It was pitch black outside, which meant it was probably the middle of the night. There was no way I was going back to sleep.
I still couldn’t believe Rafe was gone. I mean, I would get over the tracker thing. Was he worried that I wouldn’t?
And if I’d said those things to him, that I didn’t love him and I wanted him to leave, I was obviously out of my mind. I didn’t mean them. Didn’t he know that I didn’t mean them?
I had always thought that he understood me so well. How could he not know what his leaving would do to me?
Didn’t he know how much I needed him?
“Knock, knock,” a soft voice said at my door. “I heard you were awake.”
“Whitney?”
She came into my room wearing a hospital gown and a bathrobe, pushing a small, wheeled, see-through bin that had her baby inside. “Auntie Genesis, meet Marco Rafael.”
The baby was wrapped up in a blanket like a burrito, his little head covered with a blue knit cap. “He’s so small!”
“That’s what happens when they come early,” she told me, putting him right next to my bed so I could see him. “Fortunately, he was strong enough and far enough along that he didn’t even have to go in the NICU.” I reached out to touch the skin on his cheek with my fingertips, the only parts of my hand that weren’t bandaged up. His skin was the softest thing I had ever felt.
“He’s so beautiful,” I breathed, looking up at Whitney.
“I know.” She smiled, sitting down in the chair that Aunt Sylvia had occupied earlier.
“Why did you choose that name?”
“We didn’t quite make it to the hospital, although Rafe did his best. Marco delivered this little guy in the backseat of Rafe’s SUV. I don’t recommend childbirth without an epidural, by the way. Anyway, I was so hopped up on pain that I demanded he be named Marco Rafael after the two of them, and Christopher was so relieved we were okay that he was fine with it. So Marco it is.” She put her hand on top of little Marco’s chest.
I started to cry.
“What is it?”
“Rafe’s gone. He left me. Everybody leaves me,” I said, in between sobs.
She handed me the tissue box next to my bed. I couldn’t blow my nose, but I could wipe away the tears and the snot.
“He blames himself, you know.”
I tried to put the tissues in the trash can, but missed. “What? Why?”
“Both Rafe and Marco blame themselves. Marco had promised to watch over you, and Rafe said he’d never let anything happen to you. You should have seen them after they brought you in. They were both a mess.”
“What happened?” The last thing I remembered was being put in the trunk. Everything after that was a total blur.
And if we had lived anywhere else, Whitney wouldn’t have known, but by now every single person in our town had probably told and retold this story and had started adding embellishments to it. “After they dropped me off at the hospital, they got a phone call from the sheriff. Your 911 call got through, but they couldn’t hear anything. They managed to triangulate the location of your cell phone, and they found Laddie and your broken phone and your truck. Rafe and Marco raced out of here, but your kidnappers had a couple of hours’ head start.”
Little Marco yawned, drawing her attention for a minute, and she smiled a serene, motherly smile. “Anyway, they completely broke every imaginable traffic law, calling the rest of the security team to come with them. Police tried to pull them over for speeding, but they didn’t stop. They called the local stations to tell them what they were doing, and somehow those police officers let them keep going. They caught up to your kidnappers halfway through Missouri, which adds crossing state lines to the charges. Marco got ahead of them and swerved, forcing them to stop. The other bodyguards used their guns to force the kidnappers out of the car while every highway patrolman and sheriff’s department from here to Missouri pulled up behind them. Sheriff Stidd says Rafe was the one who got you out of the trunk and put you in an ambulance. They initially stopped at a hospital in Missouri, where they figured out your injuries weren’t life-threatening, and he insisted you be brought here, close to home so your family could visit you. He rode with you all the way here. He stayed to make sure you would be fine, and then he left. He cleared out of your guesthouse, and his guards checked out of the B&B. They’re just gone.”
“What about Royal Productions?” Had I just unemployed the entire town with whatever I said during my delirium? “Did he shut that down too?”
“No. Amanda says he paid two years’ worth of rent on the B&B because of the short notice, the lease on the building is paid through five years, and he has managers in place at work to run things. He didn’t close anything down. He’s just not here.”