Page 13 of One Step After Another

5.

Luca

“SIR ... sir, I’m goingto need you to calm down, please. Can you follow the light? Look into the light and follow where it goes.”

Luca didn’t know that voice, who it belonged to, or why the person it belonged to was currently holding him down. It was never a good thing to wake up confused, disoriented, and immobile against something hard.

His mind raced to catch up; to fill in the blanks as something bright waved in front of his blurry vision. He didn’t know where he was, how he got there, or why it all happened. The faceless man behind the light spoke again, or his mouth moved anyway, but Luca didn’t understand a thing the guy was saying.

Or he just didn’t care to.

If he could see, and breathe, despite the fuzzy line of sight and the cloudiness in his brain then that only meant one thing to him. He was alive. What did it matter what the asshole with the flashlight was trying to say to him?

The next time the white light swung past his eyes, Luca attempted to strike out to make sure the prick didn’t shine it in his face again. But when his arm didn’t do what he wanted, or rather, stopped completely within a couple of inches, he finally understood why his body and limbs weren’t doing what they wanted.

Lifting his head slightly from the hard surface beneath him, he could see the restraints locked around his wrists and attached to the metal bars of a paramedic’s gurney.

Fucking hell.

How did that happen?

The click-click of wheels had him jerking on the bed, but the paramedic didn’t miss a beat, keeping up to the moving gurney like it wasn’t a problem at all. Overhead, Luca saw the name of a hotel written in a fancy script.

Luca slammed his head back into the gurney as the paramedic asked, “You were found unconscious in the hotel’s elevator—do you remember what happened at all? What is your name? The date?”

A new voice came from behind Luca’s head. “Anything?”

“Nothing verbal,” said the man with the flashlight that Luca was going to shove up his ass the first chance he could. “Pupils are reacting, though. He can hear me, but he’s not responding otherwise. Vitals are stable either way.”

“Room eight-oh-one,” he heard someone else say. Not the guy attempting to make conversation with him or the one navigating the gurney. “Found a body. Also, a guard choked out in the stairwell, but the guy said he didn’t remember a thing when they finally got him conscious and talking. My bet, this dude’s about to say the same.”

“This guy wasn’t choked out,” Luca’s new friend barked back.

“You don’t know—”

“Yes, I do. No bruises or anything to suggest that’s what happened. Also, there’s a needle prick in the side of his neck, and he’s so out of it that he can barely lift his head for more than a couple of seconds at a time. Drugged.”

“We need to talk to him,” the other guy said. “Witnesses say he was in the elevator with the woman we think is connected to the murdered man upstairs ... possibly even talking to her. Security footage is being pulled as we—”

“And you can talk to him, officer, as soon he is conscious and aware of his surroundings while stable. At the moment, he seems to be only two out of three of those things. We will see you at the hospital.”

“But—”

“At the hospital,” snapped the paramedic.

That was the last of the conversation between the cop and the medics. In the next second, the gurney bumped into something hard enough to rock Luca before he was lifted higher, and the wheels rolled along something that sounded like metal. He had a clear view of the officer waiting outside the ambulance and the doors that closed him out.

Everything was becoming a hell of a lot clearer to Luca even if he didn’t plan on acting like it. He couldn’t; not if he wanted to get out of this current situation without cuffs on his wrists. That much was obvious. He was also grateful that the identification he brought along for the night was fake so anything they took off his unconscious body wasn’t going to lead them anywhere once he got to the hospital.

What bothered him more?

That he remembered what happened.

Everything.

In painfully clear detail.

Penny did this.