An Ice cold Grave Page 0,15
leave the state or anything. Don't forget that you'll have to talk to the SBI guys."
"We'll do that," Tolliver said.
She left without further advice, and I grabbed my suitcase. It would take me less than ten minutes to be out of there.
Tolliver got up, too, and began sticking his razor and shaving cream into his valet kit. "Why are you so anxious to go?" he asked. "I think you need to sleep."
"It was so bad, what I saw," I said. I paused in my packing, a folded sweater in my hands. "The last thing in the world I want to do is get sucked into this investigation. I'll get the atlas. We better decide which way we want to go."
Though I was still a little unsteady on my feet, I grabbed our keys off the top of the TV. While Tolliver checked the stock in our ice chest, I stepped out into the dark to open the car. I shut the door behind me. The night was cold and silent. There were lots of lights on in Doraville, including the one right above my head, but that still didn't amount to much. I pulled on my heavy jacket while I looked up at the sky. Though the night was cloudy, I could see the distant glitter of a scattering of stars. I like to look at them, especially when my job gets me down. They're vast and cold and far away; my problems are insignificant compared to their brilliance.
Sometime soon, it would snow. I could almost smell it coming in the air.
I shook off the spell of the night sky, and thought about my more immediate concerns. I clicked the car's keyless entry pad and stepped off the little sidewalk that ran outside our door. Something moved in my peripheral vision and I began to turn my head.
A crushing blow struck my arm just below my elbow. The pain was immediate and intense. I shouted, wordless with alarm, and pressed the panic button on the keypad. The horn began to blare, though in the next instant the keys fell from my numb fingers. I tried to turn to face the danger, trying to throw my hands up to protect myself. The left arm would not obey. I could only make out a man clad in black with a knit hood over his head, and a second blow was already arcing toward the side of my head. Though I launched myself sideways to avoid the full force of the impact, I thought my head would fly off my shoulders when the shovel grazed my skull. I started down to the sidewalk. The last thing I remember is trying to throw my hands out to break my fall, but only one of them answered my command.
"SHE'LL be okay, right?" I heard Tolliver's voice, but it was louder and sharper than usual. "Harper, Harper, talk to me!"
"She's going to come around in a minute," said a calm voice. Older man.
"It's cold out here," Tolliver shouted. "Get her into the ambulance."
Oh, shit, we couldn't afford that. Or at least, we shouldn't spend our money this way. "No," I said, but it didn't come out coherently.
"Yes," he said. He'd understood me; God bless Tolliver. What if I were by myself in this world? What if he decided...Oh, Jesus, my head hurt. Was that blood on my hand?
"Who hit me?" I asked, and Tolliver said, "Someone hit you? I thought you fainted! Someone hit her! Call the police."
"Okay, buddy, they'll meet us at the hospital," said the calm voice again.
My arm hurt worse than anything I'd ever felt. But then, just about every part of my body hurt. I wanted someone to knock me out. This was awful.
"Ready?" asked a new voice.
"One, two, three," said the calm one, and I was on a gurney and choking on a shriek at the pain of being moved.
"That shouldn't have hurt so much," New Voice said. New Voice was a woman. "Does she have another injury? Besides the head?"
"Arm," I tried to say.
"Maybe you shouldn't move her," my brother said.
"We've already moved her," Calm Voice pointed out.
"Is she all right?" asked still another voice. That was a really stupid question, in my opinion.
Then they rolled me to the ambulance; I opened my eyes again, just a crack, to see the flashing red lights. I had another pang of dismay about the money this was going to cost; but then when they slid me in, I had no pangs about