“I did not get dizzy.” Harry hugged his arm tighter. “My big feet got tangled up in the bedspread.”
Pete pulled the room’s lone guest chair closer to his father. “Are you hurt, Pop?” he asked softly.
“No.” Harry made a sheepish face. “Maybe my pride.”
Zoe edged to one side, checking the quilt covering the twin-sized bed. It wasn’t rumpled, nor did it hang low enough to cause a hazard.
“He won’t let me look at his arm,” Jenna said.
“Did you call for an ambulance?” Pete asked.
“I don’t need an ambulance. My arm is fine.”
Jenna gave Harry an exasperated look. “If he’d hit his head, we’d have to send him to the hospital. State regulations. But he says he didn’t.”
“He also claims his arm is fine, but from the way he’s holding it, I have my doubts,” Pete said.
“Hey,” Harry protested. “I’m right here. Don’t talk about me like I’m some piece of furniture.”
“Sorry, Pop.”
Zoe moved to Pete’s side and placed a hand on his arm.
He ignored her. “Where’s the nurse?” he asked the aide.
“She got called to another emergency at the other end of the floor. It looks like one of those nights. She’ll be back in a few minutes.” Jenna didn’t tack on “I hope,” but her tone implied it. “As far as hitting his head is concerned, Miss Barbara was here when it happened and confirmed he didn’t.”
Zoe squeezed until Pete looked at her. “Why don’t you two go talk to Barbara, and I’ll stay with Harry.” Pete always said Zoe had a way with his dad.
He held her gaze, then nodded. “Good idea.”
Zoe turned to Jenna and lowered her voice. “If you could bring me a few first aid supplies, I’d appreciate it.”
“Absolutely.”
Once Pete and Jenna had left, Zoe took a seat next to Harry. She tipped her head toward the window behind them. “What were you looking at out there?”
He lowered his face. “The stars. Isn’t much else worth looking at. Bunch of cars in a parking lot.”
Zoe nudged him with her shoulder. “Not exactly a room with a view, huh?”
“I wonder…if I called the front desk and complained, would they move me to another room in this hotel?”
Harry only grasped his true living conditions during sporadic lucid moments. Most of the time he thought he was in a hotel or at a restaurant. “I can check,” Zoe said, knowing he’d forget he’d asked within minutes.
“I’d sure appreciate it.”
Feigning surprise, she brushed her fingers over his plaid flannel shirtsleeve. “Did you hurt yourself?”
He looked down at his arm and appeared surprised. “It does hurt some.”
“Mind if I take a look?”
He eyed her suspiciously. “You a doctor?”
Afraid the mention of her work as a paramedic might be met with the same resistance as he’d expressed earlier, she smiled. “No. But I know my way around a Band-Aid.”
He thought about it, then relaxed his grip on the afflicted limb and extended his arm to her.
Not broken. No obvious blood seeping through the fabric. “How about we take your shirt off.”
“You getting fresh with me, Sunshine?” he said, a mischievous twinkle in his pale blue eyes. “I’ll have to tell on you to my son.”
The fact Harry recognized her as Pete’s girlfriend made her laugh. “Behave yourself. All I really need is this one arm out of the sleeve. You can keep the rest of the shirt on to maintain decorum.”
He allowed her to tug on the shirt’s cuff as he withdrew the arm with a pained grimace.
His elbow already showed signs of discoloration and swelling while his forearm suffered a bad case of road rash. Or in this case, wall rash. Zoe suspected he’d fallen against the wall and slid down, catching the windowsill with his elbow on the way to the floor. She took his hand. “Squeeze,” she told him. He complied with a little too much enthusiasm. “Nothing wrong with your grip.”
He grinned, pleased with himself. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
“Nope. I’m tough.”
“Wanna arm wrestle?”
“Maybe later. Let me get some antibiotic ointment and a bandage so you don’t get blood on your sheets.”
“No hospital?”
She pressed a kiss to his cheek. “No hospital.”
“I knew I liked you.”
Zoe rose and crossed to the door in search of the bandaging materials she’d asked for. As she neared, hushed voices—one of them Pete’s—in the hallway stopped her.
“Yes, I’m afraid you will have to testify,” he said. “But don’t worry about it. Just tell your story, the same as you did the first time.”
Zoe crept closer and peeked out. Jenna hugged herself, shoulders hunched. “I thought that awful part of my life was behind me. I was never so embarrassed. And to have to talk about it in front of God and everyone…Now you’re saying I have to do it again?” Her sigh sounded tear-laden. “Surely there has to be a way to keep him behind bars without my help.”
Pete put a hand on the woman’s shoulder. “I’m afraid there isn’t. After all this time, a few of the prosecution’s witnesses can’t be tracked down or have died. You may be the best shot we have.”
Zoe ducked out of their view. Frattini wasn’t the only one keeping details about the case from her. Pete might not want to clue her in on Franklin’s findings, but she’d darned well get Jenna’s part of the story from him.
Just not in front of Harry. She marched into the hall as if she’d overheard nothing. “Oh. There you are. Did you get the first aid stuff I asked for?”
Flustered, Jenna brushed her bangs from her face. “I’ll get it now.” She took a step away and stopped, pivoting back. “Did Harry let you check his arm?”
“A bump on his elbow and some scrapes. Nothing broken.”
The aide exhaled. “Good.”
