Conceal, Protect - By Carol Ericson Page 0,34
head against the cracked window.
“Noelle?” J.D. reached across the seat, and her head fell back, a trickle of blood oozing from her temple.
“If she doesn’t come out of this, Zendaris, you’re a dead man.”
Chapter Ten
The voices were coming back. They had faded away, and now they murmured and swirled around her, just like the snow. She stuck out her tongue to catch some.
“Noelle?” Warm fingers pressed her cheek, and she inhaled the distinctly masculine scent of J.D. “She’s awake.”
“How’s your head feeling, Noelle?”
Her head? Blinking, she reached up, her fingers stumbling across a bandage. Her temple throbbed beneath it, and she closed her eyes. The darkness behind her lids soothed her.
The accident.
She struggled to sit up, but firm hands patted her back down. “It’s okay. We’re going to load you into the ambulance now.”
“J-J.D.?” She chattered out the name, a sudden chill seizing her neck and jaw.
A gloved hand grabbed hers. “I’m right here. I’m riding in the ambulance with you.”
Her world jerked and swayed, and she squeezed her eyes shut tighter, but they were just rolling her stretcher to the ambulance.
The ride to the hospital was a blur of the EMT asking her questions about the day of the week and the president in between pokes and prods from various medical instruments. And J.D. Always J.D., murmuring soothing words, touching her hand and adjusting the sheet covering her body.
As long as they didn’t pull that sheet over her face, she figured she was okay.
Later, it could’ve been minutes, it could’ve been hours, her stretcher zoomed through the emergency entrance to the hospital and down a shiny corridor that resembled more snow.
She was still woozy and a little nauseous, but she was able to answer the doctor’s questions, and she remembered the accident itself up until the point where the truck hit the guardrail. That’s when she must’ve smacked her head against the car window.
She even remembered floating in and out of consciousness as J.D. pulled her from the car and the sirens from the ambulance wailed to the rescue.
When she got back to her room after the CAT scan, J.D. crept in and pulled up a chair.
She opened one eye. “Concussion—nothing more.”
“That’s enough. You had me going there for a while. You’d come to and then check out. Scared the hell out of me.”
“How are you?”
“I’m fine.” He rolled up his sleeves and held up his arms, bent at the elbow. “Just some abrasions from the air bag.”
“The other car?”
“Took off.”
“What? Like a hit-and-run? Because it was totally his fault, unless he was skidding. But then, why take off?”
J.D. shifted his gaze downward, his thick, dark lashes dropping. “I don’t think it was an accident, Noelle.”
“You mean he was drunk, or...” The nausea hit her again and she gagged.
“Water?” J.D.’s hand hovered over the plastic pitcher next to her bed.
She nodded, her eyes never leaving his, although he avoided her stare.
He handed her the cup, and she took a sip. Then she wiped the back of her hand across her mouth.
“You mean someone tried to run us off the road on purpose, don’t you?”
“After all that’s happened, it’s too much of a coincidence to believe otherwise. If the other car’s brakes failed or it hit an icy patch, why would the driver take off after we crashed?”
“Maybe he’d been drinking and was afraid he’d get cited for a DUI.” She pleated the sheet with shaky fingers. She didn’t want to be having this conversation.
“If he was drinking and driving, he would’ve stopped the first time he bumped us.”
Crumpling the sheet in her fist, she said, “But why? Why would someone stalking me want to kill us?”
“Incapacitate.”
“Excuse me?”
“I don’t know that bumping a car like that into a guardrail would kill the occupants of the car, but it would incapacitate us. It knocked you out.”
“But why? It doesn’t make any sense to me.”
J.D. jumped up from the plastic chair so quickly it tipped over and fell to the floor, bouncing once. He paced to the window, plowing his fingers through his hair.
The frustration emanated from his body in waves, so palpable she could feel it washing over her, merging with her own frustration into a crescendo ready to crash and engulf them both.
Throughout the chaos of the past few days, it comforted her to know that J.D. had taken on her problems as his own. He wanted to nail her stalker as much as she did.
And he’d kissed her. His interest in her had surpassed the mystery of the break-in