August might be more involved in Jenna’s disappearance than they had previously thought.
Or that she was in danger herself.
Either way, Logan intended to keep her by his side until he had more details
August hated hospitals, both the smell and the clinical atmosphere of the long white corridors leading to the many and impersonal wards.
Mainly because the last time she had been in one had been four years ago, when she sat at her father’s bedside watching him die. Her mother had been killed outright in the crash, but her father had lingered for three days longer before he also died without regaining consciousness.
She’d wanted to ask Logan for more information on Jenna, but he had insisted she needed to get dressed so they could leave for the hospital as soon as possible.
August hadn’t dawdled in dressing, but she had come to a halt in front of the mirror on her dressing table when she saw the colorful bruise Logan had left on the skin between her neck and shoulder. On purpose? As that mark of possession? Or had he, like her, simply been carried away by the moment?
Whichever it was, August deliberately put on a thin green sweater to cover that mark, along with faded blue jeans.
She had thought Logan might be more talkative when he drove the two of them to the hospital in his dark gray SUV, but one glance at his grimly set features in the light given off by the dashboard was enough to discourage August from saying anything on any subject.
Logan no longer looked like the man who had seduced her into a puddle of want and need in her apartment such a short time ago. Instead, he gave off a cold alertness, both during the drive and since they had entered the hospital. August stood silently at his side while he enquired at the front desk and was told that Jenna had been admitted to a private room on one of the wards.
Not that August had any real inclination to discuss their intimacy either. Jenna, and seeing for herself that her friend really was okay, was all that mattered to her right now. August had already lost too many people she cared about. She didn’t want to lose another one.
There was a policemen standing on one side of the doorway into the room where they’d been told Jenna was, along with another man standing on the other side of the door, this one wearing a black suit, white shirt, and dark tie.
“Logan,” he acknowledged when they reached him.
He nodded. “Ben.”
“Rourke’s inside.” He turned to the policeman. “This is Logan Steele and Miss August Harvey, Jenna’s flatmate.”
Logan looked at the policeman. “Okay if we go in?”
“Your name and Miss Harvey’s are on the approved list of visitors, yes, sir.” He moved to open the door for them to enter.
Logan let August go in ahead of him. “Steady.” He took a firm grip of her arm as she gave a sob and reeled back on her heels.
Because one glance across the room and August could see that Jenna was far from okay.
Not in any way, by any stretch of the imagination could Jenna ever be called that right now.
August barely noticed Rourke’s presence in the room, her breathing shallow as she stared at the woman in the bed. She concentrated on the saline drip feeding into one of Jenna’s hands and the oxygen tubes in her nose, in an effort to stop herself from actually collapsing onto the floor.
Because it wasn’t either of those things that made August’s stomach churn and her heart almost stop. Jenna’s face, her beautiful and vivacious face, was barely recognizable, even the fiery red of her hair a tangled and bloody mess. Both of Jenna’s eyes were swollen, her cheeks were covered in deep purple and black bruises, and her nose still had blood in the nostrils. Her bottom lip was split and puffy.
August couldn’t see the rest of her friend’s body because she was wearing a blue-and-white-check hospital gown beneath a single white sheet. But Jenna’s hands, always so perfectly manicured and the nails painted to match whatever she was wearing, were a mess. A couple of the fingers on each hand had been put into splints, telling August they were probably broken, and several of Jenna’s long nails were broken. There were also livid red marks around both wrists, as if Jenna had been restrained when the other injuries were being inflicted.
“Oh God, Jenna…” August’s legs did buckle at the thought of the beating Jenna must have taken to look like this, and she reached out blindly for the chair Rourke quickly placed beneath her so that she sat rather than fell down. “Who—who did—did this to her?” Her teeth were chattering so much, she could barely speak. “Why?” she choked.
Logan stepped behind the chair August sat in before placing his hands reassuringly on her shoulders. “Rourke?”
“We don’t know yet,” his twin said gently to August. “Not for certain.”
Her gaze flicker toward him. “What does that mean?”
Rourke shrugged. “Someone found Jenna dumped in an alley behind a restaurant. She still had her handbag with her, and her purse containing her credit cards and money were still inside. Apparently, she was still conscious when the police got there, just incapable of moving because she was in so much pain. By the time I got to the hospital she’d been given strong meds for the pain, so I haven’t been able to speak to her myself yet. But the police said Jenna kept repeating, ‘It wasn’t me. It wasn’t me. Tell August, it wasn’t me.’”
August’s eyes flooded with the tears that fell freely down her cheeks. “I don’t know what that means.”
Logan had a feeling that he did.
The expression on Rourke’s face and his earlier warning to Logan to not let August out of his sight said his brother thought he knew what Jenna’s warning had meant too.
He now believed Rourke’s earlier warning to mean he had wanted Logan to protect August. Although Logan would need to speak with Rourke privately before he could be sure that was the case.
“Luckily, Jenna also had a piece of paper in her purse with Atticus’s telephone number on it to call in case of an emergency,” Rourke continued. “The police phoned Atticus, and then he contacted me, as I’m the one on call for Steele Protectors tonight. I came straight to the hospital. But that’s really all I know so far.”
“Damage?” Logan growled.
“Multiple bruises. Defensive wounds on her hands. Abrasions on her wrists where she was tied up. A broken cheekbone, also a couple of ribs and two fingers on each hand.” Rourke related those injuries without emotion or inflection but that didn’t stop Logan from seeing the fury in his brother’s eyes.
Logan’s fixed gaze silently asked the question that his brother hadn’t yet answered. Rourke gave a reassuring shake of his head, and Logan heaved an inward sigh of relief. Jenna hadn’t been physically violated.
He snorted. “She’s going to be so pissed when she wakes up and we tell her she can’t play the violin.”
August looked up at him with slightly unfocused eyes. “Jenna doesn’t play the violin— Ah, you’re one of those people who likes to make jokes when they’re worried or upset,” she realized dully.
Upset? Logan wasn’t upset. He was fucking furious!
If August wasn’t here, he would most probably have slammed a fist through one of the walls. Not helpful, he knew that, but it might have eased some of the tension and adrenaline surging through his body right now.
Whoever had done this to Jenna was going to pay, and pay dearly.
Jenna’s mother, the best friend of Logan’s mother, had been living on her own in Ireland when Jenna was born, and no father had ever shown an interest in his daughter. Unfortunately, Sarah, Jenna’s mother, had died of cancer when Jenna was only eight, after which Jenna had come to live with Logan’s parents in London.
Suddenly finding themselves with what amounted to a younger sister had been a bit of a shock to the six Steele brothers, but, as they all lived away from home by that time, not too much of one.
It had been twenty-three-year-old Atticus that Jenna had attached herself to the most. As might be expected, their eldest brother had moaned and groaned at having an eight-year-old girl dogging his every footstep whenever he visited home, but they all knew that secretly, Atticus adored Jenna.
If Logan and Rourke were furious about this attack on their adopted sister, then their surly eldest brother was going to be absolutely pissed. And a seriously pissed Atticus was scary beyond belief.
“He’s on his way back from the States right now,” Rourke supplied dryly. “He was getting on the first plane out of Atlanta back to the UK after speaking with me. He should be here in the morning.”
Identical twins Logan and Rourke might be as different in their choice of clothes as chalk and cheese, but inwardly, they had a rapport that very often didn’t require any words to convey what they were thinking.
Logan nodded, his immediate concern for August, who hadn’t said another word since his stupid violin remark he had hoped might alleviate some of the tension on the room. It hadn’t.
He stepped around the chair to go down on his haunches in front of August. She was pale, the freckles on her nose more noticeable against that pallor, her eyes dark green pits of pain. “I know the injuries sound and look awful,” he soothed. “But they’re all superficial—”
“Superficial!” August shot up out of the chair so quickly, she almost knocked Logan over. “I barely recognize her.” Her voice broke emotionally as she moved to stand beside the bed and placed one of her hands gingerly on Jenna’s shoulder, obviously unsure whether or not even that light touch might hurt the unconscious woman.
“The swelling will go down and the bruises will fade, and the bones will knit back together,” Rourke reassured. “She’ll look better in a couple of days, and in a couple of months, she’ll be as good as new.”
Physically, perhaps, but Logan and Rourke both knew it was the emotional damage Jenna had suffered that would last the longest. The constant living in fear for her safety, that she might be taken again, which would linger the longest. Possibly forever.
Logan straightened. “Will you be okay here on your own for a few minutes?” he asked August. “I need to go outside and have a private word with Rourke.”
“Fine.” August barely seemed aware of the two of them leaving the room as she continued to look at her injured friend, those tears still raining unchecked down August’s pale cheeks.
“Spill it,” Logan bit out as soon as the two men were outside in the corridor and the door to the room was closed behind them.
Rourke moved farther down the corridor, away from the policeman and Ben, one of their own bodyguards on the payroll of Steele Protectors. “I wasn’t completely honest in there. Jenna was awake, briefly, when I arrived,” he admitted. “I’m guessing, as the police haven’t questioned August yet, that Jenna didn’t tell them everything.” He gave a pained frown. “Jenna told me, ‘Tell August, warn her, it wasn’t me they wanted. It was her.’”
Just as Logan had suspected.