The Bulletproof Boy Read online

  “No,” I say, pushing aside the oxygen mask. “I’m fine. Call the doctor and tell him I have to go back to work, and I’ll schedule another time for this chelation treatment.”

  “This isn’t a spa, it’s a hospital. I’m afraid that if you don’t sit here for at least three hours and allow this medicine to drip into your bloodstream, your kidneys are going to fail and you will certainly die. You’ve been exposed to extremely high levels of a toxin. Most likely within the last twenty-four hours. Have you been anywhere unusual?”

  I try to remember my activities of the last twenty-four hours. Reaching up to rub my forehead, I exhale in exasperation. “I don’t think so. I need my phone to check my appointments. I have so many meetings in a day—can you go get Miranda?”

  “Sure,” the nurse says, but he turns back to me with an odd look. “I’m not supposed to tell you this, but the doctor thinks you’ve been poisoned. We’ve informed the police and they’re sending someone over to ask you some questions.”

  I pause. I try to respond, but another fit of coughing interrupts me, and splatters the front of my hospital gown with blood. When that settles down, I stare at the blood with a deep frown before looking back up at the nurse.

  “Rodriguez,” I tell the nurse. “Get me Detective Rodriguez. And my cell phone. And my lawyer.”

  Chapter Three

  Getting shot

  “Cadmium poisoning?” Miranda says as she sits at my bedside and looks up information on her phone. “Are you sure they said it was cadmium? There are three possible worksites where you could have been exposed. But it looks like we’ve had regular safety inspections and the levels are all way lower than they need to be to meet health standards. Besides, you’ve been mostly in the office. Other men would have gotten way sicker, way faster.”

  “Have employees been calling in sick?” I ask her as I hunt for statistics on my own phone. “Are there an unusual amount of absent workers?”

  “No, not at all. In fact, all the construction projects around the city are ahead of schedule. They have been taking fewer sick days than usual.”

  My eyebrows crease as my brain tries to process everything that’s happening. “Miranda... the doctors think that it’s possible someone specifically poisoned me.”

  “What? That’s ridiculous.” She looks up at me with narrowed eyes. “Or—do you think it could be a jealous competitor? You have stolen clients from quite a few firms, and you’ve put some completely out of business.”

  “Their lack of talent put them out of business,” I inform her.

  She sighs, turning to play with the vase of flowers she bought me in the hospital gift shop. She then turns back to look at me suddenly. “There’s another possibility,” she says. “It could be Benjamin. He’s really angry about that trick you pulled with the Justice Towers.”

  “He’s a sick bastard,” I say, sitting up with a groan. Clutching my chest, I remember the first time I met Senator Benjamin Powell. I was fifteen years old, in a hospital bed similar to this one, and more injured than I am now. He loved seeing me vulnerable like that, and groggy from morphine. He thought he could intimidate me into becoming one of his pawns. He thought he’d succeeded.

  “Would he do something like this?” Miranda asks softly.

  I remember the way that Benjamin took pleasure in causing more harm to my already wounded body. “Definitely.”

  “Have you shared any food or drink with him in business meetings about the towers?”

  “No—although there was champagne at the ribbon cutting ceremony.”

  “That was our champagne. It would have been safe.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you, Miranda.” Coughing quietly, I cover my mouth with my hand, trying to conceal the bleeding from her so that she doesn’t worry. “My calendar looks normal—I haven’t done anything unusual. I think the doctors might be wrong about the cadmium. Or maybe I was exposed a long time ago. They said the cadmium exposure could cause cancer, and they’re scheduling me for an MRI after the chelation.”

  “God, I hope not, Cole. I had to watch my dad wither away after he was diagnosed. I will never forgive you if you make me go through that again.”

  “I won’t,” I promise her, reaching out with my non-bloody hand to touch hers. “Thank you for being here for me.”

  She squeezes my hand and looks at me with concern. “Do you know—is there some way I can get ahold of Scarlett?”

  Her words hit me like a stab in the gut, and I look away, trying not to wince. “I can only reach her by letter, and she isn’t responding. However, I do have the phone number of her… fiancé.”

  Miranda’s eyebrows jump slightly. “No. Fiancé? You’re joking.”

  I shake my head and shrug, trying to appear noncommittal. “Apparently, she’s getting married.”

  Loosening her grip on my hand, Miranda looks at me in shock. “Cole…”

  “It’s fine. Remember, she’s not our Scarlett anymore. She’s Sophie, now.”

  “She will always be our Scarlett. Your Scarlett. Give me that damned phone number. I refuse to believe she’s marrying some other guy.”

  “Who’s getting married?” asks a voice from the doorway.

  I look up to see my old friend, and I exhale in relief. “Roddy, you’re a sight for sore eyes.”

  “Heard someone tried to poison you, Hunter. You dead yet?”

  “Halfway there,” I tell him with a grin. “Speaking of which, Miranda—could you go see if Mr. Bishop has arrived yet? I still need to make those amendments to my will.”

  She stands up haltingly. “Fine. I’ll let you boys talk in private. But don’t get too attached to the idea of your death, young man. You still have a company to run, and there’s a whole world out there that needs more of your designs.”

  When she turns and walks away, I see her lift a hand to her face to flick away some tears. It hurts me to think that my condition is causing her pain. But somehow, I don’t think I have a lot of living left to do.

  “Are you going to leave me a yacht?” Detective Ricardo Carlos Rodriguez asks as he moves to my bedside. “You don’t have to, but I wouldn’t complain.”

  “I don’t have a yacht,” I tell my friend, covering a cough.

  “Fine,” he says with a nod. “I’ll settle for a duplex. Just a little one.”

  “How about a ranch where you can retire and raise horses?”

  “Sounds good, man. But you have to throw in the horses.”

  “Done. Now can you figure out who’s trying to kill me, please?”

  “Maybe. You look like death,” he says as he surveys my bloody hospital gown. “Whoever’s trying is succeeding.”

  “Tell me more good news, buddy.”

  He grins. “Don’t worry. I already sent my team to look at your house, your office, and those three construction sites. And the doctor informed me that you’re probably going to live, so you don’t have to buy horses for my ranch just yet. Maybe a puppy, though. I always wanted a Siberian Husky.”

  Coughing and laughing at the same time, I smile weakly. “Having friends is hard when you’re rich. You get sick and they ask for presents. Why don’t I get a puppy?”

  “You’ll be fine, man,” Rodriguez says, suddenly serious. “The doctor said that your kidneys seem to be functioning better than expected, and that your lungs will probably make a full recovery once you finish the chelation. You’re as tough as Rasputin!”

  “Rasputin eventually got killed,” I remind the detective with a groan.

  “You won’t,” he says reassuringly. “It’s just going to take some time to heal, and you need to rest up and stop working yourself to death. You need to get some sleep.”

  “I never sleep.”

  “And that’s probably why you collapsed on your goddamn rooftop. You’re sick, man. Real sick. You need to take some time off, and allow yourself to get better.”

  Shaking my head, I frown. “I can’t take time off right now, Roddy. You know that.”


  “Why? Because of problems with your girl? Because you need to work yourself into oblivion to forget about her?”

  Closing my eyes, I lean my head back against the pillows. “No.”

  “Don’t lie to me, Hunter.”

  I exhale slowly through my nostrils. “She doesn’t give a shit about me anymore.”

  “That’s bull, and you know it. This is the same girl who tore apart a prison for you.”

  Nodding, I inhale deeply, which results in me coughing again. In annoyance, I reach for my oxygen mask and take a few whiffs. “That was a long time ago, man.”

  “It wasn’t that long ago. I remember it like it was yesterday. Girls don’t commit felonies for guys they aren’t crazy about. Then there was that car she stole. Come on—she’s committed a lot of felonies for you. If that isn’t love, I don’t know what is.”

  Smiling slightly in memory, I think about the ridiculous car sitting in my garage. I lift my shoulders. “We’ve drifted apart. We don’t talk anymore. I’ve tried to give her space. I’ve tried to be patient. I even went to therapy to see if I could sort my shit out—somehow make myself into someone she could stand to be around again. Things have only gotten worse.”

  “It can’t be that bad. Let her know that you’re sick, and I’m sure she’ll come to see you.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Hunter, you need to let her know. If you don’t, I’m going to inform the press and get some nationwide-news coverage…”

  “Do not do that,” I warn him with a serious look. “My company can’t handle bad press right now.”

  “Okay, okay,” he says, patting my arm. “Don’t worry, buddy. I’m just joking around. I just want you to feel better, and I know—I know that you’ll never feel better unless you get your girl back.”

  I press my lips together tightly, trying not to betray emotion as I stare at the hospital walls. “She has issues. I always tried to be understanding of that. I am understanding of that. She ran away and took that job without telling me—I didn’t get upset. She started living with some guy—I didn’t get upset. I know what she’s been through, and I know I screwed up. But maybe I should have gotten upset. I should have… let myself be jealous. When she dated other guys in college, I should have been more possessive and showed her that I care.”

  “She knows that you care! I never realized she cheated on you, man.”

  “It wasn’t cheating,” I inform him. “We were never really… together, in the traditional sense. Scar was molested when she was very young, and she is kind of messed up in certain ways.”

  “Messed up how?”

  I turn to look at Rodriguez with a sudden fire in my chest. “You know what happened, a few days ago? I got a call at my office from Zachary Small. I immediately recognized the name as her boyfriend, from her letters. And you know what this bastard has the balls to ask me? If I’ll give him permission to marry her. Because I’m her foster brother, and I’m the only family she has. Closest thing to a father she has.”

  “What the fuck?” Rodriguez asks.

  “He wanted my permission to marry my wife.”

  There is a silence in the room

  “Oh, hell no,” my friend mutters. “You gonna let some broke-ass mothafucker move in on your woman like that—”

  “I know, brother.”

  “Why would she ever agree to marry some piece of shit, when she is already married to you?”

  “I don’t know. I just thought that there was some invisible line she would never cross. But getting married to someone else? I’m jealous. I’m upset. I don’t want to be, but I can’t help it. This is too much.”

  “You’re Cole Hunter. Who the fuck is better than you?”

  “Thanks, man. But I’m currently coughing up blood and breathing from an oxygen mask, so it’s not an awesome day to be Cole Hunter.”

  “She should be here, by your side.” The detective shakes his head. “These bitches. Trifling bitches need to learn.”

  “She’s just scared,” I tell my friend.

  “What is she so scared of?”

  “The truth,” I mutter. Thinking about my answer, I turn to gaze into the hospital hall, where the staff is rushing about purposefully. “She’s always been scared of the truth.”

  While I’m speaking, there is an odd impact on the side of my face—pressure and heat. It is followed by a terrible noise. The noise is blinding, like there is glass shattering all around me, and I blink rapidly. I am confused, and I don’t know where to turn first. The windows. My vision is suddenly blurry and unsteady, but I am able to squint and see that the windows are damaged.

  But that isn’t possible. I built this hospital to withstand earthquakes. Only the toughest of materials were used. I am distracted from this thought by the painful throbbing in my face. I turn to the detective, who is ducking down on one knee, and looking around, similarly disoriented.

  “Rodriguez… is there something wrong with my face?”

  When he looks up at me, his eyes widen. He grabs the side of the hospital bed, and pulls it forcefully down to the floor, causing the whole bed to topple over with me still in it—but not before I feel another searing impact in my shoulder. This time, an earsplitting yell is ripped from my throat as I crash painfully into the rails of the fallen bed. There is also sharp glass under my hand, which I had put out defensively to break my fall. The metal pole holding my chelation treatment clatters to the floor beside us.

  “Stay down!” Rodriguez shouts, covering my body with his own, and using the hospital bed like a shield.

  When there is a scream from the doorway, the detective gestures wildly with his arm. “Miranda! Get down! Get away from the windows!”

  “What is happening?” I ask my friend, clutching my shoulder and moaning. My face feels like it’s on fire. It’s as if I just got stabbed with a hot poker in the eye. Shutting my eyes tightly, I try to brace myself against the pain so that I can think. I hear the sound of nurses screaming and scattering in the hospital, and people shouting at each other to take cover. “What the hell just happened? Roddy?”

  “Your face just got ripped open,” he says with a grimace. “Large caliber bullet.”

  I blink several times, suddenly able to make sense of the burning sensation under my eye. Jesus, it burns. The glass underneath me must be from the flower vase Miranda brought me being hit.

  “A sniper?” I ask Rodriguez, my voice a hiss through gritted teeth. I feel suddenly light headed and it is hard to think. I whisper as though it will keep the bad guys from knowing where I am. “Scarlett’s boyfriend, that Zack guy, he’s a sniper.”

  “Is he a bad sniper?” Rodriguez asks. “Because this guy missed you by a mile.”

  “Missed me?” I ask as the searing pain floods my shoulder, causing me to writhe and grip my arm with a moan. “What are you talking about? I feel like I just had my damn shoulder blown off.”

  “Naw,” Rodriguez says, leaning forward to examine the wound. “It’s just a scratch. If he were a real sniper, you’d have a bullet in your brain. Here…” Looking around, he grabs one of the sheets from the bed and begins typing it around my shoulder awkwardly, even managing to loop a corner around my face. “This should do for now. A hospital is literally the best place to get shot, so don’t worry, man.”

  The pain is causing my whole body to break out in a cold sweat. “Sure. I’m not worried. Do I look worried?” My breathing is coming in short, shallow gasps, and I push the sheet above my lips so I can breathe better. My injured lungs are not cooperating, and I wish I could take a puff from my oxygen mask.

  Reaching for his police radio, Rodriguez studies me with slightly lifted eyebrows. “I’m not the best detective in the world, Cole, but it looks like someone really wants you dead. This motherfucker knew he failed at killing you with poison, so he decided to use bullets. Good thing you’re in Rasputin mode.”

  “Rasputin died!” I shriek hoarsely in reminder, clutching my shoulder with great
frustration.

  Pressing a button on his radio he begins communicating with his precinct. “10-71 in progress, requesting backup…”

  Laying my head back on the floor, I stop listening to him. He ducks as a bullet whizzes by over the hospital bed, and rolls his eyes as if only lightly annoyed by the futile efforts of the shooter. I have always known that my friend was a badass, but I didn’t realize he was so calm under pressure.

  Using my teeth to pick some glass out of my palm, I wince at the pain in my face. My whole fucking body is a shredded mess. Coughing, I reach for my phone, which has clattered to the floor. My fingers leave a blood thumbprint on the screen, and the sticky wetness prevents me from unlocking the device. I give up and just let my arm lie limply on the cold hospital floor. I feel like I’ve been punched repeatedly in the eye, the shoulder, and the gut by a three-hundred pound man with brass knuckles.

  But all these injuries are only serving to expose my deeper pain.

  Underneath the shallow flesh wounds is a sick, empty feeling. A hollowness.

  None of this would matter if she were still on my side. If I could just pick up my cell phone and call her, and tell her that I’m hurting. Tell her that I’ve had a hard day, and I need her. If I could just know that I would see her at the end of all this, when I get out of this hospital, it would all be easier to endure.

  All of this would disappear if I could only touch her.

  If I could just go home and find her sitting there, wearing her librarian glasses, sipping a cup of tea while she does god-knows-what on that laptop of hers. If I could only hold her, and put my head on her shoulder, and breathe in the scent of her hair. Every bad day would be a private joke, easily washed away.

  But now, even if I do get better, and get out of this hospital, I will still be going home to an empty house. I will still be surrounded by paintings and furniture we picked out together. I will still have to get dressed in our shared walk-in closet, which is 95% filled with her favorite clothes that haven’t been touched in years.

  I can get the poison leeched out of me, and I can get the bullet holes patched up, but I can’t fix the empty shell that my life has become. My therapist was right when she told me that I was slowly killing myself with my inability to let go. I need to be honest with myself.