sighed. “Not necessarily. If it has something to do with Paula Cooper’s crash... It’s been years. There was no tampering done to her car back then. There’s no evidence this connects at all.”
“Yet.”
Laurel sighed again and slid into the seat next to Gracie. “I’m going to look into it. If I find a link, I’ll investigate it, but you both need to understand this is for the police to figure out.”
Gracie knew Laurel was right, but she also knew Will had come to Rightful Claim, told her he’d figured out a pattern and then his car had been tampered with. Those couldn’t be coincidences.
Laurel would be thorough, Gracie had no doubt. Even if Laurel wasn’t getting married to a Carson, Gracie knew her cousin too well to ever think she’d not follow a lead just because the deceased was a Carson. If there was some connection, Laurel would find it.
Eventually. But Will was in a hospital room with who knew what kind of injuries and Gracie knew she didn’t have time for eventually.
“Gracie.” Laurel’s voice took on a sterner tone. “Promise me you two will let the police handle this.”
Gracie didn’t want to lie to her cousin, but she also didn’t know how she could possibly agree.
“Ms. Delaney?”
Both her and Laurel turned to the nurse, who smiled kindly. Melina knew both of them because their work often brought them to the hospital and since Melina had been Gracie’s babysitter once upon a time. “Not you, Deputy. Gracie, Mr. Cooper is able to see visitors now, and he’s asked for you, if you’d like to go back.”
Gracie hopped to her feet, but so did Laurel.
“I’ll need to speak with Mr. Cooper.”
Melina nodded. “That’ll be fine, but he specifically asked for Gracie. Room 203.”
Laurel started striding that way, but Gracie hurried in front of her. “Laurel, listen, I need you to do me a favor.”
“I’m here in a professional capacity.”
“Please, let me go alone.”
“Gracie.”
“Please, just... Just give me a few minutes alone. I’m not asking you not to question him, I’m just asking that you let me... Look...” She swallowed at the emotion clogging her throat. “Maybe you don’t understand why, but I feel responsible. At least partially. If I’d handled this even remotely differently—”
“You don’t know what would have happened.”
“Maybe not, but... As my best friend and my cousin and just the best human being I know, please give me five minutes alone with him. Personal minutes.”
Laurel sighed heavily. “Five minutes. And I’m right outside the door.”
Gracie gave Laurel an impulsive hug. “Thank you.” Five minutes wasn’t enough really. She’d probably cry when she saw him again. After all, she’d cried in that ambulance. Hopefully Will didn’t remember that.
Still, she’d need those few minutes to try to work through all this...stuff. Guilt. Worry. The desperate need to fix what she’d almost irreparably broken.
She and Laurel walked silently to the room number Melina had given them. Laurel gave a little nod and leaned against the wall next to the door. She glanced at her watch meaningfully.
Five minutes. Gracie blew out a breath and knocked on the door before pushing the door open. It was a small room, but the blinds were open to the bright sunshine outside.
Will sat in his bed and slowly turned to look at her as she closed the door behind her. One arm was in a cast, and his face was a maze of bandages. There was a hospital sheet over the bottom half of his body so she couldn’t see what kind of damage had been done down there.
He was beat-up and clearly a mess, and still he loomed too large in that bed. Like it didn’t matter he’d been pulverized by metal and concrete, he could take it. She almost believed it when he simply sat there and stared at her.
“Hi,” she offered from where she stood rooted by the door.
“Hey,” he returned, and his voice didn’t sound like him at all. She couldn’t read his expression, either. Maybe it was just pain.
She walked haltingly to his bedside knowing she had to say whatever it was she was going to say before her five minutes were up and Laurel came in to question him.
He frowned at her as she came to stand beside his bed. “You... You’ve been here the whole time?”
It was then she realized what he was looking so quizzically at. The dried blood on her sleeve she’d gotten from touching him out there on that frigid roadside.
When she looked back at his face, he was staring hard at hers.
“You haven’t slept,” he said, as though that were some great surprise.
“I was waiting to hear... I didn’t know how bad off you were. You passed out in the ambulance.”
“I don’t... I don’t remember that. The ambulance.”
“What do you remember?”
“Your voice.”
Gracie inhaled and then forgot to exhale. It didn’t mean anything that she was the thing he remembered. It didn’t mean he cared or this mattered, and as guilty as she felt about almost letting him die, she couldn’t let herself get wrapped up in thinking there was some change here. He was still Will, and she was just...his supplier.
“Gracie.” His non-cast arm moved and before she realized what he was doing, he’d taken her hand in his. There was a bandage on top of his hand, and still he gripped her tight. She stared at it.
“Gracie, look at me.”
She forced herself to take her gaze off his much bigger, and far more battered, hand squeezing hers.
His blue gaze was earnest and desperate. A look she recognized, and one that made her heart pinch. Because before last night she would have felt sorry for him, wondered if he needed therapy.
Today, she knew that desperation wasn’t out of place, and that maybe, just maybe, Will’s obsession with the case wasn’t wrong or sad or an attempt not to deal with the complicated feelings about his wife’s infidelity or death.
“You have to get me out of here,” he said, his gaze never leaving hers. “As soon as possible.”
* * *
WILL HURT JUST about everywhere and he knew pretty soon a nurse would come in and pump him full of all sorts of crap.
He preferred the pain. The pain kept him centered, and it reminded him of one simple truth.
He’d been right. All along, he’d been right. Whoever Paula had been having an affair
