Love On The Line (2 page)

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Violet rushed past the automatic door at Brentsville Memorial Hospital, her entire body numb save the wrecking-ball slamming of her heart in her chest. She inhaled in a wobbly attempt to calm it, but the hard punch of hospital-grade antiseptic that met her nose jerked her back in time. Flashes of a night, seven years past but still eerily similar, hurled themselves at her memory, ratcheting the alarm bells in her head into full-on panic mode. The fact that Jason’s lieutenant had gotten on the phone himself and sworn that her brother was fine didn’t stop Violet’s pulse from doing a terrified triple-time in her veins.

Jason was her twin, her only living relative, and she hated his job as an active duty police detective with the white-hot passion of a thousand fiery suns.

“Jesus, Blue. You look awful.”

The familiar childhood nickname, and even more familiar voice that went with it, sent relief skidding through Violet, and she whirled on her heel in the direction of the speaker.

“Oh my God, Jason! Are you okay?” Tears burned hot beneath her eyelids, and she flung her arms around her brother so hard he let out an
oof
of surprise before returning the gesture.

“I’m fine, I swear,” he said over her shoulder. “Just a couple bumps and bruises. I would’ve called you myself, but they wouldn’t let me out until the doctor took a look at everything, and I didn’t want you to hear about it on the news first.”

Violet pulled back, confusion banging around in her head through the tidal wave of relief. “Hear about what on the news? What’s going on?” She scanned him more carefully, getting no further than the rust-colored stains angrily marking his shirt before her breath turned to sand in her lungs. “Is that…blood?”

Jason tensed, shifting his body to angle the stains away from her line of sight. “I’m fine, Violet,” he reiterated, and damn it, she
hated
when he handed her the standard cop treatment. Was it really so hard to just answer the question?

Jason’s eyes took a tour around the bustling hospital lobby, and when he dropped his voice, Violet’s gut went along for the ride. “Why don’t we go into one of the waiting rooms where it’s quieter?”

He kicked his feet into a purposeful stride, but she dug her heels into the linoleum, her stomach clenching. Suddenly, tiny details started filtering into her awareness. The pair of uniformed officers by the door, their expressions as sharp and serious as razor-wire, the satellite van parked by the curb in front of the glass-walled atrium in the lobby, complete with a pretty blond news reporter getting ready to go live, the dirty-copper smell of old pennies coming from the blue fabric of Jason’s dress shirt. Each detail stung Violet like a harbinger of very bad things, but she stared her brother down regardless.

“Not until you tell me what’s going on,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest so tightly, the seams of her chef’s jacket bit into the bare skin beneath it. “What happened that you think is going to get me so worried? And if you’re so fine, why is there blood all over your shirt?”

Jason exhaled a defeated breath, but didn’t drop his bright blue eyes from her watercolor counterparts.

“The blood on my shirt isn’t mine, Violet. It’s Noah’s. We were out on a routine investigation this afternoon, and someone shot him.”

CHAPTER TWO

The first thing Noah Blackwell thought upon waking was that he shouldn’t have thrown back an entire bottle of tequila. Not that he remembered getting drunk— hell, the last thing he could place with any accuracy was being at his minefield of a desk, working on a lead in the MacMillan assault. But he must’ve gone on the mother of all benders between then and now, otherwise why would his memory have more holes than a stack full of paper targets at the range?

And more importantly, why else would he feel like he’d just gotten the shellacking of a lifetime?

Noah dragged his eyes open, but they worked in sticky slow-motion, refusing to focus. Tiny pinpoints of light peppered his vision, and as hard as he tried to think, his brain just felt like a dry sponge in a dirty soap dish.

A soap dish that damn near exploded when he tried to actually move.

Searing hot pain bolted through every one of his limbs like he’d been lit on fire, seizing the breath in his lungs as he tried to sit up. The pain ran an extended circuit through his left arm, sinking in with vicious teeth, and it hammered into place the realization that something was very, very wrong.

“Whoa! Oh, crap! Um, don’t try to get up, Noah.” A firm yet feminine hand slid over his right shoulder, and when his head lolled on its axis as he turned toward it, another scooped up to capture his cheek. Noah tried to gather all the details, to file and calculate just like he always did, but he couldn’t focus. He caught a glimpse of pale blue eyes, a heavy fringe of gold-brown hair, and wait, there was something definitely familiar about the woman. She leaned over, so close that the braid thrown over her shoulder tickled his cheek, and he let his eyes drift closed again. Man, she smelled sweet and exotic, like suntan lotion and summer heat.

Wait a second. She wasn’t just familiar. He
knew
her. Only it wasn’t from a beach. There had been confetti, and noisemakers, and way too many glasses of champagne…

“Okay, I called for the doctor. Just stay still.” The woman hesitated for just a fraction of a second before pulling back, a soft metallic jingle curving past his ear as reality started to filter through the thick haze in his head. The mattress beneath his too-heavy body was flat and unforgiving, the pillowcase too starched and stiff to be his own. The pain in his arm thudded in a steady rampage of things-not-right, and dammit, where the hell was he?

“Ah, Detective Blackwell. Good to see you’re finally awake again. How are you feeling?”

The voice at his side was brand-new and very unfamiliar, and Noah snapped his eyes back open, forcing himself to stop floating and focus.  The woman—hadn’t there been a woman?— was gone, replaced by a man with a serious expression and a stethoscope in his hands.

Noah frowned, and damn, even his face hurt. “Who…are you?”

The man’s eyes flashed concern, so fast that Noah would’ve missed it if it hadn’t been ingrained in him to notice everything. “I’m Dr. Fisher. I’ve been taking care of you.”

Sure enough, the man on his right wore a slightly rumpled white jacket with the name
Dr. Blake Fisher
stitched over the breast in loopy blue script. He met Noah’s gaze head-on, but Noah got the feeling it was just as much to assess the situation as it was to establish bedside manner.

Panic leaked past the heavy fog in his brain. From the first day at the academy, it had been drilled into him to remember even the most mundane details, and he did it with spot-on accuracy, no exceptions.

So why couldn’t he remember where he was or how he got here?

“Where…” The rest of the question sat Epoxied to the roof of Noah’s mouth, but thankfully, the guy in front of him caught on pretty quick.

“You’re back in your room. You gave us a bit of a scare because you’ve taken a lot longer to come out of the anesthesia than most people do.”

Noah snapped his head back so fast that it slapped against the grainy pillow behind him, a move he paid the price for as the reverb rattled through his entire body. “What anesthesia?”

Dr. Fisher didn’t move. “The anesthesia for your surgery. We discussed it last night.” In the span of a pulse beat, the guy had whipped out a tiny flashlight, and Christ, the thing was annoyingly bright. “Can you tell me your name?”

What kind of stupid question was that? “Noah Blackwell.”

“And what month is it?”

Really? “March. Listen, doc—”

“Are you having any pain?”

At least now they were getting somewhere. Noah grunted. “My arm.” God, the thing was still on fire, ten times worse than when he’d broken his collarbone playing pickup football with his brothers a few Thanksgivings ago. Only that, he clearly remembered, and this was a total mystery. And if there was one thing Noah didn’t do, it was forget.

Dr. Fisher nodded, giving up a faint expression of
well duh
as he locked his eyes on the monitor next to Noah’s bed. “Anywhere else?”

Noah’s throat worked in a series of dry swallows, but finally he managed to push another whisper past the Sahara of his lips. “Not really. I don’t…what’s going on? I had surgery?”

“You’re at Brentsville Hospital. You were brought here after being hurt on the job.” Dr. Fisher hesitated, and oh hell, with the way the guy’s voice had just gone all poor-pitiful-you-in-the-bed, whatever came next really couldn’t be good. “You’ve sustained a fairly serious injury, detective. Do you remember how you were hurt?”

Noah strained to think, but it only made his skull feel like it had been tenderized with a jackhammer. “My partner…we were on a lead.” Yeah, okay. He and Jason had been working a string of robbery-assaults, and they’d gotten a tip about a local lowlife named Ernie Sands from one of their informants. Most of the attacks had been particularly brutal, and Noah had put in all his waking hours working even the thinnest of leads, trying to catch a break. “What happened?”

Dr. Fisher looked at him like he was trying to measure out the right amount of information, but finally he said, “You were brought into the emergency department yesterday afternoon with a gunshot wound to your upper left arm.”

“I got shot?
Yesterday?
” Noah rasped, and okay,
that
woke him up. His heart took a slap-shot at his sternum, and he jerked against the flat slab of the mattress despite the shrieking protest from every cell in his body. Sure as sunrise, his left arm was bundled under a tight mass of snowy bandages that extended from just above his elbow all the way up under the sleeve of his pale green hospital gown, and the whole thing was encased in a hard plastic contraption that made moving it damn near impossible.

All of a sudden, a fat slash of fear surged up from deep within his memory, and he jackknifed off the bed, adrenaline spearing through his veins. “My partner! Where’s Jason?”

Jason had been with him, on his right-hand side, just like always when they went out to follow up on a lead. It was standard operating procedure, and they’d done it no less than a billion times. Assess the scene, note the exits and escape routes, fall into position, stay alert.

Why couldn’t he remember what had
happened
?

“Hold on, detective! You need to relax.” For a wiry guy, the doc was surprisingly strong, pressing the flat of his palm against Noah’s uninjured shoulder to guide him back into place. “Your partner is just fine. He’s waiting out in the hallway while I examine you.”

Cold sweat pebbled on Noah’s brow despite the reassurance that Jason hadn’t met a similar fate to Noah’s, or worse. “Some asshole shot me while I was trying to do my job, I can’t remember a damned thing about the last twenty-four hours of my life, and you want me to relax?”

But Dr. Fisher’s grip didn’t budge. “It’s because you got shot that you need to relax. The surgeon who repaired the damage to your arm is going to be less than thrilled if I have to call him and tell him you blew out all your stitches.”

Thoughts flung themselves around in Noah’s brain, but he couldn’t get any of them to fall in line. “Start at the beginning, doc. And don’t scrimp on the details.”

Dr. Fisher released Noah’s shoulder, but only far enough to indicate the corresponding spot on his
unbandaged arm. “When you were shot, the bullet missed the bone in your upper arm. Luckily, it also missed any major arteries. However, it did do some significant damage to your muscle, and you lost a fair amount of blood at the scene. We called in a surgeon to repair the injury early this morning, but you’ve taken longer than usual to come out of the anesthesia.”

“Is that why I can’t remember anything? The anesthesia?” Noah asked, finally letting go against the hospital bed again.

Dr. Fisher dipped his chin in a tight, singular nod. “It’s not entirely unusual for the details to be fuzzy. You were conscious upon arrival yesterday, although we managed your pain with morphine, which can also make a person quite spacy. Often times, trauma patients block or repress the events surrounding their injury, but it’s likely you’ll remember things as you heal. The best thing for you to focus on is recovering physically.”

Right, right. He could recover just as soon as he made a statement and went after the bastard who’d put a hole in him. “Okay, so now that I’m awake, how much longer do I need to stay here?” Noah heard the gruff pull of the words only after they’d fallen from his lips, and his face prickled with heat. “Not that I’m not grateful for you patching me up and all,” he tacked on. Shit, he was botching this. “I’m just not a hospital kind of guy.”

The doc took one last look at the jagged lines scrawled on the monitor, the edges of his lips lifting upward in the faintest suggestion of a smile. “Not many police officers are. But considering the complications with the anesthesia and the nature of your injury, we’ll still probably keep you until tomorrow.”

Noah fought the urge to slump, but mostly because he suspected the movement might hurt like a bitch. “Great,” he said, although he couldn’t have meant it less. Something about the doctor’s expression snagged his attention hard, and Noah’s gut did a double-down. “Wait. How long are we talking for full recovery, here?”