“Yeah, and good thing, or you would have arrested the wrong guy,” she answered. “Now if you two don’t mind. I’ve got a really nasty headache.”
“They want to keep you overnight, Ryley, but first tell me what really happened.”
“I lost my balance and brought the boxes down on me when I fell. It’s that simple.” Ryley frowned as she turned her gaze to the corner of the room.
Crews followed it. “Who’s in the corner?”
Tucker turned to look and met her gaze again. “He knows?”
“Yeah, he does. Tucker, I’d like you to meet Dr. Rosalind Crews’s son, Detective Jake Crews.”
Tucker’s eyes widened. “So, he knows everything.”
“No.” She was quick to cut him off. “He knows what I told him. I have patient confidentiality with his mother.”
Jake tensed, then forced his shoulders back down. What had Mom not shared? Maybe it was time he stopped by and paid his mother another visit to discover what other secrets she knew about Ryley and her alleged ghost tracking ability.
Chapter 23
After kicking everyone out, Ryley eased up in the hospital bed and ignored the spirits wandering aimlessly into the room. If she didn’t look at them, they’d never know she knew they were there, and wouldn’t bother her. It was a fine line to tread, and Ryley opted for closing her eyes over staring at the stained ceiling tiles.
The doctor came in thirty minutes later, explaining what he’d found—none of the lacerations were deep enough for stitches. Ryley was lucky.
She had a concussion and he wanted to stay her overnight, but she’d told them she was checking herself out.
Her clothes smelled like a distillery had met a butcher shop, covered in bourbon and blood. A nurse took pity on her and provided a pair of scrubs. She’d need to make a quick cab ride to the bar to get her belongings so she could pay the cabbie and get her stuff.
They’d wheeled her out of the room and her heart raced watching the black creepy crawlies on the ceiling and walls walking like spiders and converging into one of the rooms.
They’d made it to the elevator when a code was announced, sending nurses and doctors into that patient’s room. Down the hall in another direction more of the death stalker things were following an elderly man wearing a hospital gown. He was walking toward her pushing his IV pole. Ryley averted her eyes as the black shapes crept closer to him. Poor man wasn’t going to last long.
The elevator dinged and the orderly pushed her on and delivered her to the front of the hospital, as was protocol. He left her just outside the doors. Cabs were visible in the distance. A couple was smoking in a designated area off on the side of the building.
Ryley sat down on a bench to catch her breath and figure out what to do next. She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples, fighting the oncoming headache from the change in air pressure and electricity from all of the deceased. Hospitals were a petri dish for spirits. Most were the recently deceased. Some were deceased caregivers that never left the job, but regardless of why, the combined static in the air always triggered migraines. They’d started the first time her mom had taken her to the ER, when Ryley had broken her arm.
“Are you going to sit here all night?” Oscar asked.
Ryley’s eyes shot open. “Not now that you’re here.” Ryley rose from her seat. “Tell me you have wheels.”
“I have a vehicle,” he said and looked back inside the hospital doors. “Is there a reason why you checked yourself out?”
“Is there a reason why you’re still lurking in the parking lot?”
Oscar’s lips twitched, and he took her bag of smelly clothes and gestured to the parking lot. “Should I bring the car around, or can you walk?”
“I’m banged up, but I think I can manage.” Ryley followed him, albeit at a slower pace.
“And where exactly am I taking you?” Oscar asked, opening the passenger door of an old pickup truck. The car did not match the man.
“Why the clunker? Didn’t Wilson pay you enough?”
“Some secrets aren’t ready to be shared. I’m sure you’d agree.”
She nodded and slid into the seat when Oscar shut the door behind her. He climbed in on the other side and started the engine. He looked foreign sitting behind the wheel of the dumpy truck in his fancy business suit.
“Do you have your house keys?” He asked, glancing at the plastic bag.
She shook her head. “They’re at the bar.”
“And do you have keys to the bar?”
She hadn’t thought this through. It was three in the morning. Her brother had a spare key, but he’d kill her for leaving the hospital. The bar was closed, and Kent was a hard sleeper the times he wasn’t sleeping at his girlfriend’s house.
“Can you spot me money for a hotel?”
Oscar glanced at her as if she’d lost her mind. “Why leave the hospital where you have a warm bed and food just to go to a hotel with no money?”
“That’s one of those secrets,” she said.
He sighed and put the truck in drive. “I think I can do better than a hotel for the night.” He turned out onto the road. “You now own more property in town.”
“Not yet, I don’t.”
They drove in silence across town where the houses were more spread out, and grew farther and farther apart. This was what she called Country, just on the outskirts of town where fenced-in green fields held herds of cattle and big barns.
There were fewer ghosts, but ghosts none the less. Some dressed in civil war uniforms marching in the distance. She could feel it in the pit of her stomach around her tired, aching bones. Her normal walls to hold out the spirits were weakened, probably thanks to the concussion. With any luck, tonight she’d sleep like the dead. If the dead would just leave her
