“How am I going to find Quinn when I’m doped up on painkillers, with my leg in a boot cast?”
In the urgent care exam room, Lauren offered a sympathetic shrug in response to Nicole’s question. “You have to take care of yourself. Other people are looking for Quinn.”
“Are they? What has that Cooper Elliott of yours turned up?”
“He’s not my Cooper Elliott.” Refusing to blush, Lauren settled into a side chair to await the physician’s assistant who would return with final discharge instructions. “I hardly know him.”
While Lauren was sorry to hear about Dani’s boat being smashed, she was also relieved that the latest incident had not taken her once again to the sheriff’s office for another round of questions with Cooper Elliott. At least—as far as Lauren knew—there had been no gruesome discovery of what became of Dani herself.
“I cannot do this,” Nicole said. “I cannot be laid up like this. Not right now. There’s too much to do.”
“One thing at a time.” Lauren examined the boot cast carefully wrapped around Nicole’s swollen ankle. The ankle was indeed broken. For now, the boot would immobilize it. Whether Nicole would need surgery was undetermined.
“I know, I know. It’s just so frustrating. I don’t even care about my foot. We have to find out what happened to Quinn.”
Maybe, Lauren thought, she would suggest that her aunt Sylvia call a special town meeting. Cooper could run it. The other officers could help with interviews. There had to be a faster way to find out who was the last person to see Quinn—and when and where.
Lauren quickly dismissed the idea. Sylvia’s shop was in shambles. Asking her to take on a town meeting was out of the question.
Nicole’s phone buzzed for the fifth time from its secure place in the sport band wrapped around her bicep.
“Maybe you should answer that,” Lauren said.
“It will either be my editor—and I don’t know what to tell him—or it’s Ethan wondering why I haven’t called. We were supposed to go to Birch Bend.”
“Either way,” Lauren said, “somebody’s probably worried.”
And they were going to need a ride. Jack Parker had safely transported Nicole and Lauren to the hospital, but he hadn’t even come inside. He muttered something about an important phone call and left them as soon as Lauren scrounged up a transit wheelchair for Nicole from inside the clinic. Lauren didn’t want to call her aunt, who had a pile of her own problems right now.
“Ethan would come and get us, wouldn’t he?” Lauren said.
“Probably.” Nicole rubbed her forehead. “I would have thought they’d offer me something stronger than ibuprofen by now.”
“Your stomach is too empty for narcotics.” Lauren stood up and took Nicole’s phone from the strap on her arm, surprised Nicole didn’t protest. “Call Ethan.”
The exam room door opened just then, and the physician’s assistant entered with papers in his hands.
“Okay, we’ll have you out of here in a jiffy,” he said. “We just need a few John Hancocks. First, I need to know where you plan to go from here.”
“To my house, I suppose.”
“Alone?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Do you have a ground floor bedroom and bath?”
Nicole sighed. “No.”
“Then I don’t recommend you go home. No stairs.”
Lauren shifted her bag to the other shoulder. “She can come home with me. There’s an elevator in my building.”
“I’m not imposing myself on you,” Nicole said. “Thank you, but I’ll manage.”
“Perhaps I wasn’t clear,” the PA said. “No weight on your foot. None at all. You have to be extremely careful until you see the orthopedist and get a determination about surgery. I want you in a comfortable chair with your foot elevated, icing every three or four hours for the next three days.”
“She’s coming home with me.” Lauren had a chair in her spare room that would fold out to a twin bed. The apartment was small enough that Nicole wouldn’t have to hobble too far for anything, and since it was right downtown on Main Street, checking in and making sure Nicole had everything she needed would be easy.
“Good.” The PA checked some boxes on a form. “She shouldn’t be on her own until after she sees the surgeon.”
“What about medication?”
“I’ll give you the prescription. She shouldn’t take more painkiller than she needs, but she shouldn’t skimp either.”
“She is right here,” Nicole said, “and not nearly as unconscious as you might think.”
“Sorry,” Lauren muttered.
The PA flipped over a page. “I see you live in St. Louis.”
“That’s right.” Nicole tried to readjust her position and winced.
“I’d like you to stay in Hidden Falls for at least a week. I can understand that you may prefer to have surgery in St. Louis, but you’ll need someone to help you get there. And you’ll have to hang up your car keys for a couple of months.”
A protest formed on Nicole’s lips, but Lauren was relieved she had the good sense not to voice it. “You can stay with me as long as you need to,” she said.
“I’m not being given much choice, am I?” Nicole reached for the pen the PA held. “What do you want me to sign?”
“Right here.” He handed her the form. “And here’s your prescription for pain meds. They should hold you till you can see the surgeon.”
Nicole scribbled her signature.
“I’ll send someone in to help you get outside and make sure you have your X-rays on a CD.” He looked at Lauren. “You can pull your car around anytime.”
The door closed behind him. Lauren looked at Nicole. “You have to call Ethan.”
“I guess.” Nicole looked at her phone. “Four calls and five texts from him.”
“He’s worried.”
“Or at least curious.” Nicole scrolled to find Ethan’s number in her list of recent calls and tapped it.
Lauren looked around the exam room to make sure they wouldn’t leave anything behind. The shoe and sock taken from Nicole’s injured foot were in a plastic bag with the sweatshirt she’d worn tied around her waist. Lauren picked up the bag and her own purse, trying not to eavesdrop on Nicole’s conversation with Ethan.
Something was going on with the two of them. Lauren slapped down a twinge of envy and decided to look in the hall to see if anyone was coming to help them out. She and Nicole would have to wait for Ethan in the waiting room or on a bench outside the urgent care doors. The clinic would want to free up the exam room.
She nearly didn’t hear her own cell phone ring. Lauren dug in her bag and extracted the phone between the third and fourth rings. The number was unfamiliar, and Lauren couldn’t immediately place the area code her screen displayed. She didn’t get a lot of phone calls from other cities. She tapped the Answer button and raised the phone to her ear.
“Hello?”
No response.
“Hello?”
She heard only the notes of a faint tune—a music box? A whistle? A flute? Lauren couldn’t be sure. When the sound stopped, she looked again at the screen. The call had disconnected.
The tightness in her chest was both distant and familiar. She was back in high school, a pleasant student with a few close friends but not remarkable in any way that would launch her into popularity beyond her cafeteria crowd. For most of a school year, she received calls from at least a dozen different numbers but always with the same low, mocking chuckle. When Lauren stopped answering calls, the caller began letting her voice mail catch a few seconds of his amusement. When she began ignoring any number she didn’t immediately recognize, he called repeatedly until she shut off her phone. Then she started leaving her phone at home on purpose and deleting voice mails without looking to see who left them.
Why she was a target Lauren never knew.
Just before graduation she heard the laugh for the last time—at the back of a classroom. She turned and caught his eye. Nevin Morgan. He never called again.
When Lauren returned to Hidden Falls after college, he’d moved away. She didn’t care where. She was just glad he was gone.
Until three days ago when she saw him on Main Street and he turned up at Quinn’s banquet.