“Thank you,” Tory said, a lump constricting her throat.
“You need to stay strong,” the doctor said. “Lisa is going to need you.”
Tory bit her lip. She shook the hand the doctor extended; then he turned and walked out of the waiting room.
“I appreciate your cooperation,” Detective Larson said to her and Josh. “I’ll be in touch.” The tall, lanky policeman followed the doctor out the door.
Despair sat like a heavy weight on her chest. Tory turned to Josh, who pulled her into his arms and held her as she wept for her friend.
Chapter Sixteen
Sitting behind the wide mahogany desk in his office on the top floor of the Bridger building, Damon pressed the phone against his ear.
“You’re a sweetheart, Melanie. I really appreciate your keeping me updated on her condition—Lisa being a friend and all. I’m sorry to hear she isn’t doing better.”
Yes!He wanted to shoot his fist into the air. The hands of fate had granted him a reprieve.
“I’m happy to help,” Melanie said.
“Why don’t you let me thank you properly? How about dinner at that new French restaurant they just opened out on Camelback Road?”
“Oh, that sounds wonderful. What night, Damon?”
“Saturday work for you?”
“I’d love that. I heard it was expensive but really, really worth it.”
“Okay, it’s a date. I’ll call you later in the week just to confirm. Unless something comes up, we’ll plan on Saturday night.”
“I’ll look forward to it. Talk to you soon.”
Damon hung up the phone.Unless something comes up—and he would make sure it did. He didn’t have time to date, even if nailing Melanie was a sure thing.
He thought about the information the pretty, dark-eyed nurse had given him. Besides the gunshot wound, Lisa had suffered brain trauma from hitting her head on the pavement. The result was severe retrograde amnesia.
From what Melanie could find out, when Lisa had finally awoken after surgery, she had no memory of what had happened to her. Nothing at all for weeks before she was found running naked down the road.
Melanie Romano, the nurse he had hooked up with last month at the Peacock, had just brought news that saved his bacon.
Damon leaned back in his black leather chair and looked out the windows of his corner office at the vast grid of Phoenix streets and freeways stretching out in all directions.
He’d been frantic after Lisa’s escape. He hadn’t expected it, hadn’t been finished with the little blond whore, not by a long shot. He hadn’t realized how much he was going to enjoy having her under his control, the feeling of almost godly power. He hadn’t even begun to have his fill of Lisa Shane.
But once she’d run, he’d had to stop her. He couldn’t let her go to the police. Shooting her had been his only option. He was a better than average marksman, so the gunshot should have been fatal, but it wasn’t. He’d been sure she would die on the way to the hospital but that hadn’t happened, either.
Certain she wouldn’t live long enough to give the cops his name, he’d gone back to the cabin that night, boarded up the broken window, and used Clorox to clean up the blood.
The place was way out of the way, just one of dozens of other seasonal residences, nothing suspicious about it. The odds of the police finding it were slim to none. Even if they looked inside, unless they searched hard, they wouldn’t see the basement door.
It pissed him off that he’d had to toss Lisa’s cell phone. Sooner or later, Tory would have called and he would have had her. But he couldn’t risk the cops’ finding it in his possession.
He was in the clear for now, but he could still be in very deep trouble.
Lisa hadn’t died, and ever since he’d read the story of her rescue in the newspapers, he’d been frantically trying to come up with an idea, a way to silence her for good.
Eventually, he had calmed down and gotten himself under control, begun to formulate a plan. He’d thought of Melanie right away, remembering she had mentioned she worked at Scottsdale Memorial.
She’d been a tiger in bed the night they’d hooked up, had clearly hoped to see him again. He’d called her as soon as he had read in the papers that Lisa was being transported to the hospital.
