She might have left Luke at the hospital, but she realized as she climbed out of her car that he had come home with her anyway. She couldn’t erase the anguished tone of voice in which he’d said he lost her.
Concussion craziness, she told herself sternly. Icy snow still covered the ground, and she walked carefully, wishing spring would just get on with it. She needed some warmth. She needed to be able to stride freely again without fear of slipping.
Dissatisfaction followed her and she tried to blame it on a rough night. She was happy with her life, she loved living in a place with seasons, including winter, and so what if one of them lasted too long?
Dang. Her own thoughts were getting as addled as Luke’s.
“Bri?”
She looked around, startled, and saw Jack standing a few feet away. A man of about thirty, he was thin enough to look like he was still a kid. His dark hair was shaggy, his dark eyes strangely penetrating. “Jack? Is something wrong?”
He shoved his hands in his pockets. “I don’t know. One of the cops was here a little while ago looking for you.”
“Thanks.” Somebody at the hospital had probably reported that Luke had said he’d been pushed. And that she was his ex-wife. Lovely. What was she supposed to know about anything? “I’m sure they’ll come back if it’s important. Are you on your way to work?”
“Yeah.” He nodded and started to shuffle away.
She stared after him for a moment. Somewhere in the fog that wrapped her brain, it struck her as odd that he would have known the cops were here. Then she shrugged the thought away. Jack was a pretty lonely guy, she figured. Always nice and polite, but he’d probably been walking past here when the cops came and had just waited to tell her. Made him feel important.
Inside, she barely paused. She pulled off her clothes, letting them lie where they fell as she stumbled down the hallway. Her bed was the only thing she wanted. She took just enough time to pull on a long flannel nightshirt, then crawl under the covers. She fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.
Luke and all the problems he might raise could wait.
They only waited a few hours, however. The phone started ringing off the wall around noon. Like a well-trained nurse, she came instantly awake. A headache had settled in while she slept but she ignored it, reaching for the phone beside her bed.
“Bri? It’s Jan. Dr. David asked me to call you. We’ve got a lion who wants out of the cage, but he can’t be released until we know he’ll have care. So...”
“On my way. What about the guy who was working with him?”
“He showed up, too. That’s part of what’s going on here. Plus a deputy. Sorry.”
“What am I supposed to do about that?”
Jan laughed quietly. “Soothe the raging beast? I don’t know. It’s kind of funny, actually.”
Bri sat up and realized her head was pounding. A migraine. Lovely. Funny? What in the world was Jan talking about?
Groaning once or twice, Bri struggled into her clothes, popped some ibuprofen for the migraine and grabbed a roll for breakfast. On the way to the hospital she stopped to get a large milk shake at the diner, wondering why she even bothered. Sometimes she was too nice for her own good, she thought irritably. This was not going to be a good day.
It started getting interesting, though. As she walked down the corridor in the ward where Luke was being kept, she could hear him.
“Don’t you tell me I can’t leave! I can leave anytime I want. You can’t keep me.”
Apparently he was not fully over the concussion. Luke might not like being trapped in a hospital bed, but he’d always been sensible. This didn’t sound sensible.
She entered his room to find Dr. David, Jan, Police Chief Jake Madison and a strange man clad in heavy work clothes. Firmly stuck in the bed by his elevated leg and broken arm, Luke was holding forth, his words slurred by the swelling in his face.
She rounded the bed, took his good arm, put the milk shake in his hand and said, “Shut up and drink.”
Luke paused midsentence, blinked and said, “Bri?”
“Who else? Shut up and drink. Let me find out what’s going on.”
“They’re keeping me prisoner.”
“You don’t look ready to walk out of here. Now put the straw in your mouth and drink.”
To her surprise, he obeyed. He took one pull on the straw and looked at her. “Do you know how much that hurts?”
“Not as much as you’re going to hurt if you try to stand on that leg right now. Drink.”
She turned to everyone else. “How about you all tell me what’s happening?”
Dr. David—all the docs here preferred to be called by their first names—answered first. “He can’t leave here unless we’re certain he’s going to get proper care. The concussion can have effects for weeks, as you know. Then there’s his lack of mobility. Dr. Trent doesn’t want him walking on that leg for a week.”
“A week?” It must have been a pretty bad break. She nodded. “Okay, I get that part, and from what I see he’s still not quite in his right mind.”
Luke stopped drinking. “I’m perfectly sane!”
“And perfectly concussed. Hush and drink. Let’s figure out things so we know what to do.”
She was beginning to understand why Jan could see some humor in this. She was beginning to see it herself.
“Bri...”
“If you don’t behave, I’m going to tape you with my cell phone so I can show you later just how impossible you’re being.”
He glared at her, but resumed trying to drink his milk shake.
“Now what about everyone else here?” she asked.
The stranger stepped forward, offering his hand. “I’m Mike Hanson. I work with Luke sometimes. We were out checking out the building site when Luke fell. I brought him in. The thing is, he was insisting he was pushed, so I reported it to the chief here.”
Jake Madison nodded. “We were hoping Mr. Masters might remember, but he doesn’t seem to.”
“That’s not unusual,” Dr. David said. “He might never remember what happened right before his fall.”
Jake nodded again. “I’m asking Mr. Hanson here to take a deputy out to the site to see if there’s any evidence that someone else was out there, but he didn’t see anyone at the time.”
“Not a soul,” Hanson agreed. “It was awfully slippery out there, but Luke isn’t a careless man. That’s the thing. If he says he was pushed, I believe him.”
“We’ll
