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The voices were muffled, as though she was listening to a butt dial all over again, but she could barely concentrate on what they were saying. The pain was too acute, too overwhelming. She had to grit her teeth together not to scream.
“Oh my God. Are you okay?” Riley asked, crouching down next to her. “Do you think you can get up?”
Ally couldn’t reply. She had no breath left in her lungs. It hurt too much to even open her eyes.
“Should we call an ambulance?” one of the girls said.
Riley reached out to touch Ally’s face. “I’m so sorry,” she said, swallowing down a sob. “This is all my fault.”
“It hurts,” Ally managed to get out.
“Dude, that ankle looks pretty bad,” one of the guys standing by Ally’s feet said.
Yeah, it felt pretty bad, too, she wanted to say. But then another pulse of pain shot up from her foot and she let out a low groan.
“Okay, I’m gonna call 911,” Riley said, patting Ally’s hair as though she was a little girl. “And the rest of you might want to get out of here, because after that I’m calling my dad and he’s definitely gonna kill me.”
* * *
Nate rushed toward the hospital desk, breathless from running from the car to the building. “I’m looking for my daughter, Riley Crawford,” he said to the nurse behind the glass. “I’m her dad.”
“Riley Crawford,” the nurse murmured, tapping something into her computer. “No, we don’t have a Riley Crawford here.”
“She’s not been admitted,” he told her, finally catching his breath. “She came in with a friend. She’s sixteen, has long dark hair and a pale face.” He looked around the waiting room, trying to see if he could see her.
“Is that her?” the nurse asked, pointing over his shoulder. He followed her gesture, and saw Riley sitting on a chair in the far corner, her legs pulled up to her chest as though she was trying to make herself as small as possible. “She came in about an hour ago,” the nurse told him. “Her friend has been taken back for examination.”
Nate nodded at the nurse before turning and covering the distance to his daughter. Her eyes were rimmed with red, her expression crumpled.
“Oh, Dad.” She launched herself into his arms. Nate held her tight, his body slumping with relief. After everything she’d been through he couldn’t bear to see her hurt. She might have driven him crazy on a good day, but she was his daughter, and he’d do anything to protect her.
“You’re okay?” he asked her, her hair muffling his voice. “Not hurt?”
“I’m fine.”
“And your friend? What happened to her?”
Riley looked up at him, and there was something different in her watery eyes. A look of fear. “It’s not a friend exactly…” she muttered. “It’s Ally.”
Nate blinked. It took a second or two for him to connect the dots “Ally Sutton? From the coffee shop?” How on earth was she involved?
Riley nodded mutely.
“What happened to her? Why’s she here?” Nate asked, every muscle in his body tensing. “Is she okay?”
“I don’t know,” Riley wailed, her words tumbling over each other. “She looked really hurt. She was bleeding from her head and her ankle was all swollen and I’ve no idea how she’s doing. Nobody will tell me.”
“How did she get hurt? Was it a car accident? Did you see it happen?”
Riley shook her head. “She was running and tripped on a rock.”
Jesus. Nate closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again because he could picture her slamming against the sharp, jagged stone, and could almost feel how painful it was. She had to have hit it damn hard to have the injuries Riley described.
“Where?” he asked her. “At the beach?”
As soon as he asked, he knew there was more to the story than his daughter was telling him. He only had to look at the guilty expression on her face. “Riley?” he asked, his voice a little rougher now. “What happened?”
“I’ll tell you,” she said, “But you have to promise not to kill me.” She looked around. “Because I have about a hundred witnesses here.”
