The Beautiful Daughters (31 page)

Adri fell out of the truck, screaming for a gurney, a trauma team, a surgeon. They came in seconds, nurses in scrubs and a doctor who was already wearing a surgical gown, looking as if he had been waiting for them to arrive. Maybe he had been. Maybe Jackson had called ahead on his cell phone. Adri couldn't remember.

Then, a whirlwind of activity, of bodies and shouts and a palpable urgency that echoed through the truck as they extracted Will's limp body. Just as quickly as they came, everyone was gone: Will was whisked away, Jackson bent in conversation with the officer, who had abandoned his cruiser with the lights still flashing. Adri and Caleb were left standing at the emergency bay door.

Adri wrapped her arms around herself and shivered so hard her teeth chattered. But then she realized that Caleb was naked from the waist up, his eyes frantic and trained on the red emergency room sign. The sight of him looking so vulnerable filled her with an emotion she couldn't explain, and she went to fit her arms around his waist. He was warm, his chest heaving, and she put her cheek against the place where his heart was a staccato of muted sound. After a second he held her back, his embrace so tight that she struggled to breathe. But it was exactly what she needed. A reminder. His strong, stable body around her.

Caleb's arms engulfed the whole of her narrow back. Adri felt tiny in his embrace. Protected. He bent his head and kissed her hair, again and again until she turned her face into his chest.

Adri felt like she could have stayed there forever, hidden in Caleb's arms, where the real world and all the horror it contained could be held at bay. She couldn't help but catch a few grave words passed between Jackson and the police officer. She looked over at them, assuming that she would find the middle-aged man in uniform studying Jackson's truck intently. But when she followed the line of his gaze, she discovered he wasn't looking at the truck at all. He was staring at Harper.

27

HARPER

H
arper had forgotten that she had injuries, too. When the police officer rapped on her window with his knuckles and helped her out of the vehicle, the first thing he did was escort her into the hospital. A nurse took her to a small trauma room and made her lie on her side beneath a bright light that gave Harper an instant, blinding headache.

“Can you tell me what happened?” the nurse asked kindly. She probed the helix of Harper's wounded ear with gloved hands, and Harper shuddered from the sudden burst of pain. “Is this a bite wound?”

Harper didn't respond, but her silence must have spoken volumes.

“I'm going to have to start an IV. There's a lot of bacteria in the mouth. You'll need a round of prophylactic antibiotics. Are you up-to-date on your tetanus vaccine?”

Harper couldn't remember the last time she'd seen a doctor, much less gotten an immunization. But still, she didn't speak.

“Tetanus it is.” The nurse turned to write something on a chart. “Do you have insurance, Miss . . . ?”

“Harper Penny.” The police officer supplied from where he stood quietly in the corner of the room. Jackson must have given him her name.

“Do you have insurance, Ms. Penny?”

“No.” It was the first thing Harper had said since she screamed for help. She half expected the nurse to throw her out immediately, but the older woman remained perfectly collected. Harper didn't know whether to be grateful or upset. She glanced at the nurse's shirt and saw that her name was Gayle.

“You're going to need a couple stitches,” Gayle told her. “And an IV, though we might be able to manage the antibiotics with a series of injections instead. We'll have to see. Some wound irrigation, maybe an X-ray . . . Were you struck in the jaw?” Reaching out one hand, the other still clutching a clipboard, the nurse delicately explored the place where Sawyer had hit Harper. It stung, but Harper suspected it wasn't broken. “The doctor will have to decide,” the nurse said, as if she could hear Harper's thoughts. Then she picked up Harper's hand and examined her fingers and the fine spiderweb of abrasions that had split across Harper's skin when she attacked Sawyer.

“Eventually, you're going to want to consult a plastic surgeon about your ear. Cartilage can be tricky. Unfortunately, we don't have a plastic surgeon on staff, but there's a center for reconstructive surgery in Sioux Falls. We can give you a referral.”

Harper could hardly comprehend what the nurse was saying, never mind tuck away information for later reference. Besides, she didn't have insurance.

“Do you have any other injuries?”

“No.” Harper squeezed her eyes shut again. At least, none that you can see.

“Well, sweetheart, you're lucky we're a nonprofit,” Gayle told Harper. “It complicates things, I'll have to make a few calls, but we'll get you patched up one way or another.” Turning to the officer who still stood in the corner of the room, she asked, “Do you want me to document?”

“Yes, please.”

Gayle left the room quietly and returned minutes later with a camera. She didn't ask Harper if she wanted to have her wounds photographed, but Harper would have done whatever
they asked of her anyway. She sat up on the bed, the paper crinkling beneath her, and offered up her cheek, her ear, her hands, her face for the camera. Her eyes were closed in every picture.

When Gayle was done, she had a quick, whispered conversation with the police officer. As soon as the nurse was gone, he made his way over to Harper's bed.

“I assume you're well enough to answer a couple of questions?”

Harper put her hand over her eyes, but she nodded as best she could. What else was there for her to do? What was the point of hiding now? None of it mattered. None of it. Not with Will shot. In shock? Undergoing surgery? Harper thrust such thoughts from her mind and took a deep, shuddering breath. One thing at a time. That was all she could handle. She shifted a little on the paper-lined bed.

“I'll tell you everything,” she said, looking the officer—­McNeil, according to the engraved tag on his shirt—straight in the eye. “Anything you want to hear.”

And she did. The entire story, starting from the moment she first saw Sawyer across the bar. She paused once, when Gayle came in to start her IV, but after the line had been set and the antibiotic was drip-drip-dripping down the plastic tube, Officer McNeil asked for privacy. Gayle gave Harper a searching look, and Harper nodded, giving the nurse wordless permission to go. Harper's injuries were far from life-threatening. They could be dealt with later.

When Harper told Officer McNeil about the pornography, about the things that Sawyer had made her do, he asked her to hang on for a moment while he made a few phone calls. Within twenty minutes there was another police officer in the room, as well as a social worker. Jenna Hudson.

They listened, documenting, interrupting with the occasional question or point of clarification, and when Harper had finally recounted the last hour of her life (was that all the time that had passed since she stepped out of the mansion?), the
two men stared at her with indiscernible expressions. Jenna only smiled faintly, a look of pity mixed with sorrow, and gave ­Harper's arm a comforting little pat.

Did they believe her? Would she care if they didn't? Were they judging her? Did it matter if they were?

After a few silent moments, Officer McNeil finally stepped forward and offered Harper his hand. She reached out hesitantly, but as soon as their fingers touched he pressed her hand between both of his palms. He looked sad. He looked like he believed her.

Harper felt tears burn hot in her eyes. She had held on to it all for so long, had pushed her fears, her revulsion, her hatred and self-loathing down so deep that she doubted she would ever be free of it. Her heart was cemented in her chest, walled off and cold, yet Officer McNeil's touch, the look in his eyes, sent a hairline crack through the hardest part of her. But she couldn't afford to fall to pieces here. She didn't deserve to. Harper fought to maintain her composure and won. She coaxed a faint half-smile.

“We'll get him,” Officer McNeil told her. “You've given us more than enough information to nail this guy.”

She had. Full name, address, license plate, places he frequented. Agency 21. Where he banked and worked out and bought coffee every morning. Physical description, down to the small birthmark on his upper arm. Harper had also given them her stage name, though it was bitter on her tongue and she nearly gagged. Worst of all, she had no doubt that a team of people would soon be scouring the internet for evidence. For pictures of her. Did they have a task force for this sort of thing? A Special Victims Unit? Would the FBI get involved? Harper had no idea, and she didn't much care.

“Is Will okay?” she asked, for now that she had done her part, he was the only thing she cared about.

Officer McNeil exchanged a look with Jenna. “Last I heard he was still in surgery.”

“But is it serious?”

He shook his head. “I don't know.”

“Your friends are in the waiting room,” Jenna said. “Would you like to see them?”

Harper didn't know how to respond. Could she face Adri and Jackson? She felt like even Caleb, a relative stranger, was a better friend to Will than she had proved to be. But she had no choice. She nodded.

“I'll send them in,” Officer McNeil said. “And I'll let Gayle know that you're ready to see a doctor.”

The two officers started to leave, but at the last second Officer McNeil turned and said, “I'm going to need you to stick around for a while, okay? We'll put out an APB on Sawyer, but you're going to have to give a full statement, testify if this thing goes to trial. We can contact you at the Vogt farm?”

Harper didn't know if she'd be welcome there anymore. She shrugged. “I don't know. But I promise I won't go anywhere without telling you first.”

“Thanks.”

The door fell shut behind the men, but Jenna hovered near Harper's knees for a moment longer. “I'm sorry,” she eventually said, searching Harper's eyes. “I'm so very sorry.”

Harper knew how a heart could hurt for another person, could hold all the regret in the world on behalf of someone who had been wounded.

But Harper didn't deserve Jenna's sympathy.

She had told them most of the story. But not all of it. She hadn't included the one in her tawdry life story that would have changed Officer McNeil's compassion to revulsion. That would have made Jenna consider her anything but a victim.

Harper hadn't told them about David.

Adri didn't come. Instead, Gayle bustled in with another, younger nurse, and a doctor who attended to Harper's injuries
with dispassionate calm. It turned Harper's stomach to hear him discuss her ear and the perforations that had torn right through the cartilage in places. It hadn't felt quite so violent at the time, but hearing him discuss it now was downright grisly. And she almost fainted when he painstakingly removed the half dozen earrings that ringed the uppermost curve of her ruined ear. But he assured her he would use small stitches, try to keep the scarring minimal, and handed her a printed referral sheet for a reconstructive plastic surgery center before he took his leave. Not that she ever intended to use it.

The doctor had determined that Harper didn't need X-rays for her jaw, and after washing her gravel-scraped cheek, the nurses smoothed it with salve and called her good to go. Only the IV remained, but Gayle removed it neatly and efficiently, lecturing Harper about finishing the oral antibiotics she had been prescribed and watching closely for signs of infection.

“Cross my heart,” Harper assured her, but she felt completely anesthetized. Well past the point of listening. Or caring. It had been hours, and she had yet to hear a single word about Will.

When Harper emerged from the trauma room, it was almost six o'clock in the morning. She hadn't slept for a single second throughout the entire torment of the night, but she was throbbing with restlessness.

The waiting room was almost empty, but Caleb sat hunched alone in a chair beside the water cooler. He was wearing an ill-fitting sweatshirt bearing the hospital logo; the too-tight sleeves reached only halfway down his forearms. At first Harper thought he was asleep, but as she hovered uncertain in the doorway, Adri's would-be boyfriend looked up.

“Hey,” Caleb said. It was a noncommittal greeting, casual. She couldn't tell if he was being purposefully short with her or if he was just tired.

“How is he?” Harper asked, not moving from where she stood. Not daring to.

“He's going to be okay.”

It was such a benign statement, but all the air whooshed out of Harper's lungs at the news.

Caleb seemed to notice how fragile Harper was, and he put his hands on his knees and stood up. Walked over to where she was barely clinging to composure and gave her elbow a fortifying squeeze. “Gunshot wound to the outer left shoulder. Missed the brachial artery and the joint. Long story short, humerus fracture, nerve damage, muscle damage, and the tissue surrounding the exit wound is the consistency of soup, but our boy is going to live.”

Harper buckled. Caleb caught her by the arm before she could hit the floor, and steered her over to one of the waiting room seats. It was smooth, blue plastic. Cold and uncomfortable.

Caleb sat down beside her, and touched her knee briefly, kindly. Harper was still reeling from his words, “Our boy is going to live.” It was all she cared about. Almost.

“It could have been a lot worse, Harper.” Caleb sounded grim.

“Will his arm be okay?” she whispered, staring at the wall unseeing.

Harper felt Caleb shrug rather than saw him do it. “It'll never be the same, that's for sure. TV has convinced the world that there is such a thing as a flesh wound, but that's just not true. A gunshot is a major traumatic event, no matter where the injury occurs. Of course there is blood loss and shock, the risk of sepsis due to the junk brought in with the cavitation wave . . .” Caleb trailed off and gave Harper a sidelong glance. “Sorry. Nurse talk.”