3. Anna
ANNA
Before I even open my eyes, I want to throw up. It feels like a woodpecker has taken up residence in my skull, and everything hurts. The air is far too dry, in only the way a hospital can be. Sure enough, when I open my eyes, I find monitors and wires and an IV bag lurking in my periphery.
I try to clear the fog from my memory, but there’s a large black void where my admission into the ER should be. And a lot before that is hazy, too.
I remember yelling, gunshots, the crash…
And then fragmented bits.
Staggering out of the car, collapsing on the roadside, and people hovering over me.
They thought I had been shot in the head, seeing broken skull fragments and brain matter and blood when they tried to assess me.
But it wasn’t mine.
Oh God.
Keith.
I reach to feel the side of my head, praying that someone’s washed it all off, but I can’t be sure. There’s a stiffness to it that isn’t reassuring.
At least I’m not covered in gauze and casts.
For how sore I am, I anticipated I would look like a mummy.
But all I can find is a bandage wrapped around my right bicep and a square cloth adhered to the side of my forehead near my temple.
Everything else is just some nasty bruising that’s already had enough time to form and turn a purplish-dark blue.
How long have I been here?
Shit, how am I going to pay for being here?
Fifty new fears unlock themselves, but none are as horrifying as the business card on the tray beside my bed.
Detective Nash, Paradise City PD.
“He and his partner have been in here a couple of times now,” the nurse explains when she checks on me a few minutes later, but that’s all she can tell me.
Are they on the up and up? Were they here to simply get my witness statement for the robbery? Or do they have a connection to Sebastian? Do they know who I really am? Am I even safe here?