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“What?”
“I think someone was there who shouldn’t be.”
“You’re right about that,” he said, and she knew he was talking about her.
“Just listen—”
“No . . . I don’t care if you saw a boat, or a yacht, or a damned submarine in the river, okay? It doesn’t matter!” He was shaking his head, his emotions raw. She’d known that he’d been worried sick when he’d dragged her from the river, had heard his voice crack with fear. “Nikki! Nikki, oh, Jesus, honey. Are you okay? Oh, please, God. Nikki!” He’d been kneeling beside her in the tall grass and the mud and had looked over his shoulder frantically. “I need an ambulance! Right now! For my wife! Can someone call an ambulance? Now!”
But once they’d made it to the hospital and she’d been diagnosed with only a dislocated shoulder, her pregnancy still viable, his fears had morphed into a quiet, seething rage as he’d heard from a deputy that Morrisette was teetering between life and death, on the edge and in emergency surgery.
All because she’d tried to save Nikki.
“How is Sylvie?” She hated to ask, but had to.
“Who knows?” he snapped, then quickly gained control of himself. “Still in surgery. But as far as I know, alive.”
She’d heard that Morrisette had suffered a broken jaw and not just a mild concussion but a serious brain injury requiring surgery.
Blowing out a sigh, he shook his head and stared at the ceiling tiles. “I don’t . . . I don’t really know. I mean, they’re not saying she’ll pull through.”
“Not saying?” she repeated, sick inside. “But surely . . . I mean . . .” She couldn’t, wouldn’t think that Reed’s tough-as-old-leather partner wouldn’t make it.
“She’s strong. A fighter. You know, she always says she’s ‘Texas strong,’ whatever the hell that means. But . . . well, we just have to wait.” He cast a look to his wife that was a little less caustic. “She took a bad blow.”
“I know.” Nikki cringed beneath the bedsheets and remembered the prow of the boat striking Morrisette with a horrid sharp crack. Blood had poured from Morrisette’s head, staining the river as the detective had lost consciousness and turned ash gray. Reed had dragged Nikki from the river while a female deputy had gone in after Morrisette and hauled her out of the water to start CPR on the muddy bank in the ensuing pandemonium.
The ambulance Reed had demanded had arrived within minutes, the EMTs taking over from the deputy who had started CPR on Morrisette on the muddy bank of the river. Within seconds Reed’s partner had been put on a stretcher and carried into the waiting vehicle. The second ambulance showed up seven minutes later. Reed had ridden with Nikki to the hospital and stayed with her during her examination in the ER. Her diagnosis was simple: a dislocated shoulder, the result of being rammed into by the unmoored boat lurching wildly in the swollen river. Thankfully, despite a feeling that something had broken while she’d been in the river, she hadn’t miscarried.
At least not yet.
She touched her abdomen with her right hand, consoling herself with the new life still growing tenaciously inside her. That, at least, was a blessing.
She thought about Morrisette’s phone call, the one Nikki had overheard while hiding beneath the rim of the bank. “So,” she asked carefully, as she knew Reed wouldn’t want to discuss his case. “Is it true that Bronco Cravens called in the homicide?”
“What?” Reed said, his eyebrows knitting. “How did . . . What did . . . How do you know about Bronco?”
“So it is true. How’s he connected?” she asked, unable to stop the questions that had been plaguing her to keep from rolling off her tongue. “And what’s with the empty grave? Two bodies, but three burial sites? Was one moved?”
“Oh, my God! Nikki—stop! Just . . . Stop!” He held up a hand, palm out, his expression one of utter disbelief that she would still be investigating. “You’re in the damned hospital for crying out loud, so just—”
At that second there was a soft tap on the already half-open door and a uniformed cop, a woman Nikki didn’t recognize, peeked in. “Detective?”
“I’ll be right back,” Reed said, then quickly stepped into the hallway, disappearing and leaving the door ajar before Nikki could ask the next question already forming on her lips. But he’d practically confirmed that Bronco had made the call. She strained her neck to peer through the crack in the door but couldn’t see Reed or the cop, only the view of a curved desk of blond wood, where three nurses—two women and a man, all in blue scrubs—were huddled over monitors, the man speaking into a phone as he stared at a computer screen.
Nikki shifted on the bed to get a better view, or to find out if Reed was anywhere within sight, but a sharp pain in her left shoulder caused her to suck in her breath and reminded her that she was far from a hundred percent. Damn. For the next several weeks she would have to keep her arm immobile, which would slow her down. She’d also have to ice her shoulder and eventually start physical therapy. The only reason she hadn’t been discharged yet was because of her pregnancy, considered high risk because of her previous miscarriages, and the ER doc wanted to talk with Nikki’s OB/GYN.
The last thing she needed was to be laid up, but, she reminded herself, she was lucky. Yeah, she had to wear a sling to keep her arm immobile for a while, but other than that she was okay.
Unlike Morrisette.
* * *
“Hey, Detective!” a voice boomed down the corridor. Reed looked down a hallway and spied a tall, muscular man in khakis and a black tight-fitting T-shirt striding toward him. His blond hair was clipped so close to his skull that the beginning of male pattern baldness was visible and two days’ worth of beard covered a tight, angry jaw. His eyes, laser blue, were focused on Reed as he skirted past an aide pushing an empty gurney toward a bank of elevators.
Tyson Beaumont, Reed guessed. And he looked as if he were fit to be tied.
A few steps behind him was a trim man in his late sixties or early seventies who looked as if he’d just stepped off the golf course in his Izod shirt and crisp plaid shorts. Reed supposed it was Baxter Beaumont, Tyson’s father.
