Lizzie tried to calm her breathing. As much as she wanted to hold Ben close to her, she had to remember he was safer away from his father. She on the other hand, wasn’t so lucky.

  He finally stopped bruising her arm when he got to a gold car parked two blocks away. He took a key out of his pocket and unlocked the doors, pushing her inside as soon as he could open a door. Once she was inside, he opened the glove box and grabbed a zip tie and secured it around her wrists.

  “How did you have this all planned out?” With the getaway car being right there, it was clear he’d thought things through. She hadn’t really had a chance to look at him, but the fact that he didn’t seem to be limping or bleeding also gave her a hint he’d taken measures to make sure only Doug was injured.

  Thinking of Doug, she wished she knew what exactly his injuries were. The car had definitely been impacted on his side, and if he was able to move, she was sure Tommy wouldn’t have been able to take her so easily.

  Tommy worked his way around the car and settled into the plush fabric of the driver’s seat. He waited until after he started the car and was on his way down the road before he responded.

  “We’ll have plenty of time to discuss how brilliant I am. First we need to get somewhere safe, where we can discuss what a bad girl you’ve been.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Doug hated playing the stupid Redbirds. Their forwards had a way of breaking down his defense, which was exactly what played out in front of the net. He tried to push the man who’d camped out in front of him, but it was too late, he tipped a pass through a hole between Doug’s legs.

  They were in the Redbird’s arena, so the horn blared. The penetrating noise seemed like it was coming from inside Doug. It was the most irritating noise in existence when it was in an opposing arena. It was almost as annoying as the beeping Doug kept hearing. More than likely it was something one of the fans taunting him behind the glass found to drive him insane. Whatever it was, it worked.

  As the other team celebrated their goal, Doug focused in on the steady beeping. He skated around the net, focusing on the blurred faces. With his mask, glove and blocker in the way, it made it a little hard to rub his eyes, but he held his blocker up to his mask anyway.

  “Doug, if you can hear me, squeeze my hand.” The voice sounded far away, and at first he couldn’t place it.

  He looked around him and realized the rest of the people in the arena had disappeared. The voice kept speaking, but he couldn’t find the owner.

  “Mom? Where are you?”

  He gave up looking behind his net and skated towards center ice. Along with hearing his mother, the beeping was getting louder. Doug tried to focus on the noises, wanting to figure out what in the world was going on. Scanning for any hint of his mother hiding somewhere in the stands, he called out to her again.

  “Tell me where you are, Mom.”

  “Did you see that?” she asked in return, causing Doug to twirl around to try to find what she was talking about. “His finger just moved. That’s right, Doug. It’s time to come back to us.”

  Doug didn’t understand. He closed his eyes and shook his head to try to clear the craziness. When he went to reopen them, he found there was a weight on top of them, making it difficult to lift his lids. As stubborn as he was, it didn’t take him too long to battle them open, but the effort it took was tiring.

  He expected to see the arena around him, but the first thing he saw was a bright light. It made him want to immediately close his eyes. After the trouble he had opening them, he decided to just let them get used to the pain the light caused.

  “There you are,” his mom said.

  He tried to move his neck to look towards the voice, which finally sounded closer, but his neck was somehow restrained. His eyes darted from side to side to see if he could see her in his peripheral vision, which didn’t do him any good.

  “I’ll go get the doctor,” his dad said.

  “What are you guys doing here? And where exactly is here?” Doug had to speak slowly to get the words out. It felt like his throat was filled with multiple frogs and a little like someone had scraped his throat with something.

  “You shouldn’t speak. They just removed your intubation tube. Do you remember what happened?”

  His mom’s answer sort of answered his question. Apparently he was in the hospital and things were bad enough his parents had made the roughly seven-hour flight to be by his side.

  Doug went to shake his head since she’d mentioned not speaking, but he couldn’t do that either. He attempted to take a quick inventory of what injuries he could feel. He quickly realized he wasn’t able to really feel anything. There weren’t even tingles in his arms or legs.

  “What happened?” he croaked out.

  “I’ll tell you as long as you promise not to speak again until the doctor says it’s okay.” Doug wanted to point out he couldn’t agree, but thankfully she went on with her explanation. “You were in a car accident. I don’t have all the details, but the driver rammed into your side of the car and left the scene.”

  “Lizzie? Ben?” Since he hadn’t agreed, she couldn’t scold him.

  Flashes of the crash started playing in his head. After the initial hit, he remembered airbags deploying and his face running into the one that popped out of the steering wheel. There was pain, enough that he thought he was blacking out, but he tried to fight through it to check on his passengers.

  “The baby’s fine. He’s out in the waiting room with your friends. The doctors say he doesn’t have a scratch on him, but he keeps calling for his parents, and I’m told he thinks you’re his father.”

  If she didn’t want him using his voice, she not only needed to not ask questions, she also needed to not bring up topics he needed to expound upon.

  “Lizzie?” He hadn’t missed that she’d neglected to mention the love of his life. He wished he could see her face to know exactly how bad things were.

  “Like I said, I don’t know everything. We’d just got to town when we got the call you’d been in an accident and were going into surgery. Before you hurt yourself by asking, we were surprising you with a visit since you’ve had some time off for weeks now and haven’t come to visit. Anyway, when we got here, we heard there were two other people in the accident, and that it appears one of them was taken from the scene.”

  “How long?” Doug asked as he started panicking. He hadn’t noticed the driver in the other car because he’d been focused on trying to avoid the collision, but it had to have been Tommy.

  “Five hours.”

  He couldn’t tell if he was doing anything as he attempted to ball his hands into fists. He didn’t need the machines beeping around him to tell him his pulse picked up. The thumping of his blood through his body filled his ears.

  “I’m going to have to ask you to leave the room.” Doug didn’t know the voice, but he assumed it wasn’t speaking to him.

  “You’ll have to physically remove me if you think I’m leaving his side.”

  Doug let his mother and the doctor argue while he thought about what was going on with Lizzie. Five hours was a long time to be alone with a homicidal maniac. They shouldn’t have left the house. They had been safe there.

  He let his eyes shut as he felt tears fall down his face. He needed to talk to the police, so he could tell them everything he remembered. He had managed to see some flashes, but he had to think of every detail he could. It went without saying that Tommy hadn’t driven away in the car that had rammed them. Doug had blurry memories, but he knew the other car had practically been in his lap when things came to a halt.

  “Cops?” he asked since no one seemed to be paying him any attention.

  If the doctor was worried about him, picking a fight with his mother was a bad move. He inherited every ounce of stubbornness from her, so his money was that she’d win the argument.

  Doug picked up the sound of someone sighing, but he didn’t know who it was. Since he didn’t know how many people were in the room, it was hard to get a sense.

  “Sorry about that,” the man Doug assumed was the doctor said. His tone made him imagine a glare in Doug’s mother’s direction. “The police have been checking on your condition and have a man standing guard outside. You should be safe. I’m going to test the feeling in your extremities. You had some spinal damage, and I’m a little concerned about the swelling.”

  Doug wanted to laugh at the doctor thinking he was worried about his own safety. He hoped the doctor hadn’t been filled in on all the facts of the accident, because if he had, he was an idiot.

  “I need to talk to the cops. My fiancé is missing.”

  “Your fiancé?” His mom sounded confused, but he ignored the comment.

  “Detective Milner.” Doug’s strength felt like it was being zapped out of him, so he didn’t bother relaying the detective’s partner. Both of them had been there when he handed over the photo Tommy had left for them.

  “I’m sure he’ll be in to talk to you soon, but until then, can you feel this?”

  Doug didn’t feel anything, nor did he feel like talking to anyone who couldn’t give him a clue whether Lizzie was still alive. He closed his eyes and hoped the rest of the room realized he wasn’t into playing the little needle poke games, or whatever it was the doctor was trying to do.

  “He’s not responding,” his mother stated the obvious.

  “I’m guessing that’s because he doesn’t feel anything, and not because he’s being obstinate about me not sending someone to check on whether the detective he wants to talk to is around.”

  Well the doctor wasn’t totally stupid. Doug would’ve felt better about that realization if he wasn’t fairly certain he was paralyzed.

  “I don’t want to believe that’s true, but why don’t you go through his list of injuries, maybe that would help him be a little more cooperative,” his mom suggested. Her tone let him know he better not be keeping things to himself.

  “Okay, I should’ve probably brought a glass of water for this, but here it all is.” Doug imagined the noise of a drum signaling the punchline of a joke. “You have a compound fracture in your left tibia that we had to operate on along with dealing with a little internal bleeding. Early indication is we have everything internal under control and you’ve got all the organs you came in with, but the bleeding was cause by a piece of metal that ended up doing damage to your spine. Right now there’s too much swelling to get a clear picture of the damage. I’m hoping as the swelling goes down, you’ll regain some feeling.”

  Doug knew that news should’ve been devastating, but he could care less. Actually that wasn’t right. He was pissed he wasn’t able to search for Lizzie, and that he hadn’t been able to protect her. As a goaltender, he was quick to react. He recalled there were cars parked to their right, so he couldn’t swerve that way, but there had to have been another option.

  “And he could care less. I’ll go see if I can find his detective.” The doctor already claimed defeat, which was a testament to how long he’d been dealing with Doug’s mom.

  “Do you think bringing the baby in would help?”

  “Yes,” Doug answered before anyone could respond to his mother. “I want to see Ben.”

  He was terrified for Lizzie, but Ben had to be scared too. Doug wasn’t sure who was with him, but he’d been anxious every time Doug had seen him with new people.

  Doug opened his eyes, even though it was frustrating not to see anything other than the ceiling. He wanted to verify with his own eyes Ben was okay, even if someone had to hold the toddler in front of his face.

  “Normally I would say no, but I understand the need to verify your son is okay. We’ll keep it under ten minutes, though.”

  No one in the room corrected the doctor, and since he didn’t say anything else, Doug assumed he disappeared to find the detective.

  “Clay, will you go get him?” His father answered in the affirmative before his mother turned her focus back on Doug. “It seems there’s a few holes in your life you need to fill in once you’re able to speak without straining. I am guessing the baby isn’t really yours, but I’m not naïve enough to think it isn’t possible and you just recently found out about it. I’d hope you weren’t hiding a secret love child from me.”

  Doug chose to conserve his strength rather than engaging. What little energy he had needed to wait for Ben. That didn’t stop his mom from basically talking to herself.

  “And you’re engaged. I guess it’s a good thing we decided to visit. We may have had to read about the wedding in the paper.”

  “Daddy,” Ben squealed. It was music to Doug’s ears for many reasons. “Daddy hurt.”

  “Yes, Daddy hurt, buddy. You hurt?” Ben’s face hovered over Doug’s face, and Doug could see he’d been crying. Even though he’d sounded happy about seeing Doug, he’d been having a tough time. “Thank you,” Doug said to whoever held him.

  “You’re welcome,” his dad replied. “I figured it would make you feel a little better.”

  “I fine, but Mommy gone.” Ben was impatient to let anyone else talk.

  All Doug wanted to do was wrap his arms around the little guy and try to give what comfort he could, but that didn’t seem to be happening any time soon.

  “I know, but we’ll get her back.”

  “Bad guy took her.”

  Doug had no doubt about that, but he was a little surprised Tommy had left Ben behind. When Tommy sent the dozens of texts, “his son” was mentioned in at least a quarter of them.

  “I know. We’ll get her back, though. Is Annie or Casey keeping an eye on you?”

  Ben’s head nodded, and Doug felt a little envious. The doctor hadn’t said anything about his neck, but it was either glued in place or his spine issues went from head to toe.

  “About half the team is out in the waiting room. We haven’t told them the extent of your injuries, since we didn’t know how bad things were.” While his dad spoke, there were a few hitches in his words, indicating he was worried about the prognosis.

  “They wouldn’t believe you if you told them I’m paralyzed, so that’s probably for the best.” Doug wished it could be just him and Ben in the room. Of course without the ability to move his arms and legs, asking everyone else to leave was impossible. “Do you have Turtle with you?”

  Doug knew he’d been packed in the diaper bag in the backseat. He’d noticed Lizzie had forgotten him and had thrown the stuffed animal in the bag just before they left. There was a good chance someone overlooked grabbing it from the car, though. Any worry that Ben didn’t have the things he needed erased when Turtle popped into view.

  “Not working. Can’t sleep. Mommy gone.”

  The word pairings came out in squeaks and as Turtle was moved out of the way, Doug saw Ben’s bottom lip jut out and tears fill his eyes. No matter what was wrong with his spine, Doug made a vow that his arms would work again, because they were meant to hold and comfort that little boy.

  “Mommy will be home soon, and the bad man won’t bother us again. I promise, buddy. Listen, I think I’m going to take a nap, so I’d like you to try, okay?” Doug thought about asking if Casey or Annie could take Ben to his place, but the hospital was probably safer.

  “You take Turtle?” Ben held the stuffed animal out.

  “No, you keep Turtle. If he’s not helping you sleep, use his little shell as a pillow, and ask Casey or Annie to find you a blankie, okay? You need to get some sleep. When you wake up, we’ll have some dinner, okay?”

  Doug wasn’t sure he was cleared to eat anything, but he could pretend to eat whatever someone was able to spoon-feed him. That would require his bed to be lifted up so he could sit, which he was hoping was possible. Not being able to see anything was driving him crazy.

  “Okay. Love you, Daddy.”

  The tears that had started falling from Doug’s eyes when he thought about Lizzie welled up again and pushed to make their way down his face.

  “I love you too, buddy.”

  Ben’s face disappeared from his vision and Doug’s chest tightened from all the emotions welling up inside. He’d just found the family he’d always dreamed about and it was pulled apart.

  “How long has he been in your life?” Doug’s mom asked after a few moments. Apparently since he’d forced words out while Ben was around, she decided to lift her speaking ban. Not that it ever worked. “I’d say years, but I don’t think you could have kept him hidden that long.”

  “A few days. That doesn’t change the fact that they mean everything to me. His father is the one who hit us and took Lizzie.”

  Even though he was on a roll as far as getting words out, and at times it didn’t feel like he had to search deep inside him to find them, it was exhausting keeping up with conversations. He wasn’t going to be able to stay awake much longer, so he was appreciative when he heard Detective Milner’s voice coming his way.

  “I hear you’ve been asking for me.” There was a grit to the man’s voice that Doug imagined came from a pack-a-day habit.

  “Have you found her? Do you have any leads at all?”

  “Maybe it’d be better if we came back and talked after you rested a little. You sound like crap.” At least the detective didn’t sugarcoat things.

  “Just tell me if you know where she is and that she’s alive.”

  “As far as I know, I can’t do either of those right now. We’ve got people out looking everywhere, but we didn’t find much at the scene to go by.”

  Doug imagined there wasn’t paperwork in the other car that proclaimed where Tommy was going next. He had to have another car nearby though, so Doug started describing everything he could remember about the cars around him. He didn’t have a photographic memory, but the harder he thought about certain details, the easier it was for him to start spitting things out.