Find Me in the Dark by Dea Poirier

Author:Dea Poirier [Poirier, Dea]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781800196698
Publisher: Bookouture
Published: 2021-10-21T04:00:00+00:00

23

A low beeping lulls me awake. The blinding white light, sharp astringent, and the bare walls—I know instantly that I’m in the hospital despite the daze still clinging to my thoughts. I fumble with the side of the bed and find the call button. Then, I wait. Within a half hour, I’ve talked a nurse into calling Lucas. Twenty minutes later, he jogs into my hospital room.

“Finally, you’re awake,” he says.

“Finally?” I ask. The nurse wouldn’t answer most of my questions. She seemed so resistant, in fact, I’m pretty sure someone from the station told her explicitly not to tell me anything.

“It’s been three days since you got stabbed during the altercation with Brayden,” he says, wincing at the words as he says them.

“Three days?” I’ve missed so much time. That’s a lifetime in a murder investigation. “What happened? Why was I out for so long?”

He shakes his head and chews the inside of his cheek for a moment. I wonder who told him not to talk to me too.

“You needed to rest, to heal. You didn’t miss anything other than Brayden being dragged off and us getting the search warrant for his place, dropped about an hour ago. They’re charging him with attempted murder of a law enforcement officer, as well as breaking the protective order. So he’s locked up while we can investigate him further.”

I nod. “Did the search already take place?”

He shakes his head. “No, we haven’t had time to get everyone over there yet.”

It takes me hours and several threats to talk the hospital staff into discharging me and giving me the all-clear to go back to work. Though the flesh around my stitches is nearly healed, the nurses and doctor warn me that it’ll be months until I’m fully healed internally. Each time I breathe, my lung aches. The harder I breathe, the more my eyes water.

“You should really take a few days,” Lucas says as we climb into his car.

“Say that again and I’ll hobble you,” I threaten, though I wouldn’t be able to at the moment. Just getting into the car tweaked my flesh the wrong way. “I’m going to be there for the search.” Feeling like this, like control over my body is slipping through my fingers, is humiliating. But I won’t let myself believe that being injured makes me weak.

“Yeah, yeah,” he says, starting his SUV and throwing it into drive. “Do you ever take a day off?” he asks, looking at me from the corner of his eye.

“Only when I’m unconscious, apparently,” I say, watching him carve his way through the crowded hospital parking lot.

Short of moving across the country to a new station and having travel time, this is the longest stretch of time I’ve had off in years. Maybe ever. After my first homicide case, my sergeant made me take two days off. That alone was enough to drive me stir crazy.

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