Page 95 of Shattered Silence Duet

“Excuse me, officer,” I say politely, moving myself in front of Atlas. “Would you mind calling Chief Walters? Tell him you have the Black Hawk Investigations team here.” The officer’s eyebrows raise in surprise.

“Oh, of course, sorry I didn’t realize you knew the chief.” He turns and pulls out his phone and as he starts talking, I turn to my brothers.

“We need to just stay calm and answer what we need to before we leave. Ben and Jasper are with her now, she’s safe.”

“For now,” Atlas grumbles.

“Yes, for now, but if anyone can keep a level head to make sureshe is taken care of, it’s Ben. You trust him to do that, right?” I ask, trying to make eye contact with Atlas.

He looks like he wants to argue before his shoulders drop in defeat. “Yeah, of course I trust him.”

A commotion draws our attention to where two officers are escorting the man we believe to be Jeff out of the house. He’s conscious now, his hands in handcuffs behind his back as he yells obscenities at the cops.

“I haven’t done anything, you idiots!” He struggles and when he sees us, his eyes go wide. “You! You broke into my house and attacked me! Officers, you need to arrest them, not ME!” he yells as they drag him to the back of the cop car.

“You’re a dead man!” Max yells, surprising me, and it’s Dom who grabs him and stops him from running across the lawn to knock the guy out. “I’m gonna kill you for what you did to her!”

“Max, you have to calm down, do you want to spend the night in a jail cell or in the hospital with Mina?” Dom whispers as he holds him back. The fight instantly drains out of him and Dom lets him go.

The officer in front of us hangs up the phone and turns back to us, either unconcerned or unaware of the fight that almost broke out right behind his back. “Ok, Chief said for us to take some quick photos of you, to document the blood, then you can go and he will see you at the hospital later to get your statements.”

“Thank you, officer,” I say before any of the others can argue. The officer does a good job of hustling through the next part. He gets his partner to help photograph us and take down each of our names before they allow the others to go in and clean themselves up.

Max and I are left outside as we’re clean, and we grab a few spare shirts from the back of the SUV for them to put on when they’re done. We watch as the cops come out with bags of evidence, including the knife that was in her shoulder, clearly visible, covered in blood in a clear bag, even from where we stand across the street.

“I think I’m gonna be sick again,” Max grumbles.

“Turn around and take a few deep breaths,” I tell him, rubbing his back as he does just that.

“Thanks man. I’m trying to keep my cool right now, but I feel so… lost. I can’t believe this happened, and I don’t know how to help her.”

“Hey, look at me,” I say, gripping his shoulders as I stare at him. “We’re doing the best we can. We’vebeendoing the best we can. There is only so much we can do without all the information. When Mina makes it through this, we will finally get some answers out of her. Now this has happened, there is no way we let her ever come back here.”

“You think she’ll want to be with us, even though we couldn’t protect her from… all this?”

“We couldn’t protect her because we didn’t know.”

“Still…”

“No, Max. We. Didn’t. Know. We had a lot of guesses and theories about what is going on, and honestly, I don’t think any of them have been removed from the table at this point. But she is going to need time to recover and we will make sure we will be there every step of the way, whether she wants us to be or not. You know why?” I ask him.

“Why?”

“Because she needs us. And we need her. She’s one of us now, and we take care of our family. We’ll figure this out, okay? But you need to be strong for her. She would be upset if she saw you angry and falling apart. She wants to know you are okay, as much as you want her to be. Can you do that?”

He nods slowly at first before he seems to come to some sort of internal conclusion. “Yes. I can do that, Thanks, Gideon.”

“Anytime, brother.” I pull him in for a quick hug right before the voice of the others reach us.

“Let’s go!” Dom yells as he storms out of the house, Atlas and Tucker right behind him.

My words may have helped to calm Max down, but they’veonly made me feel more anxious. None of this is my brother's fault, but it is mine.

We all sit in the waiting room in silence, anxiously waiting for news on Mina. I keep getting up and pacing, unable to sit still. It’s been an hour and a half since we arrived, and we still haven’t heard anything. All we know is that she’s in surgery.

Finally, as Atlas is about to punch a hole in the wall from frustration, a nurse comes in and looks around at the seven of us as she asks, “are you all here for Mina Davies?”

“Yes, we are.” Dom says, standing and taking charge.