The Insiders by Tijan

FORTY-FOUR

Camille Story was the one who broke the news.

And that was after I had hacked her. She had a whole offline file of everything. Smart. And annoying. But it almost didn’t matter, because that night all that paparazzi got pictures of me standing by the ambulance, Kash’s hand in mine. Peter’s program to delete Kash’s picture crashed. It was overloaded that night, so when Kash said word was out, word really was out.

On him.

As I sat in the waiting lounge, while Matt was being worked on by the hospital, I was seeing what I could do. And after an hour I had to come to the conclusion that it wasn’t much. I only had my phone with me, and Kash’s picture was everywhere.

He was the big story. Not me.

Press already knew about his image. There’d been articles posted about Kash, but I had to guess that it wasn’t as much as they wanted to publish. Writing an article on Calhoun Bastian’s grandson would’ve made me fear for my life, too. I wouldn’t have had the nerve to write the story, so I almost had to give respect to the ones who were reporting on him.

I had to assume they already knew who Kash was, since someone having a picture that doesn’t load for years is kinda big news. It makes you wonder who the hell that guy was. Now the world knew, and after the first few stories were posted, the rate of more and more posting was astonishing. Calhoun Bastian couldn’t go after all of them. Safety in numbers, that sort of thing.

So, in a way, I was almost not news at all.

My boyfriend couldn’t say the same.

He was news. He was huge, big news. And we were already seeing the result of the news spreading like wildfire. We’d been asked to leave the main general lounge right away, not because of Kash but because of all the guards. We were getting enough attention from that, but then we were asked, twenty minutes ago, to leave the second private waiting lobby for a third, way more private one.

I was pretty sure we were in the doctors’ lounge.

Thirty minutes into our wait, when we were still in the second lobby, Peter and Quinn had arrived. The atmosphere in the hospital switched again. They came in dressed to the nines. Quinn was wearing a formal dress, with sparkling cleavage and diamond earrings. Her hair was pulled up in a twisted side bun, more diamonds added among the strands for decoration. Peter was in a tuxedo, shiny black shoes, and was even wearing a tailcoat.

There’d been a nervous excitement that had slowly built and built, but put this couple on the scene and I wasn’t surprised when a guy walking with them screamed “hospital administrator” to me.

Shit was serious now.

The nurses kept stopping in, checking on us, their eyes going to Kash and staying. I was pretty sure all the nurses actually working on Matt weren’t the ones coming to see how we were doing. That was all extra. And I knew this because those nurses were working. These weren’t.

Waiting on Chrissy had meant that the hospital was almost a second home to me, growing up. I knew how the staff and shifts worked there. But all that stopped once the administrator was there. Nurses came in, saw him, saw the reproach in his gaze, and stopped coming in.

When Peter and Quinn entered the waiting room, Kash didn’t go over to them. He remained in the seat next to mine.

I was surprised at that.

Both Peter and Quinn noticed, too, and Quinn’s eyebrows furrowed a small bit. Peter’s face was kept blank, his eyes darting to me as if reassuring himself, then he focused on what the administrator was saying.

It was another twenty minutes after their arrival, after they were given coffee and anything else they wanted, when the doctor breezed in through the door.

We all moved.

“We were able to diagnose the poison your son ingested.”

“Poison!” Quinn sucked in her breath.

Kash stepped back, a harsh hiss from him.

Peter and Quinn both frowned at him.

The doctor frowned at them frowning at him and kept on, “It was touch-and-go for a while, but once we were able to identify the poison, we administered an antidote. Your son has since stabilized. We have an IV drip giving him saline, and extra oxygen. We want to make sure all his body functions and organs don’t have any lasting damage, but the last set of vitals we got were good. They were very good. We want to monitor Matt for another night, make sure everything is fine. We’ll have him moved to a more secure floor, too.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Quinn said. “Can we see him?”

“He’s sleeping, but once we have him in the room, a nurse will come to get you guys.”

Peter was staring right at Kash, who was on his phone and moving away from the group. He was speaking in a low voice, one that he was using on purpose so none of us could hear what he was doing.

He was making plans. Without us.

I didn’t like it. Someone had hurt my brother. I wanted in on the revenge, but that was ludicrous, right? Kash would handle it—that’s what he did.

Then Peter cleared his throat.

He ignored the doctor, speaking over another question Quinn was asking, and spoke right to Kash. “You’re in the spotlight, Kash.”

Kash stiffened, looking back. He spoke into the phone: “I’ll call you back. Move on my orders until you hear from me.”

He put the phone in his pocket and raised his head up, looking almost defiant. There was a big “fuck off” look in Kash’s eyes, though. He wasn’t being defiant. He was furious. He was being Kash. This was what he did.

“It was Bonham. He was picked up on the club’s security feeds, leaving a few minutes before Matt collapsed.”

Quinn gasped.

Peter’s frown deepened. “Bonham? But—”

“The wife,” Kash grated out. His glance skimmed to Quinn before returning to Peter. “Revenge.”

“Oh dear Lord. Are you serious?”

“What?” Quinn was looking between the two. “What’s going on?”

Both men ignored her.

Peter was saying, “That’s insane. He would’ve known the enemy that I’d be for him.”

“The man’s at the end of his run. He knows it. The wife was the last straw.” Kash’s eyes narrowed. “He was desperate and not thinking.”

“Jesus.” Peter turned away, a hand going to his forehead. He was thinking. “His wife now? His home? There are children—”

Kash cut in. “Already called the police. They have units checking the home.”

“They had a cabin. I had a meeting set up at the end of the week with Bonham to discuss the board he’s still on. He asked to push it back. Said he would be up north at a cabin till then.”

Kash looked at me, and then I got it.

I could do this. I could help this way.

Taking my phone out, I was already looking. “I’ll get the address.”

“Here.”

An iPad was held out to me.

It took a second to put two and two together. The hand holding it out to me was … my father’s. He waved it again. “You can work faster on this than your phone.”

He was right.

I snatched it up, moving to the chairs. I’d process that later. My dad giving me his iPad, having it at the ready, letting me do my thing.

It wasn’t a computer, but I got the address within minutes

“Got it!”

Kash was at my side, phone in hand. He read it off to whoever was on the other side.

“It’ll take a little bit of time, but I can turn off his security program. Or at least get the codes, if they need them.”

Kash gave me a look, saying into the phone, “Yes, Detective. You can reach me at this number. Thank you.” He put the phone away and doubled his look. “An officer of the law just heard you offering to illegally hack a security system.”

Oh.

Not good.

“Oops.”

He shook his head, exasperated, but bent and kissed my forehead. “Only you. Only you.” I heard the amusement from him, and that lessened some of the anxiety in me.

We waited another twenty minutes before a nurse came to show Quinn and Peter to Matt’s room. I wanted to point out that Matt wouldn’t have wanted Quinn in there. If he had a choice, I would’ve been the female he would’ve preferred, but Kash just gave me the signal to keep quiet. He held back, then said he was going to seek out the doctor again.

He wanted to check one more thing.

Torie had been waiting with us until then. Kash told her she could go and she did, saying good-bye to me and letting me know I could call on her for anything. I appreciated that. I did. She’d become a quick friend, and at this point, I was being loose in my classification of friend. She was it, for the moment.

It was an hour later when we were told that Matt’s prognosis was good, better than good. We could all go home and let Matt sleep the night through.

As soon as we got the report, exhaustion hit hard.

That was when we heard the shouting. Kash was walking with me, down a hallway. At the same time, Peter and Quinn were just coming off an elevator. They saw us. There was no surprise, so they must have planned to leave with Kash and me.

But then a stairway door burst open and I heard, “I am going to see my daughter whether you want me to or not! She’s mine! I saw her on the news, heard the story, and this hospital is the closest to that club where patients would be sent. Doesn’t take a genius to figure out that she’s here, and I know she is. Call it mother’s intuition.”

A blond head was walking into the hallway, talking to two hospital staff behind her. Another nurse was behind them, looking aggrieved, and from down the hallway, hospital security was heading our way.

Then that blond ball of fury looked my way, and I swear I could see steam rising from Chrissy Hayes’s head.

“There you are!”

My mother had arrived.