Page 105 of Distress Signal

“I’ll go,” Crew said, stepping away from us. But he paused suddenly and swung around. “Has anyone called Mama?”

“Shit,” Lane and Trey swore in unison.

“I’ll do it,” I said wearily. This was, after all, my fault.

Crew once again clapped me on the shoulder, then the threeof them dispersed, Trey and Lane toward Lane’s SUV, Crew toward the ambulance.

With a deep breath, I withdrew my phone from my pocket and dialed Mama.

“What’s wrong?” she asked when she answered.

She sounded far more alert than I would’ve expected so early in the morning, and I had to guess her mother’s intuition had woken her.

“There was an…incident.”

“Are you okay? Is Reagan?”

“Reagan and I are fine,” I assured her. “But Aria was staying at the guest house, and she was attacked.”

Mama sucked in a gasp, then let her breath out on a soft curse, a rarity for her. “I didn’t even know she left. Is she okay? What’s going on?”

“I don’t know much right now,” I admitted. “She got hit on the head, and there was a lot of blood. But she’s in the ambulance, and they’re taking her up to Boise. Crew is with her.”

“Come get me. I’ll be ready in five.”

“Yes ma’am,” I said, then hung up. My attention focused on my house across the field, where two figures stood backlit on the front porch.

My legs felt like lead as I trudged through the country grasses in that direction. A maelstrom of emotions tangled in my chest: rage, fear, and most insistent of them all…guilt.

“What happened?” West asked when I reached the base of the stairs.

“Aria was attacked,” I said flatly. “Blunt force trauma to her head. They’re taking her up to Boise.”

“Let’s go then,” he said.

Not bothering with the steps, he jumped straight from the porch to the ground and beelined for his truck. He climbed in and turned it over, his headlights illuminating Reagan, staring at me wide-eyed. She had on one of myshirts and a pair of my sweats, her arms crossed over her chest.

“Is she going to be okay?” she asked softly.

I gave her the truth. “I don’t know.”

Without another word, she reached for me, and I grabbed her hand, holding it tightly as I helped her down the steps, like she was my lifeline, the one thing keeping me grounded in this hellscape.

When I climbed into the back with her, West shot me a confused look, and I said, “We have to pick up Mama.”

He jerked his head in the approximation of a nod and sped away from my house, taking a right at the end of the long drive, heading toward the big house.

As promised, Mama waited on the front porch, her normally tan skin almost ghostly pale. Worry lined every inch of her face and body. She got in the passenger seat, and West reached for her, holding her hand the entire drive to Boise.

Walking into the hospital lobby hit me with an intense force of déjà vu. It hadn’t even been a year since we’d rushed here in the middle of the night for a different sibling, waiting to see if Crew would be alright after being assaulted, abducted, and thrown fifty feet through the air in the wake of an explosion.

Mama approached the desk while I followed my twin into the waiting room, Reagan’s hand clasped tightly in my own. She hadn’t spoken a word since we left, and I didn’t press her as we took a seat alongside my brothers. Truth be told, I didn’t much feel like talking either.

We’d only been sitting there for about ten minutes when I saw a familiar brunette head weaving through the lobby, and I jumped to my feet, racing out to meet Sutton.

“What’s going on?” I asked. “The front desk wouldn’t give Mama any information.”

“She woke up on the drive here,” Sutton said. “She got hit pretty good on the head, but it seems to be more of a fleshwound. Split her skin open and turned into a bleeder. I assume they’ll run tests to rule out a brain bleed. Worst she’ll come out with is some stitches and a concussion.”