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Josiah waited until the paramedic was finished applying the bandages before he spoke. And he looked at Michael, instead of McBride. “Elmer and I were out in the barn working. He needed to come inside to use the bathroom, so I brought him in, but I forgot to turn off the barn lights. Once Elmer was situated, I went back outside to turn off the lights, since it was getting late and chilly and we weren’t going back out tonight. I started hitting the switches and I thought—”
He stopped, his dark gaze flickering. Michael was surprised when Josiah looked away, at McBride this time. “I thought I saw something down the barn, maybe a raccoon moving, so I took a few steps closer. Didn’t see anything, so I turned around. Something was sailing right at my face. I just remember a bright flash of pain, hitting something, and then Michael waking me up.”
Michael studied Josiah’s expression, curious why he’d left out the T-shirt. Had he been testing McBride for some reason? As if expecting him to know Josiah had left out a pertinent detail?
“You didn’t see the person who assaulted you?” McBride asked.
“No. It happened too fast. All I saw was whatever hit me.”
“Did the object come directly at your face, or was it swung?”
“What does it matter?” Michael asked, confused by the question and annoyed by the way Josiah’s face was starting to pinch with pain. He needed to rest not suffer through the third degree from his ex.
McBride tossed him an impatient look he probably got a lot of mileage out of with teenagers speeding or drunks sleeping it off, but the look was lost on Michael. “The direction of the blow can help identify the weapon used. Some solid objects are more likely to be swung, rather than come straight at you.” He gave a very pointed look to the shotgun Dad still held on his lap.
Michael fought to keep his temper both in check and off his face. Exploding on McBride would not help Josiah tonight. Josiah was getting stressed out, and Michael needed to fix this somehow. He glanced at Dad, whose own face displayed his annoyance at the entire production.
“I don’t remember,” Josiah said. “I really don’t. It might have come right at me, but again, it happened so fast.”
“All right, thank you.” McBride pulled a business card out of his jacket pocket, probably out of habit, and started to hand it to Josiah. Michael didn’t recognize the two paramedics, but he was pretty sure everyone in the room knew Josiah and McBride had once been roommates. McBride gave the card to Michael. “If any of you think of anything else, please call me.”
“Sure,” Michael said. He walked McBride to the door and waited on the porch until the man and his cruiser disappeared down the road. Making sure his enemy was off the property. Even if McBride had nothing to do with Josiah’s assault tonight, Michael still did not like or trust the guy.
As Michael went back inside, he found Josiah and the paramedic who’d bandaged his eye in the middle of an argument over treatment.
“I’ll sign whatever you need me to sign,” Josiah snapped, “but I’m not going to the hospital. I understand I was unconscious, and I know the signs of concussions to watch for.”
Neither paramedic seemed happy with the decision, but they gave Josiah the refusal to transport papers to sign, collected their equipment, suggested Michael wake Josiah every few hours as a precaution, and finally left. Once the ambulance pulled onto the road, Michael jogged out to the gate, shoved it shut, and snapped the lock into place. Even though it had been locked when whoever it was got in and hurt Josiah, Michael wasn’t taking any extra chances with the lives and safety of the two other men in his house.
Michael locked the front door and snapped the dead bolt into place, adrenaline still up and his suspicion going haywire. He was vaguely aware of Dad speaking softly with Josiah as Michael went through the entire downstairs, making sure windows and the rear kitchen door were all locked up tight for the night. Flashes of Dad doing the exact same thing every night for weeks after Mom died assailed Michael for a long, grief-stricken moment.
He stood in the middle of the kitchen and let his body shake as he worked through the terror he’d felt tonight. Terror that had built from the moment he found Dad on the bathroom floor until right now. Josiah could have been killed, and Michael would have lost someone else he cared about to violence on this land.
But he hadn’t. Josiah was shaken and bruised, but he was alive. Michael splashed some water on his face from the kitchen sink, scrubbed his skin dry with a towel, and then joined Dad and Josiah in the living room. They still had their heads together, but when Josiah saw him, he smiled. A real, if exhausted, smile.
As stressed as he still was, Michael smiled back.
Waking up on the cold dirt floor of the barn with a raging headache and the sound of Michael’s terrified voice had quickly jumped into the top five of Josiah’s least favorite memories ever. For several awful seconds, Josiah had no idea what was going on, why he was in pain, or why he was so freaking cold. His glasses were gone, blurring the world around him in a dizzying way, and he’d panicked until it all came back in a rush: barn, lights, ka-blam to the face!
Michael’s stoic presence was the only thing that kept Josiah focused in those first five minutes after waking. Michael’s voice coaxed him to tell what happened. Michael’s firm but gentle touch helped Josiah sit up and ultimately walk back to the house when every step made his head want to explode.
He hadn’t truly started to warm up until after Jules and Larry arrived with their gear. Josiah knew them from a few other calls over the years for his patients, and he liked them both a lot. Jules had carefully cleaned and bandaged his cut, and it had taken every last ounce of Josiah’s self-restraint not to freak out when Michael led Seamus into the house. Seamus was the very last person Josiah had wanted to see that night. The shirt Josiah had found in the barn had come from Seamus’s house, it had to have.
Michael was the only person he’d told about the shirt, and he’d silently thanked Michael for not mentioning it while Josiah told Seamus about the barn. Josiah couldn’t articulate why he’d left the shirt out. Maybe to see if he’d get a reaction out of Seamus, which he hadn’t. Seamus had been...oddly warm. As if he actually cared that Josiah had been hurt and wanted to find the person who’d done it for personal reasons, rather than professional.
It confused the hell out of Josiah.
He’d been insanely grateful when their three guests left. Elmer had rolled right over to the couch and asked if he could get Josiah anything. “Aspirin? Water? A shot of whiskey to soothe the soul?”
Josiah shook his head, which was an epically bad idea, because bright lights winked behind his eyes. “I just want to sleep for a while.”
“Paramedic said to keep you awake and check on you every few hours.”
“I know, but that doesn’t mean I have to be happy about it.”
“So it’s true what they say, eh? Doctors and nurses make the worst patients.”
“Yes, we do.” Michael buzzing around downstairs wasn’t lost on Josiah, and he felt awful for sending his friend into what he could only describe as a slight panic. A similar sort of stress bracketed Elmer’s age-lined eyes, and Josiah couldn’t help feeling as if he was outside of something huge shared by father and son.
