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She nearly crumbled inside, then straightened her spine, her gloved fingers clenching over the big steering wheel. “Shut up,” she yelled at that tiny, nagging voice in her head. She couldn’t be deterred by emotions. Not now. There was a time for grief and regret, if necessary . . . when the time came. For now, she’d hold out hope and onto determination to get what was due her.
For her family.
Jaw set, gloved fingers tight over the steering wheel, she wound her Caddy through a clog of cars, vans, trucks, and buses within the city to join a steady stream of traffic heading west, into the setting sun. A few more hours, that was all she needed, she thought, as she found her sunglasses, replicas from the 1960s, and slid them onto the bridge of her nose. And for security? In case she was walking into the proverbial lion’s den, she again had her pistol, though she hoped she’d never have to use it. She’d never shot at anyone in her life.
“Always a first time,” she told herself and caught her reflection in the wide rearview mirror. “Always a first time.”
* * *
Noah opened a bleary eye and blinked.
Where the hell was he?
The room was small, with a window, and he was lying on a bed. Some kind of bed with crisp sheets and—
Holy shit, he was in a hospital room. The underlying smell of disinfectant was barely discernable, but it lingered a bit.
As the cobwebs cleared from his mind, he surveyed his surroundings, a monitor over his head steadily beeping, a tray nearby with an empty urinal on one end and a glass of water with a bent straw on the other. A window with shades at half-mast, a vast parking lot stretching below; his room had to be on the second, maybe third floor. He squinted as he stared outside the window.
Dusk was settling into the city, a few street lamps blinking on, and as the building had an L shape, he noticed the Emergency Room entrance, probably the very spot where he’d been brought in. Elizabeth Park Hospital. He’d been here before as a little kid when he’d broken his left arm after falling from the roof of the shed.
What the hell had happened?
The desert.
The motorbike.
Didi Storm’s white Cadillac.
And the explosion that rocked the desert floor and the resultant fire that had burned wildly.
And . . . the gunman. That was it, a tall man carrying a rifle and backlit by the conflagration, pointing the end of the barrel straight at Noah. His heart began to race at the memory, and he heard the monitor begin to beep faster. He move
d on the bed and felt pain in his right side, then noticed that his arm was bandaged, as was his chest.
How long had he been out of it? He remembered nothing after the gunman had approached. His throat was dry, gritty, and he tried to reach for the glass at the near end of the tray table. Pain shot through his shoulder, and he froze.
At the sound of footsteps and a rattling cart approaching his half-open door, he closed his eyes again, forced his breathing to slow, and waited.
Someone came into the room and puttered around his bed. “Hey, there,” she said, a woman’s soft, comforting voice. “You awake?”
He didn’t move. Didn’t so much as twitch. Not even when a thermometer was tucked under his tongue or a blood pressure cuff was placed around his arm or his wrist was lifted by cool, gloved hands.
“Hello,” she said again, this time closer to his ear. “Can you hear me?”
When he didn’t acknowledge that he’d heard her, she waited, as if expecting him to raise an eyelid or lift a finger. He didn’t, but he could feel her presence as he managed to regulate his breathing and, from the sounds of the monitor, his heartbeat.
“Helen?” another woman’s voice, lower and raspy. “Is he awake?”
“I thought so, but no. Not responding.” A beat. As if both women were looking at him. Staring at him, as if they knew he was faking it. He kept breathing normally, or what he thought would be normally.
The second woman asked, “Has the doctor been in?”
“Yes, earlier.” Helen again.
Noah strained to hear.
“More surgery?”
