Seeing the car, I pulled up beside it and only just got the stand down before I jumped off and ran over to it. Given its age, you could only open its trunk with the keys, and a quick search of the vehicle showed they weren’t inside it either. Opening the back door, I pressed down on the button that’d flatten the back seat, but nothing happened on either side.
Just as I was starting to panic, a car screeched to a halt beside me, and Remy jumped out of it.
“I’ve got a crowbar in the back,” Remy yelled, running to the back of his SUV.
“Hurry the fuck up. If she’s in there, it’ll be airless, and the sun will be heating it up more than the body can take.”
Jogging up to me, he wedged it in the gap under the lid of the trunk, and began pressing down. It was like trying to open a bottle of beer with a nail, in that he had to keep moving where he was to get more space to work with.
Just as I was about to tell him to give it to me so I could beat the shit out of the lock with it, Jesse stopped beside us and got out.
“Move over,” he clipped and pushed us away to give him space. “My friend got me this lock picking kit as a joke a few weeks ago.” Then, pulling something out of his pocket, he went to work on the lock and had it open in under a minute.
When the lid finally lifted, the first thing I saw was one foot with a Spongebob Vans on it—just like the one that’d arrived yesterday that Addy was so excited about.
I felt my legs wobble as I took in how still she was, and then the scrapes and dirt on her face and arms, followed by how sweaty and pale she was.
As I pulled her toward me to pick her up, I heard Remy and Jesse making separate calls. One to 911, the other to Jackson, who’d caught up with the guy he was chasing. None of it made any sense to me, though.
At least, it didn’t until Remy said, “Ambulance is gonna take twenty-five to get here, man. We’re quicker driving her to the hospital.”
That’s when I snapped out of my stupor and began moving toward his SUV.
It’d only been roughly sixty seconds since we’d found her, but in those seconds, I’d been hit by the possibility that she was dead and then realizing with relief that she wasn’t, but it was clear she wasn’t in a good way. If he said driving was the quickest way to get her the help she needed from the hospital, we were driving her.
My eyes stayed glued to her throughout the whole journey. Even when staff at the hospital ran out with a stretcher, all of them moving frantically to get her inside after Remy shouted out how we’d found her, I stuck by her side, my eyes not leaving her once.
That was until a male nurse took me to the side of the room and spoke to me calmly.
“Sir, we need to be able to work on her. Right now, her body temperature is way too high, which means we’ve got to get her cooled down and hydrated, but we’re also going to have to run some tests. There’s going to be a lot of people coming in and out of the room, so it’s not feasible for you to stay at her side.”
Numbly, I nodded and walked out, feeling like I was leaving part of me behind in the room. I knew he was being reasonable and that they needed to work on giving her the medical attention Addy needed, but it killed me all the same.
As I rounded the corner, I saw Remy, Jackson, Jesse, and Elijah leaning against the wall waiting for me. Remy and Elijah had their normal scowls on their faces, but Jackson was covered in dirt, and his hair was finally sticking up all over the place with twigs stuck in it.
Straightening from the wall as soon as he saw me, my twin walked up to me. “What did they say?”
“Right now, they think it’s severe heatstroke and dehydration. Her body temperature’s too high, so they’re cooling her down.”
Repeating what I’d heard made it sound like nothing because we all got dehydrated and overheated at some point. Well, that was it sounded like nothing until you saw someone unconscious, paler than milk, and drenched in sweat because of it.
“Liam, Devon, and Jay have the guy Jackson caught at the ranch,” Remy said quietly, “and Liall’s just handed Marni over to the police for arson. I reckon those charges are going to get added to once we talk with the guy, though. Dex is heading to join them in a second, and Webb will be heading straight there.”