“That could’ve been anyone,” Nick groaned.
“Harvey said they were pulling security footage from the bank across the street. Maybe they’ll find something to identify the person behind the wheel. I’d love to know what the hell he was thinking.”
It could have been an accident, Nick mused. Though, with the way women had been attacked around Dark Canyon lately…he doubted it.
“Soisshe okay?” Ryan asked, leaning back in the chair.
“She says she is,” Nick said though it nagged at him whether he should believe her or not. “She’s with Fern right now at Baldwin Memorial.”
Ryan’s hand coiled around the edge of the table at the sound of Fern’s name. He’d been the first on scene at the fire that had nearly claimed Fern’s life. Nick knew he visited her at the hospital as often as Sassy did, if not more. “Did you or the police find anything else out about what happened to her?” Nick asked curiously.
“Not much,” Ryan said.
Nick could tell by the way the muscles in Ryan’s face bunched that he was none too pleased with the lack of development in Fern’s case. “Has she remembered anything new?”
“Bits and pieces,” Ryan answered. “Nothing definitive. She’s still in a delicate state.”
Nick nodded in understanding. He frowned over his next question. “Do you think they’re related—Fern almost being burned alive and what happened to Annie Ross?”
“The police aren’t saying much,” Ryan told him. “Not to me. But I think they’d be foolish to overlook the possibility. Things like that don’t happen in Dark Canyon.”
Women didn’t normally get run down in the streets, either. Nick couldn’t stand the idea of Sassy getting mixed up in whatever was happening. It made the dumplings in his stomach roil.
“I need you to look out for my cousin,” Ryan told him. “You spend more time with her than anyone, and I know you won’t let anything happen to her on your watch.”
“You can count on it.”
The corner of Ryan’s mouth lifted in an unconvincing smile. He’d been burning the candle at both ends lately, too, between his time on call and his visits to Fern. “She and Ava are tougher than bobcats. They had no trouble keeping up with the rest of us growing up. But after what happened to Ava, neither of them should take any chances.”
Nick remembered the security alarm at Sassy’s gallery and how she’d responded solo in the middle of the night. If that happened again… “She’s not alone,” he assured Ryan.
Ryan didn’t have time to respond. The handheld radio clipped to Nick’s belt squawked.
He automatically rose to his feet. “Gotta go.”
“Careful out there, Malone,” Ryan advised. “I have a feeling our troubles in Dark Canyon aren’t over.”
* * *
Sassy had come to Recovery Room 303 bearing banana nut muffins she’d found in the cafeteria downstairs and a smile she hoped her friend found convincing. Still shaken from her run-in with the black F-150, she’d sought her friend’s bedside not because she wanted to rehash what had happened on the sidewalk but because she’d needed something to bring her adrenaline levels down.
She’d stopped sweating finally and felt that her pulse had returned to a normal rhythm, but whenever she thought about that grille skimming by her, trapping her between the wall of the building and certain death, it started tripping again.
She needed to stop reliving it, and she definitely didn’t want to worry Fern, so she kept the details of the incident to herself and focused on the woman in the hospital bed.
Sassy had met Fern before the fire that had nearly taken her life. She’d been driving through Dark Canyon one day almost a year ago and had stopped at the gallery to look around. At the time, Zephyr had been showcasing works of female empowerment. Fern had been as captivated by them as Sassy had been. They had struck up a conversation. While she wasn’t an artist, Sassy thought Fern had a keen eye for art. She’d invited her to join a series of art classes her grandmother Leolani was hosting on the reservation.
Fern had attended the classes, giving her and Sassy more of a chance to get to know one another. There weren’t many people Sassy had felt comfortable showing her work to after she’d stopped painting professionally shortly after college, but she’d believed Fern when she’d complimented the work she’d completed during the classes.
After several coffee dates, Sassy had felt comfortable doing so, especially when Fern opened up a bit about her troubled childhood. Since Leolani also taught art therapy classes, Sassy had suggested Fern join them.
When she’d learned that an unidentified woman had been hospitalized after nearly being killed in a cabin fire, she’d had no idea it was Fern. Because of Fern’s memory loss, it had taken some time for her to remember anything about her life, much less how she’d wound up in the cabin on the reservation with a badly broken leg. When Sassy had learned her friend was the woman who had been brutalized, she had immediately stepped in to help her cousin Ava, the psychologist on Fern’s case, care for her.
Due to the ongoing investigation into Fern’s near murder, she was staying at Baldwin Memorial under a fake name for protection. Tribal police were keeping the details of the fire under close wraps until they had more answers about what had led to her abduction.
Fern was still fighting memory loss and regression. But even with a badly broken leg, she was fighting to regain her strength. Other than Sassy, Ava, Ryan and her doctors, she spoke to no one.
Sassy finished off her muffin, gauging Fern’s face. She had good color. Her long light brown hair had been pulled back from her face, and her hazel eyes weren’t limned in near as many shadows as Sassy had seen there before. She was happy to see Fern eating and her cheeks starting to fill out again. “The Colton fundraiser’s coming up,” she said. “I’m heading out to the reservation tomorrow. Hopefully I can convince the artists there to contribute some pieces to the auction. In fact, I wish you were coming with me. I could use your eye.”
