Page 37 of Devil's Due: Sarge

“Go ask for Vlad.”

On a light arm squeeze, she walks out of the room. My brain hurts, but not from the severe beating. Because I need to know what the hell happened to Greer. Several minutes later, the door pushes open again, this time with Vlad walking in. His face looks grim, but he’s here and I feel like I can actually take a breath.

“You look like shit, brother,” he says, laughing humorlessly and shaking his head.

“I feel like shit. How’d you know where to find me?” Though I’ve been lying down, I can’t have this conversation while prone and press the button next to thenurse callbutton to shift the bed and thus me to sit up.

Vlad waits for the bed to stop moving before he decides to answer. “She called. Told me you were injured… Told me where to find you.”

It’s crazy how my whole body relaxes knowing that she’s been in touch. “Where is she now?”

His face becomes sullen. “Don’t know. Was hoping you could fill us in.”

“Do you think she made the meet? Alone? That goddamn woman,” I grumble under my breath. “I get out of here, I’m going to strangle her, then bend her over my knee and spank her ass, then…” At this point, I’m too worried and upset to come up with anything else.

He moves his arms to cross over his chest to hide his discomfort, but I’ve known the man long enough. I’m fully aware of his mannerisms. “Okay, first we need to get men to Halfway. We need to find out if she made it to the meet. When she called… she said you were attacked by Devil’s Hangmen. You don’t think?”

I cut him off. “No. She got me here. That means she had to have gotten away from them.”

“Her family?”

“From a rich community outside of Miami.”

“We’ll get brothers heading that way.”

“Unless she’s in trouble, don’t do anything without consulting me, yeah?”

He snickers, even though there’s nothing funny about the situation. “I’m so used to taking care of her, for Nic, I forget that you threw your claim.”

“I love her, man. Don’t know how or why it happened—lord knows I don’t deserve her—but I love her and I can’t…I can’t… fail her.”

He’s been my best friend for years now. He knows about Claire and my boy. “Right,” he says, shifting the course of the conversation. “Getting brothers there now.” Then he pulls his phone from his pocket, presses a button, and brings it up to his ear. “Reap, we need men in Halfway. Check to see if Greer made it to her meet.” That’s all. He hangs up and shoves the phone back in his pocket.

“I have to get out of here.”

“No, brother, you have to get better.”

Easy for him to say when it’s nothiswoman’s life on the line. He stays for a while longer, despite my lack of conversation. Eventually, he gives up and leaves me to my bad mood. I hate being an ass to him, but I’m in pain, I’m stuck in a hospital, and the woman I love is missing. Not much for me to be in a good mood about.

Kitchen shows up with a menu full of approved foods. The doctor has me on a post-surgical diet for the day. Oatmeal? Jell-O? Ooh… Cream of Wheat? Are you fucking kidding me?

“The oatmeal and Cream of Wheat come with toast,” the portly young woman assures me. She’s short and rounded, but she has a very pretty face and hair like corn silk. I wonder if she’s aware of that.

Anyway, in the end, she suggests the oatmeal and a Dreamcicle shake. I haven’t had one of those in years. I remember getting them in a Push-Up form from the ice cream man when I was a kid. If an orange sherbet and vanilla ice cream blend can’t lift my mood, nothing will.

At least they sprinkled cinnamon on the oatmeal. The toast is buttered. And this is what my life has been reduced to, the contemplation of cinnamon and butter on toast. I’m losing my mind in here. Antsy. On edge. I need to find my woman.

Just when I’m about ready to jump out the window to escape, Dark shows and he’s dangling a set of keys in his hand—my keys. “Brother,” he says, tossing them over to me. “You look like shit.”

“Such is the consensus,” I say, sighing in relief at my newly gifted way to escape.

“Truck runs.” He looks uncomfortable, however. Dark never looks uncomfortable. “No Greer. Asked around. The old woman who runs the store across from where we found the truck said she saw a blonde girl go off with three ‘fancy dressed men in one of them fancy cars.’”

That had to be her family.

“Fuck...” I draw out the word while attempting to figure shit out in my throbbing head, throbbing from rubbing my hand over my face. “I know the truck runs. How she got us here. Why’d you phrase it like that? What’s going on?”

“You don’t remember?”

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