“No.” He shook his head back and forth. “This is about Jackson…”
“Is he back in Carson Cove?” Jon tensed up.
“I don’t think he’ll be back here for a while,” Leo sighed. “I called my guys after the accident and told them to call in every favor we had if that was what it took to find him—they did. He’s in rehab right now…”
“Rehab?” I blinked in confusion. “Damn…”
“He checked in the day after the emergency hearing was canceled—his mother is paying for a ninety day stint at the best facility in the country.” Leo shrugged. “I’m sending one of my guys there to get a visual, so we have confirmation, but if he’s there, then he didn’t have anything to do with this.”
I was happy to hear that Jackson was getting help, but it didn’t give me much relief. I doubted his buddy, Duke, would be anywhere near Carson Cove after stabbing Jon—especially if Jackson ended up in handcuffs. The suspect list seemed to be narrowed down to the woman that had been sending the letters in the pink envelopes. I tried to call Anna a couple of times, but the phone went to voicemail. I just couldn’t bring myself to dial Taylor’s number, no matter how badly I wanted to get in touch with her sister. Jon even had Leo locate a number for Bolt, but he didn’t pick up when we called either. I couldn’t really blame them—after what happened at the wedding, we were probably the last people they wanted to hear from.
“Ms. Monroe?” The doctor walked out into the lobby.
“Yes!” I stood up and hurried over to him. “How is she?”
“She’s fine. There’s nothing for you to worry about. We’re bringing her up to one of the recovery rooms right now. She didn’t lose consciousness, and the scans confirmed there is no internal bleeding, so we won’t be keeping her overnight. She’ll be discharged shortly. You can go see her once she’s situated if you’d like.” He looked past me at the others. “Just one visitor at a time, and we prefer if it’s only family.”
“What about my daughter?” I motioned to Charley. “Can she come with me?”
“That should be fine.” He nodded. “Just keep an eye on her, please.”
I talked with Jon after the doctor left and asked him to watch Charley for a few minutes so I could talk to my mom on my own first. I wanted to see how she was doing, make sure she was up for a visit from Charley—and see if I could get any details from her about the mysterious woman who ran them off the road. Walking down the hallway gave me flashbacks to the day I took a similar walk in another part of the hospital after Jon got stabbed. I thought that was the worst day of my life. My mother was okay, but I hoped it would be the last time I had to walk down one of those halls with someone I cared about laying in a hospital bed.
“Mom?” I pushed the door open and saw a nurse standing beside the bed with both hands in the pockets of her scrubs.
“She’s resting. I gave her something to help her sleep.” The nurse didn’t look at me—and her voice was oddly familiar, but it was muffled behind a surgical mask that was covering her mouth.
“Sleep?” I raised my eyebrows in surprise. “The doctor said she would be discharged soon…”
“Sit down, Melanie. Neither one of you is going home today…” The nurse pulled her hands out of her pockets—and I saw a gun.
“What? I…” I took a step back, and the nurse pointed the gun at me—then she pulled the mask away from her face, and I finally realized who she was. “Gina!?”
Jon’s assistant? What the hell?
“Sit the fuck down!” She motioned to the chair beside the bed while pulling the hammer back on the gun.
“Okay!” I held up my hands and moved towards the chair as she circled around me to put herself between the bed and the door—as if I was going to run with a gun pointed at me.
“God damn it, why couldn’t you go away like all of the others?” Gina tilted her head and smiled, but it wasn’t the bubbly smile I was used to; it was downright sinister.
“Gina, we can talk about this.” I tried to remain calm as I sat down and quickly made sure that my mother was still breathing.
“Oh, you want to talk, do you?” She took a step forward, and I saw her face twitch. “Why don’t we talk about all of the years that I waited for Jon’s marriage to fall apart. I knew it was doomed—a blind person could have seen that.”
“I…” My words got tangled up in my throat.
“Then it happened, finally!” Gina tapped the gun on the side of her head and then pointed it at me again. “I just knew he was going to realize that I was the one who had been there for him all of those years while he suffered with that miserable bitch.”
“I had no idea you loved him—you two weren’t together…” I realized I was trying to talk sense into a person who had clearly lost all semblance of it when my words just caused her to get angrier.
“We were always together.” Gina’s words seethed across her lips. “I sat right outside his office—every single day—every single night, even when he worked late because he didn’t want to go home. I made sure every one of the little whores that showed up after he got divorced understood that he was never going to love them the way he loved me. Then you blindsided the fuck out of me—on the night I was going to tell him how I really felt.”
“What do you mean?” I tilted my head to the side—I rationalized that as long as she was talking, she wasn’t squeezing the trigger.
“The engagement party, you stupid slut.” Gina’s words snapped against her teeth. “My god, I had just gotten rid of Hannah! Yet there he was—salivating over you like you were going to be his next meal.”
“I was just talking to him about a job…” I felt my heart beating hard in my ears, and my head was spinning, but every second mattered—I just needed enough of them to pass for someone to open the door.