Adam’s apple bobbing, Liam stood to extract his phone from the pocket of his jeans. As he phoned the doctor, the door to my room flewopen.
61
“Ness!”Sarah raced to me. Her arms went around my shoulders and pulled me into the fiercest hug. After a couple long seconds, she pressed me away. “I’ll have you know, I’m really pissed at you! You can’t go playing hero and dying on me likethat.”
“Says the girl who dated Alex Morgan to gather info.” I inspected what I could see of her body. “Did he hurt you? Are youokay?”
“I’m fine, hun.” She shuddered as she said this, which made me sit upstraighter.
“Whathappened?”
“I’ll tell you everything some other time. I think you have enough to deal with rightnow.”
“I have nothing to deal with right now besides getting this bandageoff.”
“Greg’s on his way,” Liamsaid.
“Thank you, Liam.” Then to Sarah, I said, “I hope he’s going to take this thing off. And dischargeme.”
Sarah and Liam exchanged a glance that made my stomach tighten. Had they seen what lay beneath thebandage?
“Did I lose my eye or something?” I thought I still felt its presence, but perhaps it was like a phantomlimb.
“Your eye’s still there,” Liamsaid.
“Then why does everyone keep blanching when I bring itup?”
“The reason I sent you that message in the shoe is because I overheard Alex and Justin talk about how they’d found out the location of the Sillin stash.” Even though I was glad for an explanation, I sensed Sarah was feeding it to me to evade my question. “I was honestly certain they knew where it was. I didn’t think they were using me to findit.”
I flicked my gaze up to Liam. “I’m very tempted to sayI told youso.”
He flashed me a pained smile. “Go ahead. Sayit.”
Lucas sauntered in then, shaggy-haired and shiny-eyed. “Back from the dead so soon,Clark?”
I shook my head in amusement. “Would you rather I have haunted your ass,Lucas?”
“Did you just . . . did you just”—he slapped a palm against his chest—“swear?”
While Sarah rolled her eyes, I snorted. “I’m happy to see you,too.”
“You gave us quite the scare last week.” A genuine smile now graced Lucas’slips.
“Wasn’t myintent.”
“Can you tell Matt it was? ’Cause I sort of have a bet going with him that you did all that for theattention.”
I gawked athim.
He smirked. “Kidding.”
“So I got you something,” Sarah interjected, digging into her enormous Mary-Poppins handbag. “I gotussomething.”
She pulled out a firetruck-red silk bomberjacket.
“Wow that’s really . . .red.”
“Wait for it.” She flipped the jacket around. On the back, in flowy white embroidery, was written Boulder Babe. “I have a matching one for myself.Obvs.”
