Chapter Seventeen

T he small room felt suffocating. With the doctor and nurse on either side of her hospital bed with Carson's big body taking up the space the medical equipment didn't, there wasn't even room for Layne to breathe.

Her neck was beginning to ache from tilting her head upward for the emergency room doctor to examine her face.

Could the lights be any brighter? The harsh fluorescents made tears form in the corners of her eyes. Even blinking hurt her, tugging the ragged skin of the wound she still had no idea how she got.

The doctor, a woman with kind brown eyes, gently probed the gash on Layne's face. Then she dropped her hands and moved to the sink to wash them.

As soon as she vacated the spot, Carson took her place at Layne's bedside. His big hand enveloped hers, and he pressed her fingers lightly.

"Are you going to stitch her?" His voice grated, in opposition to the tenderness in his gaze when he looked at her.

When the doctor stood at the foot of the bed, she wasn't smiling. "The cut isn't uniform. If it were, I'd stich it right now and send you home with pain medication. But I don't think you'd be happy with that outcome, as it would definitely leave a prominent scar. I'm going to call in the plastic surgeon."

Layne barely registered the words.

"How soon can they get her patched up? She's still bleeding."

It was Layne's turn to squeeze Carson's fingers in an attempt to soothe him. He sounded ready to pound the pulp out of anybody in this hospital who failed her.

"I'll call for the surgeon right now. I believe Dr. Patel is already in the hospital for another patient." She patted Layne's foot under the thin, almost useless blanket that was spread over her. "Don't worry—he'll fix you up right. He's the best."

The doctor left the room with instructions for the nurse to reapply a bandage to Layne's face. As soon as the young woman left her alone with Carson, he seemed to deflate.

All the air left him, and he bowed over her. "You're going to be okay, doll. The surgeon will do what he promises or I'll bury him in a shallow grave."

She might have giggled at his threat if she weren't still nauseated and chilled with shock. Her body couldn't keep up with what happened to her.

He strummed the back of her fingers again. "What were you doing at your ranch? I'm pretty sure I told you not to leave the house without me."

"I was going to grab some muffin tins for Faye. I knew you were at Golden Horizon, so I took the back way between our ranches." She searched his face, more aware of the lines carved around his steel-gray eyes, put there by her. "I tried to call you—three times. You didn't answer."

He shook his head. "I never got a call. Where's your phone? Give it to me."

She fished it out of her back pocket and held it out to him.

After he glanced at the screen, he groaned. "Your cell service is spotty in Wyoming. The calls never connected. But that doesn't explain how you left the ranch in the first place. Where the hell was Willow? I asked her to stay with you."

She tried to remember if she'd even spoken to Willow before she left the Black Heart Ranch, but her brain was so jumbled from the concussion that the ER doctor had just diagnosed her with it due to the fact she couldn't recall the events that led up to her driving to Golden Horizon.

Any further discussion of the details was cut short as the nurse popped back in to say she would be taking Layne to pre-op for surgery.

"I'm coming with her." Carson stepped closer to the bed as if daring anyone to separate him from her.

"You can come to the pre-surgery room and stay with her until we wheel her into the OR."

The creases around his eyes didn't fade. Layne couldn't tear her gaze away from the handsome, rugged features of the man she loved just as much—probably more—than the boy she once did.

All those letters still waited for her back at Golden Horizon. Suddenly, she wished she'd taken them all with her when they made their hasty escape for Italy.

Everything felt so off. It didn't help when her stomach was unsettled and she could hardly cling to a single thought for more than a few fleeting moments.

The painful throb in her head only amplified when the nurse wheeled her bed through a maze of hallways. She let her eyes slip shut, fighting the nausea and faintly aware that Carson still clutched her hand as he marched in long strides alongside her bed.

With all that was going on in her current life, she'd ignored her normal one. She never ignored emails or phone calls. Her assistant was practically her bestie. They talked every day, but she didn't feel like she'd caught up with Hannah in days. It was very important to Layne to keep up with her friend and all of her business contacts.

She'd even ignored her father. Ever since learning that he'd intercepted all of Carson's letters and thrown them in the trash, she didn't know what to say to him.

Sure, she was angry. But worse, she was disappointed in him. After she never heard from Carson again, her dad watched her grow depressed and burst into tears at any little thing. Then he saw her lose hope.

He must have had her best interest in mind when he made the choice to sever any ties she had with Carson…but it wasn't what she wanted. Not what she needed.

She squeezed Carson's fingers in return. He met her stare. Through the sick haze in her head, her heart still beat for this man.

"I love you." The words came out faint, but he heard.

"Christ, doll." He bent to scatter kisses over the side of her face that wasn't ruined and about to be repaired. "I love you too. I'll never stop."

After that, she was given some medication in her IV to make her sleepy. Her eyes grew too heavy to keep them trained on Carson's.

When she opened them again, a new set of eyes was staring down at her. Pale blue eyes.

She blinked at the person.

"Hi, Layne. I'm Dr. Patel, your surgeon. I'm going to suture your wound and there won't even be a scar on your face when I'm finished." When he smiled, her heart gave a thick thud.

She recognized him. Knew him, but not as a surgeon.

No!

She opened her mouth to protest. Nothing came out. Words were scrambled bits of molasses laying on her tongue.

Callused fingers squeezed hers. Carson. She didn't have the energy to turn her head and look at her lover, to try to tell him that something was wrong. Something big and scary.

That her surgeon was most likely her stalker.

In the only form of communication she could think of, she began tapping on Carson's hand. He would understand what she was saying to him.

He knew Morse code.

* * * * *

Carson watched Layne being wheeled away to the operating room. She would be all right. She had a concussion and that horrific gash on her face, but she was still with him. He'd keep her safe.

He'd fucking failed, though.

As soon as she was out of sight, he shifted into SEAL mode.

He walked out of the hospital to make a call to Colt. The phone barely blipped in the start of a ring before his brother picked up.

"What the hell is going on?" he demanded.

Colt broke in, "Listen to me and don't speak. Willow got a call from Denver."

Tripping over the abrupt change in topic, he did a mental pivot to catch up.

"He's in the hospital in Italy. Injured in combat."

"Fuck!" He sliced his fingers through his hair. If he'd been wearing his usual cowboy hat, he would have knocked it onto the floor. "What's his condition?"

"He's able to talk. He's with it enough to call home."

"No wonder Willow wasn't with Layne. She was distracted."

"She went into worried sister mode. When I told her what happened to Layne, she was frantic. I had to send Oaks to calm her down."

"What can I do right now?" He felt even more helpless.

"We wait. Denver is in good hands. He'll be all right."

He scrubbed his fingers through his hair again, spiking the longer strands. Forcing that new worry away—to be studied closer at a later time—he focused on the one right in front of him.

"What happened to Layne was no accident."

"I know. After you took her away, I searched the entire property. The barn was rigged. Somebody set that trap, and goddamn if I know how they slipped under my radar. I'm sorry, brother." Colt hated to fail as much as Carson did.

"What do you mean, rigged? What did you find?" He began to pace up and down the hallway between the waiting room and the door to the pre-op they'd wheeled Layne out of.

"It was like a fucking cartoon setup. I half expected a rabbit and a roadrunner to start chasing each other."

"What the fuck did you see?" he growled, already picturing it.

"Someone rigged a heavy steel part from a tractor to swing down when the door opened. Carson, she couldn't have avoided it even if she'd seen it."

"Fuck!"

An older nurse glared at him, and he took off in long strides to the opposite end of the hall, gripping the phone tighter to his ear.

Colt went on. "I took photos of everything. I fingerprinted the doors and windows. The cops are here now, dusting everything down. When Oaks looked at the camera footage, he found the cams had been tampered with. But he didn't get much farther than that because Willow called hysterical with news of Denver."

Hell. Not being there for his family was one of his worst nightmares. Not being there for Layne, though…

He gripped the phone tighter. The fingers of his free hand snapped into a fist.

She'd looked so terrified going into surgery. It broke him. It—

The memory of her tapping on his hand struck.

Tap tap tap

Tap hold

Tap tap hold

His mind sped faster. What those taps translated to had his heart rocketing into his throat.

Dot dot dot

Dash

Dot dash

Morse code?

The system was ingrained in his psyche so deep that he felt each of her finger taps to the marrow of his bones.

But she wouldn't have communicated with him that way…would she?

Tap tap tap

A series of three dots was an S .

The letters formed a word in his mind.

S-T-A-L-K-E-R

"Colt." His brother's name sounded strangled coming from his lips. Like somebody had knotted a noose around his throat.

"I need you to get here—now! Something's the matter. Layne was trying to tell me before she went into surg—" He broke off, spinning to stare at the closed door of the OR.

He took two strides and came up against the door that couldn't be opened without a clearance card.

In his ear, Colt was firing off questions.

"She's in trouble. Get here, and bring the police with you!"

He stuffed his phone in his pocket, and using his shoulder, slammed into the closed door.

From behind, a woman screamed. He whirled to see the older hospital worker running away, waving her arms.

"Security! Security!"

A guard entered the hallway, barreling toward him. As he reached for his safety stick, Carson kicked it out of his hand. Then he spotted his ID clipped on his belt, dragged him two feet to the ID reader and slammed his body against the reader.

The door opened for him, and he rushed inside, searching left and right, heart thundering. He heard several more sets of feet rushing his way, along with an announcement over the hospital loudspeaker.

When he made eye contact with a guy in scrubs, the man shrank against the wall.

"Layne London! Where is she?"

"You can't be here. This is a secure, sterile area."

He grabbed him by the front of the shirt, twisting until he yanked the man on tiptoe. With his face thrust close to the man's, he growled, "Take me to her. Now. "

He bobbed his head in agreement. Behind them, the doors burst open and several security officers rushed in.

Seeing that he had to follow some of the rules—and that these guys could be on his side or against him—he jerked his head for them to follow.

"I think my woman is in trouble. If you can show me that she's fine, I'll walk out of here. If you can't"—he leveled them all in a glare—"we're going to have a problem."