“What about Gretchen Lansing?” J.P. asked, and his tone indicated that he wasn’t inquiring about her prognosis for a full recovery. “Is she ambulatory? How do we know she won’t find Eli’s room somehow and finish the job?”
Brynne felt Sara stiffen in her arms, then straighten and pull away.
She stared at Marisol, waiting for an answer.
Marisol gave J.P. a look that might have been described as wry, in another context. “Mrs. Lansing is recovering on another floor, and there’s a security guard outside her door at all times. And she’s handcuffed to the rail of her bed, so it’s safe to say she won’t be going anywhere until it’s decided whether or not she’s fit to stand trial.”
“Fit to stand trial?” The question came from Cord, but any one of them would have responded the same way, if he hadn’t asked first. “Are you saying that woman might get away with this?”
“Cord,” Marisol pointed out, gently but firmly. “I’m a doctor, not a judge or a member of the grand jury. I don’t decide these things.”
Cord subsided. Shoved a hand through his dark hair in frustration.
“I can assure all of you that Sheriff Garrett is completely safe here,” Marisol added.
Brynne spoke up, at last. “What about her husband? What’s being done to protect Eli from him?”
If she received an answer she didn’t like, she would park herself in Eli’s room and protect him herself.
“Mr. Lansing has not been charged with a crime. That said, he is permitted to sit with Mrs. Lansing. I’ve spoken with Mr. Lansing, and he is quite undone by what’s happened, especially so soon after their son’s death.”
“That isn’t good enough,” Sara protested. “Fred Lansing is a horrible man, and he probably sees Gretchen as the victim here, not the perpetrator.”
“Sara’s right,” J.P. interjected. “He’s as crazy as his wife. Suppose he decides to carry out his idea of justice?”
“Security has been alerted that Mr. Lansing is not allowed to set foot on this floor,” Marisol said.
J.P. shook his head, turned to Cord. “Who’s standing the first watch? You or me?”
“Since we’re liable to butt heads over this,” Cord reasoned quietly, “with both of us wanting to stay, we’d better flip a coin.”
Sara watched the two men with obvious relief. She had been at the hospital almost as long as Eli had, the attack having occurred around four in the afternoon.
It was past midnight now.
Strange, Brynne reflected. She hadn’t given a single thought to the time of day until that moment; she’d rushed to the hospital as soon as Sara called, a little after five.
Now Marisol crossed the room and spoke quietly to Sara, assuring her that her brother would be well looked after and urging her to go home and rest.
Sara did have dark circles under her eyes. She was pale, too, and though Brynne had tried to convince her to go downstairs to the cafeteria and grab something to eat, she hadn’t been willing to leave the ICU.
“Think about the kids,” Brynne prodded. “They’re worried, too. They’ll need you, Sara.”
For a moment, Sara looked fierce, but her expression softened. “You’re right,” she said. “I should go home. But so should you, Brynne.”
Brynne thought of her poor, concerned parents, probably wide-awake, despite the late hour, and waiting for news. She’d phoned them in a panic when she’d gotten word that Eli had been rushed to the hospital and taken in for surgery, before hurrying there herself. She’d ignored their texts and voice mails since then, focused on Eli, too agitated to concentrate on the simplest thing that didn’t concern his well-being.
She turned her head to look at J.P. and Cord.
“I won the toss,” Cord said, looking back at her and Sara. “Both of you go home. I’ll be sitting within six feet of Eli’s bed until morning and, believe me, nobody is going to get close to him except Marisol and the nurses.”
J.P. slapped Cord lightly on the back, though his gaze rested on Sara. “I’ll be back to relieve my buddy here at 7 a.m. sharp, and I can make the same promise.”
Sara nodded wearily, and a tear slipped down her right cheek. “Thanks,” she said, almost in a whisper.
Brynne added her thanks; Cord and J.P. were Eli’s closest friends, and they were strong men, country tough.
She and Sara collected their coats from the rack provided by the hospital, and left the waiting room, headed toward the bank of elevators. J.P. followed behind them, saying nothing.
He was quite literally, Brynne reflected, a man of few words.
Downstairs, in the main lobby, they encountered Dan Summers, who was just coming through the front doors and into the lobby.
His expression was grim.
“How is he?” he asked.
J.P. stopped to give an update, while Sara and Brynne, barely functional now that they could relax a little, greeted the newcomer distractedly and went on.
They were barely outside when J.P. caught up to them.
“It’s dark,” he said. “I’m walking you to your cars, and I don’t want any arguments.”
Brynne said nothing.
Sara gave an exhausted snicker.
What, Brynne wondered, was that about? She was too tired to pursue the issue, though. She just wanted to go back to her apartment, feed her cat, make a brief call to her parents and fall into bed.
A shower could wait until morning. She might not even undress.
The trio reached her roadster first.
She unlocked it with a key fob, and J.P. and Sara waited, side by side, until she was behind the wheel with the headlights on and the doors secure again.
As she drove away, she caught a glimpse of Sara and J.P. in her rearview mirror, and something about the way they walked, a little apart, heads lowered, hurt her heart.
Again, she wondered.
Again, she was too tired to frame a question, even in her own mind.
When she arrived at Bailey’s, her parents’ car, a modest sedan, was parked in back, leaving just enough room for her roadster.
Her dad was standing on the back porch when she got out of the roadster.
“You should be at home, sleeping,” she told her dad, in mild reprimand. “It’s late.”
“How are we supposed to sleep when our daughter’s young man is undergoing brain surgery?” Mike Bailey countered, though gently.
Brynne made her way toward him, her hands shoved into the pockets of her warmest coat. “It wasn’t exactly brain surgery,” she said. “They had to drill a hole in Eli’s skull because his brain was swollen.”