Sinful Love (Sinful Nights #4)(85)

Strong? What was that? Did she even know what strength was anymore? Did she know anything? Her world had been twisted inside out, shaken cruelly by the hand of Fate, and now Michael was—

She squeezed her eyes shut, blocking out the word dying.

“Annalise,” Sophie said, her voice gentle but firm. “You’re allowed to be sad. You’re allowed to be terrified. But you’re not allowed to think negative thoughts right now. Michael is in surgery, and they are fighting to save his life. We need to be there in the OR waiting room for whenever the doctors come out. Not here.” Sophie glanced around the chapel. It was warm and comforting, but it was a hiding place in some ways. “Come now. You can do this.”

Sophie held one hand, and Elle took the other. Annalise was keenly aware that the three women in this chapel were in love with three brothers, and the other two were there to help her be tough for the brother that needed her. The man she loved.

She took a breath, inhaling hope and letting go of all else.

There was no room for thoughts of that killer. There was no room for hate, for vengeance, or for cold, heartless enemies.

There was only room for love. She would do everything to send her love to Michael, and her strength to the doctors working on him. She left the chapel, Elle and Sophie leading her to join the rest of the family in the OR waiting room.

They waited and they waited and they waited.

For an hour.

Then another.

Then for nearly one more.

Until at last, a woman in green scrubs pushed open the door, and surveyed the scene. She had lines around her blue eyes, and strong cheekbones. “I’m Doctor Brooks. Are you the family of Michael Sloan?”





CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT


Everyone stood.

Annalise, Elle, Sophie. Ryan, Colin, Shannon, and Brent, his arm protectively around his pregnant wife. The grandparents. Even the detective had stayed, and Michael’s friend Mindy had joined the vigil.

Collectively holding their breath, crossing their fingers, and praying to whoever listened, they waited for the surgeon to speak again.

“It was touch-and-go there for a while. We didn’t know where the bullet hit him until we opened up his chest. And he lost a lot of blood,” the doctor said, her tone measured and even. Annalise was poised on the balls of her feet, every muscle strung tight, waiting, wanting, aching for answers. “Turns out he was shot in the spleen. We got lucky.”

Lucky.

Oh God, never had a word been more beautiful.

Never had anyone said such a perfect word. Lucky was good.

“We were able to remove his spleen, and he’ll be able to live a normal life without it.”

“Oh my God. He’s really alive?” Annalise asked in a breathless rush, desperately needing a second confirmation.

The surgeon smiled and nodded. “Yes. Very much so.”

“Can we see him?” The question came from Michael’s grandmother.

The doctor shook her head. “He’s in recovery now. He hasn’t even woken up yet.”

Two hours later, a nurse said he was asking for Annalise. She brought her hand to her heart, then turned and embraced Elle and Sophie. “Thank God,” she whispered, her voice breaking as it had in the chapel with them, but this time for a much happier reason.

*

Sanders set down the phone and breathed a huge sigh of relief. Becky wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek.

“He’s going to be okay,” he said, so damn grateful for the news his best friend’s mother—Victoria Paige—had just given him. Her grandson Michael was going to be okay.

When Sanders was pulled over for speeding, he’d never expected his role as an informant would curl around and hook into the murder of his best friend from years ago. He’d had no notion that the bastards who ran the company had pressured Dora to commit murder. He’d thought for years, as nearly everyone did, that it was her crime. Her choice and hers alone. He never knew the men he worked for had wanted Thomas dead and had used Dora to make that happen.

It didn’t mean he forgave her. Just meant that she didn’t act alone.

But he could breathe easier, knowing that all her accomplices at last had been rounded up.

Becky sank onto his lap, her arms still looped around his neck, and he stayed there in her embrace for a long time.

*

John stepped through the ER doors and paced in front of the hospital, talking to Special Agent Reiss on the phone.

“And with the information obtained from Mr. Foxton, that’s how we were able to focus in on West Limos,” she said, and rattled off the details.

Agent Reiss had been looking into local racketeering activity for some time, and when Sanders Foxton had been brought in for transporting illegal firearms, he’d become the linchpin in the feds’ investigation into the local crime ring that ran guns and drugs across Nevada. Evidently Sanders hadn’t known what he was transporting, but the details of the runs he’d made over the years had bit by bit helped the FBI narrow in on one company.

A company that had appeared squeaky clean.

That company owned by a supposed West Strass. But as it turned out, West had been dead a long, long time. West Strass was an alias for West Stravinksy, the brother of Charlie Stravinsky who’d been killed by an unknown assailant in a poor neighborhood in his native country more than four decades ago. Since then, Charlie had moved to America and had been laundering his money through companies he set up with a fake identity in his brother’s name. Apparently West Strass had many assets around the United States—a carwash in Texas, a dry cleaner in San Diego, a limo company in Las Vegas, and for a while he’d been the owner of a limo company in San Francisco when Charlie had relocated there, working as a loan shark and running rigged poker games.