Shelter Mountain (Virgin River #2)(37)

Doc grimaced, but then he nodded and went to talk to Preacher.

Back in the exam room, Mel bent over Paige. “I’m taking you to the OB in Grace Valley, Paige. We need a specialist. Possibly a surgeon.”

“Am I losing the baby?” she asked weakly.

“I’ll be honest with you—it doesn’t look good. I’ve asked that Preacher bring the gurney back. Would you like him to go with you?”

“No. I have to talk to him, though.”

When Preacher rolled the gurney to the exam room, Mel told him to take a moment with Paige, quickly, then she would need his help to load her. He stepped into the room and took her hand, the one that wasn’t holding the ice pack to her face. “John,” she said, “please make sure Christopher is all right. That he doesn’t see his father. That he knows Mama is okay. Please.”

“Mel and Jack can—”

“No, John. Please. Take care of Chris. I’ll be all right, but I don’t want him scared and I don’t want him to see his father. Please?”

“Anything you want,” he said. “Paige…”

“No, no more apologies,” she said. “Take care of Chris.”

Preacher assisted Mel in sliding Paige from the exam table to the gurney, and the bright red puddle of blood left behind as she was moved caused his own blood to roar in his ears. As he pushed the gurney out of Doc’s office, Rick ran to help him lift it down the porch stairs to the waiting Hummer. His vision blurred as his eyes clouded with unshed tears. “Everything will be all right, Paige,” he said. “I’ll take care of Chris.”

Wes Lassiter had achieved a kneeling position in the street, his hands bound behind his back, his face bloody and swelling. He’d begun to draw a crowd. Several men were leaning on the rail or sitting on the porch chairs at Jack’s while Jack and Preacher sat on the steps, watching. Jack’s hand was plunged into a bowl full of ice when the sheriff’s deputy pulled into town. He had to carefully drive around the man in the street and parked at the bar, right in front of Jack.

It was the same deputy who had attended the shooting Jack had been involved in over a month ago when a drug addict, looking for narcotics from Doc’s drug cabinet, had held a knife on Mel. The deputy, Henry Depardeau, got out of the car and hitched up his gun belt. “Sheridan,” he said. “I’m seeing a lot more of you these days than I like.”

“Ditto,” Jack said. He lifted his swollen hand. “I’d shake, but…”

Henry threw a look over his shoulder. “You do that?”

“I did. The man threw my pregnant wife to the ground so he could kick the shit out of his own pregnant wife.”

“Whew.” Henry shook his head and looked down. “He punch you?” Henry asked, pointing to his own cheek, indicating the bruise Jack still wore.

“Nah. I wasn’t going to let him hit me. This is old,” he explained. “I walked into a door. A big, stupid door.”

“Then you beat him. That’s two batteries, Jack. His and yours. Might have to hook you both up.”

“Whatever you have to do, Henry. He did try to kick me in the head, though. That count for anything?”

“Maybe. At least you didn’t kill him.”

“Saved his life,” Preacher said. “I was going to kill him.”

“How’d you get that blood on you there, big fella?” Henry asked Preacher.

“Carrying Paige to Doc’s. Paige being his wife,” Preacher said, looking down at the wide smear of blood on his shirt. To Jack he said, “Shew—I better change this shirt before Chris wakes up from his nap. The things you don’t think about with kids.” And he got up quickly, going inside.

“So,” Henry said to Jack. “You did that all by yourself.”

“All by myself.”

“And the woman?”

“She’s been taken to a specialist—an OB. She might be losing that baby. He knew she was pregnant, by the way,” Jack added, throwing a glance in Lassiter’s direction. “Last I heard, besides being thrown to the ground by her hair and kicked in the stomach, she’s bleeding real bad.”

“Witnesses to this beating?”

“Plenty. There’s me, Preacher, Rick here, my wife, who took the woman to the doctor in Grace Valley. You can catch up with her later. It was an emergency.”

“Hey!” Lassiter yelled. “I’m over here!”

Henry glanced lazily over his shoulder and said, “Yeah? Then shut up.” Back to Jack, he said, “I suppose I can trust you to stay right here?”

“Where am I gonna go, Henry? I want to be sure Mel’s okay.”

“Tell you what we’re going to do. I’m going to book him. And if the sheriff wants you to come in, you drive on over. Okay?”

“Sure thing, Henry.”

He shook his head again. “I just can’t figure out why anyone in his right head would bother these Virgin River women.”

“Yeah. Makes no sense,” Jack said.

The baby spontaneously aborted—miscarried—before Doc and Mel could even get Paige to Grace Valley. John Stone and June Hudson loaded her in their ambulance and took her to Valley Hospital where, thankfully, a D and C caused the bleeding to slow and no further surgery was required.