“And that’s what makes it even more ridiculous.”
“Trust me, I know all about it.” I glanced at my watch. I could’ve sworn Sunny said she was due at the café early today but neither her Jeep nor her bike were parked outside, and I didn’t have any messages from her. It was possible I mixed up her schedule in my head. Our dawn conversations before I returned home were barely coherent on the best days. I’d have to bother her partners for an update. “I’m going to grab some coffee. Is there anything you’d like me to pass along to Bethany?”
“If you valued your life, you wouldn’t ask me questions like that,” she grumbled.
It was a hot, hazy late July day but the humidity didn’t bother me as I crossed the driveway toward Naked. The café was quiet when I stepped inside, with only a few tables occupied. Agent Price sat in his usual spot, a glass of iced tea beside his open hardcover book. I was in such a good mood, I called out, “How’s it going, Price?”
“Can’t complain, Loew,” he replied without looking up.
I rounded the counter, setting my hands on the butcher block. Beth and Meara stood beside the espresso machine, their heads bowed together. “Hey. Nice to see you two. Any idea where your cult leader is today? I thought she was opening this morning but I think I mixed up my days.”
Meara glanced up at me and I realized her eyes were red. “You didn’t hear?”
Cold spilled down my spine. “Hear what?”
“There was an accident early this morning,” she said. “She’s in the hospital and—”
“She’s fuckingwhat?”
“We don’t know all the details,” Meara said with a sniff. “All she told me was that she wanted me to cover for her this morning and not let anyone freak out.”
“And you decided to allow that?” I cried.
“I thought she’d already called you,” she replied.
I couldn’t listen to this. I turned away from the counter. I had to leave. Right now. I had to go. I patted my pockets for my keys. When I found them, I blinked down at my hand for a moment, trying to remember how to get to the hospital.
“Give me those.” I looked up to find Agent Price glaring at me. “You’re not driving anywhere with that crazy look in your eyes. Give me the keys. I’ll get you there in no time.”
And that was how I ended up sitting in the passenger seat of my car, nearly paralyzed with panic while Price drove like a bat out of hell to the regional hospital. He talked the whole time, going on about FBI training and knowing everything in the book about defensive driving. He cracked a few jokes, it seemed, but I couldn’t focus on any of them.
“When you get in there, you tell them you’re her husband,” Price said as he pulled up to the emergency room entrance. “They won’t let you in if you say you’re just the guy who gives her grief.”
“I don’t give her—oh, shut up,” I muttered, my hand on the door handle as I waited for him to come to a stop. “Thanks for the ride. I owe you one.”
“I’ll chill in the waiting room until they kick you out.”
I pushed open the door. “I don’t plan on getting kicked out.”
“Then mind your manners in there. Nurses will fuck you up.”
I jogged into the emergency room and dropped the husband line on the first person in scrubs I could find. It worked like a charm and we might as well start a tab for everything I owed Agent Price. A nurse led me through a maze of hallways until passing me off to someone with a physician’s badge who finally pulled back a long curtain to reveal a very small, very broken Sunny sitting up on a gurney, her legs folded in front of her and her hair tangled around her shoulders. One side of her face was bruised, the line of her jaw scraped raw. Her arm was enclosed in a hard plastic brace from her bicep to her fingers, and wires snaked out from under the hospital gown.
“Hey, Beck.” She offered a wobbly smile and my heart cracked right down the center. “Don’t worry. It wasn’t a forklift.”
“For fuck’s sake, Sunny,” I breathed. “Who did this to you?”
“Your wife was struck by a motor vehicle while riding her bicycle,” the doctor said.
Your wife?Sunny mouthed.
Yes,I mouthed back. To the doctor, I said, “My wife is present and conscious, and I’ll thank you to not speak of her as if she’s an object.”
The doctor glanced between us and gave a slow nod. “Right. Well. Sunny. As you know, you fractured both your humerus and radius, and you have a concussion.”
“I’ve had worse,” Sunny said, wiggling her fingers near her temple.
“That doesn’t make me any happier,” I replied.
