Southern Hills Hospital sits,as you may have guessed, in the hills on the south side of town.Off Nolensville Road and Harding Place, to be exact.Not too far from Crieve Hall.I took the same exit I’d taken earlier, blew past the turnoff that would have taken me to Blackburn Drive, and barreled down Harding Place at a few miles above the speed limit.I screeched into the parking lot outside the hospital less than fifteen minutes after Mendoza called.
I had spent the whole trip—when I wasn’t navigating turns and trying to avoid hitting, or being hit by, the other cars—mulling over what might be wrong.
Maybe Araminta Tucker had had a heart attack?Maybe Mendoza’s gorgeousness had been too much for her, and she’d collapsed?
Or maybe he had accused her of having had something to do with her sister-in-law’s murder, and a guilty conscience had brought on a medical issue?
She was already in an assisted living facility, though.Surely they had a doctor on staff?And anyway, there were hospitals closer to Franklin, weren’t there?It was hard to imagine that they’d drive her all the way to Southern Hills if something was wrong.
Unless she had Southern Hills written down as her hospital of choice.It was the hospital closest to where she’d been living before she went into assisted living.
Or maybe it had nothing to do with Araminta Tucker.Maybe Mendoza had found Steven.Maybe Steven really had been kidnapped, and had escaped from his kidnappers, and been hurt in the process, and now he was in the hospital.Maybe the blonde had shot him.
Or maybe it was Diana.Maybe she’d had an accident on her way to work.Or on her way to lunch.Or the bank.Or maybe the nutcase who had threatened to hurt her because he had to pay his ex-wife alimony had made good on his threat.
Or Rachel.Maybe Rachel had gotten in a car accident on her way to the post office.
Maybe it was my fault.Maybe I should have taken the damn letters to the mailbox myself…
I slammed the car door behind me and locked it on the run.And hurried through the lobby to the elevator, where I hopped from foot to foot while I waited the hour and a half it took for it to make it down from the fourth floor.When I’d gotten inside, the elevator took its sweet time creaking up to three, and then hung there an eternity before it deigned to open the doors.I turned sideways and slithered through the opening while the doors were still moving.
316 was to the right.I hustled down the hallway—not quite running, since I figured someone would try to stop me if I did, and then I’d have to waste valuable time arguing about why I was running in the hospital—and arrived outside 316 out of breath.
The door was cracked an inch or two.From inside I could hear Mendoza’s voice, calm and even, and someone else’s croak, too faint for me to make out who it belonged to.There was the whooshing noise of machines, or maybe some of the whooshing was in my head.
I pushed the door open and stuck my head through.And felt that same head go light and sort of fussy when I got a good look at what was going on.
It was a single room with a single bed, with a single occupant in it.He was hooked up to wires and tubes and a machine that looked like it was helping him breathe.That was where most of the whooshing was coming from.And if it hadn’t been for the shock of red hair that stuck up—bright as fire against the white of the bandages and sheets—I would have had a hard time recognizing him.
I made an involuntary squeak, and put a hand over my mouth to hide it.But it was too late.Zachary’s eyes cut my way, and Mendoza turned his head.
“Oh.”He straightened.“You made good time.”
“I think I probably broke a couple of traffic rules on the way here.”I slipped through the door and into the room.And took a couple of steps closer to the bed.“Zach.That looks painful.”
Zachary made a noise that might have been an attempt at laughter, or maybe just agreement.
“I’m so sorry,” I said.“Is this because of the job I gave you last night?”
“We were just getting to that,” Mendoza said, and turned back to the bed.“You OK for another couple of minutes?”
Zachary nodded.Or moved his head a fraction of an inch on the pillow.
“Would you recognize whoever did this to you?”
Zachary shook his head.His free hand—the other was hooked up to a variety of tubes and wires—lifted to the top of his head and then moved down to his chin.To me it looked as if he was starting to do the sign of the cross, and I hadn’t even realized he was Catholic, which made me feel bad.
Mendoza interpreted it differently.“They put something over your head?”
“M-hm,” Zachary said.
“Can you guess where you might have come across them?Or was it random?”
Zach shook his head.“Nuh-uh.”
“Not random?”
Apparently not.He said something.I didn’t catch it, but Mendoza seemed to.“We’ll start there.”
