Page 68 of Guilty as Sin
He had a hand on the back of her thigh. “This is recent. This was an eight, maybe. Maybe more.”
She’d had half an hour in Jace’s truck to come up with her answer, and that was a good thing, as slow as her thought processes were right now. “Maybe.”
“Is this incident related?” he asked. He didn’t ask,Do you have a boyfriend who’s beating you up and shooting you? Because I’d have to report that.But that was what he meant.
“No.” She’d decided on minimal information. Simple but true, and something she could keep straight in her current state. If the doctor wasn’t treating the patient he’d thought he was, he’d have to share that with the police. “I was shot in another state. Treated there. You won’t find anything about it in my records here. It was nobody I knew. The shooter’s dead. And please don’t mention the gunshot to the cops. They’ll waste their time trying to make a connection, and next time, this could be worse.”
She could hear the mental shrug in the doctor’s voice when he said, “Right.” Thank goodness for ER docs whose job ended when you were off the table, and who were at the end of their shift.
The cop showed up a few minutes later, while she was still waiting, by herself this time, to get her results and get out of here so she could let go and hurt. It was her friend from the night before, with the red hair and freckles. She said, “Got you on… night shifts, huh?” She tried to remember his name. She couldn’t.
His Adam’s apple bobbed, and he said, “Yes, ma’am. Officer Wilson.”
“Did anybody check the locker room?” she asked. “The lights?”
He looked confused for a moment, then fixed his expression the way they’d taught him at the academy. “That’s why I’m here. To take a report.”
She told the story again. The doctor came back into the room like he had something to say, but before he could, Officer Wilson asked him, “Can you give me an opinion about what caused Ms. Hollander’s injuries?”
“She was struck,” the doctor said. “With a blunt object. No sharp edges, but fairly heavy, from the amount of bruising, and multiple times. She says she remembers a first blow on the head that moved down to the left shoulder, then a second blow on that upturned arm, and that’s certainly possible. Head, shoulder, forearm. There’s another area of bruising on her left leg, but it doesn’t appear to be as severe. And a final area on her mid-back that shows a different pattern. She also has cuts in her mouth. Those are from the object striking her face, driving the skin of her cheek into her teeth.”
“The thing on my back is where I fell back and hit the bench,” Paige said.
“No chance,” Officer Wilson asked the doctor, ignoring Paige, “that she fell in the dark onto her shoulder and face, got up, and fell again on her back?”
Paige couldn’t blame him, not really. The memory was an unreliable thing. Especially after you’d hit your head.
“No chance at all, I’d say,” the doctor said. “Not with that injury pattern. Something hit her.”
“Right.” Officer Wilson was writing again. “We’ll check into it. We’ll get back to you, ma’am,” he told Paige. “We have your number.”
Paige thought about saying that she hoped it got a higher priority than her broken window had, but she was tired. And she hurt. And she was scared.
Lily,she thought, closing her eyes against the light,I think we have a problem.
Jace was quiet as he helped her into the truck again. She’d been able to give his T-shirt back, at least, though she was still wearing his jacket, because he’d insisted. She was still barefoot, too, in a pair of borrowed green scrubs she’d promised to return, and holding a bag of sample meds she wasn’t planning to use.
Jace stayed quiet as he pulled onto the highway and headed for Sinful, and she was glad.
Twenty minutes, and she could lie down. Twenty minutes, and she could rest her spinning head. Twenty minutes, and she could cry.
The dark road unspooled on and on, climbing to the mountains, curving around the bases of hills. She stared at the hypnotic white sweep that was his headlights, closed her eyes against the too-bright invasion of oncoming traffic, and wished she could call Lily. She wanted her sister. She wanted herclothes.They were still in her locker at the health club with everything else.
Oh, no.
It had been ten minutes, or had it been fifteen? And Jace still wasn’t talking. His silence felt weird. She thought about leaning the seat back, but she had to say this first. “Thanks for driving me. Thanks for paying. I’ll pay you back as soon as I get my checkbook. But…”
“How bad off are you?” he asked. Interrupting her. That was weird, too. Wasn’t it?
“What I said. Not that bad. Minor concussion. A few days of headaches. Bone bruise on my shoulder. Some others.” She adjusted the sling on her left wrist and ignored the deep, hot jab of pain. “And I’m sorry, but my keys are in my purse, my purse is in my locker, and the gym’s closed. So I need to ask for your help again.”
A long pause. “No hidden key?” Which wasn’t the answer she’d expected, which meant she had to think again. Which was hard.
“No,” she said. “Hidden keys are a bad idea. Every burglar knows where people hide them.”
“Right,” he said. “I’ll take you home with me. You can sleep in my bed. Tomorrow morning, we’ll get your things from the gym. Just answer one question first.”
“What’s that?” She didn’t want to answer a question. She wanted to go home. She wanted to stop.
