Page 44 of Deputy Brand Gets Her Man
He started up the Jeep and pointed it toward El Paso, got about ten miles, but then he couldn’t keep going. Images of Willow lying so still, of the blood on the ground he was pretty sure had come from her head, wouldn’t let up. What if he got there too late? What if she…?
Something welled up in his chest and his eyes were watering so much he couldn’t see. He had to pull over. So he did, along the shoulder. Then he gripped the steering wheel in one hand and pressed his fingers to his eyes but even then he kept seeing the blood shining in her dark hair.
His stupid nose was running.
He opened the glove compartment, and his father’s journal fell out. The whole reason he’d come here was in that journal. Freaking stupid quest, stupid gold. He opened it to the page he’d marked, tore it out and crumbled it in his fist.
Knuckles rapped on his window, startling him bad. He shoved the crumpled page into his pocket and looked up.
His brother stood there with his angel-blonde bride Lily beside him. She was frowning so hard her eyebrows met.
Jeremiah put his window down. Ethan looked at him and his eyes widened a little bit. Then frowning again, he said, “So it’s like that, is it?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, bro. I’m having an allergy attack.” He glanced at Lily. “Don’t suppose you have a Benadryl on you?”
“Fresh out,” she said. And she tilted her head to one side and searched his eyes. “You okay?”
Of all the Brands, only Lily would ask a villain like him if he was okay. Then again, she was only a Brand by marriage.
His throat knotted up so hard he couldn’t talk, so he nodded instead. Then he grabbed the water bottle in his console and took a drink. It was piss-warm. He said, “We should get going. Make sure she’s okay.”
“So why’d you stop then?” Lily asked.
“Told you. Allergy attack. I think it’s easing up.”
Lily’s face was soft. “You can ride with us, get the Jeep later, if?—”
“He’s got it, hon,” Ethan said, like he knew Jeremiah needed to be alone. “You’ve got it, yeah, bro?”
“Yeah, I got it. Thanks.”
When Willow opened her eyes, her mom was sitting beside her bed, holding her hand, gazing at her face and smiling. “There you are, my girl. There you are.”
Tears pooled in her brown eyes and spilled over, down her cheeks.
She realized her dad had been standing with his back toward her, gazing out a window, but he turned fast when her mother spoke, and came to the other side of her bed, crouching low and clasping her free hand. “Willow,” he said. “My Willow.” His hand came to her face, but she pulled her eyes from his to look at her surroundings. Hospital room. What the hay had happened?
“It was him, wasn’t it?” her dad asked in the low tones that were always a warning someone was in trouble, generally someone who’d wronged another Brand. It went deeper when the harmed party was his only child.
“What was who?” she croaked, then put a hand to her throat, pulling it free of her dad’s to do so and noticing the IV lines piercing her forearm. “What happened?”
“What do you remember, Willow?” Taylor asked. She sent her husband a stern and quelling look, then offered Willow water from a cup with a bendy straw.
She drank, and when her mom pulled the cup away, she grabbed it from her, and drank again.
“Careful. Maybe get a nurse, hon?” she said to Wes.
“No, wait,” Willow said. Her voice was still weird, weak and scratchy. “What did you mean, it was him?”
Her dad looked at her mom, and she nodded.
“You were on Sundance, in pursuit of a suspect on a motorcycle. Marks in the pavement suggest the biker spun around and went at you, scaring the horse into?—”
“Is Sundance okay?”
“He’s okay, baby,” her mother said. “A little road rash, but he’s fine.”
She blinked, frowning away the clouds over her brain. “Yeah. The guy on the bike threw a brick through the window at the WTD. I think it’s the same person who threw a brick through the Montrose’s window, and the pharmacy window.
