Gone (Deadly Secrets #2)(65)
She shook her head, stepped forward, and dropped her badge on his desk. It landed with a thud against the folders. “I’m sorry if I hurt you. That was never my intention. And I’d be all for this if you wanted to run this story to keep my daughter’s name in front of the public, if I thought you wanted to help those other families, but that’s not what you want. You want my personal connection to these kids, not Emma’s connection, not details on these missing kids. I’m not just a story, Jeremy. She’s not just a story. And neither are those kids. Their parents deserve to know what happened to their children just as much as I do. What they don’t deserve is to be used as pawns in a ratings quest. So I quit.”
She turned, pulled the office door open, and made it two steps out before she heard him swear and say, “Raegan, come back.”
She kept walking, wanting nothing more than to get out of this station and back to Alec. He didn’t follow her. She’d known he wouldn’t because he wouldn’t dare make a scene in front of his staff.
Just past the dark soundstage, Anna Chapman rushed up at her side. “Hey. There you are.” Breathless, she said, “This note was left for you at the front desk.”
Raegan stuffed the note in her pocket without looking at it and rounded the corner toward her cubicle. “Probably another lecture from Jeremy.”
Anna hustled to keep up with her. “You two have a fight?”
“We had nothing.” Raegan stopped at her desk, grabbed her purse from the bottom drawer, and pulled out her keys.
“What’s going on, Raegan?” Anna stood in the doorway of her cubicle, clearly not getting the hint Raegan wasn’t in the mood to chat.
“Nothing more than finally seeing the light.”
Some kind of commotion sounded behind Anna. Raegan glanced that way to see a cluster of people around a salt-and-pepper-haired woman dressed in a fancy suit who looked like she’d just stepped off the pages of Vogue Senior.
“What’s that about?” Raegan asked as she shoved lip balm, her brush, and the rest of her personal items from her desk into her purse.
“Oh that.” Anna glanced over her shoulder at the small crowd and then back at Raegan. “Miriam Kasdan’s giving an on-camera interview.” Raegan recognized the name. The woman was some big philanthropist in the city who Jeremy had been trying to hook for a special interest piece. “So are you and Jeremy done for good? Chloe Hampton said he was really upset the other day after you were here.”
A tiny bit of guilt pinched Raegan’s chest, but it faded quickly when she remembered the way Jeremy wanted to use Emma for his ratings. She grabbed the framed photo of Emma from the corner of her desk and shoved it in her bag. “Look, Anna, I really have to go.”
The phone in her purse buzzed. Raegan pulled it out as she moved past Anna and turned for the elevator. “This is Raegan.”
“Raegan, it’s Ethan.”
“Hey, Ethan.” A whisper of worry rushed down Raegan’s spine when she realized his voice sounded tight. “What’s up? Is everything okay?”
“No.”
Her feet drew to a stop. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s Alec.”
The blood drained from her face, and she gripped the receiver until her knuckles turned white. “What happened?”
“He was shot. Paramedics are transporting him to the ER right now.”
“It’s fine. It doesn’t even hurt.” Alec sat upright on the gurney in the ER bay, winced at the pain he didn’t want the doctor and nurse to see, and tried to stand. “Just put a bandage on it and let me go.”
The nurse typing on a computer in the corner of the room rushed over and pushed him back down while a doctor who looked to be in his forties removed the pressure bandages the EMTs had applied in the ambulance. Another twinge of pain shot through Alec’s shoulder, making his teeth grind. “Sir, you need to calm down or we’re going to have to sedate you.”
Panic clawed at Alec’s chest as his spine hit the mattress. The pain in his shoulder from that bullet and the throb in the back of his head where he’d cracked his skull against the pavement sucked, but they were the least of his worries at the moment. He didn’t have his cell phone, didn’t know where it was or what had happened to it. He couldn’t call anyone to go find Raegan, and he was ready to scream if Nurse Ratched didn’t let go of him soon so he could make sure Raegan was okay.
He struggled for patience as he tried to hold still so the doctor could work on his arm. “Okay, just do it fast. I need to get out of here.”
“You’re not going anywhere until we make sure this isn’t more serious than it looks,” the doctor said. To the nurse still holding him down, he said, “Let’s get an IV antibiotic drip going. I also want images of the shoulder to make sure we’re not missing any shrapnel.”
“Yes, doctor.”
The nurse rushed out of the room while the doctor looked back down at Alec’s shoulder and reapplied the pressure bandage. “We’ll know more after we take some pictures. Sit tight. Someone will come get you in a few minutes.”
Pictures would take hours. That panic grabbed hold of Alec’s chest and squeezed like a python. “At least let me use a phone. It’s important. My wi—”