Criminal Intent (MIRA) (19 page)

“She made it through the surgery with flying colors. Your grandmother’s a strong woman.”

“Yes. She is.” The relief that flooded him was almost overwhelming. “What now?”

“She’s in Recovery right now, resting comfortably. We inserted a pin in her hip. That should take care of the immediate problem, but she’ll be off her feet for a while. Assuming that there are no complications—”

“Complications?”

“She’s in her eighties,” Gates said, “and diabetic. After surgery, there’s always a risk of complications. As a diabetic, she’s at a slightly higher risk. But as I said, she’s a strong woman. The surgery was routine. Once she’s well enough to leave
the hospital, I expect she’ll need at least a month in rehab. Maybe longer, depending on how quickly she bounces back. Diabetics can take longer to heal. After that…well, she may or may not be capable of continuing to live on her own. At her age, and with her visual disability…well, it’s something you’ll want to take up with her family physician. Look at all the options. If you’re thinking of placing her in a facility, you should probably start planning for it as soon as possible. Sometimes there are waiting lists.”

He didn’t like the way the man said the word
facility.
As if Gram were a piece of refuse that needed to be hauled off to the garbage dump and left there. He forced himself to remember that Gates was only doing his job. Forced himself to remember that, even though it would be a last resort, if things got bad enough, it might come to that. He might have to place her in some kind of nursing-care facility. But that wasn’t something he was ready to think about. Not yet. “Can I see her?” Davy said.

“Once she’s out of the Recovery room and on the post-surgical ward. But she’ll be groggy, and she needs to rest. We’ll be keeping her heavily sedated because of the pain. It might be better if you waited until tomorrow.” Gates glanced at the clock on the wall and corrected himself. “Or, more accurately, later today.”

“Thanks, Doc.”

Gates disappeared down the corridor, and Davy was alone with Annie again. “Feel better?” she said.

“I’ll feel better when I see her.”

“Ah,” she said. “You’re the kind of man who has to see it to believe it.”

She looked exhausted. Wiped out. As Gram would say, like something the cat dragged in. There was blue paint splattered all over her clothes, her hair was a rat’s nest, and her eyes were red and puffy, probably from the effort she’d expended to stay awake
all these hours in a place that was about as exciting as watching paint dry. Count on him to take the most gorgeous female to hit Serenity in a decade and turn her into something from a B-grade sci-fi flick. “You look tired,” he said. “I should take you home.”

“I can wait a little longer.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure. I’ll leave when you leave.”

They killed another half hour sitting silently on the ugly couch before a nurse finally came in and told him that his grandmother had been moved to a room on the second floor of the hospital. He could visit, the nurse said, but Gram needed her rest, so he should keep it brief.

He thanked her, and he and Annie took the elevator upstairs. The corridors were lit as bright as midday. Nurses bustled about, clanging carts, slamming doors, blood pressure cuffs and thermometers at the ready. He wondered how anybody ever managed to sleep, let alone get well, in this place with its lights and its noise and the constant interruptions from the nursing staff in their ongoing quest to measure the vital signs of every patient at least once an hour.

He stopped at the second-floor nurses’ station and asked for Lorena Hunter’s room, then followed the nurse’s directions down a secondary corridor that veered off to the left. He located Room 215 and paused outside the door, which had been left slightly ajar. “You go in,” Annie said. “I’ll wait out here.”

Davy cautiously pulled open the door and stepped inside the room. Gram lay beneath crisp white sheets, amid tubes and hoses and hanging bags of various fluids, both ingoing and outgoing. Someone had tucked a rolled-up bedspread against her side to keep her from moving around too much in the bed. Her face was ashen, the long white hair that was her pride and joy a tangled mess. Her dentures sat in a Dixie cup on
the bed stand, beside one of those little plastic pans they give you in case you need to vomit. She would have a conniption about the teeth. Gram might be in her eighties, but she hadn’t lost her vanity. She never let anybody see her without her dentures. Some things, she’d told him, were too private to share even with immediate family. All these strangers viewing her toothless gums would be the ultimate indignity.

He leaned over the hospital bed and touched her hand, the one that didn’t have any tubes or needles stuck in it. Her eyes flickered, and she opened them. Her blindness wasn’t total. She still could see light and shadow, could still recognize blurry colors if they were bright enough. But she couldn’t recognize faces. “Hey,” he said.

She might not be able to distinguish faces, but she had no trouble with voices. “Dabid,” she said, her speech thickened by a combination of drugs, tubing, and missing dentures. “Brote—” Her mouth was dry, probably from the anesthesia. She ran her tongue over her lips and tried again. “Broke hip.”

“That’s right, Gram,” he said gently, scooching down so that he was at eye level with her. “But you’re okay now. The doctors fixed you up as good as new. They put in a pin to hold you together. Now you’re just like the bionic woman.” He took her thin, blue-veined hand in his and squeezed it. “You’ll be out of here in no time.”

“Cagh.”

“What?”

“Cagh. Theed cagh.”

He tried to figure out what she was saying, but it made no sense. “I’m sorry, Gram,” he said, “but I don’t understand.”

She was starting to get agitated. He could tell by the way she squeezed his hand and raised her head off the pillow, working her mouth in frustration. “Theed cagh,” she said. “Koko! Theed cagh.”

A lightbulb went on over his head. “Feed the cat?” he said, and
she nodded, dropping her head back to the pillow as though she’d utilized her last reserve of strength. “Don’t worry, Gram,” he said. “I’ll take care of Koko. And I’ll water your plants, and take care of whatever else needs doing.”

A tear spilled from the corner of her eye. “Home,” she said.

An arrow of pain shot through his heart. “I know, hon,” he said. “It won’t be long. I promise.”

“Dabid?”

“What, Gram?”

She wriggled her hand out of his grasp, reached up and pressed it against the side of his head. “Good boy,” she said. “My boy.”

He had to get out of here. If he didn’t get out of here, he was going to lose it. He caught her hand in his and kissed it. “Gram,” he said, “I have to go. I promised I’d only stay for a minute. You need to sleep. But I’ll be back in a few hours. We’ll both feel better then, and we can have a nice visit.”

“Don’ forget cagh.”

“I won’t, Gram. I’ll stop over and feed her before I come back. You get some rest now.”

She didn’t want him to leave. She didn’t say a word, didn’t cling to his hand. But he could tell she didn’t want him to go. He went anyway, found Annie leaning against the wall outside the door, her eyelids closed, a vertical frown line running between her eyes.

“Ready?” he said softly, and she opened her eyes.

“Are you okay?” she said.

“I’m fine.”

“Liar.” There was a tenderness to her voice that hadn’t been there earlier. “I heard every word that was said in there.”

“So I lied. Sue me. Can we just get out of here?”

The drive home from the hospital was silent, both of them thinking private thoughts as the police cruiser slipped through
the darkness. The air was thick and humid, almost soupy, the town deserted at this hour, a monochromatic caricature of its real self. Even the bars that lined Androscoggin Street were closed. Only the Big Apple convenience store remained open, for any citizen who needed an emergency pack of Camels or a tank of gas. Business wasn’t thriving. The lone clerk working the graveyard shift stood outside, leaning against the front of the building, smoking a cigarette, its crimson tip glowing in the dark. Hunter crossed the old iron bridge and headed out the state highway. They temporarily left civilization behind as they traveled the deserted stretch of road where she’d met him just a few days ago when her Volvo died. Then they came back into civilization, passing through the little settlement that surrounded the Twilight.

In the dark, the Twilight’s dead neon sign loomed like an escapee from some modern-day Stonehenge. Hunter wheeled the cruiser into the parking lot and came to a stop at the foot of the outside stairway. “I’ll walk you up,” he said.

Annie, who’d been hoping for a quick escape, paused, her hand already on the door handle. “That won’t be necessary.”

He turned off the ignition and removed his keys. “Screw necessary. You’re here all by yourself. Somebody broke into the place a few nights ago. I’m walking you up.”

She didn’t argue. It was three o’clock in the morning, she was beyond exhausted, and it didn’t seem worth the effort. He followed her up the darkened staircase. She stumbled on the edge of a stair that needed fixing and he caught and steadied her, his hand pressed lightly against the small of her back. It was the first time he’d touched her, and her heart began a sudden, irrational thudding. It would have been nice, she thought with an irritation that was disproportionate to the situation, if Sophie could have bothered to leave the outside light on when Jessie picked her up. But that was a teenager for you. They
left the lights on when you wanted them off, then left you in the dark when you could have used the light.

She’d witnessed something extraordinary tonight, and she was still trying to process it. There was much more to Davy Hunter than she had thought. That hard outer shell of his had multiple layers that were gradually being peeled back to reveal the remarkable man beneath. The disclosure of his tender side had left her shaken, her breath coming in short, shallow inhalations. Or maybe it was just the climb up the steep staircase to the second floor with his hand pressed against her back that left her breathless.

She should have insisted that he let her walk up alone. Should have insisted that he stay in the car. Should have insisted that he go home, where she wouldn’t be tempted to beg him to stay. This was a dangerous game she was playing, and the consequences could be deadly. She had no business getting involved with any man, not while Luke Brogan was out there gunning for her. If she let down her guard, she could jeopardize her safety, not to mention Sophie’s.

Hunter would only complicate her life at a time when she could ill afford complications. He’d already made it clear that nothing could ever come of this heated attraction between them. The man had a dark side, and demons of his own to battle. His dead ex-wife, for one, and God only knew what else. She had no idea of the statistics regarding the percentage of sober alcoholics who fell off the wagon, but she suspected they were discouragingly high. It would be an idiotic move on her part to invite him in, at three o’clock in the morning, when she was so hungry for him she could taste it.

She’d been so careful. For six months, she hadn’t made a single misstep. Hadn’t let anybody get too close, for fear of revealing more than she intended. She’d already said too much to him, the other night at Jo’s barbecue, which only served to prove that he was dangerous. Sexy and compelling and
dangerous. Was she really willing to throw away all her caution and good sense for a roll in the hay with a man who would probably forget her the instant he climbed out of her bed?

They reached the landing outside her door. Annie took a deep breath and turned to tell him good-night. To send him packing, before she did the unthinkable. She opened her mouth to speak, but the scent of him, hot and dusky and male, invaded her senses. Powerless to resist, she drew that riveting scent of man into her lungs and held it captive. His fingers, splayed against her lower back, scorched her skin, even through the cotton work shirt she’d donned to paint in. The sultry night was a liquid presence that flowed around them, between them, heavy and sticky and sweet.

Oh, God.
Once she touched him, she’d be lost.

She wasn’t even aware of moving as she flowed into him, pelvis to pelvis, heat to heat, her aching breasts pressed hard against his chest. Relief because her indecision was ended mingled with anticipation over what was to come. Certain now, more certain than she’d ever been of anything, she reached up and found his face. Skimmed it with her fingers. He uttered a soft, unintelligible sound that might have been a word. Breathing hard, Annie tangled her fists in his hair and pulled his mouth down to hers.

Kissing Davy Hunter was like riding a nuclear missile. All that trapped energy, all that carefully restrained intensity, he let loose in an explosion of gargantuan proportions. The power he exuded was exhilarating. Terrifying. Determined to swallow him alive, she gripped his shirtfront in her hands, twisting and torturing it as she gave herself over to his steamy, liquid kisses.

He broke away from her with a gasp. Desperate for oxygen, she sucked in sweet, sticky air as his mouth worked its way down the slender column of her neck. Her head fell back, baring
her throat to the prickle of whisker stubble, the warm feathery tickle of his breath, as with lips and teeth and tongue he plundered her. It was a ridiculous word, one that conjured up mental images of pirates and romance novel heroes. But it was the only word that fit. Davy Hunter, policeman, pirate and plunderer, tugged frantically at the buttons of her cotton shirt, peeling it back to reveal the sheer, lacy underwear she wore under her painting clothes.

“Christ Almighty,” he said hoarsely. “Where the hell’s your door key?”

It took her an instant to comprehend, took her an instant to remember that they were still outside her door, in plain view of not only every car that passed on the highway, but the prying eyes of her neighbors. With shaky hands, she fished the key out of her pocket. He took it from her and inserted it into the lock. The door opened, and they very nearly tumbled through it. He shoved it closed behind them and locked it, tossed the key on a table, and slipped the cotton shirt down over her arms.