“I don’t care what I said.” I reached out for him again, but he took another step back, opening his eyes.
“Rylie, I really don’t want to be your rebound . . . I can’t be.” He smoothed his hair down where my fingers had been. “We should probably head over to the hospital, and see if that woman’s regained consciousness.”
My heart was in my stomach. It served me right to feel the way I’d made him feel so many years ago. What was I thinking kissing him?
The ride to the hospital was uncomfortable to say the least. I didn’t know whether to feel sad or mad, but I was pretty sure both were coursing through my body. Tears threatened to fall. I almost wished I were back at my parents’ house. Almost.
On the way, he called one of his buddies from the academy and asked if he’d meet us at the hospital so we could talk to Ella.
The girl, who we confirmed to be Ella James, was still unconscious when we arrived. Luke and his cop friend went to speak with the doctors, giving me the opportunity to sneak into her room. I plopped down in a chair next to her bed and tried to focus on the case rather than my mixed up emotions.
Was I supposed to hold her hand? Talk to her?
No, that would be weird.
The nurses had cleaned her up nicely. Without puke in her hair, she actually didn’t look so terrible. “What happened to you?” I whispered and leaned closer. And noticed the track marks up and down her arms.
The door of the room swung open, startling me so badly I almost fell out of my chair.
“Oh, thank God,” I heard. The guy’s voice sounded desperate. “I was so worried.”
The man’s eyes were focused directly on Ella as if I wasn’t even in the room. He wrapped his arms around her floppy form and hugged her tight to his chest.
“Are you Clark?” I asked in a small voice.
He pivoted his head to look at me without letting Ella go. “Who’s asking?”
“Uh, I’m, um,” I tried to come up with a convincing lie, but my brain was frozen. “I’m a park ranger. Well, a seasonal park ranger. I mean, not forever hopefully, but—”
“Why is a park ranger in my girlfriend’s hospital room?” He slowly lowered her to the bed and fixed her hair before focusing his full attention on me.
I wanted to call out for Luke, but I didn’t want to spook Clark. I slowly stood.
“Your friend—Ronnie—he’s . . .”
“Yeah, I know. What’s it to ya?” He took a step toward me, and I took a step toward the door. Come on, Luke, come back, I silently urged.
“I found him. We—me and my friend—well, he’s a cop—”
“The cops are here?” Ronnie’s eyes widened before he lunged.
I ducked to the side before he could reach me, and when he yanked the door open, Luke was standing with his arms crossed over his chest.
“Leaving so soon?” Luke grabbed Clark by the shoulder.
Clark, a forty-something man wearing a superhero shirt identical to the one my youngest nephew wore nearly every day, stood only as tall as Luke’s chest.
“My friend here has a few questions he’d like to ask you.” Luke motioned to the uniformed officer behind him.
Clark’s face went ashen. “I didn’t do it. I swear.”
“Why don’t we go somewhere where we can talk?” Luke said.
“Do I need a lawyer?”
“You’re not under arrest, but if you’d like a lawyer, we can take you down to the station and—”
“No, I’ll talk to you.” Clark’s shoulders slumped.
Luke and I followed Clark and his officer friend down the hall and into the elevator to the first-floor cafeteria. “What were you doing in there? I turn my back for one second . . .”
He glanced over at me and I shrugged.
“I—I thought you already caught Ronnie’s killer,” Clark said when we found seats around a table that reminded me of the ones in our high school cafeteria.
“We have a few persons of interest, yes. But we’d like to know if you could give us any additional information about the circumstances surrounding his death,” Luke said.
“Me and Ronnie, we’ve been friends for lots of years. Always fishing together. ’Til he caught that damn catfish and started thinkin’ he was better than everyone else.”
Seriously, who cared about fishing that much?
“Can you tell us about the night he caught the catfish?”
“Sure,” Clark shifted in his seat. “We were back in Muddy Water, usin’ stink bait like always, and Ronnie gets a tug. Bigger’n any tug I ever saw. It took us both an hour to reel that sucker in, and by the time it was on shore, we knew it was close to the record.
“I didn’ want Ronnie to take it to the rangers. I’ve had my bits of trouble with ’em in the past”—he looked at me apologetically—“but Ronnie talked me into it. So we loaded that big, slimy fish into the back of my truck and drove it around to the ranger station. I don’ think the rangers much believed us though.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, they was asking a bunch of questions and makin’ it sound like we was lyin’ and such. Ronnie was too excited to notice, but they seemed irritated that we made them stay open late to take measurements and weights and pictures.”
“Do you remember which rangers were on duty that night?”
Luke and I both knew Antonio and Kyle had been working.
“Oh I dunno their names, it was the Spanish one that all the girls like—”
Luke quirked an eyebrow at me.
“And the one with a permanent scowl on his face, looks like he needs an enema.”
Yep, Antonio and Kyle, though I wasn’t sure how he’d managed to mistake Italian for Spanish.
“And how did you know they weren’t happy that they had to stay late?”
“Just a feelin’, ya know? They was more
