Page 39 of Just for Her
“You’re a terrible liar. What happened? Is Miriam okay? No one will tell me anything.”
“Relax. Miriam is fine. She’s down at the police station now, giving a statement.”
“How’d you get her to do that?”
“You can thank my brother Vinnie for that. He’s the one who found you. As for what happened, well, I think you can probably tell me more about that than I can tell you. You were facedown in a pool of your own blood when Vinnie got there.”
Those words—facedown in a pool of blood—would haunt me forever.
“What about Caleb?”
“In custody. He’s not going to be seeing the light of day anytime soon.”
She closed her eyes, sank back against the raised bed, and sighed. “Good.”
I took her hand, needing the contact, pleased when her fingers curled lightly around mine. “What about you?”
Her lips quirked slightly. “I’ve been better.”
“Sofia’s the best. She’s going to take good care of you.”
One eye opened and peered at me. “Please don’t tell me she’s another Stella.”
Had the situation been different, I might have laughed. “Worse. Little sister.”
“I heard that.” Sofia reappeared and pulled back the curtain. “Don’t listen to this guy,” she said to Allison. “I’m hisfavoritesister. But right now, you’ve got a date with a CT scanner. Then, we’ll take you up to a room and let you get some rest.”
“Okay.”
“Jason will take good care of you.”
An orderly appeared next to Sofia and began to release the brakes on the bed.
Allison gave me a weary smile. “Guess I’ll see you later.”
“Count on it.”
The guy wheeled Allison away. I started to follow, but Sofia put her hand on my arm.
“You can’t go with her, Paulie.”
I exhaled. “Right.”
“But you can be waiting for her when she gets out of imaging,” she said, her face softening. “Room 408. Visiting hours are until ten.”
“Thanks, Sofe.”
She told me it would take at least thirty minutes for the CT scan, so I went to the cafeteria in search of some badly needed coffee.
The day had been a roller-coaster ride of intense emotion. Regret that I’d let her go. Fear that something awful had happened to her. Elation when Vinnie had called me and told me he’d found her. Rage when I’d learned what had happened. And now, thankfully, relief.
Yeah, I’d run the full gamut, and that was a new experience for me. Sure, I dealt with abuse cases all the time, but they weren’tpersonal. Let me tell you, that put a whole new spin on things.
Now that I knew Allison was okay—relatively speaking, of course, as there was nothing okay about what had happened—we could move forward to making sure it never happened again. The details were still sketchy, but Vinnie had told me Allison had regained consciousness on the way to the hospital and provided enough information to arrest and hold Caleb Johnson.
Apparently, Allison had made it about an hour out of town before she decided to turn around and head back. When she’d let herself into Miriam’s apartment, however, Caleb had been there. Allison had been at his mercy for an entire night and most of the next day. I grudgingly supposed it could have been a lot worse than it was.
I was heading up to the fourth floor when I heard Miriam call my name.
