According to the staff, her injuries weren’t as severe as they looked. Concussion. Bruising. Her face had run into something—something that could very likely be a steering wheel. Was she the woman who had purposely run down Edward Letton yesterday morning? Had she sustained those injuries in the crash? She didn’t really look much like the woman described by Carol Pellter, the young soccer player who’d narrowly missed being mowed down by the hit-and-run driver (that was Pellter with two l’s, Carol had informed him seriously when she saw him writing her name down incorrectly). She also said it “scared the shit out of me, to quote my father,” and said Father looked decidedly uncomfortable when those words shot from his daughter’s young mouth. Carol, however, was decidedly happy to be able to use the language. Her description of the driver was fairly generic: older woman, wearing a baseball cap. Upon questioning both Carol and her parents, Carol’s father made it clear that “older” to Carol meant anyone over sixteen. Will had taken Carol to the sheriff’s offices to meet their one and only sketch artist, a talented amateur not on the county payroll. The artist had tried to draw a picture based on Carol’s description. In the end Will had put the woman anywhere from her mid-twenties to her late thirties.
But the reason Will was here now, with this mystery woman, was that she’d shown up at the hospital with a head injury consistent with one caused by an automobile accident—a ramming automobile accident. She fell loosely inside the right age bracket, and she had the right length of brown hair, and timing-wise, her injuries could have occurred yesterday morning.
But Will was reluctant to ask her directly about the hit-and-run. He didn’t want to feed her information until he was ready. He was hoping she’d trip up and tell him something herself. Maybe something she wanted him to know. Was desperate for him to know. Such as that Edward Letton, who was languishing in this same hospital with multiple fractures—the most serious a crushing head injury that had required emergency surgery to stop the bleeding in his brain—had been driving a van equipped with ropes, chains, handcuffs, and items of well…torture. Dog-eared pages of crude child pornography were tucked inside the vehicle’s pockets. The workshop of a predator about to strike.
Carol Pellter was damn lucky Gemma LaPorte, or whoever, had thwarted Letton from his sadistic purpose. If the man had grabbed the girl…Will’s mind clamped shut. No need to go there.
But was the driver Gemma LaPorte? If so, he would have no choice but to charge her with attempted murder at the worst, reckless driving at the least. According to Carol she’d run down Letton intentionally, but though the deed must have been in full view of the fields, with all the noise and attention diverting the players and bystanders, no one saw much of anything except a silver car driving a little faster than it should, the tires squealing a bit. That silver car had not been found.
So, was it intentional? Will was inclined to believe so. Carol was pretty sure of herself. And her parents, scared that Carol had nearly been run down, had been all about finding that driver and throwing the book at her. Until they’d looked through the open door of the van and seen what Will saw. Before that viewing they’d been instrumental in dialing 911 and getting an ambulance for Letton; they’d probably helped save him from dying at the site. It wasn’t until Will and another deputy were on the scene that anyone really looked inside Letton’s van. Then the Pellters stood silent and sober, possibly regretting their good Samaritan actions. When Carol wanted to see what was inside, they’d pulled her away, Carol all the while protesting that it was unfair, and that she heard her mom say, “oh, God,” and her dad say, “shit,” like they were both really, really scared, so she, Carol Pellter, deserved to know what was in that van!
Mom and Dad Pellter ignored her, staring at Will hollow-eyed, holding onto the whirling dervish that was their daughter in a protective grip that finally seemed to penetrate the spirited girl’s annoyance and she stopped fighting them and grew quiet.
Letton’s van had been impounded.
Now Gemma LaPorte was looking at him, her eye more hazel than green as the line of exterior light had shifted to illuminate the bruises on her forehead. “What’s the date today?” she asked.
“October seventh.”
“Three days,” she repeated.
A heavyset nurse entered the room, caught Gemma’s expression and turned officiously to Will. Before she could berate him for upsetting her patient, he nodded at her. “I’ll check back with you later,” he told Gemma, then headed into the hallway.
The nurse said to Gemma, “You look like you could use some more pain medication.”
Gemma was staring after Will. She felt like she could use some more pain medication, but she didn’t dare. She needed to keep her wits about her.
“Administration will be calling for your billing information,” the nurse added with a slight grimace. The duties and functions of a hospital were well-known.
Hospitals…pain…she had experienced a terrible moment when she saw a plastic mask descending over her face and smelled the scent of some drug.
“Do you know why that deputy came to see me?” she asked shakily. “He didn’t really say.”
Nurse Penny had seen a lot of patients in her forty years on the job. She prided herself as a good judge of character. Had only been fooled by someone once, and that was the bastard she eventually married and divorced. She hoped he rotted in hell somewhere.
She could certainly feel this patient’s reluctance and fear, but there was no sense of maliciousness or criminality emanating from her. She knew what that felt like. She’d been cajoled and lied to by an assortment of bamboozlers over the years and she’d seen right through them. No. This girl just seemed scared. Maybe angry. She’d muttered some vile things in her sleep, but Nurse Penny believed she was a good person at heart. “There was a hit-and-run. A man was seriously injured. They’re looking for the vehicle that ran him down, and the driver was described as a young woman about your age.”
Gemma felt cold. She absorbed the news silently. The nurse frowned, not liking the sense that the girl felt guilt. Could she have been wrong about her?
Gemma kept her silence as the nurse bustled around the room. She closed her eyes and pretended to sleep, not fooling Nurse Penny for a minute. Eventually, though, the nurse had to return to other duties and she left the room, pausing for a moment to look at the girl in the bed. She shook her head and left, a faint disturbance of air marking her passage.
The room fell quiet except for the soft whirs and clicks of the monitor.
Gemma opened her eye cautiously. She was alone. Lifting her arm, she examined the IV running into the skin above her wrist, felt the pressure of the cuff surrounding her upper arm. She began peeling off the tape that held the IV in place.
The sun skidded behind a cloud, plunging the October afternoon into early darkness, but the wolf welcomed the veil of shadow. He stood next to the bus stop bench, lifted his head and smelled the thick fall air, heavy with pent-up rain. He was glad for the clouds. He was a hunter and he preferred darkness.
A young couple sat on the bench, fighting over whether they had time to stop by her parents’ after visiting his father, who was recovering from hip surgery. The wolf was as remote to them as a distant star. He could have been invisible for all they noticed. Like the people living in the big house, he wasn’t worth noticing. He was insignificant. Unnoticeable. Maybe a little dull.
He pushed thoughts of them aside and concentrated on the woman inside the hospital. He’d followed her through all the strange turns that had brought her here. He was furious with her. She’d taken something from him. He needed to take her down, have her in his control. The need was near killing him. He could practically see her spread-eagled on the floor before him. He saw her squirming as he visualized unzipping his jeans and releasing his cock, then jamming it inside her again, and again, and again, as she threw back her head and thrashed and screamed. He knew she wanted him as much as he wanted her, but like the witch of his youth, she was teasing, taunting,