Lullabies and Lies - By Mallory Kane Page 0,56
attached to the back of her left hand. Her gaze followed the tubes to the IV bag.
“Where am I?” she croaked. “Where’s Emily?”
The nurse smiled at her. “So you’re awake? You’re in the Emergency Room of Oak Grove Community Hospital.”
“What’s wrong with me?”
“You were sedated.”
Sedated. It all came flooding back. The house, the blood, Emily’s rattle. The visions swirled dizzily in her head like a broken kaleidoscope.
Terror squeezed her heart. “My baby,” she whispered.
The nurse looked at her oddly.
Sunny rubbed her eyes and concentrated. What had happened?
The policewoman had sat with her in the backseat of the police car until Griff had come over with one of the EMTs.
She remembered pleading with Griff not to let them sedate her, but he hadn’t listened.
Once the injection took effect, everything else was a blur. She remembered being carried. Snatches of conversation floated just out of reach of her rational brain.
At one point, she’d heard one of the EMTs say something about the woman’s heart.
Sunny forced herself to speak. “A woman was brought here in the ambulance with me,” she whispered hoarsely to the nurse. She licked her dry lips. “I have to see her. I have to get up.” She lifted her left hand and the tubing pulled, sending a burning pain through the back of her hand.
“Why do I have an IV?”
“The doctor ordered it. You were dehydrated.”
“Take it out. I have to see Bess.”
“Not right now.”
“Please.”
The nurse gently but firmly caught her hand and laid it down on the bed, then straightened the IV tubing. “You need to stay still. I’ll check on her for you. Do you know her name?”
Sunny’s hazy brain wouldn’t work. “I don’t—wait. Bess, I think. Bess something.”
“I’ll be back.”
“Please hurry. She knows where my baby is.”
GRIFF STEPPED into the curtained cubicle. Sunny’s eyes were closed, her brow had that tiny frown line in the middle of it.
After the ambulance had taken off, sirens screaming, he’d spent hours with the local police as they went over Bess Raymond’s house, taking fingerprints, tire prints, blood samples. He’d watched with dread as the CSU team took swab after swab after swab of blood from the living room. He prayed none of it was Emily’s.
Then he’d given Captain Sparks an abbreviated version of what he’d found when he’d arrived at the scene.
As soon as he could get away, he’d come straight here. He’d tried to talk to Bess Raymond. No luck there. The gunshot had miraculously missed her vital organs. It had nicked one kidney and then exited intact.
But she was on a blood thinner after a heart attack almost a year ago, which accounted for all the blood, and made her recovery uncertain.
If Bess died, they might never find Sunny’s baby. How could he bear to tell her? He reached over and ran his thumb along the tiny line between her brows, smoothing it out. Then he combed her silky hair back from her face with his fingers.
She opened her eyes.
“Griff,” she said softly.
“Hi Sunny.” He threw up a smiling mask to hide his worry. “Looks like you had a nice nap.”
She sent him a feeble glare. “You let them drug me.”
“You were about to go over the edge.” He eyed the IV pole. “Looks like it was a good idea.”
Her gaze sharpened. “Did you talk to Bess? What did you find out about Emily?”
“Bess lost a lot of blood.”
Sunny threw back the covers and tried to struggle up, but she was blocked by the metal guardrails on the side of the hospital bed. “I want to talk to her.”
“Sunny, you can’t now.”
Sunny’s face grew pale. “Is she dead?”
“Bess Raymond has a heart condition. They had to take her right into surgery to repair the bullet wound. She’s in Intensive Care on a ventilator. We haven’t been able to talk to her yet.”
Sunny’s eyes widened with dread.
“They’re trying to stabilize her. They hope she’ll regain consciousness soon.”
“And Emily?”
“The crime scene investigation unit is going over the house now. We found an empty infant carrier seat in the bedroom. It’s being checked for trace evidence now.”
“Emily’s gone? They took her.” Sunny put both hands over her mouth as a strangled sob escaped.
Griff stood there helplessly. He didn’t know how to comfort her. All his training, all his experience, hadn’t prepared him for what he was feeling now.
Each missing person was important. Each case he’d handled, he’d given everything he had. But this time, everything he had wasn’t enough.
Looking at Sunny’s pale face and bowed shoulders, he realized a terrifying