Page 20 of Calder Strong (The Calder Brand #5)

J OSEPH WAS BENDING OVER M OSBY, REACHING FOR HIS SHOULDERS to hold him steady. At the sound of that small, anxious voice, his hands froze in midmotion. In his concern for the injured man, he’d scarcely thought about Annabeth’s children and how near they would be.

And now, here was Lucas, worried about the man he called his dad. Joseph felt something twist inside him—the pain of having lost what he’d never known. Despite his best intentions, he couldn’t take his eyes off the boy.

“He’s bleeding, Mama.” Lucas spoke again, his eyes wide with fear. “What happened to him?” He gave Joseph a startled glance. “Who is this man?”

“Your father had a very bad accident with a gun, Lucas.” Annabeth’s voice was calm and steady. “This kind man brought him home and stayed to help me take care of him.”

“Is my dad going to die?” Lucas directed the question at Joseph.

Joseph swallowed the lump in his throat. He wanted to reassure the boy, but it wasn’t his place to promise anything. “I won’t lie to you, Lucas. He’s hurt pretty bad. But he’s strong, and we’re taking good care of him.”

“I need you for something important,” Annabeth said to her son. “Go back to your room and take care of your sister. Keep her in bed with the door closed. If she wakes up and hears something, tell her not to be scared. Maybe you can tell her one of your stories. Can you do that?”

“Uh-huh.” He nodded.

“Can you be very, very brave?”

“I’ll try.” Lucas looked as if he was about to cry but was struggling not to show it. Joseph couldn’t hold back an unexpected surge of love.

“That’s my good boy,” Annabeth said. “Now run along.”

With a last worried look, Lucas walked back down the hall to the bedroom.

“You’ve raised a fine son.” No sooner were the words spoken than Joseph regretted them. Annabeth’s stricken look told him that this was neither the time nor the place.

She raised her chin and tightened her jaw, the picture of determination. “Let’s get this done,” she said. “Are you ready?”

“Ready.” He placed his hands on Silas Mosby. The man was solid muscle. Joseph had felt his brute strength at the dance. If Mosby woke up fighting, he’d be hard to hold down. But it was Annabeth who had the more challenging task.

Her index finger slid into the bullet wound. Joseph’s hands pressed Mosby’s body hard against the table. He could see the concentration in Annabeth’s face as she probed deeper, then deeper, almost as far as her finger could reach. Mosby twitched and jerked but didn’t wake up.

“I think I can feel the bullet,” Annabeth whispered. “My finger’s touching something solid.”

“You’re sure it’s not a bone fragment? The bullet went in close to his hip.”

“Yes. It’s smooth—it gives a little. I’m sure.”

She withdrew her finger, washed her hands in the sink, and used a pair of forks like tongs to fish the spoon out of the hot water. She tested it to make sure it wasn’t hot enough to burn, then turned back to the table.

The spoon went in at a slant, carefully and slowly. Joseph knew she’d been nervous earlier, but now her hands were steady, her mouth set in a firm line. In the years when they were young, he’d assumed that he knew everything about her. But he’d never imagined how strong she could be.

As the spoon probed deeper, Mosby’s body went rigid. His jaws clenched on the wrapped knife between his teeth. His eyes were closed, but he was coming around, feeling the kind of pain that could make a strong man scream. Joseph tightened his grip.

“I’m touching it with the spoon,” she said. “I’ll have to work the spoon under the bullet to lift it out. That’s going to hurt even worse than going in.”

“Go ahead. I’ve got him,” Joseph said. “The bullet could’ve taken a scrap of his shirt going in. Make sure you get that, too.”

Mosby was beginning to twitch. A whimper stirred in his throat. Joseph tightened his grip. Too bad they didn’t have any liquor, not even moonshine, to dull his senses.

Perspiration beaded Annabeth’s face as she worked the spoon deeper. Her breath came hard with the effort of keeping her hands steady.

Mosby groaned. Joseph fought to hold him still. “Don’t move,” he said. “Your wife is digging that bullet out of you. You don’t want to make her slip.”

Mosby’s eyes opened. As he blinked his vision into focus, his expression changed from confusion to blazing hatred. His angry grunts were muffled by the wrapped knife between his jaws. He might have reached up and pulled it out, but Joseph’s grip pinned his hands to the table.

“Keep still if you want to live!” Joseph muttered, close to his ear. “You have a beautiful wife and children who love you. You’ve got no business catting around the country, breaking the law and getting yourself shot. They deserve better than that. They deserve the best of you.”

Mosby paid him no attention. Out of his head with pain and fury, he began to buck and kick. Joseph used his full weight to pin his upper body down, but it wasn’t enough. Mosby was still thrashing to get free.

So far, Annabeth had managed to keep the spoon in place. But Joseph could see that she was struggling to hold it steady. The pain had to be driving her husband wild, but if she didn’t finish what she’d started, the infection would kill him.

She cast Joseph a desperate look. Then her eyes narrowed, her mouth tightened into a resolute line, and she shoved the spoon deeper.

Moseby’s muffled scream shattered the air.

It went on for what seemed like minutes as his wife twisted the spoon and pulled it out of the wound.

Joseph heard something hard drop to the floor and roll away, followed by the clatter of the falling spoon.

“I got it,” Annabeth said in an unsteady voice. “It’s out—the cloth bit, too.”

Mosby was no longer screaming. He had fainted again.

Annabeth pressed a wad of cotton bandages against the wound to stop the bleeding. “I’ll do that,” Joseph said, moving around the table to her side. “You’ve done enough. Get off your feet.”

“No, it’s all right. I—” She swayed, slumping against him. He reached out to steady her. And suddenly, he was holding her, cradling her in his arms.

Her curves fit his body, just as they had in the old days when they were hot-blooded young fools.

Life had wrenched them apart, and there could be no going back.

But right now, holding her felt like something they both needed.

He rocked her gently, one hand stroking her hair.

A single sob rose in her throat, but that was all.

Joseph knew that she was too strong and too proud to cry on his shoulder.

Time stood still for a moment. Then she stirred and pushed away from him. He saw that her robe, hands, and arms were splattered with blood. “My children,” she said. “They’ll be terrified. I need to go to them.”

“Go on. I’ll get him bandaged and cleaned up. Then I’ll help you get him to bed.”

“I’m going to wash and change. Then I’ll be with my children. If you need me before I come back, knock on the door,” she said.

Mosby was still unconscious. Left alone with him, Joseph went to work, cleaning around the bullet wound, applying a fresh dressing, and wrapping it tight.

Annabeth’s husband was not out of danger.

He’d survived the bullet wound, but the risk of a slow, miserable death from infection was still grave.

Joseph thought of his family. There had to be something more he could do. Just one thing came to mind.

The head wound could have used some stitches, but the crease in Mosby’s scalp hadn’t penetrated the bone. The fool was lucky. A finger’s breadth deeper, and the shot would have killed him. As it was, the bullet had probably knocked him out.

Joseph had finished wrapping Mosby’s head and was washing up in the sink when Annabeth reappeared, looking exhausted and wearing a faded housedress. She carried a threadbare flannel work shirt that she thrust toward him. “Take it. You’ll need something to wear home.”

Thanking her, he dried his hands, stripped off the blood-soaked singlet, and accepted the shirt. It was Silas’s, of course, but this was no time to be choosy. He was grateful for the soft, clean fabric on his skin. He wouldn’t be going straight home yet, but there was no need to tell her that.

She looked down at her husband, the overhead light casting her face in shadow. “How is he?”

“As well as could be expected. He’s going to need fluids when he wakes up. Water, or even coffee. Are you ready to move him?”

“The bed’s turned down. I laid out an extra sheet.”

“Bring the sheet in here. We’ll use it to carry him.”

Stripped to his drawers and shifted onto the clean, doubled sheet, Silas was lifted off the table and carried hammock-style down the hall toward the bedroom.

With Joseph at the head and Annabeth bringing up the rear, they moved with slow, shuffling steps, doing their best not to jar him.

But he was already beginning to twitch and moan.

By the time they lowered him to the bed, he was thrashing with his legs and muttering half-coherent curses.

As Annabeth laid the covers over him, she sent Joseph an urgent look. “You need to go. I don’t want you around when he wakes up. That will just agitate him. If you’re gone, he might not even remember you were here—or he might believe he was hallucinating.”

“Will you be okay?” It was a useless question. She was right. He needed to leave.

“I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about the mess in the kitchen. Just go.”

Joseph tore himself away and headed out to his car, leaving Annabeth with her husband and her children. He had no business staying or interfering in her life, not even to help her.

He would back off and leave her alone. But there was one more thing he needed to do.

A few minutes after Joseph left, Silas woke up. Annabeth was bending over him, adjusting his covers, when he opened his eyes. Her heart seemed to freeze as he stared directly up at her. His mouth shaped words. “What happened?”