Thirty-Nine

My eyes felt as if someone were pressing the ball of their hands into them, preventing me from lifting them. Muffled voices sounded between the pulses of pain in my head. Flashes of light and my body in motion.

When I finally opened my eyes, the room I was lying in was unfamiliar and white. Sterile. I closed my eyes again because the brightness hurt them.

Voices said words like concussion, stitches, bruising. Then another voice. Lyme disease. Not thinking clearly.

Maybe whoever said those words was correct. I remembered going for a run. Remembered the sudden attack and not having my pepper spray. Maybe I hadn’t been thinking clearly before that moment.

“Hey.” A whisper of a voice came from the side of my bed. “Are you going to wake up?”

I struggled to open my eyes and saw Kate leaning over and peering at me, her concerned face turning into a smiling one.

“What happened?” I said, even though my mouth seemed sandpaper dry.

“You were attacked at the park.”

“I remember running … and someone hitting me.”

“I’ll tell you, New Yorkers have a bad rap. But several came to your rescue. One man almost caught the guy.”

“Really?” A pain shot through the center of my forehead. I winced.

“Hurt?”

“Yes,” I said. “Kate, you need to go. I know you’re busy. You don’t need to be here.”

“That’s a bunch of crap. You were with me for every one of my procedures, bestie, and I’m not going anywhere. Can we get her something more for the pain?” Kate said as she turned away from me.

I closed my eyes and didn’t open them again until later into the evening.

“He had a scar on his face,” someone said.

“The same place?” I recognized that voice, for it had reached out and comforted me once before—when Justine died. Smooth, deep, strong yet commanding. Den must be right outside my door.

But another man came into view.

“I’m Doctor Pearson,” he said. Gray hair, tiny round glasses framing droopy blue eyes. “How are you feeling?”

“Like shit.”

He smiled with compassion. “Can you be more specific?”

“My head is still throbbing. I’m nauseated and my whole body just hurts.”

“It sounds about right for what you went through earlier today. Had you been keeping up with your meds?”

“Yes. I was taking care of myself.”

“But you’ve been under a lot of stress?”

“I guess you could say that.” Justine’s murder, then the look-alike’s murder, with the stalking in between, and having to write the book—plus finding the ring, still buried in my purse somewhere at the apartment. The ring so priceless that it was worth killing for.

The doctor drew in a breath. He wasn’t my regular physician, but I saw the lecture coming. “Lyme disease is one thing you must learn to manage. Maybe you should take a break.”

Maybe I should. A mad man running through the park had attacked me. A beautiful Jean Harlow look-alike had followed me. Sal Mendo scared me away from the Dream Girl show. Severn Hartwell had tried to attack me at the bar. I’d received emails and phones calls from all sorts of crazy people. Why? What was I doing to myself ? Would any of it bring Justine back? I needed to finish the book and get it out of my life. How could I do that lying in the hospital bed?

And what to do with the ring?

That still required some mulling over.

“Now you have no choice,” the doctor was saying. “You’re just going to need to take it easy for a few days. Maybe longer. Listen to your body.”

Listen to my body? I’d been listening to it for years. Lyme disease had taught me the necessity. But I didn’t have time to lie around counting sheep. And Justine wasn’t around to pick up the slack.

“Concussions, even mild ones, can be very serious if you don’t take care of them,” he said. “I’ll need to keep you until tomorrow, and then you need to be on bed rest for at least two days.”

When I imagined a bed, I thought of my home on Cloister Island. I’d be damned if I was going back to stay at Justine’s place now. The sorting and pitching of her belongings would wait—as would the book. There was no choice now.

“Preferably somewhere you’ll have people around to watch over you.”

I needed to go home. This was the kind of thing my mom and gram lived for. Taking care of somebody. Kate was too busy. She’d missed too much work already for me. And I hated that. And Den, well, Den was a busy cop. No. I needed to go home.

Den now entered the room, dressed in uniform, which lifted my spirits more than just a tad. “How you doing?”

“About how I look, I imagine.” I was embarrassed that he saw me with a huge knot on my head and God knows what else.

“Did you see the man who pushed you?”

“Not at all,” I said. “Sorry.”

“I need to get a statement from you.”

“Tomorrow,” the doctor said in a clipped tone, pointing his finger at the door.