CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
NOAH WOKE FEELING like a heavy beam had dropped across his belly. And it had to have glanced off his head on its way down, as foggy as he was. Opening leaden eyelids took enormous effort. He tried to move his lips to form a word.
“You’re in recovery after surgery,” a woman said from right above him. “You were shot and the surgeon had to remove a bullet.”
Shot. He tried to consider that, but his mind drifted.
He came to again. Shot. This time he got out a ragged, desperate “Cait.”
“What is it? Do you need something?”
“Cait.” It took him a moment to work up enough spit to allow his tongue to function. His lips felt cracked. “Want Cait.”
“Oh. I’m afraid we can’t let family into recovery…”
“…all right?” he managed to say.
“Your fiancée? Is that who you’re asking about?”
He finally pried his eyes open to glare fiercely at the plump, kindly woman. “Fiancée.”
“I know you must have questions—”
“Alive?”
“Oh!” This time she sounded startled. “Let me find out more about the incident.”
He was too scared to doze this time. A second nurse appeared and persuaded him to suck on some ice chips. His tension grew as he waited.
The first nurse reappeared in his range of vision. She was smiling. “Do you mean Cait McAllister?”
“Yes.”
“I’m told she’s fine. A few bumps and bruises. The man who kidnapped her and shot you was killed by police.”
He was able to grapple with the news. Longtime Deputy District Attorney Ronald Floyd had been desperate enough to kill and kill again. Pulling him out of the car, Noah had recognized him.
Time passed. They insisted he couldn’t see Cait until they moved him upstairs to a room. The mist gradually cleared from Noah’s head, allowing him to think more clearly. Shouldn’t he hurt more than he did? He did know vaguely that these days they used painkillers internally before closing the patient. He had confidence he’d hurt eventually.
Sure as hell his Suburban would be totaled. He wondered whether he could persuade the insurance adjustor to consider what happened an accident. That almost amused him. Yeah, probably not. Ah, well. Buying a new vehicle was a small price to pay if Cait really had survived unscathed.
He had nodded off again when they finally announced that they were ready to move him to a room. Thankfully, that involved no more than adjusting IV lines and rolling the bed he was in out through a pair of doors and down a hall.
“Noah?”
Was that Cait? His head turned as he searched for her, and suddenly there she was, right next to the bed. Reaching over the rails for his hand. Her eyes were damp and puffy, and shock infused her expression. He guessed that meant he didn’t look very good.
“Cait.” He was able to grip her hand and almost smile at how chilly it was.
The orderly was saying something cheerful, and Noah suddenly realized he was surrounded. Colin and his wife were there, too, and, of all people, Alec Raynor hovered in the background. He caught a brief glimpse of his PA, Ruth Lang, unless he was seeing things.
After scanning the small crowd, his gaze locked back on Cait’s distraught face.
He wanted to tell her he loved her, but his last public announcement hadn’t gone so well.
Most of the people jammed themselves into the elevator that carried him up. Once the orderly, joined by a nurse, began to maneuver the bed into a patient room, though, they asked everyone to wait outside until they had him “settled.” He hoped that didn’t involve shifting him to another bed. That would hurt.
The only person he really wanted to see was Cait. He frowned. No, maybe Colin, too. He’d like to find out what happened after he had checked out. Doctor, too. Nobody had yet told him what damage that bullet had done. He could move his feet—he demonstrated to himself, watching them rotate beneath the thin white blanket—so he knew he wasn’t paralyzed. But there were other ugly possibilities.
He got to stay in the same bed, but it was an annoying length of time before the nurse seemed satisfied that he was settled. She took his blood pressure and temperature, shifted the IV to a different pole, made notes on a whiteboard below the wall-hung television. The one positive was that he seemed to be alone in the room. There wasn’t even an empty bed on the other side of the room, just an empty space.