Not Quite Dead (A Lowcountry Mystery)

Chapter Twenty-Three

It seems like half the town mills around the waiting room in the damn hospital, a place that I would prefer never to set foot in again for my entire life. The doctor's bandaged my wrists and my forehead from the struggle along the river, then tended to Mel even though she told them a hundred times she wanted to be with Will.

Will's in surgery, and they haven't been out to update us yet. Will's parents are here, and so are Mel's. Grant's with one of his great-grandparents, and the rest of the people sitting or lounging or pacing are concerned friends. I spot Leo and give him a tight smile.

Beau's next to me, hasn't left my side, and his hands have hardly left my body. They wanted to admit me, give me a bed, but even though I refused, it doesn't stop the mayor from hovering. He shifts so we're facing each other, concern and anger swirling into dark clouds in his eyes, then runs rough fingertips over my cheeks. "What hurts?"

"I'm fine, Beau." When he refuses to accept that answer again, I give in. "Shoulder hurts. Face."

"Yeah, you've looked better." He sets one hand on my waist and uses the other to swipe filthy hair off my forehead, then grimaces. "Don't move."

I'm not going anywhere, and not just because the cops haven't been around to take my statement yet.

Beau returns with two ice packs and a fistful of ibuprofen at the same time as two identical police officers stride toward me. Their nametags declare them Officer Ryan and Officer Ryan, which makes my eyes pop painfully wide.

"Tom and Ted Ryan? You're cops?" The idea strikes me as hilarious—the only kids to land in hot water more often as kids than Leo Boone and me are policemen. If it wouldn't have hurt like the dickens, I would have laughed until I peed myself.

They grin, twin pictures of Irish heritage, right down to their whiskey-loving bellies. "I know. It's like the biggest finger ever to that old prick sheriff, right?"

I have no idea which one of them speaks. I never could tell them apart, and never had any desire to try once they told me the only sure way was to check out the birthmark on Tom's ass.

"You've got that right."

The old sheriff had been ancient, and his face would turn the color of an eggplant when we got him going. Their smiles fall away as they study my injuries, and eyebrows go up when Beau snags my hand.

"We've got to ask you what happened, Graciela. We've talked to Melanie already."

"Fine."

The Ryan twins grow more serious than I ever believed possible, pulling out a recorder and a pad to take notes, then asking me to recount the events of the day, starting with the attack that morning. I tell them everything, distracted more than once by Beau's face in the corner of my eye. It appears to be carved from stone, with the exception of his eyes, which glitter with something fierce. Determined. Fiery.

It reminds me of the story Mel told about Leo's sister, and distracts me from one of the cops' questions. "What?"

"I asked why you didn't report the threats you received."

"I don't know. It seemed like some kind of teenage prank."

"Kids breaking out car windows? That's pretty extreme," one of them comments, skepticism plain in the twist of his lips. If anyone would know, the two of them would.

"It didn't seem possible that anyone was after me in particular—I'd been gone for years and was back only a couple of days when it started." At the time, I wasn't aware of the centuries-old hex on my family that lived on in the form of a deceptively strong voodoo witch.