"I was alive?"

"Yes."

Several tears skimmed down Maris's cheeks as she considered how that must have been for him. She looked down at her body loosely wrapped in a hospital gown, name tag on her wrist, pressure cuff on one arm, intravenous tube in the other. A warmed blanket had been flipped over her by the nurse before she departed. Maris would really like one of those cabinets for home. Nothing like a heated blanket.

"Dan..." She felt slightly disa.s.sociated from her surroundings and wondered if the hospital personnel had given her something for pain.

"Yes?"

"You really do care, don't you?"

"f.u.c.k. Of course I do."

She pulled her hand free of his grasp and cupped the side of his jaw. He kissed her palm. His skin felt damp.

"You've been crying, haven't you?"

"Maris, would you just shut up?"

"Sure."

"I don't mean that."

"Yes, you do. I'm an idiot and you're...you're a nice man."

He made a face and rolled his shoulders. "I've been called worse."

"I wasn't even looking...I just stepped out in the street. How bad is the damage? Did somebody tell you, at least? Because they've said nothing to me. Not that I remember, anyway."

Dan removed her hand from his face and held it clasped between both of his. "Somehow I always end up in this hospital."

"What?"

"Never mind. No one said anything about broken bones after the x-rays?"

Maris shook her head.

"It takes a while, I suppose. You are splinted up on your leg, but that might be precaution. Does it hurt?"

"At this point, everything hurts."

"Anyway, I think they wouldn't be quite so blase if there was a possibility of internal bleeding. I did hear a doctor in the hall mention concussion, though. If that's all you've come out of this with, you're d.a.m.ned lucky." He turned her hand in his, pressing his thumb into her palm. "One of the witnesses said the driver pulled out of a parking s.p.a.ce without noticing you were there. Luckily the car hadn't picked up speed yet. Whoever was behind the wheel stopped momentarily and then sped off."

"Anybody get a tag?"

Dan shook his head. "No. But we've got a pretty good description of the vehicle."

"We? I thought you were...I don't know. Not suspended, but..." Her head hurt, making thinking difficult.

"I was only taken off your aunt's case and told to take a couple of days' vacation. I'm not suspended. I've still got a job. It's still we' unless they actually fire me."

Dan put his head down on the back of her hand. He appeared inclined to stop speaking for a while so Maris let him because an urge to seek stillness had come over her, too. She would have closed her eyes, but if she did have a concussion, she thought she might not be allowed to sleep. Having never had a head injury, she wasn't sure, so she stared at a bright orange sign on the wall regarding biohazard and listened to the silence creeping in. Sound fell away, first voices, then machinery, down to the ticking clock on the wall, a noise she hadn't previously noticed. A sudden fear possessed her that despite Dan's non-medical a.s.surances to the contrary, death had come to claim her.

A mist materialized in the corner of the room, taking undefined shape as it struggled to manifest. Maris tried to jiggle her hand, to shake Dan to attention, but found she couldn't move.

Don't give in.

"What?" Had she said that word aloud? Her lips felt stiff and lifeless.

Hold on, child.

"Aunt Alva?"

The machine to her right burst through the bubble of silence with an ear-piercing clamor.

Dan pulled into the hospital parking lot and found a spot a good distance from the main entrance. Naturally everyone wanted the closest s.p.a.ces in the pouring rain. He hadn't brought an umbrella. Who was he kidding? He never carried an umbrella. Anywhere. Not the manly thing to do. Getting out of the car, he turned his collar up against the onslaught and ran across the puddled blacktop. The automatic doors opened for him, but not quickly enough. He hit the right one with his elbow and swore. Mouthing an apology at an old lady waiting in a chair at outpatient admissions, he headed for the elevator.

The nurses on the second floor knew him by sight at this point, and he nodded greetings as he pa.s.sed. At the last room on the left, he paused. He heard voices inside. No, not voices, plural. Only one. Maris was on the phone.

Unabashedly, he listened for a few seconds before entering. Maris's mom had to be on the other end. Maris didn't talk to anyone else in that manner, with a note of impatience mixed with devotion. Maris had told her mother a couple of days ago about Alva's pa.s.sing, believing her mother wouldn't really care. But she had.

"Yes, the body's been released. I thought I told you that yesterday. There was no one but me to make the decisions, Mom. Give it a little time, and I'll arrange a service. I...I can't right now. There are complications."

Yes, like Alva's murder, the fact Maris had been in the hospital after being struck by a car, and the dead-end of a lead in Alva's case that had pointed to one of the neighbors with a criminal record, leaving only Maris once again. Nothing had yet come of the vehicle that had run Maris down. And Maris didn't mention any of this to her mother.

As soon as she was up to it, Maris had placed a small obituary for Alva. Dan had encouraged her, hoping the announcement might bring a call from an attorney somewhere who'd prepared Alva's Will. A double-edged sword if it proved Maris benefited in any way. Dan hoped it would reveal another beneficiary. Someone hard and cold and not at all like Maris.

Dan moved to stand on the threshold. Maris, dressed and ready to go, waved him inside from her perch on the edge of the hospital bed.

"Mom, I've got to run. I'll call soon. Yes, I promise. Work is okay with my being out. Nothing I can do about it, right? Yeah. Okay. Love you."

Dan eyed the white gauze wrapped around her head and the fuzz of shaved hair showing on the right side. "I thought that was coming off?"

"It is. Do you have time to wait a few minutes? Someone's coming to remove this and give me my release instructions."

He walked up to her and pulled a box from his pocket. "I've been holding onto this for you. I found it on the ground the day of your accident." He pulled off the lid.

She threw her hands over her mouth and gasped in the hollow they made. Then she reached out and s.n.a.t.c.hed her feather earring from the cotton inside. "Oh, Dan, thank you, thank you so, so much. Can you help me put it in?"

He did, fingers lingering against the side of her throat. Her pulse beat steady and strong. When he ran a fingertip over the line of tendon, her skin warmed, but she eased his hand away and made another adjustment to the position of the earring.

She dropped her hands into her lap. "I called that hotel outside of town. Now the d.a.m.ned convention is over, they had plenty of empty rooms, so I-"

"I told you I would take you home with me."

Maris avoided his eye, stroking the feather. "Things haven't changed. With us, perhaps, they have. But not out there in the world where you perform a lawman's job."

Dan threw himself down in the nearest chair, continuing to clutch the empty box in his hand. So much for romantic gestures. Not that he expected her to fall into bed with him again. Not yet. She had some healing to do still.

"You make me sound like a freaking sheriff out of the Old West, Maris. You need someone to look after you. You're not allowed to drive yet, you can't return to work, and it is the preference of the Alcina Cove PD that, if you don't have to leave the area, you don't. If you're going to be that G.o.dd.a.m.ned stubborn, you can have the guestroom."

"And if you're going to be that G.o.dd.a.m.ned stubborn, I'll take it." Maris caressed the feather one more time, lifting her gaze to the doorway.

Two people entered, a floor nurse and the other presumably Maris's doctor. Dan stood. "I'll step out." Before anyone could protest, he darted into the corridor. He strode to the window overlooking the hospital grounds and shoved his hands into his pockets. Rainwater dripped off his hair and down his back beneath his jacket. He shivered. Outside, the day was gray, wet, and miserable. Plumes of water arced behind the tires of a vehicle departing the lot. As he would be required to pull the car to the entrance for pickup, he had no worries about Maris getting wet, though.

His gaze shifted to the wide, brightly lit corridor reflected behind him, U-shaped stations running down the center all the way to the far end. Hospital personnel and visitors moved in and out of rooms with a drone of quiet conversation. From Maris's door, the doctor raised a hand to get his attention. Dan started to make his way back, halting at the sight of a figure standing beneath the exit sign halfway down the lengthy hall. Dan narrowed his eyes, bringing the man into sharper focus. Dan had seen him somewhere before. Of course, he came into contact with hundreds of people every year. The guy carried a bouquet of flowers wrapped in cellophane. After reading the sign directing visitors to certain room numbers, he started making his way in Dan's direction, pausing outside each door to check the numbered plaque.

Dan turned away. Where he'd seen the guy would come to him, probably in the middle of the night. Right now he didn't want to get into any conversations. After nearly a week in the hospital, Maris was ready to leave. The first two or three days he'd been mired in worry and senseless guilt, but after that...

After that, he'd been filled with a sense of liberation like the shift of the atmosphere after a long, hot summer. He felt lighter, somehow. Physically lighter. Made no sense, but he found himself sloughing off long-term anxiety like dead skin.

Entering the hospital room, he studied the un-bandaged right side of Maris's head. A growth resembling a week's worth of soft beard shadowed her scalp around the edges of an oversized band-aid. Beneath it, so he had been told, the scar of a very precise incision would one day shine like a thin silver line. Right now, he suspected it resembled nothing quite so picturesque. A hand span below the new bandage, the plume of Maris's feather swung in a draft of air.

"Your girl's ready to go, Detective."

Maris's gaze jerked toward the doctor at his words. Her shoulders shifted in a dismissive shrug. She rose from the bed, gathering her plastic hospital bag from the mattress. The cream-colored teddy bear Felicia Woodward had given her peered out the top.

"I'll go bring the car up. See you in a few minutes, Maris."

"I-can't I walk with you?"

"No," said the doctor. "Definitely not. Hospital policy. Sit tight and wait for the wheelchair."

Dan left the room, walking quickly in case Maris took it into her head to disobey the doctor's orders. Glancing aside into one of the rooms, he spotted the fellow with the flowers. The man turned and looked at him with no sign of recognition at all. Dan continued down the hall, figuring he had to be wrong. Still, something seemed familiar. Had he become like Maris, seeking relevance in everything? Oddly, though, she'd said very little along those lines this past week. She had been quite pensive instead. He supposed he would be, too, after a brush with death. But the head injury...could it have altered her perception of things? Life would be a h.e.l.l of a lot easier if she were normal. That was unfair, though, to judge her on the basis of his own existence. Did he expect her to live without her gift because he'd be more comfortable? Besides, she wouldn't be Maris then, would she?

That gave him pause. What if Maris was different now?

Five minutes later, Dan pulled his car into a s.p.a.ce in front of the older entrance, the one where aids brought patients to be released to whoever would be driving them home. The rain had gotten chilly, so he kept the car running, heater on high. After a moment, he s.n.a.t.c.hed a towel from the back seat to dry his hair, glancing in the mirror every few seconds for Maris's arrival. When she finally wheeled up with an aid at her back, she looked pale and shaken. The aid pulled the chair off the curb and closer to the car. Dan hopped out.

"Are you all right? Not dizzy or anything?"

Maris handed him her belongings and pushed up out of the chair. "I'm fine."

As he helped Maris into the front pa.s.senger seat, Dan glanced back at the aid holding the chair handles.

"A man got in the elevator with us," the woman said. "Made small talk, mostly about the weather. And then he asked your wife-"

"Not his wife," Maris said, buckling her seat belt.

"He asked her if he knew her. She said no, but he persisted. That was a little annoying, yes, but something about the exchange"-the aid tipped her head in Maris's direction-"upset her."

"I'm fine," Maris repeated.

Dan thanked the woman and helped her lift the empty wheelchair up onto the sidewalk. After, he got in the car and swiveled to face Maris. "Warm enough?"

"Getting there."

"Is there a possibility this guy recognized you from before?"

"I was twelve when I left, Dan. I had buck teeth and braids and was a good five inches shorter than I am now. I was a late bloomer, one of those girls who doesn't reach full height until her mid-teens."

"What about him upset you, then?" Dan put the car in gear and rolled away from the curb.

"I...I sensed something about him. Something not good."

Ah. Maris had returned. "Like what?"

"I don't know. Apprehension. Regret, possibly. Anger. A lot of mixed-up c.r.a.p going on in that guy's head. With the exception of you, I don't usually get that clear a message. And those freaking flowers in his hand. He kept waving them around like he was trying to punctuate his words in the air. He threw them away when he got off the elevator a floor before we did."

Dan inhaled, willing himself calm. "Flowers? What kind of flowers?"

"A variety of daisies, shastas and gerbers, and something purple in there, too, all wrapped up in cellophane with a green ribbon. Does it matter?"

Yes, he thought. It very well might if it was the same guy he'd noticed. "Think hard. Are you sure you haven't seen him somewhere?"

She shook her head.

"Perhaps behind the wheel of the car that hit you?"

"What?"

Dan tightened his grip on the steering wheel. "The accident was in the paper, including your name. Anyone would have figured you'd been brought to this hospital. He might have been driven by guilt to seek you out. That would explain him asking if you knew him, if you recognized him. I should have paid closer attention."

"To what?"

"To that guy. I'm pretty sure I saw him on your floor. He'd gone into a room a few doors down from yours, but now that I think about it, the bed in that room was empty. I think the patient might have been out walking, and he ducked in there when he saw you weren't alone."

Maris's fingers tightened on the side of her seat. "You don't think those flowers were for me, do you? That's creepy as h.e.l.l."

"I don't know. He could be feeling really bad about what happened. That doesn't mean he isn't going to be charged, though. The sketch artist we sometimes work with is a friend of mine. I'd like to ask her to come in while the guy's face is still fresh in my head. But I'll see you settled in first."

"What would be the purpose of having a sketch? You don't know it was the driver. I really don't recall much of that day."

"I don't need to. We can put the likeness in the paper as a person of interest. We don't need to specify suspect. He could be a witness for all anyone might know. But the sketch could turn up a name."

"Okay." Maris hadn't quite settled down.

Dan wondered what she might be hiding from him. He didn't need to be protected. He needed to be informed. "Maris, remember what you said about the two of us lying to protect others and for self-preservation? Do you remember that?"

She nodded again.

"We've been through a lot together this past week. Prematurely, yes, but true. I think we need to start being honest, all the time, no matter what."

Her head bobbed one more time, a small movement hardly noticeable in the gloom of rain. "Okay."

"Okay" was not an agreement. It was not even an answer. Well, it was a Maris-type answer, open-ended and vague. In her head, she probably understood what she meant, but there was no point in seeking clarification. Not right now. When he needed a more definitive answer, he would bring it up again.