Page 62 of Beware of Dog (Lean Dogs Legacy #6)

The surgeon who’d patched up Cass had a grandfatherly demeanor that Shep found comforting.

As comforting as anything could be in the moment.

Wearing a gift shop t-shirt, arm freshly cleaned and bandaged, he sat on a plastic chair beside Raven and listened to the man talk about Cass’s condition, the therapy she would need, the antibiotics she’d been placed on, and what they could expect as far as recovery went.

Shep nodded where appropriate, and he heard what the doctor said, filed it away somewhere useful in the back of his mind.

But as soon as he could, he said, “When can I see her?”

She was still asleep, when he slipped into the room.

The dress was gone. Of course it was. She wore a white hospital gown with blue squiggles printed on it.

No more flowers and jeweled combs in her hair.

Someone had cleaned up all the blood, wiped her face; it was sallow and gray-smudged, marks like bruises under her closed eyes.

Shep lingered a moment just inside the door.

She was alive.

She’d made it.

Shep was afraid, for a moment, that he might sink to his knees, his legs too unsteady to hold him up. But he took one lurching step, and then another, and another, and then he was at her bedside, falling into a chair, and he took her small, cold little hand so carefully into both of his.

That first, small contact, unconscious on her part, unlocked something inside his chest. Yes, her hand was cold, but not dead cold.

It was their wedding night, and she was in a hospital bed.

He bent forward and pressed his forehead against her hand. Breathed. In and out, in and out.

Her fingers twitched, the slightest movement along his temple.

His next breath actually did something, actually filled him up with air.

Somewhere between one beep of the heart monitor and the next, Shep fell asleep.

~*~

It wasn’t until she urged Shep to buy a shirt in the hospital gift shop that Raven realized she herself looked like a walking horror show.

She peeped through the window in the door of Cass’s room, saw Shep lay his head down on top of Cass’s wrist, then took a deep breath and went back to the gift shop.

She bought a black sweatshirt and pants, changed in the ladies’ room, and bundled her ruined dress up in the bag from the shop.

She was heading off in search of coffee when her phone dinged. A text from Toly: we’re here .

“Oh.” She pressed a hand over her mouth, so acute and knee-weakening was her relief.

She fired off a text, headed for the doors, and didn’t think she took a proper breath until she caught sight of Toly. He was carrying Nat up high on his shoulder, hand cupped around the back of her head, his gaze darting back and forth across the hallway until he spotted her.

“Hi,” he started, and then, “oh. Hi, darling.”

She crashed into him, arms going around his ribs, and he folded his free arm around her right away and pulled her closer.

Raven dragged in a breath that smelled of him, his cologne, his shampoo, his sweat, and of Nat, milk and diaper cream. She pressed her face into Toly’s shoulder and took a series of deep, unsteady breaths, her hands clenched tight in his hoodie.

He murmured something soft and soothing in Russian. Shifted Nat to a better position and tightened his arm around her, hand coming up to her nape. “Hi, baby,” he said, softly. “Is she okay?”

“Yes. Yeah.” She heard other familiar voices, and knew she ought to pull back, wipe her eyes, and take charge. But she spoke just for her husband: “She’s going to be okay. Shep’s with her. She… fuck . Yeah, she’s okay.”

He kissed her temple, and lingered there a moment, lips against her skin.

“Where’s Cass?” she heard Walsh say, close, and she pulled back, finally, and wiped her eyes, and became the Woman in Charge that all her brothers had so desperately needed their whole lives.

~*~

“I left the Foxes behind,” Devin said, when he got Raven alone in front of a vending machine. Emily had needed a lot of hugs and hand-holding, weepy and dehydrated from it, and had finally agreed to sit down in a visitor chair beside Emmie and Violet.

Raven had reached unheard-of levels of exhaustion, but when she peeked through the window, Shep was sleeping soundly in the chair beside Cass’s bed, and so she refused to let anyone disturb them.

She twisted the top off her Coke and took a healthy swig. “All three?”

“Yeah.” His grin was wry. “I like that: my three Foxes.” Then he grew serious. “They found evidence of intruders. There’s a back fence. Low, chain link. Someone cut through it to get on the property through the woods.”

She shook her head. “Damn it.”

“No cameras back there,” Devin continued. “I imagine Charlie will have a word with Maverick about that. But they found shell casings.”

She tipped her head sideways against the machine. “What’s their educated guess? About who is it?”

He cocked a brow. “Is Cassandra not supposed to testify at someone’s rape trial?”

“Yes, but…” She trailed off, and the lights got a little brighter and more painful when her eyes widened. “Shit. Yes, there was this group of thugs, this street gang the rich wankers hired to intimidate Cass’s poor friend. But the boys had a meeting with them. They—ah, shit .”

“What are they called?”

“I don’t…” She wracked her brain, and couldn’t decide if she’d ever been told, or if Toly had said something and she’d forgotten.

She was too tired to think straight. “Toly knows. He went. Let me—” She gestured with her Coke bottle, and Devin caught her gently by the wrist and steered her down into a chair.

“I’ll ask him, love. You sit before you fall.”

She started to protest, and yawned instead. “Okay. Thank you.”

Before he went, he leaned down and pressed a kiss to the top of her head.

It really was a marvel, she thought, eyelids fluttering, that they’d somehow all ended up here, together, against every odd.

~*~

“Tell me about the gangbangers trying to scare off the friend,” Devin said without preamble when Fox answered his phone with a brief, “Yeah?”

Fox took a breath, turned once more to peer out at the benighted forest over his shoulder—Tenny and Reese had flicked on torches, at this point, confident the perps were long gone, but that they still might find something of use; the high beams panned through the tree trunks in crazy swoops and dives like old-timey movie spotlights over the Hollywood sky—and said, “Tres Diablos. Mexican street gang. I wasn’t there for the parlay, but Reese and Tenny were. And Toly.”

“Yeah, I asked him about it. He thinks this could have been them. That there was some posturing with them and Shep at the meeting.”

If he’d had the ears of a true fox, they would have pricked up. A little coil of aha in his belly, almost excitement but not quite, because it was always a thrill to have a target to point himself toward. “Well, then. It’s a place to start.”

“Sounds like it. When do you want to move?” While Fox was considering, Devin added, to his surprise, “I think we should wait until Cass is awake and see if her man wants to come along. He’ll want his pound of flesh.”

Fox started to say that they didn’t need Shep to “come along.” That the four of them, acting as their own little crusaders, the Six-Hundred, could more than handle a run of the mill street gang, and that Shep, from what little Fox knew of him, was only liable to get in the way.

But then he reflected on what he’d seen tonight, Cass limp and bloody, and Shep barking out orders, gloved up like a real medic, efficient even though he had to be rattled.

If a man was capable enough, he was owed the chance for personal revenge, Fox acknowledged. “Fine. How’s Cass?”

He knew she was still alive; someone would have called sooner if she wasn’t. An uncharitable thought, but an honest one.

“Sleeping.” Devin didn’t sigh, per se, but there was a relieved quality to his exhale.

“Shepherd’s with her, poor sod. Asleep on the edge of her bed.

The doctor seems confident enough. We won’t know the extent of possible nerve damage until she wakes, but she should be fine in all the ways that count. ”

“Good.” He paused a beat, then added, “Whatever we do to the Tres Diablos, we need to do it quick. No waiting around for Cass to get discharged.”

“Right. I’ll do you one better: there’s not going to be a trial. For that boy? No way. No trial. If you catch my meaning.”

Fox snorted. “I always catch your meaning, old man. Sometimes you’re even right. I agree: no trial. He doesn’t deserve it.”

~*~

The heat was blinding. Or maybe that was the sweat pouring in his eyes, stinging, slowing him down.

He dashed at it with his sleeve, but smacked into his helmet, jerking his chin strap, and didn’t get his eyes clear.

He blinked instead, without much success, and his next breath sucked the dry, desert heat down into his lungs where it scored his flesh and squeezed tight around his airway.

His hands kept slipping in blood. So much blood, pints of it. How was the guy still alive? He was, though, because he was screaming bloody murder, and the men around them were shouting, and gunshots rattled in the distance, and they were all going to fucking die—

Something cool and soft touched his palm, and Shep woke with a start.

The old Iraq nightmare didn’t so much fade as vaporize, and in its place, the shitty evening crashed over him, a drowning wave of gunshots, and Cass limp in his arms, and laid on a table, and his own gloved hands slick with her blood.

He hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but, well, he had .

He sat up and rubbed the grit from his eyes with his right hand, and that was when he realized that his left was occupied; that the cool, smooth touch at his palm was Cass’s palm, and that, for the first time since he dragged a chair over and sat down, she was gripping him back .

He blinked his vision clear, awareness swimming under the bright hospital lights, and looked up at the head of the bed.

Cass was ghost-pale, more washed-out than her gown and the covers tucked up under her arms. But her eyes were slitted open, that vibrant bright blue electric against a white backdrop.

One corner of her mouth twitched upward, and her hand squeezed on his again, weak, but trying. Her voice came out faint and scratchy. “Hi, baby.”

“Hi—”

His voice broke, so he stood on shaky legs instead, and bent to press the gentlest of kisses against the top of her head.