Off Limits(57)
“Abby?” Patrick whispered, reaching up and taking my hand. I squeezed his fingers, staying next to him. “Where's Abby?”
“She's fine,” I said, lying through my teeth. I had no f*cking clue how Abby was, except that she was alive. “I don't think Chris touched her.”
“I'm sorry,” he whispered, his eyes fluttering shut. His head sagged back, and I leaned down, checking him. No heartbeat.
“Shit!” I grunted, tearing open his shirt to double check. “Don't you f*cking die on me, old man!”
I heard Abby stirring in the garage, just as the cop car stopped outside. The doors to the car closed, and I heard the scrape of boots on the dirt. “Move your asses, boys!” I yelled even as I interlaced my hands and looked for the compression point. It’d been years, but the basics of giving CPR were still there in my mind. “I've got a man in cardiac arrest in here!”
Chapter 17
Abby
I came to slowly, groggy from the slap Chris had hit me with. When I did, the first thing I noticed was that I was lying on the ground with a woman kneeling above me. “Miss Rawlings?”
“Who are you?” I muttered, blinking. The light was now dim, but I had a pounding headache. “Where is Shawnie?”
“Your friend is being looked after,” the woman replied. “I'm Debbie Morgan. I'm a cop.”
“What happened?” I asked, rubbing my head.
“Mr. Lake has been arrested. He's in an ambulance as well,” the cop said. She helped me sit up, making sure I kept my head down and between my knees. I noticed that I'd been covered with a blanket, which helped explain why I was so warm. “Your friend and your father are also on the way to the hospital.”
“Daddy?” I asked, jerking my head up and sending a lightning bolt of pain through my head. “Is he all right?”
“Your father was taken to the hospital with chest pains,” the cop replied. “We're going to take you there as soon as a car gets here. We had to get the others out of here first.”
“Dane?” I asked. “I heard him before Chris knocked me out.”
“Mr. Bell?” The cop asked, then pointed. “He's been arrested too. We'll make sure he won’t hurt you again.”
I shook my head, struggling to get to my feet. When the cop tried to restrain me, I pushed her hands away. “Let go of me! Dane didn't do anything. He's my boyfriend. He was trying to save me.”
The cop stopped, looking in my eyes. I rolled my eyes, despite how much it hurt, and got up. “I'm not loopy, and I'm not on drugs. Dane is my boyfriend, and if he’s here, it's because he saved us.”
“That's what I keep telling them,” I heard Dane say from the other room, grunting when someone shoved him. “Just nobody believes me.”
“Shut up, traitor,” someone in the other room grunted, and I heard a loud smack and the thud of a body hitting the floor. The cops around here weren’t exactly the most understanding nor the most likely to follow the rules in terms of use of force, especially against convicted felons.
“Stop it!” I yelled, wincing at the pain in my head as I made my way into the other room, which turned out to be the kitchen. Dane was lying on his side, his hands cuffed behind his back while his eyes stared holes into a cop who was standing over him. “I'm telling you, he wasn't involved! What's your name? I'm going to sue your ass!”
The cop looked at me, surprise registering in his face for the first time before turning and walking away. I looked at the other two cops in the room, who both looked sheepish at the ferocity in my voice. One of them, the cop who'd helped me wake up, went over and helped Dane to his feet. “Okay, I'm going to go by her word,” she said softly to Dane. “On the promise that you don't go anywhere. We'll ride over to the hospital together. How's that sound?”
“I'm good,” Dane said, shrugging off the cop's arm and sitting back down in the chair. “And tell your buddy out there he's lucky that I'm more forgiving than Abs is.”
The cop nodded and stepped back, gathering her fellow cops and leaving us alone. “Are you okay?” Dane asked as soon as we had a bit of privacy. There was still a cop in the room, but we lowered our voices. I wanted to reach out to Dane, but at the same time, I knew if I did, the cops would get interested again. “Are you hurt?”
“I should probably get checked for a concussion,” I replied, “but if you mean am I in the same boat as Shawnie, no.”
The female cop came up to us again, this time looking less concerned. “Miss Rawlings? We have an ambulance coming to take you to the hospital.”
“And Dane?” I asked. “Can he come along with me?”
She looked at us, then nodded. “Yeah, we can do that. Come on. Mrs. Rawlings is supposed to already be at the hospital.”
* * *
One of the nice parts about living in a city like Atlanta is that there are a lot of top-flight hospitals throughout the city. When the ambulance pulled up, I’d already been checked out by the paramedic, who confirmed that while my clothes had been torn, Chris hadn't done anything else. “You've probably got a low-grade concussion,” he advised me before we pulled up, “but I'd let the docs give you a full check out. No offense—I don't know if you need it or not, but you've got one hell of a civil lawsuit on your hands.”