The night crawled into morning, an ugly, gray morning that accurately reflected my state of mind while I sat in the hospital waiting room, typing away everything that had happened since I’d come back from dinner with Fenice and Vandal. I made a particular point to list every possible opportunity that Lisa had to facilitate the “accidents,” and even went so far as to pose a few speculations as to what reasons I thought she would have to want Alden dead.
An hour before dawn, I was allowed to visit him.
“Alden!” I hurried past the other patient in his room, who was half-hidden by a privacy curtain, and threw myself onto Alden where he sat on the edge of the bed, pulling his clothing out of the laptop bag. “Tell me you’re all right! The doctor said you were, but I want to hear it from you, too. Holy crapballs, Alden! You look like hell!”
“Thanks,” he said, touching the bump over his eye, which was bright red due to an ice pack that lay discarded next to him. “I feel like hell, although I guess that’s good, since it means I’m alive. No, don’t stop kissing me. I’m not that bad.”
I continued kissing every spot on his face that wasn’t bruised or scratched, ending at his lips. He groaned into my mouth, causing me to jerk back. “Did I hurt you? Is your mouth sore? I checked your teeth and they were all there, so I assumed nothing had been hurt, but if I’m hurting you, tell me.”
“You didn’t hurt me,” he said with a rusty chuckle. “I was just enjoying the kiss.”
“Oh, good.” I gave him one more quick peck, then stood back, eyeing him. His color was much better than when I’d rescued him, and although the bump over his eye was red, and he was starting to show a darkish halo that foretold at least a partial black eye, he looked relatively hale and hearty. “I was so worried.”
“So I gather.” He reached for his jeans, carefully putting them on. “I still don’t understand exactly what happened. All the doctor would tell me was that there was some sort of incident with the radiator, and that you’d pulled me out and then thrown me down a flight of stairs. He asked if I wanted to talk to the police, in order to file charges against you.”
“Well, I like that!” I handed him his shirt. “Here I go to all the trouble of saving you from certain death by asphyxiation, or gas poisoning, or whatever it is that too much gas does to you, and he asks you if you want to call the cops on me.”
“Whatdidhappen?” he asked, grimacing when he bent to put on a shoe.
I went over the events, apologizing numerous times when I explained how he came to have the various bumps and bruises. “You’re not the easiest person in the world to move when you’re unconscious,” I ended, gently brushing back his curls. They didn’t need moving, but I liked touching his hair, and it just made me feel better to fuss over him.
“I imagine not.” He stood, wobbled a little, but steadied almost immediately. “I guess I’d better call a plumber about the faulty gas line.”
“Faulty, my ass. That was no accident,” I said, frowning when he pulled his phone out of the bag. “Oh, I turned that off. Your battery was almost dead.”
“Thank you.” He turned on the phone and did an experimental stretch. “I know you think the worst about Lisa, but you have to admit that it’s highly unlikely that she would be so spurned by the fact that I have picked you over her that she’d try to gas me. Good lord. I have twelve messages. I wonder what—”
He held the phone up to his ear as he hit his voice mail button.
“I don’t think it’s because you spurned her,” I told him. I put the laptop back into its bag. “In fact, I have a list of items that I think explain her actions.... What’s wrong?”
I could hear the faint tinny sound of a voice talking on the voice mail, and as it stopped and another, moreurgent started up, Alden’s face changed from one of mild bemusement to outright horror. “Alden?”
“The house,” he said, his eyes huge. “The house is on fire.”
“What? Holy hellballs!” I leaned in to listen to the phone with him, and heard snatches of first Vandal, and then Fenice, yelling into the phone that Alden needed to let them know he was all right, and that the house was fully engulfed.
If there was a record for two people to run out of a third-floor hospital room, down to the parking lot, and into a car, then we broke it, because I swear we didn’t even have time to blink before I was struggling to unlock the car.
“I’ll drive,” I told him, sliding into the driver’s seat.
“Do you have a license?”
“Not for the UK, but I know how to drive.”
“Mercy—,” he started to protest, but I leaned across and opened the passenger door.
“You just got released from the hospital. Now get in the car and let me drive you home!”
“If there’s any home left,” he said grimly, but did as I ordered, and got into the passenger seat.
I said nothing, but sent up a prayer to every deity I could think of to preserve Bestwood Hall.
Chapter 16
It was worse than we could have imagined.
I watched Alden as he stumbled away from speaking with the fire chief, his face gilded red and gold by the light of the fire as it consumed his house. The fire trucks had given up trying to stop the blaze in the house—it was fully engulfed, thick oily black clouds rolling upward into what otherwise appeared to be a flawless morning sky. Instead, they sprayed the nearby trees, the garden, and the outbuildings, soaking them so that stray embers wouldn’t spread the fire.
