Cocky Secrets (Cocker Brothers #29)

39. Jett

THIRTY-NINE

Jett

A cup of coffee is thrust into my hands and I look over. “Take it,” Honey Badger gruffly says. “You look like hell.”

“If I see another cop again…”

He nods and sits on the beige, uncomfortable hospital chair on the other side of Sunshine’s bed.

“Yeah,” he mutters, staring at her bandaged head.

I take a sip as I gaze at her. It tastes like nothing to me. My senses are dead. Everything feels like how she looks – colorless and empty.

“What’d the doctor say?”

I inhale and shake my head. “I’m waiting to hear. They just wheeled her in.”

Entering the room Fuse interjects, “Doctors are just educated guessers, that’s what my mom called them.”

I look over to see him carrying his bloodied jacket, his shoulder gauzed. “They fix you up?”

He shrugs and rips the small piece of tape off his nose. “Fuck this thing. First time I’ve been to a real doctor since I joined the club eleven years ago. Felt weird. Didn’t like it. But they did a cleaner job removing the bullet than you fuckers ever did.”

Honey Badger adjusts in his chair to ask, “Well?”

Fuse leans against a wall and hooks his fingers in his blood-spattered jeans pockets. We’re all covered. “After you guys finished answering all their fuckin’ questions, they double fact-checked everything, asking the same things to us. Course all our stories are the same, because we’re the fuckin’ good guys here, but they sure didn’t want to believe it, did they?”

We both shake our heads.

“Well, they’re real curious about The Ciphers now. I have a feeling word might spread. In a good way. Hell, who knows how that’ll pan out? Could put us up against other clubs. I don’t know. Then Scratch and Tonk wanted to see what would happen to the girls, so they’re at the precinct now. Said they’d call and find out where we are when they’re done. I guess Tonk took a liking to one of the women, and he’s real concerned over what happens to her after this. They don’t have families. Most of them are totally alone.”

Honey Badger and I look at each other as he tells me, “The one he consoled, probably, that’s the one. Fuse was in the other room kicking ass.”

“Right,” I mutter, looking back at Sunshine. Gently I lift her hand and hold it, closing my eyes. I have a strong feeling she’s gonna die on me. Never seen anyone this pale.

“Oh, here’s somethin’ interesting. That money she stole? The credit card thing?”

I look over at Fuse. “Yeah?”

“There was a van parked down from the palace of misery. It was stolen. Cops broke in right in front of us. Stacks of sealed up, brand new comforters.”

“What the hell?” Honey Badger asks, frowning.

I look at Sunshine again. “Fuck. She thought she was gonna save those women. The blankets were for them.”

Fuse’s voice is low as he explains, “Scratch figured that out, too. He told the cops. Adds to her being there for noble reasons. Clears any doubt of…” He trails off.

“Good,” I whisper, holding her hand to my forehead and closing my eyes.

Fuse and Honey go silent.

We stay like this.

From time to time I hear the slurping of coffee, but nothin’ else.

After who knows how long, footsteps, the door opening, and Scratch’s familiar voice, makes me turn my head. I feel stiff everywhere.

“Jett.” He lays a heavy hand on my shoulder. “We got a hotel room. Go get cleaned up.”

“I’m not leavin.’”

He wants to argue, but decides against it.

“Where’s Tonk?” Fuse asks while Honey waits by the door.

“It’s a fuckin’ mess with those women. Social services and detectives all over the place. Some of them have distant relatives; some even had parents who didn’t know where they were. Tonk’s askin’ about Carmen.”

“That’s her name?” Honey Badger asks.

“Yeah. She was clingin’ to him for dear life until the cops made her let go. She’s only eighteen.”

“You know that for sure?”

“Yeah. There were records of the girls. He demanded to know if she was underage on top of everything. Some of them were younger than eighteen when they got impregnated.”

“Fuckin’ animals,” Honey Badger growls.

“You said it. Carmen turns nineteen soon, so she wasn’t a minor. Tonk looked like he was gonna kill someone if she had been. He’s taken a real liking to the girl.”

The door opens again and a man in a lab coat enters.

I stand up for answers. “Is she gonna make it?”

He glances around the room. We’re a sight, the four Ciphers. Only our hands are washed clean. Fuse looks like a truck hit him. After him, I’m the worst and it’s mostly her blood.

The doctor pauses to gather his cool and turns wary eyes to me. “Look, it’s against our protocol to give you information when you’re not family.” He raises his hand as I begin to speak. “BUT I am making an exception. I heard about what happened. I think you guys deserve to know, after what you all did.” He glances around our somber faces. “She’s in a coma. The bullet skimmed the side of her skull. It didn’t hit her brain tissue, but there was internal bleeding. As a result, she’s in a coma and we don’t know any more than that.”

Grasping for straws, I ask, “She’s not going to die?”

“I didn’t say that. Not everyone makes it out of a coma. I’m sorry, but they are unpredictable. The body has gone to sleep to heal from the trauma, but she might not…I’m sorry.”

The Ciphers are all staring at me with stone faces. I blink back to her and rasp, “How long are comas? For how long? I mean, is there a normal amount of time?”

“People have come out in days, weeks, months…sometimes years. There’s still much we don’t know about them.”

“There’s still much you don’t know about a lot of shit,” Fuse grumbles.

The doctor pauses and glances over. He sighs. “True. But we will do the best we can to save her life. This is one of the best hospitals in the country.”

“Can she hear me?”

“People have reported hearing things when they were unconscious, yes. Not everyone, but I think it’s worth doing, just in case. It certainly can’t hurt.” He pauses, walking to thumb through her folder. “I thought you might want to know that we have to call her Jane Doe.”

My head whips to him and his steady gaze falters.

“What the fuck,” I growl.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Cocker, but the police don’t have a record of her. There are no fingerprints in their system. She had no I.D. in her backpack or on her person.” He sees the storm brewing in me, and cautiously adds, “And they said you didn’t know her name.”

“Jesus,” Scratch mutters.

I grab the folder from him, looming over the guy. “Give me that pen.” Hesitating, he hands it to me. I cross out the fucking Jane Doe and scrawl above it, Sunshine .

“There. Call her that until she wakes the fuck up.”

Honey Badger looks over the doc’s shoulder and smiles proudly as the guy reads it, too. After a long beat, he does the decent thing. “I’ll have them change it in the system. We’ll print out a new one.”

Turning to her, I take a seat, pick up her hand and firmly tell the room, “Go.”

One after the other, they file out.

Scratch is the last one, and he walks over to pat my shoulder. “Call.”

I nod and wait until the door closes behind him.

“Sunshine, if you can hear me, you did good back there tonight. You did it. It’s over.” A lump tightens in my throat. “If you have to go now, I understand. You deserve to have whatever you want, but…I want you to stay. I want you to stay. ” Holding her clammy hand to my forehead, I close my eyes.