“Trixie!” Brock yelled over his shoulder. “Is he telling the truth?”
“Brock, listen to me. He is lying to you.” She rushed him then, squeezing by two officers and ignoring their warnings to back away from the “victim” and his assailant.
“Brock, he’s taunting you, man,” Rory said, shrugging away a cop’s lame attempt to detain him. “Put that gun away.”
“Trixie, you swear to me?” Brock searched her eyes. “Tell me the truth, baby. Don’t lie to me. Ever.”
“I wouldn’t. Put the gun down. Think of our children,” she said, gripping his arm and trying to encourage him to lower the pistol. “You’re not this person. You’re not this man.”
Brock slowly turned his head and said, “I could be. If he violated you in any way, I swear to you, I could be.”
Chapter Forty
Hours later, detectives bombarded Trixie with questions. Doctors and nurses probed her with needles, blood pressure cuffs, and thermometers. And mere minutes after the convoy of strangers left, the familiar arrived.
After they made a fuss over her, things sort of fell in place and swung back toward the realms of normality, at least by Cartwell standards.
Her father ranted in the phone, pacing her hospital room and threatening everyone but the governor as he tried to negotiate Brock’s release. Finally, Kimberly ran everyone out of her room and sat beside her, holding her hand.
“Where’s Mitch?” Trixie asked in her drowsy state.
Kimberly looked down. “I’m sure he’ll be along soon.”
“Don’t do that,” Trixie said, her head rolling from side to side.
“Don’t put me in the middle of this,” Kimberly said, thumbing the door. “Daddy Kane can’t even look at me as it is. I don’t want to come between the two of you.”
“He told Mitch not to come.”
Rory entered the room and took a seat next to her. “Kane has his reasons for wanting him to stay away.”
“I need him here,” Trixie said, groaning when she rolled to her side. “Please tell him. I need him here.”
“Get some rest, baby,” Rory said, stroking her forehead. “Things will be all worked out when you wake up. I promise.”
She lifted her head away from the pillow but fell against it as quickly as she realized her struggle was in vain. “Tell Daddy to come in here. I want to talk to him.”
“He’s on the phone with an attorney trying to have Brock’s bond posted.”
“Bond? Why?”
Rory’s lips twitched. “Well, he interfered with an arrest. He drew an unregistered weapon and he then resisted his own arrest.”
Trixie had forgotten the last part. In fact, everything was a blur now. The whole episode seemed like a terrible nightmare.
“I need to see Brock.”
“He will be here soon,” Kimberly promised.
“Where’s Ansley?”
“Where do you think she is?” Daddy Kane asked, reentering the hospital room. “Sometimes I swear she thinks Brock is her real brother. She’s at the police station pitching a fit.”
Trixie laughed and immediately moaned, wrapping her arm around her bruised torso.
Kimberly patted her hand. “Relax, honey. Brock is in good hands. Besides, if I know Ansley, she’s sitting behind bars with him by now. They’re probably both in a holding cell trying to figure out how they can escape before morning.”
“A regular Bonnie and Clyde, hmm?” Trixie teased, feeling the morphine threatening to take her under.
“They are,” Kimberly said, clutching her hand. “Ansley gets it honest. I hear our big sister provoked a lunatic, called him out by name more or less.”
“I had to,” Trixie said. “Once the sun came up, he planned to leave the rest area. If he had made it out of that rest area, there’s no doubt in my mind, he would’ve tortured me.”
“Did he threaten to kill you?” Rory asked.
“Look at her,” Kimberly said. “Are you really so jaded that you can’t see what that man was capable of?”
Kimberly and Rory were close but since she’d arrived at the hospital, she’d been as snippy with him as her father had been. Trixie nodded off, trying to fight the medication but failing to succeed.
“Tell Brock. Tell Mitch. I love them. Tell them, Rory.”
“I will, baby.”
“I love you, Rory.”
“We all love you, baby.”
She slipped into a realm of unconsciousness and was immediately greeted by a few dancing clouds.
* * * *
“Ow!” Trixie jolted to an upright position, yanking at her IVs and trying to free herself from the bed.