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“And got on his bad side,” she whispered huskily. She remembered that. “I couldn’t find anything. None of the locals like him. But I can’t think . . .” She tried, but nothing was coming to her and her head was pounding.
“Don’t force it,” Dominic soothed. “It will come back to you eventually, but you aren’t to make the pain worse.”
“Dominic is right,” Xavier said. “You have to let it come to you.”
It was so frustrating, though. There were so many things that she should know. However, they were just beyond her grasp.
“Just tell us what you do remember,” Ed said. “Have there been any other threats? Other than from Liv?”
“No. Not that I recall.”
“What threat from Liv?” Reuben asked. “Does this have anything to do with you rescuing her the other night?”
Ed quickly explained the threatening note that Liv left outside Gwen’s hotel room, and how her parents had taken her to Florida.
“She got off too lightly,” Reuben said darkly.
“She’s just a kid.” She forced her good eye open to look up into his blurry face, then she closed it again. “My vision is blurry. And it makes me feel ill.”
“You might feel like that for a while,” Xavier soothed. “I’m going to keep you in here for forty-eight hours and then I’ll let you go home if everything looks good and you have someone to take care of you.”
“She does,” Dominic and Reuben said at the same time.
Uh-oh. She needed to diffuse things before they started arguing. She really didn’t want to stay in the hospital, but the idea of having to move made her want to vomit.
“Liv didn’t really know what she was doing,” she said, hoping to distract Reuben. “She’s young and was under this Darius guy’s influence.”
“I don’t care if she’s just a kid,” Reuben snarled. “She better have told you everything about him, Sheriff.”
Oh dear. He was about to explode.
“How I do my job is none of your business, Reuben,” Ed replied firmly.
“It does when my best friend is lying beaten in a hospital bed. So do you think this Darius guy is the one that kidnapped her?” Reuben asked.
She tensed. Was it? Why couldn’t she remember?
“What happened to me?” she asked. “I was kidnapped? Someone hurt me? Why don’t I remember?”
“It’s all right, baby. You have a concussion so that’s why everything is muddled,” Dominic told her.
“Do you remember going to the Wishing Well for drinks?” Ed asked.
Did she?
A vague memory tickled at her brain. “Dildo to his face.”
Someone cleared their throat awkwardly. “Yeah, that’s it. Georgie was telling you that story.”
“I don’t remember leaving. Where did I go?”
“You drove back to the hotel,” Ed told her. “We have you on camera arriving. It looks like someone was talking to you from the shadows. Do you remember that?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Who was it?”
“We couldn’t see them on the camera,” Ed told her.
Her breathing grew faster.
“All right,” Xavier said calmly. “I don’t think Gwen’s memory is going to return right now and we’re upsetting her. Let’s leave it there for now.”
“No. No! I need to know! How did I get here?”
There was silence.
“The not knowing is worse,” she cried.
“Shh, darling girl. You’re safe. I’ll tell you. It looks like you were kidnapped from the hotel carpark. We don’t know who took you or where. But someone brought you here to the hospital. A big guy with a beard. We don’t know who he is or if he had anything to do with your kidnapping.”
But why would someone kidnap her?
Big guy. Beard.
“Flannel?”
“Yes, he was dressed in flannel. You remember him.”
“Calls me girlie. Think might be same guy in truck when I fell off bike.”
“Shit,” Dominic swore. “I forgot about that. When she fell off her bike the other day, a big guy wearing flannel with a beard stopped to help her. Fuck. Could it be the same guy? Could he have fixated on her and kidnapped her?”
“We’ll find him,” Ed promised. “Is there anything else about him you can remember, Gwen? What road were you on?”
“I don’t know. I just . . . I don’t think he would hurt me.”
“Sometimes those are the people you have to be wary of,” Reuben told her. “Sheriff, I expect hourly updates on your investigation. If you find anything, I want to know.”
“Reuben, you can’t demand that sort of shit,” Ed grumbled.
There was a knock on the door.
“Reuben, Jack, the hospital administrator is here,” Xavier said.
“Tell him I’ll be there in a moment.” Reuben squeezed her hand. “I’ll be back soon after I talk to the administrator.” He turned to Dominic. “Can I expect you’ll take care of her until I get back?”
She winced as that last sentence was said in a cold, hard voice.
“Of course I will take care of her.”
“You didn’t take care of her before. She got hurt on your watch.”
