January 27th
2:16 P.M.
Beep, beep, beep, beep.
Hushed voices bumbled incoherently above her.
Pain swamped her body.
Naomi Candella groaned and immediately felt a presence beside her.
“Naomi?”
Even groggy and disoriented, she recognized the voice. She would recognize that voice anywhere.
“Are you awake?”
She felt a hand hover above her, but he didn’t touch her. He didn’t like to touch her. She knew why, but most of the time pretended she didn’t. She also spent a lot of time pretending she didn’t care.
“Naomi, open your eyes. Now,” he barked, any trace of tenderness wiped from his voice. He was now all business.
She tried to do as he ordered and was surprised when it was so difficult. Never one to give up, she pressed on through the pain and managed to crack her eyelids open. Even the simple act of opening her eyes hurt.
The man who loomed over her relaxed. “Here, drink this,” he said gruffly.
A straw was held to her lips. Naomi opened her mouth to drink some, but the pain ricocheting around in her head was near unbearable and aggravated by any little movement. She closed her mouth without taking a sip, and let her eyes fall closed. It felt like someone was firing a nail gun inside her skull.
“The doctor just left. Do you want me to get him back in here to give you a sedative?”
He was goading her, he knew she hated being sedated, he was trying to push her into properly waking up. Because she knew he had to be concerned about her if he was provoking her, Naomi tried really hard to get it together. This time she managed to pry her eyes open, ignoring the fact that they felt like they had been glued shut, and took in her surroundings. She was in a hospital. Shehatedhospitals. What she didn’t know was why she was in a hospital. She couldn’t remember what had happened to her.
Confused, she tilted her head toward Samuel Zeeke. She had known Sam since they were kids in school, and he was now her boss.
His brow furrowed when he read the confusion on her face. “Naomi, do you remember what happened?”
“No,” she croaked, the word tearing at her throat.
“Here, drink.” Sam held the straw to her lips again, and she sucked up a single mouthful of cold water. “What is the last thing you do remember?”
That she had to think carefully about that was a pretty good indication that something was very wrong with her. Everything was all jumbled in her head, but at last she settled on an answer. “Going to bed last night.”
Obviously, her answer didn’t please Sam because his dark eyes darkened further. “You don’t rememberanythingelse after that?”
“No,” she whispered.
“Well, that’s not good, I was counting on your statement.”
“My statement?” Naomi guessed that ruled out an accident as the cause of her crushing headache. “Why am I here? What happened to me? How long have I been here? What time is it?” Anxiety was mounting inside her, she needed to be moving. Always moving was how she dealt with anything stressful in her life.
Sam knew her well, and he immediately put a hand on her shoulder, preemptively stopping her from climbing from the bed. “You're here because you were shot. You drove to work this morning. When I arrived, I found you unconscious and bleeding on the ground by your car. That was about eight, it’s now two-thirty, so you’ve been here about six hours,” he rattled off answers to her questions.
Naomi didn’t hear anything after the word shot.
She’d been shot?
“The bullet skimmed your temple,” Sam continued. “The injury isn’t all that serious, but the force of the shot must have knocked you down. You hit your head and knocked yourself out. You have a concussion.”
Given her recent medical history that was not good.