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Amber would be only too grateful to get out of there. It wasn’t just that she wanted to leave this hospital. No, it was more than that. There was another hospital that she needed to get back to. One where she hoped there would be good news waiting for her.
***
“You’re here. Good. It means that I can take a break.”
Amber wasn't sure whether Joseph's sister was truly glad to see her as she arrived in the hospital room. Dianne looked exhausted like she'd been there pretty much continuously since Joseph was brought in. She got up from her chair, brushing past Amber as she left.
“You take over here for a while. I need to go get coffee.”
Judging from her tone, she wasn’t exactly happy that Amber hadn’t been there the past couple of days. It didn’t matter. All that really mattered then was being there with him. Amber could do that.
She sat down beside Joseph, taking his hand in hers, looking him over, and trying not to wince at the way the bruises had blossomed over his face and torso.
Amber sat there with him, thinking about the person who had done this to him, thinking about everything she would do to make sure that they were caught and punished.
Thinking about her diary and what that meant.
The diary was back with the local police now, but Amber had had a chance to read through it, however briefly. She’d seen the notes in the margins. She had to hope that those could be used to trace the person who did this.
That would be down to the Washington PD, though, because they were the ones handling the case. They were the ones who had the diary in evidence. Amber could offer to assist them, but she wasn’t even sure if Palliser would let her do that. Maybe she would see it as Amber trying to use the FBI’s resources for a personal case.
For now, all Amber could do was sit there, holding Joseph’s hand, hoping that at some point he would wake up.
Somewhere in the waiting, his eyes fluttered open.
“Amber.” His voice sounded weak and hoarse. Amber gave him a sip of water from a bottle beside the bed. Joseph attempted a smile, then winced, presumably as even that hurt. “You’re back.”
“I’m sorry I had to go. I had a case. There was a killer.”
Somehow, even that didn’t sound like a good enough excuse for not being there with him while he’d been like this.
“Amber… what happened to your neck?”
Amber put a hand to the bruises that covered her neck self-consciously. Maybe she should have covered up the bruises with concealer before she came here, but the sight of her in that much makeup would probably have made Joseph just as worried.
“You’re asking me aboutmybruises?” Amber joked, trying to deflect Joseph.
It didn’t work.
“Amber, what happened?”
Amber shook her head. “It’s nothing. The suspect got violent when we went to take him down. But Agent Phelps was there. I was never in any real danger.”
That was a half-truth at best, considering how close she’d come to dying out there on the bridge, but Amber knew that Joseph would only be scared for her if he heard what had really happened.
“Amber, if this is happening to you-”
“I’m more worried about what happened to you, Joseph,” Amber said. “Have the doctors talked to you since you woke up the other day?”
“A little,” he said. “They’re saying I have cracked ribs, a concussion. They think I’ll be fine.”
“Do you… do you remember who did this to you?” Amber said. “Did you see their face? Did they say or do anything distinctive?”
Joseph shook his head, though, wincing again with the movement. “I don’t remember anything about it, Amber. It’s all a blur. One moment I was walking, and the next… the next I was waking up here.”
A part of Amber was grateful that Joseph couldn't remember because that would save him from a lot of the trauma of what had happened to him. Another part of her, the part that was an agent, the part that had gone back over the bridge, wished that he had been able to remember because that would let her bring in whoever had done this before he hurt anyone else.
Because one thing was certain when the attacker had deliberately left Amber's diary behind at the scene:
