“Let me think about it. Lindsay has a good friend—I’ll speak to her. Another thing, Barry, what about protection for her here in the hospital?”
“I’ve got two young guys coming down to keep guard. Both of them on the bitter edge of burnout. But they’re good, Taylor, so don’t frown at me or give me any of your smart lip. Now, I do need to speak to the lady. I’m going to hunt up her doctor and find out when she’ll be with it enough to talk to me. See you later.”
Demos said, “Do you think she saw anything?”
“I don’t know. You can believe that Barry will speak to each and every one of the folk on the shoot. Pray to God someone remembers something.”
* * *
Lindsay was awake. Her eyes were still closed. She was holding very still. She could hear the soft hissing of the lung machine on the nightstand beside her. Her ribs hurt, a thudding, prodding sort of pain that was with her every moment, and her face felt like she had two tons of concrete pressing down on it. At least she could breathe; at least she was alive. The other she could bear.
She could control the pain. She could and would because she had to think about what had happened. She’d heard this man, this policeman, speaking to Taylor and Demos. What had happened wasn’t an accident.
Someone had tried to kill her.
Control the pain. Yes, she had to control the pain because she had to think. But it made no sense. Who? She had no enemies, as far as she knew. Who? She felt fingers on her bare forearm, lightly stroking, making contact, giving her a connection.
“It’s all right, sweetheart.”
Taylor’s voice—soft and calm. She hadn’t realized he was here. He was wiping some Kleenex across her eyes. She hadn’t realized she was crying. Then he kissed her, gentle as a soft beam of moonlight.
“It’s all right. I’m here. Do you have much pain?”
“I can handle it.” It was so hard to speak. It hurt her face dreadfully. “Water.”
He slipped the straw into her mouth and she sucked on it, feeling shocks of pain as she did so.
He wiped away the tears on her cheeks.
“If you need some painkiller, just press this button here. It’s hooked up to your IV. The nurse did that just a couple of hours ago. She said you could take as much as you needed. That’s it. Give yourself a couple of licks. Good. No reason to put up with pain if you don’t have to.”
Taylor fell silent, waiting for the pain medication to kick in. He continued to stroke her arm, a habit now, probably one he would keep the rest of his life. He finally felt the tension begin to leave her body. Finally. “Now, you just lie here a minute, and I’ll fetch your nurse. She wanted to know when you woke up. You’ve got two doctors, not just one, and both of them want to see you.”
She closed her eyes, feeling the pain recede, leaving a strange sort of lethargy and numbness in their wake. She remembered thinking how miraculous it was when her grandmother had showed her how she could get as much painkiller as she wanted by just pressing a button. Now she was in the same position. She could still feel the immense weight, the pounding and heaviness of her face, but the pain was removed. Odd, but it was true.
Dr. Perry arrived first. She remembered him and tried to smile. “You’re doing just fine,” he said first thing.
“My face feels like it weighs two tons.”
“I know. It’s the swelling from the blow you took, combined with the swelling from the surgery. You’ll need pretty heavy-duty painkillers for another couple of days. Then it will ease and feel more normal by the day. Tomorrow we’ll change the bandages. We don’t want to take any chances with infection. The stitches come out in about nine days. We’ll be able to tell then, pretty much, the results of my handiwork.”
It was so difficult to speak. She could barely open her mouth with the bandages heavy around her head and beneath her chin. “Will I look horrible?”
“No. You’ll probably look just like you did before. As I said to Mr. Taylor here, you were very lucky. The damage was to the bones, not to your skin, which means little scarring. You were very lucky. You’ll be beautiful again. Please don’t worry.”
“Thank you.”
Taylor saw Dr. Perry in the hall. The doctor smiled. “I wasn’t lying. She’ll be fine. As for her beauty, I know she’s a model and her face is her living. I think you should prepare her for a change in careers. It might not be necessary, but I can’t be certain. It’s nearly impossible to predict the exact result. It just seems wise that you get her thinking along alternative lines. The surgery went very well, I’m not lying to you, but still, one never really knows.”
Taylor wanted to tell him that Lindsay wasn’t a model because of any great desire to be so, but he didn’t because he really didn’t know how strongly she felt about it. He wanted to get back to her. He thanked the doctor and watched him walk away down the corridor. He said to officer Jay Fogel, who was sitting by Lindsay’s door, a
Fogel shook his head, profoundly regretful. “Not even a pretty nurse.” Fogel studied the man for a moment, then added, “Besides, Mr. Taylor, you’re here. What maniac in his right mind would try to get to her with you here?”
Taylor just shook his head. Fogel was short, wiry, with a baby face that made all women, regardless of their ages, want to mother him. Fogel, from what Taylor had heard, usually took instant and shameless advantage.
“Just keep alert,” Taylor said, and went back inside.
He sat beside Lindsay and immediately covered her forearm with his fingers. He stroked the soft flesh. He felt her ease.
“I know,” she said, the words difficult to understand because she couldn’t open her mouth very wide.
“You know it wasn’t an accident?”
“Yes.”
“Any ideas?”
He sounded so matter-of-fact, so completely neutral, that she blinked at him.
He smiled at her, seeing that she’d accepted it, that she’d drawn back from hysteria. She was firmly in control. He admired her greatly in that moment. “I want you to think back to the shoot. Go very slowly. Ah, look whose timing is next to perfection. Lindsay, love, this is Sergeant Barry Kinsley of the NYPD. He and I go back a long way, probably too long a way. He looks like a wrestler and he is, but he does have a brain. He’s here to find out who tried to hurt you.”
Barry looked into her eyes and knew then why Taylor or any man for that matter could fall like a ton of bricks for the lady. They were deep blue and filled with shadows and mysteries, so deep, he thought, and soft and incredibly sexy. Since she looked like a conehead, all swathed around the head in that white bandage, he hadn’t thought much about her looks, even though she was a successful model. Now he wanted to see some professional photos of her.
“Hello, Miss Foxe,” he said.
Lindsay nodded, then jerked.
Taylor said mildly, forestalling anything she would say, “Lindsay Foxe is a nice name, sweetheart, but I think, personally, that Lindsay Taylor is a much nicer one. What do you say?”
She didn’t say anything. She was crying with relief, with shame, with regret. She felt him dab away the tears. What was wrong with her? The crying—she’d never cried so much in her life. There was no control, none at all, and now this.
“Shush, sweetheart. It’s all right. We’ll talk later about it. It’s not important. Please believe me, Lindsay. It’s not important. Now, poor Barry here wants to ask you some questions. I want you to go real slow and think about everything. Tell us each and every little detail, no matter how silly, even crazy impressions, don’t leave out even the bathroom breaks—tell us everything about yesterday morning.”
She did, speaking slowly. She forgot things, then remembered. Taylor asked questions and she remembered more. Barry asked questions with a different slant, and more came back to her. It went slowly. “. . . Then I was standing by that stupid fake ski lift and Edie started screaming. I looked at her, because I didn’t understand, then I looked up, following her eyes, and then things started raining down on me. I wasn’t fast enough.”
Barry said slowly, “Then you didn’t see anyone who shouldn’t have been there? You didn’t have any questions
