Part 2
“You grabbed me first.”
“This is my house.”
“That doesn’t make her your property.”
Nolan went still, though not from agreement. Marcus felt the young man calculating beneath his arm.
Celeste had crossed the room with a wool coat. She knelt beside Laurel and laid it over her shoulders without trying to move her. Her burgundy skirt spread across the marble. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
Laurel stared at her without answering.
Marcus eased his pressure only after Nolan stopped resisting. “Stay in the chair.”
Nolan gave a small, contemptuous laugh. “You think you’re in charge because you’re bigger?”
“No.”
Marcus released him, stepped backward without turning his back, and retrieved the transmitter. Its black casing was scuffed but intact. He extended the short antenna, pressed the emergency channel, and gave the estate address, Laurel’s condition, and a request for medical assistance and security support. The dispatcher repeated the location. Marcus answered in clipped phrases, watching Nolan rise from the chair.
“You carry that everywhere?” Nolan asked.
“Places without reliable service.”
“You planned this.”
Marcus ignored him. “Adult female, head injury, conscious but disoriented. Possible unlawful restraint. Potentially hostile male on site.”
Nolan’s calm expression changed for the first time. “You’d better be careful what you say.”
Marcus met his eyes while the dispatcher confirmed that an ambulance and two estate security vehicles were approaching from the south gate.
“I am being careful.”
Red and white light appeared faintly through the rain-covered windows, flickering across the indoor olive trees. Nolan looked toward the driveway, then toward the side table where his crystal tumbler stood untouched. He seemed to understand that leaving the room would look worse than remaining in it. He moved back to the chair but did not sit.
The first security officers entered less than two minutes later. Both knew Nolan by name. That made them hesitant. Marcus saw it immediately in the way they slowed near the conservatory doors, their attention shifting from the injured woman to the estate owner and then back again.
Nolan lifted one hand. “This man forced his way into my home and attacked me.”
“His mother opened the door,” Marcus said.
Celeste looked at the officers. Her lips parted. No sound came.
Laurel tried to push herself up.
Marcus dropped beside her. “No. Stay down.”
“I want out of here.”
“The paramedics are coming.”
“I don’t want him near me.”
“He won’t be.”
That promise was easier to make while Marcus was kneeling between her and Nolan. He knew it would become more complicated once lawyers, family money, and other people’s caution entered the night.
The ambulance crew brought a stretcher through the entrance. One paramedic stabilized Laurel’s neck while the other asked her name, the date, whether she had lost consciousness, whether she had taken medication or alcohol. Her answers were slow but correct. Marcus stayed close enough for her to see him and far enough not to interfere. Celeste held the coat around Laurel’s shoulders until the paramedic asked her to move.
When they lifted Laurel, she cried out once and immediately apologized.
“You don’t need to apologize,” the older paramedic said.
Marcus watched her face rather than the blood. Pain tightened the skin around her eyes. She reached for him as they secured the straps.
“Come with me.”
He took her hand. “I’m coming.”
Nolan stepped toward the stretcher. A security officer blocked him with an arm.
“She’s my wife.”
Laurel’s fingers locked around Marcus’s hand. “No.”
It was only one word, but everyone in the conservatory heard it.
Outside, rain silvered the broad stone steps and turned the driveway into a field of reflected emergency light. Marcus walked beside the stretcher beneath the covered entrance. Celeste followed, low heels slipping once on the wet stone, still clutching the coat around Laurel’s shoulders. Behind them, the officers entered the house, one speaking into his radio and the other directing Nolan away from the doorway.
Marcus climbed into the ambulance. Before the doors closed, he looked back through the rain. Nolan stood inside the illuminated entrance, one hand braced against the frame. Celeste remained on the steps between her son and the departing stretcher, her face turned toward neither of them.
The ambulance doors shut before Marcus could decide whether her position meant anything.
At the hospital, the emergency department became a sequence of fluorescent corridors, questions repeated by different people, and forms Laurel could not sign because her hand would not stop shaking. Marcus sat beside her while a nurse cleaned the cut above her eyebrow. The blood had dried in a narrow rust-colored line beside her eye. Without it, she might have looked like the girl who used to sleep in the passenger seat of his truck after long drives, her hair caught beneath the seat belt. The memory arrived because of the smell of antiseptic, not because he invited it.
A physician examined her pupils, ordered imaging, and said the cut would need several stitches. Laurel had a mild concussion and bruising along her shoulder and upper arm. Nothing appeared broken. They would keep her for observation because of the disorientation and nausea.
Marcus nodded at every instruction until Laurel touched his sleeve.
“You can stop doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Acting like you’re the one being discharged.”
The physician glanced between them and returned to the chart.
Marcus leaned back. “All right.”
It was not all right. His jaw ached from keeping his teeth together. He wanted names, times, photographs, statements. He wanted to know why Celeste had sent him a four-word message—Come now. Don’t call—after years of no direct contact. He wanted to go back to the estate and make certain Nolan could not soften what the room had looked like. Mostly, he wanted to turn the last three years into an error that could be corrected by staying in one chair.
Laurel closed her eyes while the physician prepared the anesthetic. “Is he here?”
“No.”
May you like
“You don’t know that.”
Marcus looked toward the curtain. “I’ll check.”
