“Shut up.”
Sometimes there wasn’t anything else to say, and I wasn’t ashamed to tell my little brother to shut up every now and then. He was getting entirely full of himself lately. Chase was running the family business and doing a really damn good job of it. Jordan had her baby and he had even taken paternity leave to stay home with Jordan and their new daughter. It was a pretty progressive thing to do as a man running a company, but it set a great example for his other male employees.
As our plane took off for L.A., I used the time to catch up on the gossip about Jeremiah. We actually didn’t get to talk to him all that much and ended up trying to decipher the news stories as they came through the press.
It was a pretty awesome sight to have four of us brothers on the plane together and with our women, even if George wasn’t going to have his woman around anymore. We were all growing up and having our families and moving into the next stage of our lives.
“How much longer?” Ana asked as she cuddled up to me about halfway through the flight.
“Another hour; should we go join the mile high club?” I teased.
She lifted her head up to face me, and for a second I thought she was going to say yes. But she quickly laid her head back on my chest and closed her eyes. We were both exhausted from running the new business. Every waking hour was dedicated to building stronger and getting more clients.
When we finally landed in Los Angeles, I knew something was wrong the second we got off the plane and Jeremiah wasn’t there. He had become a big wig in L.A., but when he said he would meet us at the airport, he never forgot about us. Jeremiah was responsible, despite his willingness to be wild and have fun.
We waited for him for at least thirty minutes and called his cell phone, but Jeremiah never answered us. When we arrived at his house via taxi, Jeremiah wasn’t there. It looked like he had been there in the morning, probably before going to the filming set, so we didn’t worry too much because we figured filming must have run later than normal and he hadn’t had a chance to check his phone.
The movie industry didn’t really care if your entire family was flying in to see you. There were thousands of dollars being spent on filming a scene and the studio was going to make sure the scene was completed before they let people leave for the night.
“Something’s wrong,” Ana said when we crawled into our bed at Jeremiah’s house.
He had an eight-bedroom house, so there was plenty of room for all of us to stay with him. We each had our own guest rooms and there were still a couple to spare.
“I’m feeling it too,” I said as I held Ana close to me. “Should I call the studio and see?”
“You probably won’t be able to get to someone who knows what is going on until the morning though. Maybe we should just try to sleep and call them in the morning?”
“Jackson will be able to find out,” I said as I sat up.
“Then go ask him to find out; I’m worried.”
I didn’t need Ana’s approval to send Jackson looking for Jeremiah; I just wanted to know I wasn’t acting totally crazy because I wanted to know where he was. Jeremiah was a grown up and probably spent many nights with beautiful women and not thinking about his family; it was entirely possible he had simply been confused about which day he had to pick us up. He was likely wrapped up in the sheets with a delicious supermodel who he was dating or something like that.
I knocked on Jackson’s door and he answered it much quicker than I had expected him to. In fact, he didn’t look like he had been resting at all. His hair was in place still and his clothes were in perfect order.
“I know, I’m having some people track him now,” Jackson said.
“Great, let me know what you find out.”
Jackson was a professional at finding people, and if there was any doubt of where Jeremiah was at, Jackson was going to find him.
By the time 3 a.m. rolled around, we were all up and sitting in the living room as Jackson went through his contacts with the local police force to see if any of them knew where the filming had been taking place or if it had run late that evening.
The police officers have to keep the general traffic away from a filming location and they would also be the first ones to know when things had ended for the evening.
“What?” Jackson said urgently into the phone. “Life flighted? We will be right there.”
When Jackson got off the phone, we all stood still looking at him and waiting for him to tell us what was going on. Jackson didn’t tell us anything right away and instead stood with the phone at his side as he ran his fingers through his hair. He looked horrible, and we all feared what the news would be.
Although Jeremiah wasn’t the youngest of us all, he did seem like the youngest since Chase had started being responsible. Jeremiah was certainly the most laid back and fun brother out of all of us. Our hearts hurt at the idea he was injured so badly he had to be life flighted.
“What the hell happened? Tell us what’s going on,” I said.
“Oh, sorry. He was doing a stunt where he jumped through a window to a blow-up mat that would catch him below. Apparently, the wind was blowing and he hit the edge of the mat instead of in the middle. He was unconscious when they got him from the filming location and they are pretty sure he’s got several broken bones.”
We were all stunned into silence as we gathered out things and got ready to head to the hospital. As a family, we hadn’t had to deal with the death or serious injury of any of us. I knew I certainly wasn’t prepared to lose Jeremiah, and I was pretty damn sure no one else was either
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