Delaney's Shadow (29 page)
Authors: Ingrid Weaver
Tags: #mobi, #Romantic Suspense, #Paranormal Romance, #Fiction, #Shadow, #epub
Delaney shoved herself to her feet and stumbled across the tracks the car had torn through the grass. The man had pushed her out of the way. He must have been struck instead. He lay on his back, his black raincoat spread like wings beneath him. His black shirt was plastered tight to his chest. She couldn’t see whether or not he was breathing.
But she could see his face.
Her knees gave out. She sank to the ground beside his head. “Max,” she breathed.
Yet she knew his name wasn’t Max. It was John.
NINETEEN
THE BEEPING WOKE HIM. NEXT CAME THE PAIN. MAX gritted his teeth. His head was killing him. So was his arm. The rest of his body felt like one big bruise. He hadn’t felt this bad since the days when Virgil used to go after him with his belt.
That thought snapped him completely awake. He opened his eyes.
He was in a hospital room. An IV tube snaked into one arm. The other was immobilized against his chest. The beeping was coming from a monitor on one side of the bed. On the other side, a woman sat in a chair, her arms crossed on the metal bed rail, her head pillowed on her forearms. He couldn’t see her face, yet he recognized her short hair, her grass-stained blouse, the slope of her back, the curve of her shoulders . . .
The pain receded on a wave of joy. Deedee! She was here. He’d reached her in time. He lifted his hand, his palm hovering above her hair.
His movement rattled the IV tube against its metal stand. Before he could touch her, Delaney jerked her head up.
Her gaze was springtime. Life. Calm and sweet and impossible to capture on canvas. Real.
Here.
Here.
He touched her sleeve. Nothing except cotton separated him from her skin. Her warmth seeped through the fabric to his fingertips. The impact crashed through his senses. The monitor accelerated along with his pulse.
Her chin trembled. “I’m so sorry.”
“Why?”
“You’re hurt because of me.”
“I’ve had worse.” And he had. The morning he’d met her—the only other time he’d actually touched her—the pain in his back had been worse than the bruises he felt now. She had helped him escape it. She had countered the effects of Virgil’s evil because she’d been everything bright and good. “Your hands. They’re okay?”
“They’re fine. I landed on my side.” Her eyes shone. “What you did was very courageous, Mr. Harrison. You probably saved my life. I don’t know how I can thank you.”
He’d saved her life twenty-eight years ago, too. Afterward, she hadn’t thanked him. Instead, she’d curled into his arms and slipped into the place he’d opened in his mind.
That was when it struck him. He was hearing her voice, not sensing it. She was talking aloud to him. She hadn’t called him Max.
He clamped his fingers around the bed rail and levered himself up on his elbow. “You know who I am.”
It was both a question and a challenge. It appeared to unsettle her. She pressed the controls at the side of the bed to raise the mattress beneath his head. She stopped when he was sitting at a forty-five-degree angle. “Is that better?”
“Sure.”
“I know my way around hospital beds,” she said. “I spent way too much time in them. Do you want some water?” she asked, springing to her feet.
“I’m fine.
Do
you know me?”
Do
you know me?”
She fiddled with the plastic pitcher beside the bed, picking it up, putting it down. “I knew who you were when I saw you at the festival. I . . .” She cleared her throat. “I recognized you from your picture.”
“My picture?”
“It’s in the brochure from the Mapleview Gallery. My grandmother keeps them for her customers. I’m Delaney Graye, Helen Wainright’s granddaughter. I’m sorry,” she said, turning toward the door. “I was supposed to tell the doctor as soon as you woke up.”
She thanked him again, said good-bye, and left.
Max dropped his head back against the pillow, then swore at the fresh burst of pain the movement sent through his skull. It made it tough to think, but he had to. What the hell was going on?
She hadn’t acknowledged him, she hadn’t tried to reach his mind; she was treating him like a stranger.
Yet she knew his name because she’d seen his picture . . .
Okay, now her reaction at the festival made sense. No wonder she hadn’t freaked out when she’d seen him in person. She’d seemed surprised, yes, but not as shocked as he would have expected. She had backed off when he’d refused her mental overture. She’d already known there was a John Harrison.
And considering Deedee’s habit of rationalizing away what didn’t fit her view of reality, she’d probably found some convoluted psychological explanation for his resemblance to her imaginary friend.
Lucky, wasn’t it? He’d already decided against revealing the truth. He’d reasoned it all through when he’d seen her outside his house last week. He didn’t want a flesh-and-blood relationship; he didn’t want to get close or to care. The last time he’d gone to her, she’d admitted flat out she was using him. Her dead bastard of a husband was still her priority. As long as she believed Max was imaginary, he could keep her safely out of his life and his heart.
Sure, that was what he’d told himself, but he’d followed her out of the tent anyway. There had been no logical reason for it; he simply hadn’t been able to keep away. How could he expect to maintain a grip on his logic when she was close enough to touch, really touch?
This time, it hadn’t been a broken beer bottle that had stopped him; it had been a car.
Yeah, real lucky.
“Mr. Harrison.” A woman in a white coat bustled in. “I’m Dr. Yarrow. How are you feeling?”
“Like I got hit by a car. What’s the damage?”
She took a penlight from her breast pocket and checked his eyes. “In spite of the pain you undoubtedly are experiencing, you got off rather easily. You have extensive bruising but no broken bones, likely due to the fact you landed on grass. The laceration on your forehead was too shallow to require stitches. Unfortunately, you did sustain a concussion.”
He touched his forehead and found a wide bandage taped just below his hairline. He wiggled the fingers of his bound arm. “What about this?”
“Your wrist is only sprained. However, I’d like to keep the arm immobilized for a few days to minimize the strain on the bones while the joint heals. The X-rays showed several healed fractures in both your arm and your wrist.” She hesitated. “Were you an accident-prone child, Mr. Harrison?”
The question was thirty years too late. So was the sympathy in her eyes—no doubt she’d also seen the other souvenirs from Virgil. “My arm’s fine.”
“We can give you medication to dull the pain.”
“No drugs. I can handle it.”
It appeared as if she wanted to say more.
He hardened his jaw.
“All right, then. Let one of the nurses know if you change your mind.” She finished her brief examination and made a note on the chart at the foot of his bed.
He glanced around. “This isn’t the ER.”
“Mrs. Graye insisted on paying for a private room.”
“Not much point, since I’m not staying.”
“Your other injuries may be minor, but your concussion concerns me. You were unconscious for a significant period of time, so I’d like to keep you overnight for observation.”
“Where are my clothes?”
“Mr. Harrison,” she began.
She didn’t have the chance to finish. A man in a brown suit coat appeared in the doorway. “Is he up to answering some questions?”
A cop, Max decided. The room immediately seemed to shrink. He had to remind himself it wasn’t a cell. He knew his rights, and regardless of what the doctor had said, he was free to leave. “Did you get the driver?” he demanded.
“Not yet.”
Dr. Yarrow moved to the door. “You can have five minutes,” she told the man. “But then he needs to rest.”
“I’ll keep it brief.” He pulled a notebook from his pocket as he walked to the side of the bed. “I’m Detective Toffelmire, Mr. Harrison. Can you tell us anything about the vehicle that struck you?”
“It was a black car.”
“Make? Model?”
“Some kind of sedan. Could have been high-end, like a Caddy.”
“What about a license number? Were they New York plates?”
“I didn’t see them.”
“The driver?”
“Didn’t see that, either. The car had tinted glass, and it was raining hard.”
“Hard enough for the driver not to notice you or Mrs. Graye?”
“Only if he was blind. There must have been a dozen witnesses. Didn’t any of them get a license number?”
“Unfortunately, no.” Toffelmire consulted his notebook. “Did you observe whether or not the driver made any attempt to avoid the collision?”
“Not that I saw.”
“Was there anyone else in his path, other than Mrs. Graye?”
Max considered it. “Besides me, no. You sound as if you think it was deliberate.”
“These are routine questions.”
“Why would anyone want to hurt her?”
“Do you have reason to believe someone attempted to?”
Typical police word games, answering a question with a question. “I wouldn’t know,” Max said.
“Are you acquainted with Mrs. Graye?”
“We just met.”
Toffelmire studied his face. “What were you doing in the parking lot, Mr. Harrison?”
Max regarded him in turn. The cop seemed familiar, and not simply because of the hostile glint in his eyes. That expression was common to all cops Max had dealt with. “Going to my car.”
“You drive a ’94 Jeep TJ, is that right?”
“Did you get that from the insurance slip in my wallet?”
“The paramedics removed your wallet in order to verify your identity. They shared all the information with me.”
“So?”
“The Jeep was parked at the opposite end of the lot from where the accident occurred.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“What is your relationship to Mrs. Graye?”
“Besides shoving her out of the path of a drunk driver?”
“Why do you assume the driver was drunk?”
“Beer tent. Rainy day. You do the math.”
“It was a lucky coincidence that you happened to be there.”
The beeps from the monitor accelerated again. Max reached beneath his hospital gown and yanked the contacts off his chest, then gripped the bed rail to haul himself upright. “Don’t you think you’re getting off track here? Instead of hassling me, go find the bastard who used the park for a drag strip. There were kids there, too. He could have hit one of them.”
“Several people mentioned you appeared to be following Mrs. Graye.”
“So were they. We were all heading in the same direction. Have you got a problem with that, Detective Toffelmire?”
“Should I, Mr. Harrison?”
“You got something to say, then say it.”
“You don’t remember me, do you?”
Max scrutinized his face.
Toffelmire stroked his nose. It was mashed sideways. He’d obviously run into someone’s fist sometime in the past . . .
Shit. Now he recognized him. Toffelmire had been one of the cops who had tried to pull him off Virgil. He’d testified at the start of the trial. He’d been in uniform then. Max hadn’t made the connection at first because the man had gained weight and lost half of his hair. He also appeared a lot different without the bulky white bandages that had crisscrossed his face.
Was he expecting an apology for the nose? No way. Max had served his time. He’d more than paid for what he’d done, and he hadn’t gotten so much as a parking ticket since he’d come back to Willowbank. That made no difference in some people’s minds. “Yeah, I remember you. You haven’t changed a bit. You’re still going after the wrong guy.”
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