Page 11 of You Betrayed Me (The Cahills 3)

“Pushed?” James repeated.

Monroe lifted James’s right arm, rotating it slightly, and James felt the color drain from his face as he sucked in his breath. “Bad?” Monroe asked.

“I’ll live.”

“Good.” Monroe returned James’s arm to its sling. “Bruised and lacerated shoulder,” he explained. “Nothing broken. As I said, ‘lucky.’ ”

James snorted his disbelief, then said, “So back to what happened—?”

Before the nurse could answer, the doctor said, “The police want to talk to you about that. We were instructed to not answer your questions.”

“What? Why not?” James asked and, despite a warning glance, Nurse Rictor responded, “Because of the investigation.”

“What investigation?” This was beginning to sound ominous.

“You’ll have to ask them. They want to speak to you.”

“Great.” James couldn’t remember all that much, at least not concerning recent events, but he knew he had an instinctive aversion to the cops.

“How did I even get here?” James asked.

“Some kind of fight or altercation,” the nurse said. When she received the hard look from Monroe, she added, “He has the right to know.”

“Fight?” James repeated. God, he thought he was long over bar fights and the like, had years before learned to contain his mercurial temper.

“Domestic dispute,” she offered.

She had to be kidding. “With whom?”

“We don’t know that,” Monroe interjected, and the nurse rolled her eyes, obviously as tired of the red tape as James was.

“That’s what we heard from the police,” said Rictor. Still ignoring the doctor’s grim expression, she barreled on. “It happened at your house. Nine-one-one was called, and the paramedics found you there. You had fallen or were pushed and hit your head against the corner of a hearth.”

He sat up a little straighter, trying to remember. In his mind’s eye, James saw himself backing away, stumbling, falling as he avoided . . . who? what?

Fireplace? He saw the raised brick hearth at his farmhouse, recalled stumbling backward, trying to avoid . . . what? who?

A woman.

He touched his cheek again.

A blistering memory teased at him . . .

You’ll never see me again!

The words stabbed through his mind.

Who had spat them out so viciously?

He should know.

But he didn’t.

Now he asked the nurse, “Who made the emergency call?”

“Don’t know,” she admitted.

“So who was I fighting with?” he demanded again.

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