The old punch line You should see the other guy swept through his mind, but he didn’t so much as crack a smile. Because he knew there was no other guy. In James’s experience, those who usually scratched and clawed were female. That didn’t bode well. Well, hell, none of this did.
“Not good, Cahill,” he said and fell back against the pillows.
He was in a fight with a woman?
He squeezed his eyes shut. Tried to recall.
A memory, hot and dark, started to surface: a woman’s distorted, furious face bloomed, then withered away again.
This was so wrong.
He started to rise again, threw off the scant covers just as the door swept open and a bald man on the north side of forty stepped into the room. His name tag read: GRANT P. MONROE, MD. A trimmed goatee that had started to gray covered his chin, and behind rimless glasses, his gaze met James’s. He introduced himself and added, “We met earlier.”
Did we?
“You may not remember.”
“I don’t.”
“Hmm.” Noncommittal. But his eyes narrowed a fraction.
“In fact, I don’t even remember how I got here.”
“Results of a concussion.” He was using a penlight to stare into James’s eyes. “Should clear up in a few days.”
“Should?”
“Could be longer. Might come all of a sudden, seemingly out of nowhere, but more likely in bits and pieces as something you see or hear creates a connection. As time passes, as your brain heals, hopefully you’ll piece it all together.” He shone his light in the other eye.
“Hopefully?”
“No one can be certain.”
“How comforting.”
The barest hint of a smile at the sarcasm. “Give it time.”
“What choice do I have?” James grumbled.
The doc didn’t react, nor answer, but explained that not only did James have the concussion, but he had suffered three cracked ribs and torn ligaments in his right shoulder, along with some abrasions and contusions.
“You’re lucky,” the doctor concluded.
“Lucky?”
“Could’ve been much worse.”
“How?”
“Well, the blow to your head could have killed you.”
“I was hit?”
“You fell.”
“I fell?” he said, thinking of all the damage.
“Or were pushed,” Nurse Rictor said as she returned, sweeping around the doc to insert something in his IV as Monroe examined his shoulder.
“Pushed?” James repeated.
Monroe lifted James’s right arm, rotating it slightly, and James felt the color drain from his face as he sucked in his breath. “Bad?” Monroe asked.
“I’ll live.”
“Good.” Monroe returned James’s arm to its sling. “Bruised and lacerated shoulder,” he explained. “Nothing broken. As I said, ‘lucky.’ ”
James snorted his disbelief, then said, “So back to what happened—?”
Before the nurse could answer, the doctor said, “The police want to talk to you about that. We were instructed to not answer your questions.”
“What? Why not?” James asked and, despite a warning glance, Nurse Rictor responded, “Because of the investigation.”
“What investigation?” This was beginning to sound ominous.
“You’ll have to ask them. They want to speak to you.”
“Great.” James couldn’t remember all that much, at least not concerning recent events, but he knew he had an instinctive aversion to the cops.
“How did I even get here?” James asked.
“Some kind of fight or altercation,” the nurse said. When she received the hard look from Monroe, she added, “He has the right to know.”
“Fight?” James repeated. God, he thought he was long over bar fights and the like, had years before learned to contain his mercurial temper.
“Domestic dispute,” she offered.
She had to be kidding. “With whom?”
“We don’t know that,” Monroe interjected, and the nurse rolled her eyes, obviously as tired of the red tape as James was.
“That’s what we heard from the police,” said Rictor. Still ignoring the doctor’s grim expression, she barreled on. “It happened at your house. Nine-one-one was called, and the paramedics found you there. You had fallen or were pushed and hit your head against the corner of a hearth.”
He sat up a little straighter, trying to remember. In his mind’s eye, James saw himself backing away, stumbling, falling as he avoided . . . who? what?
Fireplace? He saw the raised brick hearth at his farmhouse, recalled stumbling backward, trying to avoid . . . what? who?
A woman.
He touched his cheek again.
A blistering memory teased at him . . .
You’ll never see me again!
The words stabbed through his mind.
Who had spat them out so viciously?
He should know.
But he didn’t.
Now he asked the nurse, “Who made the emergency call?”
“Don’t know,” she admitted.
“So who was I fighting with?” he demanded again.
He saw a shadow flicker across Dr. Monroe’s face. “No one’s really sure. The police want to talk to you, hear your side of the story.”
“The person who I was fighting with. He—she’s not here? Wasn’t admitted?” James asked, thinking the person might be injured as well.
“Not that I know of.”
The nurse interceded. “She could have been taken somewhere else.”
“She?” he said, his worst fears confirmed. “Who?”
Rictor shook her head. “No one knows what really happened. Yet.”
“But I was in a fight with a woman and ended up here?” he clarified, agitated. “Is she all right?” He was sitting up now, ignoring the pain.
“The police think it was with your girlfriend.”
Something deep in James’s gut tightened, and he felt there was a grain of truth to the story.
“My girlfriend?” he repeated, faces of women he’d seen in the past flitting through his brain, faces he couldn’t name . . .
“Megan Travers.”
“Megan.” He said the word as if tasting it, felt Monroe’s hard gaze and Rictor’s curious one studying him as he tried to bring up a face to match the name. An image teased at his brain, but it was shadowy and vague, the features indistinguishable. Slowly, he shook his head, and a dark thought burned through him. What if she hadn’t made it? What if the reason they were being so coy and the police so adamant about wanting to talk to him was that she was dead, that he . . . oh, God, that he’d killed her? An accident. Surely. “But she—Megan—she’s all right?” he asked, his heart thudding, a deep fear clutching his soul.
“I don’t know anything about it.” Monroe
