“I’m more concerned about my in-laws and my wife,” Brian answered wearily. He knocked on the door. “Jake, it’s Brian. I’m coming in.”
A couple of remaining reporters tried to peek inside as Brian slipped through the door, but he quickly closed it before they could see anything. Brian walked up to Randy, who sat in her usual spot—a chair beside the bed. Her head and shoulders were reclined on the side of the bed, and she had hold of Lloyd’s hand, while Jake sat on the opposite side, holding Lloyd’s other hand. He glanced at Brian with dark, bloodshot eyes. “Did you get rid of those sonsofbitches outside the door?”
“Most of them.”
“When you go back out, you tell them that I’m going to take a look myself soon, and if there is one stranger standing out there, he’ll be shot.”
Brian sighed, touching Randy’s shoulder. “I’ll tell them.”
Randy looked up at Brian with eyes puffy from crying. “Brian! How is Evie?” She got to her feet and embraced him.
“She’s better. I held her as she slept for a while. That helped.”
“At least she has you,” Randy told him as he let go of her.
“I’m worried about you and Jake. You both need to get out of here and get some real rest and get some food in your stomachs.”
“I’m not going anywhere!” Jake spoke up.
Brian sighed, keeping hold of Randy’s arm. “Jake, you have to believe Lloyd will get through this, and if he does, he’s going to need his father for a lot of things. You won’t be any good to him if you continue not to eat or sleep. You’re killing yourself.”
“That obviously doesn’t matter.”
“Doesn’t it? Don’t forget you have a beautiful daughter who needs and loves you. You’re breaking her heart behaving this way, let alone her watching you blow a man’s brains out. And you have grandchildren who will need their grandfather, especially if Lloyd doesn’t make it. And you have a wife who needs you. You aren’t the only one suffering, Jake.”
Jake let go of Lloyd’s hand and rubbed at the back of his neck. “I should have seen it coming. I should have spotted that sonofabitch sneaking in! This all comes back to the same thing…me! Jake Harkner—the man who brings trouble and heartache every place he goes!”
“It only goes as far as that bastard Mike Holt.”
“Who hated me and Lloyd. We knew he could be around. I never should have taken it for granted that just because it was a closed-invitation event that Holt couldn’t have found a way in.” He rose, picking up his gun and walking to a window. “All the things I’ve been through in this life, I should have died a hundred times over, yet here I stand while it’s my son who’s dying, and my daughter lies in the next room, suffering ungodly memories after seeing one of those bastards who raped her. And all…because of who her father is!” He turned and glared at Brian. The Jake he’d become gave Brian chills. “You should have let me die of pneumonia back at that prison all those years ago.”
“I saved you for Evie!” Brian barked. “My wife loves and needs her father. She thinks the world of you, Jake. Lloyd isn’t your only child, and you know what a soft-hearted angel she is. It’s killing her, the way you’re behaving. She’s been in here with her brother, constantly praying, not just for him, but for you. She hasn’t said much, because you’re like a stick of old, damp dynamite right now, the kind that explodes way too easily. I don’t like what this is doing to my wife after what she and I have already been through, especially in her condition. I don’t often speak up to you, but I feel I have to now, because Evie wants to come in here and talk to you, Jake. She won’t sleep well until she does, so you’re going to let her talk to you, and you are not going to behave like the bastard outlaw you used to be! You’re going to behave like the father you are now—the good man she still calls Daddy.”
Their gazes held, and for a moment, Brian thought he’d gone too far. This was not the Jake Harkner he knew or had ever known. He’d never been around Jake when he was a man wanted for bank robbery and gun running and God knew what else. At the moment, he couldn’t imagine that his mother-in-law had seen through the man he was looking at now. He’d only known the Jake that Evie worshipped as her father, the Jake who loved with great passion—almost too much passion. That’s what had brought him to where he was now, a man devastated by the possibility of losing the son who was his life’s blood.