Found (Not Quite a Billionaire Book 3) Read Online Free Page B

times with Karen, but I couldn’t sleep.
    I was in Hemi’s bed, in Hemi’s teenage bedroom. But there was no Hemi to put his arms around me and tell me it would be all right, or that I hadn’t done everything as wrong as I knew I had. Or maybe it was that there was no Karen for me to be strong for. For the first time in my life, I not only had nobody to comfort me—which was the normal state of affairs—but, so much worse, I had nobody to comfort. Because I’d left.
    And every time I tried to shut out all the confusion, to close my eyes and find the sleep I craved more than any drug, I saw Koro.
    Sprawled face-down across the bedroom floor, his pants half-on, his bathrobe askew around him, his body so still, it froze me, too. I’d struggled to turn him onto his side, thinking in some dim corner of my mind, Recovery position, while I’d thought about heart attacks and strokes. I’d seen the blood that had covered his face and flowed onto the floor, that was still seeping out from a gash in his scalp. I’d felt the iciness of his skin, and it had turned mine just as cold.
    I’d felt frantically at his outflung wrist for a pulse, but hadn’t been able to detect it beneath my numb, shaking fingers. But he was bleeding, and dead people didn’t bleed.
    It was only when I’d pulled out my phone that I remembered that it was dead. I spotted the old-fashioned corded landline by the bed, lunged for it, dialed 911 . . . and got nothing. I hung up and dialed twice more before I figured it out. There must be a different emergency number in New Zealand, and I didn’t know it.
    My breath sounded loud and harsh in the room, competing with the wind and rain lashing the little house. When I heard myself whimper like a child, though, I pulled myself together. There’s nobody else here. Deal. Cope. You can’t call for help? Then get help.
    I thrust my feet back into my boots and ran. Back out in the rain, in the wind, down the hill to a neighbor, too far away out here in the country. Up a long driveway, where I pounded on a door, waited, and heard nothing. Another dash to another house, and it was the same. I kept running, stuck in a nightmare, the kind where you try and try and you can’t get there, can’t get closer. Until, at the third house, I found somebody at home, and I was gasping out an explanation, and a woman was calling for the ambulance. Then I was running back up the hill again, my boots squelching with water, my hair streaming with rain. Back into the little house, and back to Koro.
    I knelt by his side, held his hand, and waited for a siren. I covered him with a blanket, because that was all I could think of. Now, I was just trying to hang on and wait for somebody to get here, somebody who’d know what to do.
    I wanted it not to be true. I wanted to go backward, to start over, but there’s no rewind button for life.
    When he opened his eyes, I nearly dropped his hand.
    He looked straight at me, but his eyes didn’t focus, and his voice, when it came, was cracked and dry. “Fell . . . down. Got to get up. Get . . . Hope. Hope’s coming.”
    “I’m here, Koro.” The tears I’d suppressed until now were trying to choke me. “It’s Hope. I’m here. You fell, but you’re going to be all right. You’re going to be fine. Help is coming right now.”
    Finally, I heard the wail of the ambulance, and then Tane was in the doorway, big and solid as Hemi. I hadn’t remembered until that moment that he and June lived up the hill. I’d run the wrong way. I scrambled to my feet, and as we watched the paramedics settled Koro gently onto a gurney, I asked, “Could you take me to the hospital with you? Please?”
    Tane looked at me as if I were insane. “Course you’re coming. But you’ll need to change first.”
    It took me long seconds to realize what he was talking about. That everything I wore was soaked, all the way down to my underwear and boots, and I was shivering.
    I changed once again, nearly passing