Chapter Thirty-Two
Luke
I’d never been so confused in my fucking life. I blinked hard, willing Fran’s worried face to morph into someone else, but when I tried to figure out who, white spots danced in front of my eyes. “I want—”
But for the thousandth time, I couldn’t finish the sentence.
Fran shushed me, and pushed me down on the padded shelf I seemed to be lying on. “Thedoctor said you have to stay still.”
Doctor? The fuck? I hadn’t seen a doctor since my last navy medical. Hadn’t visited my local GP since I was twelve. Why the hell was a doctor telling me to stay still?
Thinking about it made the bone-crushing headache throb even worse, but since it was the only thing keeping me awake, I went with it and forced my fragmented brain to come together andtake stock of the weird situation I seemed to be in.
Headache aside, my whole body hurt, and the sensation of my mother holding my hand was almost as strange as the arctic cold air blasting up my nose. I reached for whatever was resting on my face and ripped it away.
Fran sighed. “Really? Again?”
“What?”
She said something, but I couldn’t hear her. Her lips moved like a cartoon,and then she was gone.
I couldn’t say how much time had passed when I next saw her again, but I knew the moment I opened my eyes that something had changed. Her features were sharper, more familiar, and though my surroundings still made no sense, I recognised them for what they were.
Fran gripped my hands as I struggled to sit up, but she couldn’t keep me down.
I shook her off. “Whatthe fuck am I doing in hospital?”
“You don’t remember?”
I tried for a glare, but my head hurt too much to pull it off. My vision swam and my stomach lurched, but a vicious pain in my left side kept me upright. “What’s going on? Where’s Mia?”
“Mia?”
Brilliant. On top of everything else, I’d apparently neglected to keep my mother up to date with my love life too, but Fran spoke againbefore I could. “I don’t know where Mia is. I can ring Gus and ask, but you have to lie down, okay? Your ribs are broken and you have a head injury.”
Broken ribs. Head injury. I matched the words to the pain radiating through me and groaned. “How?”
“You were knocked down by a car outside the timber merchant. Hit and run. The police are looking for the car. Do you remember anything?”
I wanted to. Every instinct I had screamed at me that I did, but chasing it hurt too much. I shook my head helplessly and lay back down. Pain pulsed through me, and I closed my eyes to it, willing it away. But pain had never worked like that for me. Absorbing it was all I had, and I let it pull me under, dragging me so deep that even Fran stroking my face began to feel normal.
“We’re lookingfor her,” Rebecca said, holding my gaze. “We went to the house, but there was no one there, and her car was gone. Hopefully, she’ll turn up soon.”
Not good enough. I wrapped an arm around myself and peered over the edge of my bed for my missing boots. Waking up to the police looming over my bed had kicked my concussed memory back to life, and now they were telling me not only was the lunaticwho’d run me down still on the run, but they had no idea where Mia was. If she was safe. Alive, even. Because no one was denying that Morgan Benson had intended to kill me with his fuck-stick black Ford Focus.
Morgan Benson. I turned the name over in my head. I knew him—vaguely, but I didn’t knowhim. Billy had, though. Maybe Mia did, too.
My jolted brain retraced the last two days tothe uncomfortable encounter I’d shared with my apparently would-be killer. The house, the path, the tiny fucking gate...she’d walked straight past him. Hadn’t talked to him, smiled at him, or so much as glanced his way. I was sure of it, but there were holes in my recollection of just about everything right now, and thinking too hard made me too dizzy to be taken seriously. I had to get out of here.
Like she’d heard my thoughts, Rebecca laid a cool hand on my arm. “Luke, I know you’re upset, and worried about Mia, but there’s really nothing you can do while you’re in this state. We’ll find her, I promise.”
I didn’t believe her. Didn’t believe the doctors who said the jackhammer in my skull was a mild concussion when it felt like my brain had fallen out the back of my head. Or Franwhen she took Rebecca’s place and bemusedly told me everything was okay. Because it wasn’t okay. And it wouldn’t be until I had Mia safe in my arms.
