Page 169 of Distress Signal
I had no idea if she meant where he’d been shot or where he’d been taken, so I answered both. “In the chest. We’re in Boise now.”
“We’ll meet you there.”
An ambulance raced up in front, screeched to a stop, and Trey climbed out from behind the wheel.
What the fuck?
I rose to my feet, moving faster out into the lobby when my twin, a brunette woman, two blondes appeared at his side.
“Finn!” Reagan called, throwing herself into my arms a moment later.
“Oh god, baby,” I sighed, unshed tears pricking my eyes and stinging my nose. The last sixteen hours had been too fucking much. I wrapped her up tightly, certain it would be a long time before I could ever let go. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she assured me. “Lainey too.”
Her twin approached us, and even though I was a twin myself, the resemblance was…uncanny. Still, I could easily tell them apart. My body came alive in Reagan’s proximity, that tether in my chest drawing me right into her embrace.
“I’m going to get her checked out,” Reagan said, offering her face up for a kiss, which I gave her, letting it linger longer than I should have in polite company. She gave my fingers a final squeeze before leading Lainey to the admission desk. I was reluctant to let her go, but all danger to her had passed with Tuck’s death.
Soon, cops started to arrive, filling the room with Lane’s deputies, though I noticed Johns and the three other deputies at the farmhouse were absent.
Likely cleaning up the mess.
“Any update?” Trey asked when we settled in the waiting room.
“He flatlined on the way,” I said, “but Sutton and Crew got his heart going again. They wheeled him back the second we landed.”
West looked around. “Sutton go with?”
I nodded. “I don’t think they could pry her away from his side at this point.”
Trey straightened, scrubbing a hand down his face in a move so like the one Lane made when he was stressed, I damn near burst into tears.
“It doesn’t look good, does it, Finny?” he whispered.
I reached for his hand, not speaking. Words were useless, and we weren’t the praying kind. Instead, I sank back in a chair and closed my eyes. All at once, a bone-deep exhaustion settled overme—the crash after adrenaline receded from my veins, coming down from the constant fight-or-flight I’d put my body through the past sixteen hours.
And I was fucking sick of hospitals. Too many people I loved had found their way through these doors the last few years, and it had to stop.
Commotion had my eyes popping open in time to see Mama, Aria, Aspen, Owen, Delia, and Jace rushing through the door.
Mama sat on Trey’s other side. “What happened?”
Seeing her opened the floodgates, and when I opened my mouth to tell her, a sob broke free instead. Shaking my head, I buried my face in my hands and let it all go.
The rage of Reagan being taken from right under my nose. The panic of not knowing where she’d been, of not knowing what was happening to her. The utter relief of seeing both her and Lainey run out of that house. Having her back in my arms, returning the missing piece of my soul. The worry over Lane, the sheer terror of potentially losing him that strangled me.
All of it was simply too much to bear a second longer.
A warm hand settled between my shoulder blades as I fell apart, though I knew without looking that it belonged to West.
Through my tears, I saw a figure approach and kneel in front of me, but my vision was too blurred to tell who.
“Baby.”
I got up and stalked away, outside and around the side of the building. The last thing I wanted was foranyoneto see me like that, let alone Reagan.
Naturally, she followed me.
