| |
Darkness shrouded the room when Lexi next roused from her chemically induced sleep. A dim light filtered in from the corridor, spreading a triangular yellow glow across the blanket covering her legs. Her body ached as though she’d laid in front of a steam roller and allowed it to flatten her.
The doctor had advised the nurses to leave her neck injury open to the air. He’d glued the deepest cuts. Her body had worked hard while she slept, forming a thin crust over the shallower sections of the welts. But when she turned her head, the skin pulled taut, and the wound tore open again. Lexi groaned, wrestling between her need to visit the bathroom and the desire to lie still and not upset her hurts.
Light caught Garima’s empty chair, turning the orange plastic into a sparkling throne. Lexi squinted at the outline of a man occupying Grunwald’s perch and she marvelled at his dedication to duty. “Hey,” she croaked. “You’re still here.”
The dark shape dipped forward, and Lexi realised too late it wasn’t the detective inspector. The hallway light back lit long legs, neat hips, and a muscular torso as he rose. She pulled in a breath, readying herself to scream, but her ribs objected, and her lungs locked on the painful inhale. Only a gasp of pure agony left Lexi’s lips. The black shape moved towards her, crossing the gap with tentative steps. Lexi’s heart pounded in her chest and the pattern on the heart monitor resembled a mountain range with high crests and deep, jagged troughs.
Cool hands closed around Lexi’s cheeks and gentle thumbs stroked away the fear. The shape dipped and bristles scratched across her soft cheek. Then a kiss, sweet and delicate, brushed her lips. Lexi tasted the essence of Shade, his distinctive musky scent, and the faint aroma of mint chewing gum. And she remembered in that moment how he’d loosened the wire from around her neck and pressed the tender kiss to her temple. He’d placed her in the recovery position and made the anonymous call. Her brow furrowed as she clamped her hands around his wrists. He leaned over her, his forehead touching hers in an unspoken embrace. “How did you call Grunwald?” she demanded. Her voice rasped an eerie croak in the quiet room. She bit down on her sore lip, realising the challenge to his disability in the question. “I mean, how do you know him well enough to have his cell phone number? And why him?” The heart monitor clunked and chattered to itself, and the blood pressure cuff inflated on her right arm. Lexi forced her breathing to slow. Visiting time ended hours ago, and she didn’t want a nurse to attend to the monitor’s alerts and dismiss Shade. He had answers for her, and she hungered for the truth with the same verve as Grunwald’s scratching pen.
He settled on the mattress beside her, one leg bent at the knee. Leaning forward, he rested his hands on either side of Lexi’s hips in a protective stance. The scattered light caught one half of his face and threw the other into shadow. Shade blew out a long breath and seemed to consider something. Then dipping sideways, he drew his phone from the pocket of his tight leather trousers with difficulty. He opened his list of recent texts and pointed at a hurried message to ‘Zero.’ His revelation answered Lexi’s original question without guile.
“Henk called him?” she mused. She squinted over the gist of Shade’s scant message, which listed Lexi’s name and location before the words ‘Grunwald’ and ‘paramedics.’ So, The People knew of the detective inspector. Gratitude infused her that Henk hadn’t dialled the emergency number and risked another officer attending the scene. Harvey Rojas might have finished what Sam Barnard started. “How did you find me?” she asked, forcing her mind away from her fear of Rojas and the realisation she still hadn’t dealt with Lachlan.
Shade reached across to the nightstand and retrieved Lexi’s cell phone. He wrinkled his nose at the extra crack bisecting the screen. Deft fingers popped the device from its plastic case, and he discarded the phone into Lexi’s lap. Holding the case sideways, Shade angled it, so the hall light picked out the flat black object nestled inside the cover. Lexi’s jaw hung slack, and she lurched for it. “You bugged my phone!” she hissed.
He nodded, his expression unrepentant. He leaned away from her reach, and his long fingers scuffed the keypad as he accessed the settings and dug into the SOS feature. Lexi swore as he turned the screen towards her. She didn’t recognise the number which had replaced Tarant’s, but she understood why her employer hadn’t responded to her last distress call. He never received it. Shade had achieved much while she slept that night, including hacking into her phone and laptop. The emergency text offered location and audio, plus photos of the inside of Lexi’s handbag, but the bug had provided a back-up clarity.
The screen turned blue and died. With a grimace, Shade dropped it onto the mattress. He grinned and placed a kiss over her parted lips. before she could protest. But Lexi didn’t have the energy to resist or complain. He’d saved her life. “You added the bug to my phone case the other night?” she asked.
Shade screwed up his features into a grimace of denial and shook his head, as though affronted. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder to infer he’d done it in the distant past. That meant he’d entered her house while she was there because she never left home without it. Lexi gasped and fell back against the pillows. It also explained how he previously picked up her location with such ease, reappearing behind her on his motorbike like an irritating bot fly. She clutched her ribs and paused for the pain to subside. It gave her a moment to think and to process the other stark fact. Shade had killed Sam Barnard. Her heart sank as conflict vied in her chest. “The old man,” she whispered. “He’s dead.”
Shade tugged her right hand towards him across her body. He closed her fingers into a fist and dipped his face towards it as though receiving a punch. Then he held up his index finger.
Lexi shook her head. “You hit him more than once. The back of his head looked like someone stove it in,” she countered. “Grunwald asked me about it, but I didn’t know what to tell him.” She gnawed on her lower lip. “I didn’t see it happen.”
Shade pointed to the floor and jerked his head sideways as though miming a fall, which proved fatal. Lexi nodded, no longer sure of what she’d surmised. But she still didn’t know what to tell Grunwald. She’d overheard him speaking to his subordinates when he believed she slept. He’d told them to canvas the neighbours to find out if they heard or saw anything useful. Her heart hammered again, and the blood pressure cuff began its painful inflation. She sighed. “Don’t tell me anything else,” she begged. “Grunwald believes I passed out and only woke when he arrived. I feel terrible lying to him, but I didn’t see you, so it’s hearsay.” She pressed her fingers over his lips, realising the irony of silencing him in a way he never used for communication. “That’s twice you’ve saved my life,” she whispered. “Perhaps I owe you dinner.”
