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The nurse used a handheld device to scan Josie’s bracelet and then pushed the medication through her IV. “Someone from X-ray will be in to get you soon.”
With that, she was gone. Josie closed her eyes, waiting for the narcotic to hit her system.
“He is not touching you,” Noah said. “We’ll go to a different hospital.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Josie said. “I can’t start over. It will take too long. Besides, we don’t know that he’s the killer. He’s not even a suspect. We can’t put him at either scene. We’ve got nothing but theories and timelines.”
“I don’t care,” Noah told her.
“He’s not going to try anything with all these people here.” Josie opened her eyes and looked at him. “The nurses give the meds. One of them will be here with him when he puts my shoulder back in place.”
“I don’t care,” Noah repeated. “You’re getting a different doctor at least.”
The ache in her shoulder was taking too much out of her to argue. At least about this. “Fine. But I want you to go home once you’ve gotten someone else to relocate my shoulder.”
Noah smiled. “Relocate your shoulder?”
The pain hadn’t ebbed very much but Josie was beginning to feel more relaxed. “You know what I mean.”
“I’m not leaving you here, Josie.”
“Noah, please. You need to be home for Wren.”
“Wren’s asleep.”
“But she’ll wake up soon and one of us needs to be there when she does.”
He brushed some hair off her cheek. “Trinity is there.”
Josie’s body started to turn to soup and she didn’t hate it. “But Trinity isn’t her guardian. Noah, this can’t be our lives. It can’t. Us always disappearing on her, leaving her with other people. Just go home. I’ll call you when they discharge me and you can pick me up.”
He took her good hand in his. “Wren will be fine. It’s not like she’s a toddler. She’s almost fifteen. She’ll understand.”
“Will she?” Josie said. “How would we know? She doesn’t talk to us about her feelings. Even if she is fine with it, that’s not the point. I’m not fine with it. We need to do our job.”
Her voice was surprisingly strident given how drowsy she felt. The pain was still there but getting blessedly duller.
“Hey,” Noah said, squeezing her hand. “I hear you. I get it.”
“Then you’ll go home?”
She could see the conflict in his eyes. He knew she was right but leaving her injured in the hospital with a serial killer suspect walking around went against the very foundation of his identity.
Josie said, “I can handle this, and you know it.”
The curtain slid back and a technician pushed a wheelchair inside the tiny space. “Taking you to X-ray,” he said.
Josie kept her eyes on Noah.
“Fine,” he told her. “I’ll go home. After I get you a different doctor.”
Forty-One
“Hello?”
Josie’s eyes fluttered open. She blinked against the harsh overhead fluorescent lights.
A nurse poked her head past the curtain. “How are you?” she said as she entered, pushing a cart with a laptop on it in front of her.
