Elisabeth Naughton - Hold On To Me

“Ryan.” Simone stared at Mitch’s chest, a new sense of fear rushing in. “He’s not breathing.”

Ryan’s fingers froze against Mitch’s blood-soaked shirt.

“Buddy? Oh, don’t do this to me right now.” He leaned over Mitch to listen for his breath. Fear filled his eyes when he leaned back. “It’s not your time, do you hear me?” He squeezed Mitch’s nose, tilted his chin up, then blew a breath into his mouth. Shifting down, he felt along Mitch’s chest, clasped his hands together, and pressed down, starting CPR compressions. “Kendrick? I need that ambulance, now, dammit!”

“They’re almost here.”

Sirens sounded outside.

Fear closed Simone’s throat. She couldn’t lose him. Not now. She didn’t know what she’d do without him.

She reached for Mitch’s hand, lying near his side, while Ryan kept at the CPR. “Mitch? If you can hear me, hold on to me, okay? You promised you would.” She choked back a sob. “You promised, and I’m holding you to that one. Please, please, please, just hold on to me.”

“Mitch?”

Struggling to get his still-bandaged shoulder and arm into the damn hoodie, Mitch grunted from the cramped bathroom in his hospital room and rasped, “I’m in here.”

Footsteps echoed from beyond the door, then Kate’s gentle voice said, “Are you okay?”

That was a loaded question. Sweat slicking his forehead, his spine, nearly every inch of his skin, he glanced in the bathroom mirror, then looked away in disgust. His face was pale, his cheeks sunken, and the beard on his jaw had passed scruffy, even for him, and was now heading toward mountain-man scary. Not to mention he was so weak he couldn’t even get his own fucking sweatshirt on. No wonder Simone hadn’t been by to see him in days. He looked like death warmed over and felt like it too.

Repulsed by himself, he kicked the door open and took one step into the hospital room where he’d spent the last week. “Does this look okay to you?”

A ghost of a smile curled Kate’s lips, and she laughed at the hoodie half hanging off his body and twisted around his back, then quickly covered it with a frown. “Sorry. It’s not funny. I didn’t mean to laugh. Come sit and I’ll help you.”

Grinding his teeth, he shuffled toward the bed—shuffled, fuck, he couldn’t even walk like a normal person thanks to the pain still radiating up his side and the shortness of breath from his damaged lung. And oh great, he was sweating all over again, just from that little effort.

The TV was running a news program in the corner of the room, the sound on low. Dropping onto the side of the bed, he groaned, hating the smell of the room, the feel of the mattress, hating everything about this goddamn place.

Kate unzipped the hoodie, then moved around his back to gently bring the garment over his bad shoulder. “Let me guess, Mom picked these up for you.”

Mitch glanced down at the matching navy sweatpants he’d managed to tug on. “What gave it away? The cheap fabric or the fact the damn zipper doesn’t work?”

Kate pulled something from the back of the hoodie and held it up for him to see. “The price tag. We all know how much she loves Walmart.”

Mitch rolled his eyes. His mother had brought him three different sweat suits just like this, all in different colors, and while he appreciated the thought, once he got out of this godforsaken place, he wasn’t going to be caught dead in any of them. “Before I forget, I wanted to say thanks so much for calling them. Mom and Dad have been camped out in this room since I woke up, driving me batshit crazy.”

“You’re welcome. I’m just returning the favor. Remember how they rushed down here when you called and told them I was in town?”

“That was different, and you know it.”

“As I remember you saying, ‘it’s time you started pulling your weight in this family.’ Well, they’ve been hovering over me for six months. Now it’s your turn.”

He couldn’t argue with that. Their parents hadn’t wanted to let Kate out of their sight, and though he couldn’t blame them—after all, finding out your long-lost daughter was actually alive would spur anyone to do a little hovering—a tiny part of him felt guilty for enjoying the respite from their meddling.

“Where are they, by the way?” she asked.

“Talking to my doctor, I’m sure. Making sure I’m not going to inadvertently puncture the other lung by leaving. I swear they think I’m still twelve.”

Kate smiled. “You’ll always be their baby, Mitch. No way around that for a parent.”

He wouldn’t know. He wasn’t a parent and probably wouldn’t ever be one. His mind shifted to Shannon, and he wondered where she was and what she was doing. He hadn’t seen her since Ryan’s parents had brought the kids back to San Francisco, and while he knew a hospital wasn’t exactly a place for kids, he missed her.

“Do you want the sling inside or outside your sweatshirt?”

“Outside.” The weather had decided to kick into gear, and it was fucking cold outside. No way was he heading out there in his condition with an open hoodie.

Kate helped him slide his arm through the sleeve. Pain pinched his shoulder where he’d been shot, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as the pain in his side every time he twisted. And it didn’t even compare to what was happening in the center of his chest each time he thought of Simone.

By the time she finished and helped him tug the zipper up the front, he was sweating buckets. “God Almighty, I’m fucking useless.”

“No you’re not. You’re just injured. You’ve gotta give yourself time to heal.” She sat on the bed next to him and reached for his hand. Her fingers closed around his, strong, sure, familiar. “It’s going to be okay. Have a little faith.”

He frowned her direction. “Don’t patronize me.”

“It’s the same thing you told me, and you were right.”

“I was blowing smoke up your ass. You should have been smart enough to see that. Simone obviously was.”

“Mitch—”

“No, you know what?” He let go of her hand, knowing he sounded like the scorned lover and hating himself even more for that. “It’s fine. I’ll get over it. Forget I said anything.”

Kate was silent at his side for a moment, then said, “She’s been here. You’ve just been sleeping a lot.”

Right. Yeah. Sleeping. Not every moment, though. And while he did remember her being here when he’d first come out of surgery, groggy and half out of it from the anesthesia and pain meds, he didn’t remember seeing much of her since. “It’s fine, Kate.”

“She’s also had to deal with Shannon and all the fallout from the press once the story went public. That’s exhausting. Trust me, I know.”

He knew that was true. He’d caught clips of it on the news. Simone had turned the file over to the Feds, who were running a full-scale investigation on Senator Dobbs, Chris Murdoch, and PreCorp, which included exhuming Simone’s late husband’s body and testing it for various poisons. And though no link to the Cyphers had been made by the big news outlets yet—the running story was simply a senator in bed with big oil, and his accountant who’d turned on him—conspiracy theorist websites were bubbling over with speculation about the secret society and the organization’s future.

“Ryan said you got a visit from Paul Messing yesterday,” she said quietly.

Mitch focused on a square tile on the floor and nodded. “He’s the new acting chairman of Cypher and Dagger. He was a few years ahead of me in school. I met him a couple of times at various functions but don’t know him well.”

“What did he say?”

“He apologized for everything that’s happened, if you can believe that. Said Murdoch was acting on his own and that the society didn’t know anything about Holdt or Dobbs or Steve’s death. He also said the society isn’t standing behind either of them.”

“Isolating themselves from the drama, like Ryan said they would.”

“Yeah.” Too little too late, in Mitch’s opinion, but…whatever.

“You know why they’re doing that, right?” Kate asked.

“Because they’re not stupid.”

“Because Simone held back part of the evidence in Steve’s box.”

Mitch looked her way. “What are you talking about?”

“There was more in there besides Steve’s medical files. He was the Cypher’s treasurer for several years. All that evidence the Feds thought he had linking the organization to money laundering, racketeering, and bribery? He really had it. On a zip drive in the bottom of the box. He just never let it go public for fear of retaliation against Simone and Shannon. Simone, Ryan, and Ryan’s team of lawyers met with Messing two days ago and laid it all on the line. So long as the organization backs off and leaves all of us alone, you especially, she won’t release what Steve collected. But if anything happens to you—to any of us—it’ll go public with one click. Ryan said she was a force to be reckoned with in the meeting. Even his high-paid team of legal whiz kids was impressed.”

Awe rippled through Mitch. She was always a force to be reckoned with in a legal setting. Negotiations were her strong suit, and in a business environment… Yeah, he just bet she was a shark waiting to strike.

He couldn’t be mad at her for not being here. Not when she was dealing with all that. And not when he now knew she was the reason Messing had given him the option of staying in the society or leaving for good, something he’d wanted for years.

God, he loved that woman. Ached for her. Wished like hell she was here right now. And didn’t want to think too much about what it meant that she wasn’t.

“Speaking of your obnoxious husband,” he said, wanting—needing—to change the subject. “Where is he?”