Angel's Verdict (19 page)

“Possibly. But it doesn’t matter all that much, does it? What matters is that we’re going to find out what really happened and fix what we can fix. We’re in this case for good reasons, Dent. To represent Consuelo’s interests and to help you get through the program.” She touched his arm. “Why don’t you go home and get some sleep? We’ll set up some time to talk together tomorrow.”

“All right.” He stood up. “You need a ride back to your town house?”

Bree looked out the window. “I can see it from here. I’ll just jump right across Bay and be right home.”

“See you tomorrow, then.”

She watched him as he wound his way out through the tables. Lonely. She’d never met a man who was as alone as William Dent seemed to be. A big, tired guy who’d lost the battle. Well, if she had anything to do with it, he was going to win the war. She glanced at the corner where the
Bitter Tide
cast and crew had gathered. Justine and Craig Oliver were gone. So was Phillip Mercury.

Suddenly, she really missed Sam Hunter. She pulled out her cell and hit the speed dial. He answered on the first ring, which could be a good thing (he was missing her) or a bad thing (he was irked she hadn’t called him before this).

“Bree!” he said. Which meant it was that good thing. He was missing her.

“Hey.”

“How long have you been back?”

“Tonia and I got home just after New Year’s Day. But you were out on that school shooting. I heard you wrapped it up, though. Did the case go well?”

“As well as anything can that involves a jealous step-father, an overconcerned high school history teacher, and a teenager barraged by too many hormones.”

“But nobody died.”

“Nobody even got seriously hurt. You weren’t by any chance calling to say that you’re free tonight?”

“Not only am I free, Antonia’s over at the theater until late. Would you be able to come over?”

Bree hoped she read the silence on the other end of the line correctly. But she and Hunter had been dancing around long enough. She wanted a real person in her life, in her bed, in her heart. She wanted a life of her own.

“I can be there in five.”

“Movie speak,” Bree said. “Ugh.”

He laughed. “You don’t know the worst of it.”

“We’ll swap horror stories.” Her heart was beating a little faster. She was swept with a wave of happiness. “Have you had dinner yet? I’m at B. Matthew’s right now. I can order something for you.”

“Fish tacos,” he said promptly. “I’ll meet you at your front door.”

The night outside was warmer than it had been. Bree left her winter coat unbuttoned. She tucked the take-out bag under her arm, stood at the crosswalk, and punched the Walk button. Somebody waved at her from across the street. Bree narrowed her eyes to see better. It was Hunter. He wore a black leather jacket. Like hers, his coat was open to the warmer air. He looked good to her: solid, tall, reassuring, and very dear. She waved. He threw her a kiss, which was so uncharacteristic for Hunter she had to laugh.

The little white running figure beeped at her, and she set one foot in the street. There was a whisper of sound behind her.

Then she didn’t remember anything else for a long time.

More needs she the divine,
Than the physician.

—Macbeth
, William Shakespeare

 

 

 

 

Bree woke up flat on her back, staring at an unfamiliar sky. Her arms were at her sides. A pale mist blanketed her breasts and legs. The light was soft, golden, like sunlight through trees in a forest. The air was scrubbed with the scent of roses.

Happiness welled up in her.

She was surrounded by five columns of intense color. The columns varied in height and width, but they were spinning, eddies in a whirlpool of soft air.

“Well, child.” The voice from the violet column was soft and known to her.

“Lavinia?” Bree said. Or tried to. Her lips were stiff. And she hurt, terribly, all over. She narrowed her eyes against the violet glow. For some reason, it was much brighter than the others.

The silver-ash column that was Petru said, “My dear Bree.”

Bree reached out to him, but her arm wouldn’t move.

“We are all here,” Professor Cianquino said. His form was a steady blue flame. “There is nothing we can do for you, my dear. Except hope.”

“I don’t believe it.” The green-blue column that was Ron sounded testy.

“You know the rules.”

That fiery column. Was that Gabriel? She hadn’t seen him for such a long time. Gabriel and his coin-colored eyes.

“This is a temporal matter,” Gabriel’s voice was calm. “We cannot interfere.”

“We can hope,” Ron said.

She felt his smile. All their smiles. Better than hope...

She drifted away.

Bree woke up flat on her back, staring at an unfamiliar ceiling. Her arms were at her sides. A white sheet was drawn up across her breasts and legs. The light was strong, bluish white. Stainless steel railings barred her on either side. The air was scrubbed with an unpleasant odor. Disinfectant of some kind.

She shoved her hands flat and sat up. Something tugged at her arm like an angry wasp, and she slapped at it reflexively before she had a chance to look. A piece of opaque tape covered a tube and the tube held a needle. The needle disappeared into skin that wasn’t her own: bright pink, slightly charred at the edges, covered with an oily goop.

She hurt. All over.

“Well, there you are. How are you feeling?” A mournful face hovered in the air above her. The face—which resembled a basset hound more than a person—was attached to a body dressed in hospital whites. Bree registered his name tag: Ollie.

“I don’t know,” she said cautiously. Then, “Where am I, Ollie?”

“The hospital,” he said reassuringly. “Savannah General. Which is in Georgia,” he added unnecessarily, “although I shouldn’t tell you too much before you tell me who you are.”

“You don’t know?” Bree said.

“Of course I do, dear. But we need to know if
you
do, you see. Name, age, and current date. It’s called being oriented times three.” He smiled, which lifted his jowls. He was in his late forties, perhaps—Bree wasn’t very good with ages—and his face was a roadmap of hard living.

“Brianna Winston-Beaufort. I’m twenty-eight, and I’m a lawyer, with a practice in Savannah. And it’s the fifteenth of January.”

“You are so right,” Dent said. “Except it’s the seventeenth. Are you in any pain?”

“The seventeenth!” She felt dizzy. Where had two days gone?

“You
are
in pain,” he said sympathetically.

“Not much.” This wasn’t strictly true. Pain was there all right, waiting to jump on her, but she was pretty sure the IV glugging whatever into her arm had some pain-killers in it. “Thank you for asking.” Bree sank back. There was a pillow, but it was hard and flat. She hated being horizontal when everyone else was vertical. Hospital beds could be elevated, couldn’t they? She fumbled around the mattress. No buttons.

“You want to sit up,” Ollie said in a kindly way. “I think that’ll be okay.” He pressed a button and Bree raised partway up without any effort at all.

The room was small. Grayish tile covered the floor. A half-open door led to a bathroom equipped with a tall toilet, stainless steel handholds, and an efficient-looking shower. A narrow floor-to-ceiling window with vertical blinds looked down on a parking lot. From the slant of the sun Bree judged it was late afternoon. An orange chair of molded plastic held a bulging tote. Bree knew that tote. It belonged to her little sister, Antonia. She did know who she was and where she was. Bree sank back against the pillows. It was a slight effort, this examination of the room, but it exhausted her.

“Oh my God! You’re awake.”

Antonia swept into the room, stopped short, and flung up her hands. “I take two seconds to go down to the Coke machine, and what happens?”

“I wake up?”

“You wake up!”

Antonia looked like she hadn’t slept for a week. Her gray University of North Carolina sweatshirt had coffee stains on the front, and it looked as if she’d bitten off a couple of her carefully manicured fingernails. Bree took all this in with a glance and said, “I’m fine, you know.”

“Of course you are,” Antonia said heartily.

She burst into tears.

“Oh dear,” Ollie said. He lifted Antonia’s tote off the orange chair and put a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Sit down, sit down. No, don’t go mauling your sister around. Leave go of her foot, dear. You don’t want to fool around with burn patients. Scarring. Infection. You just leave her be.”

Antonia released Bree’s foot and sank into the chair. She swiped her forearm under her eyes. “Right, right.”

Bree put her hands up to her cheeks. The skin on her face was tender but intact. Her left forearm was wrapped in gauze, but her hands seemed to be okay. Her right forearm, the one with the IV in it, was one step beyond a bad sunburn. She shifted her legs under the light sheet that covered them. Both legs were in immobilizer casts.

“She’s awake now,” Antonia said. “She should see a doctor, Ollie. Go get one. Right now.”

“Tonia. For heaven’s sake. You can’t just order people around like that.”

“Don’t you for-heaven’s-sake me! Push that little thing-gummy, Ollie, the emergency button.”

Ollie winked at Bree. “Don’t go anywhere, Ms. Beaufort. I’ll be right back.” He closed the swinging door gently behind him. It opened again, almost immediately. Hunter stepped into the room. The skin around his eyes was drawn tight. Like Antonia, he looked exhausted.

“Not you again,” Antonia said. “Not now. She just woke up. Come back later, Lieutenant. Unless you came to tell us you shot the guy that did this to her.”

“Not yet.” Hunter stepped to the foot of the bed. He took in the bandages, the IV, and Bree herself. His face was expressionless, but there was a glitter in his gray eyes Bree hadn’t seen before. Rage? “I’d ask how you’re feeling, but you look pretty doped up.”

“I’m fine,” Bree said. “A little drifty maybe.” She smiled. “Sorry I didn’t get to deliver the fish tacos.”

“Yeah.” He ducked his head. Was he crying? Bree struggled once more to sit up.

“Lie down, sister!” Antonia sprang out of the chair and joined Hunter at the foot of the bed. “I don’t know why you’ve been hanging around here, Hunter. You should just leave and go shoot the guy like I said before. She needs to sleep. She needs to see a doctor. She needs my mother, who’ll be here any second. She doesn’t need you.”

“Oh dear,” Bree said. Francesca and Royal lived at Plessey, some two hundred miles away in North Carolina. “Did you really have to call them, Tonia?” Then, “What guy?” She closed her eyes in an effort to remember. “What happened?”

“Oh my God.” Antonia bit off another fingernail. “Brain damage. I knew it. Where’s that damn doctor?”

“Right here.” The door to the room swung open and a portly man Bree didn’t know walked in. He was dressed in hospital whites. A stethoscope hung around his neck. He was followed by a slight, dark-haired familiar figure. “Dr. Lowry!”

The pathologist grinned and wiggled her fingers in a half wave.

The other doctor picked up the chart at the foot of the bed and flipped through it. “You know this patient, Dr. Lowry?”

“Bree Beaufort? Sure. I’ve given her a hand with a case or two.” She went up to the head of the bed and peered into Bree’s eyes. “How’re you doing?”

“Pretty well,” Bree said cautiously. “How are you, Megan? Have you been appointed to the coroner’s office?”

“You mean, am I here to see how fast I can get my hands on your corpse? Nope. Still working there part-time and helping out with my brother’s live practice.”

“Excuse me.” The other doctor, whose name tag read ERIC CAUSTON, moved Megan aside. He flicked his ophthalmologic scope on and shined it into Bree’s eyes.