She would never forgive herself if it did.
“Hey, Doc. Don’t look so glum. This isn’t your fault.”
It was as if Mike had read her mind, but she guessed he had merely read her face.
“How are you feeling?” she said.
“Actually, pretty good. Got me hooked up to some sweet painkillers. But I don’t think I’ll be able to go caving this weekend.”
Diane gave him a weak smile and lifted her arm. “Me either.”
“They have to test my blood,” he said. “They said the knife might have been contaminated with other blood or something. . ” He let the sentence trail off and looked at Neva. She kissed his forehead.
“I know,” said Diane. “Mine, too.”
“Shit. I hate that son of a bitch,” said Mike.
“We’ll get through this.” She grasped his hand and squeezed it.
Mike looked at her and smiled. “Sure, we will.”
“I’m going home and getting a long night’s sleep. I’ll come by in the morning before I go to the museum,” said Diane.
“Don’t worry about me, Doc. I’ll be fine.”
“You take care, buddy,” said Korey.
“Sure. Nothing can happen to me in the hospital, right?” He laughed weakly as they went out the door.
Korey drove Diane to her car at the museum parking lot. “I’ll take you home and pick you up in the morning,” he said. “It’s not out of my way.”
“Thanks, Korey, but I can drive. Look, I appreciate your staying at the hospital so long. It must have been boring.”
“No problem. Glad I could be there for you guys.”
“See you tomorrow.” Diane got out of his car and into her SUV. It felt good to be going home.
She drove slowly, not quite trusting the use of her right arm, relieved when she pulled into the parking space in front of her apartment building. The building was a huge old Greek Revival house subdivided into apartments.
She wished it had an elevator as she climbed the stairs to her apartment. Just as she got inside the phone rang. She picked it up.
“Hey, it’s me,” said Frank. “How’s Mike doing?”
“Good. They expect a full recovery. I spoke with him before I left.”
“That’s a relief. Look, babe, I’m sorry but I’ve got to stay in Atlanta for the next couple of days. We have a development in a case.” Frank worked in Atlanta, but lived in Rosewood, and he often stayed in Atlanta when he was working on a case instead of making the ninety-minute commute. She couldn’t blame him.
“Sure. I’d like to get to bed early, anyway.” She hoped the depth of her disappointment didn’t sound in her voice.
“I know this has been a rotten day. I really wanted to be with you tonight.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I’ll see you day after tomorrow for sure and take you out to dinner. We’ll do a movie.”
“Take care,” he said, and was gone.
She didn’t tell him that she had also been stabbed. It would only make him feel worse about not being there. She decided to take a Percocet and go to bed early.
Diane awoke feeling just as angry as she had when she went to sleep. Her arm hurt, and it pissed her off that she was going to have to get a series of blood tests to make sure she didn’t catch anything nasty from the knife. Damn that guy.
She wanted to call Garnett and see if he was making progress, but it was only six and he was most likely still at home. On top of all the other worries about herself and Mike, Diane also felt guilty, and she wasn’t sure why. But a free-floating sick feeling had come on her like a constant pain in her stomach. “Get a hold of yourself,” she said out loud to her empty bedroom.
She took a bath, taking care not to get the bandage wet, got dressed and drove to the hospital, eating a nutrition bar on the way. She wanted to see how Mike was doing, and she also wanted to ask him a question that had been nagging at the back of her mind since her near fall in the cave.
A nurse was just carrying out his breakfast tray when she entered Mike’s room. He was alone and sitting up with several pillows behind him.
“Hey, Doc.” He grinned at her.
“You look good,” she said, pulling up a chair. He actually looked better than she felt. The sight lifted some of her depression.
“I’m doing okay. How’s your arm?”
“Sore, but mending. Where’s Neva?”
“She went home to get a shower. She’ll probably be back any minute. She stayed here all night sleeping in that chair.”
Diane was silent for several moments, feeling a little foolish for her concerns about the cave, trying to come up with some small talk.
“Got something else on your mind, Doc?”
“Mike. .”
“Uh-oh, that either sounds like we’re breaking up or I’m getting fired. Since we aren’t going together and technically I work for the university. .”
Diane smiled. “It’s something that’s been nagging at me since I nearly fell in the cave, and I need your opinion. Was I reckless? As I was crawling through that tunnel, my mind was on the new opening. . I lost track of the moment. You can’t do that in a cave.”
“No, but we all have. Reckless? No. You’re like me. Safety is automatic. You just didn’t recognize the danger. While you were off on vacation enjoying yourself, I did some experiments on a piece of wood with a hole drilled in it. I poured gravel on the board to see if the rocks that got caught in the hole made any recognizable pattern.”
Diane raised her eyebrows. “How scientific of you.”
Mike smiled, showing his dimples. He tried to stretch and winced from the pain. “Son of a bitch.”
“You okay?”
“Yeah, just a little pain. If I get my hands on the guy who did this. . Shit. Anyway, the experiment-I thought maybe we could recognize the formation if we ever ran across one again.”
“Can we?”
“Maybe-if all we saw was the plug. The rocks shift toward each other when they get stuck. You can sort of recognize it. But with other breakdown on top of the plug, the pattern was hard to see.” He shook his head. “You weren’t reckless. What brought this on?”
“It was just something I was thinking about.”
Mike squinted his eyes at her. “There’s something else that’s bothering you.”
“Just trying to make sense out of things. Why us?”
“I’ve been thinking. You know, there is one person who would like to do us both in.”
Diane lowered her eyes, then brought her gaze back up to Mike’s intent look. His light brown eyes still looked sleepy, but he had a strength in his voice just now when he talked about a killer that got away, almost taking their lives with him-the one who left Neva to die.
“I’ve thought of him too. But he’s dead. He has to be.”
“Does he?”
“Yes. There’s no way he could have survived. I believe that.”
“Is that why you scan the parking lot every time you leave the museum? I’ve seen you. I do it too.”
“It’s a good habit to get into.”
“It’s just a thought I had, trying to figure out who could be so damn mad at both of us. You’re right, though-
