“Murders.”
“Do you think he was trying to kill me?” She let her voice wander up an octave. “Could that be why I don’t remember? Because I was, like, traumatized and stuff?”
“You didn’t have any identification on you when the paramedics arrived.” Nash fished a notepad out of an inner pocket of his jacket and clicked a pen. “What’s your name?”
“Lucy.”
“Lucy what?”
“I don’t remember.”
Nash just stared at her for a moment.
“Are you being straight with me?”
“Yessir.”
“Because this is a serious situation we got here. See, I’m what they call at the Bureau, a soft touch. But my partner, Penington, isn’t. He’s, to be blunt, kind of a dick. My point is…you want to be dealing with me, Lucy. And I want to help you, but I can’t if you lie to me. Penington deals with the liars.”
Lucy shut her eyes and thought about her father.
When she opened them again, a sheet of tears had formed across the surface of her eyes.
She waited five seconds, and then blinked.
Two trails started down her cheeks.
It only lasted for a second, but she saw a flicker pass across Nash’s face-a millisecond of softening.
Compassion.
So he had a heart. But then again, most people did.
She had him.
“I’ll be back here tomorrow,” Nash said.
I won’t.
He rose, buttoned his jacket.
“You better start remembering some things, Lucy.”
“I’ll try.”
He gave her a curt nod and strode out the door into the hallway, where he muttered something in passing to the deputy. Lucy let her mind drift.
Donaldson.
She smiled, wondering how badly he’d been injured. God, she hoped he wasn’t in a coma. That would be absolutely no fun at all. Vegetables didn’t feel fear. You couldn’t look in their eyes and watch the life leave or the pain come.
Lucy thought about her guitar case, wondering if they’d found it. If she had any luck at all, the thing had been destroyed in the wreckage. Under the velvet lining, there were photographs-she was even in a few of them. Then there was that weathered copy of Andrew Z. Thomas’s novel, The Passenger, signed to her and referencing that Indianapolis mystery convention she’d attended fourteen years ago as a young girl.
Great convention-she’d met Luther Kite and Orson Thomas there, two men who’d forever changed her life.
If a smart lawman saw that book, they’d make the connection.
She had to get out of this room.
Deal with Donaldson.
Escape.
Lucy pressed the NURSE CALL button, and fifteen seconds later a rail of a woman breezed into her room.
She checked the IV bags and heart monitor before turning her attention to Lucy.
“I’m Janine Winslow,” she said. “What’s going on, sweetie? You in pain?”
“My catheter hurts.”
“Really?”
Lucy nodded.
“You’re staying on top of your morphine pump?”
“Yes, but it really hurts,” Lucy lied. “It burns.”
Winslow furrowed her brow. “Dr. Lanz gave you your nerve block less than two hours ago. You shouldn’t be feeling anything at all.”
“What’s a nerve block?”
“A combination of lidocaine, corticosteroids, and epinephrine. Without a shot every twelve hours, you’d be in agony.”
“I thought that’s what the morphine pump is for.”
“That’s just to take the edge off. The nerve block is what’s keeping you from screaming hysterically.”
“Can you take it out?” Lucy asked.
“Take what out?”
“The catheter. So I can use the bathroom.”
“You can’t walk to the bathroom with the condition your legs are in.”
“I’m sure I can make it.”
The nurse swept her hair out of her eyes. “Lucy, you haven’t seen your legs yet, have you?”
“No, why?”
Winslow bit her lip.
“Why?” Lucy asked again.
“I have to change your bandages anyway. I’ll show you.”
The nurse turned off the vacuum pump and walked around to the instrument stand at the foot of the bed. Off the tray, she lifted a pair of scissors and began clipping through the bandage that completely covered Lucy’s right leg.
Lucy watched as Winslow cut all the way up to her thigh, and then returned the scissors to the tray.
“You might want to give your morphine a little squeeze,” Winslow said.
Lucy hit the pump.
Winslow started at the bottom, peeling back a patch of black foam, and then unwinding the bandage around Lucy’s leg.
“You tell me if you start to feel sick,” Winslow said.
“I have a strong stomach…are those scabs?” Lucy asked.
“No,” Winslow said. “You have to have skin to make scabs.”
For the most part, her foot was intact, though when she wiggled her toes she could see three of the five metatarsals twitching.
It was above the ankle that the real damage began.
Portions of her tibia were exposed, along with half of her patella.
She’d seen raw muscle on many occasions, but always after dragging someone at eighty miles per hour for five miles, and by that time, the muscle had been reduced to bloody, dripping strings.
Her tibialis anterior and gastrocnemius were largely intact, and she could even move them, finding the interplay between ligament, muscle, and bone simply gorgeous.
“You doing okay there, hon?” Winslow asked.
“I don’t know.”
“I know it looks bad, but they can work wonders with skin grafts.”
Lucy watched Winslow remove the bandage from her left leg.
Even worse.
Less skin coverage, and it looked as though portions of the muscle in her thigh had sustained damage-when she flexed her left quadriceps, the muscle quivered differently than her right. She could barely make it move.
This was bad-and not because she was anything approaching vain-but because her beauty, her body, had always served as her most effective camouflage. In the summertime, standing on the side of the road in a skirt that stopped two inches above her knees was almost guaranteed to lure someone into pulling over.
Even assuming she recovered from this, her legs would never look the same.
