“You’re here. In the hospital. Whimstick General.” The same older voice. “Ms. McIntyre?”
But Kara faded away.
Didn’t care where she was or who the pushy woman who was now touching her shoulder was.
Hospital?
She was injured?
She felt the warmth of the blackness surround her and though she didn’t understand why, she was grateful for the cloak of unknowing, of just letting go and forgetting. Sleep that had been so elusive to her for so long enfolded her in its dreamless and empty fog.
And then again.
How much time had passed she couldn’t guess, didn’t want to.
But unbidden, bits and pieces of the accident swirled through her mind, cutting through the fog, like spinning shards of glass, memories cut deep into her brain, first in one place, then the other. Painful little pictures causing her to wince.
She’d been driving.
Oh, God, had she been drinking?
A huge truck had been racing toward her vehicle, a roaring monster with glowing headlights, bearing down on her. On them.
Crap! Someone had been with her.
Jonas! Yes, yes, hiding in the back seat! Popping up like a gruesome doll in a jack-in-the box.
And then spinning—wildly rotating over the edge of the cliff.
Screaming!
Twisting, shrieking metal!
Glass splintering. Raining on her.
Thick branches crashing through the windshield!
Her heart raced as she remembered.
Or had it all been a dream? Oh, God, she hoped beyond hope that it was a dream, that this—the hospital—it was all a bad, bad nightmare.
She blinked. Eyed her surroundings. Trying to clear her head, to think rationally, to come to grips with where she was.
The room—small, dimly lit but sterile—two women hovering over the bed, the quiet, steady beat of some kind of monitor.
Kara’s heart sank. It was real.
“She’s coming to again,” the woman, a nurse most likely, was saying. “Ms. McIntyre? Kara, how’re you feeling?”
“My head,” she whispered.
“You were in an accident,” the younger nurse said. Kara blinked, saw the name DANI RUTGERS, RN pinned to the nurse’s scrubs. She was definitely in a hospital room, and there were two nurses nearby. An older woman, brown hair starting to silver, was eyeing the monitors, while a petite woman in her twenties with short dark hair and oversize red glasses—Dani Rutgers—was talking to her. “You’ve got a few cuts and scratches, a major bruise from your seat belt and a head injury.”
“A head . . . ?” Then she remembered the slamming of a tree branch through the broken windshield.
“That’s the concussion,” the older nurse said. Kara reached up, winced a little as she felt some pain in her shoulder, then tenderly touched her forehead, where a bandage was taped. “Six stitches.” The older nurse was curt.
Nurse Rutgers added, “But your CT scan didn’t show any sign of skull fracture.”
“If you’re lucky, you might not even need plastic surgery,” the older nurse observed with a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes.
At the moment, plastic surgery was the last thing on Kara’s mind. She was shaking off the cobwebs, starting to feel more alert.
“I’ll call Dr. Ortega and let her know you’re awake,” the older one said, and was stepping toward the door. “She can let the police know.”
The police?
The younger nurse, too, turned from the bed, but Kara reached out and grabbed her hand, holding her fast despite the IV embedded near her wrist. “Why are the police wanting to talk to me?”
“I don’t know,” Nurse Rutgers said, and the older one snorted.
As she left the room, she muttered under her breath, “Maybe they want to know who murdered that lawyer and what you were doing up there and why an ex-con was in your car.” She glanced over her shoulder through the ever-narrowing space between door and jamb, as if to make sure Kara got the message.
She did.
But the door clicked closed before Kara could respond; her temper was rising, a million questions boiling to the surface. “My brother,” she said suddenly before the younger nurse, too, could leave. “He was with me. Jonas McIntyre. Is he okay?” Oh, God, what if Jonas had died in the accident?
“I really can’t discuss another patient.”
“So he’s here.” And obviously alive. Kara felt a moment’s relief. “I want to see him.”
“That’s . . . that’s not possible,” the nurse said, her eyes kind.