Chapter 3
Warm... she was warm, Abigail realized as she rolled over in bed, too warm.
Shoving the bedclothes down and off herself, she suddenly felt a pang of pain in her shoulder and something constricting her breathing. Flinching as she raised her hand to her throat—it was the collar of her shirt.
What the heck? she wondered sleepily. How’d I fall asleep in a t-shirt?
She hated sleeping in tight t-shirts.
Squeezing her eyes closed against the light, she sat up and reached over her shoulder to grab the back of the shirt and pull it over her head. Then she could go back to sleep...
She vaguely wondered what she was supposed to be doing today, still half asleep. As she tugged on the shirt and wriggled free of it, she realized that she was also wearing tight pajama bottoms. Contorting her arms to try and unhook her bra caused her shoulder to spike with pain again, and she paused, muttering, “Ow, shoulder...”
Rolling the joint felt good, but her pajamas were cutting into her stomach as she sat there, and now she had to pee. She let out a loud complaining groan and cracked open one eye to get accustomed to the light. Confused, she spied... Jeans?
“Good morning!” Byron’s bright voice rang out from the bathroom.
A wave of panic crashed over her. She was in bed! And Byron was-!? She was in her bra! Abigail grabbed at the shirt that she had discarded on the bed next to her, desperately pulling it back over her head as fast as she could.
“I’m almost done in here,” he called out again, “trying to shave with these flimsy hotel razors is not fun... I’ll only be a minute. There’s coffee there on the side.”
“Uh, yeah, thanks,” Abigail replied, “sure.”
Her breathing was starting to return to normal as she woke up. She slowly remembered the previous night, when they had barely convinced the hotel to give them a room after they had been declared ‘no-shows’ for the rooms they had actually booked.
She squeezed her eyes closed again as she tried to capture some kind of calm.
“You all right?” he called out.
“Yeah... just... adjusting,” she said, “not used to waking up... not at home.”
Abigail winced over how that might sound, but she was more concerned with how her mind had just shut down the night before. She had experienced brief lapses in short and medium term memory since the crash, but very rarely had she had to piece together a whole night.
She felt her face flush hot at the scenario her imagination assigned to this pattern of events—waking up in a hotel room with Byron, unable to remember the night before in detail—even though she knew the actual circumstances were far less romantic.
“Sleeping in hotels is definitely weird,” he said from the bathroom, “you find the coffee?”
Abigail looked around her. The other side of the bed was still perfectly made—it was only missing a pillow. She spotted a pillow on the deep blue armchair in the corner of the room, where a thin blanket was crushed into a wrinkled ball. Byron’s shoes sat next to the chair. A small smile teased at the corner of her mouth. He really was a gentleman.
The plastic tray sat on what passed for a coffee table in the tiny double room, but the huge carafe of clearly steaming hot coffee mattered to her most in that moment.
“Coffee, yeah,” she said, still thick with sleep, “…you want?”
A beat of silence passed before his voice sounded again, “Yes, please, let me know when it’s ready—I’m just cleaning up.”
She cocked her head to one side, then she understood. He was giving her space to orient herself and make sure she was comfortable before he came into the room. A wide smile sneaked across her face as she stood and crossed to the table. She had obviously passed out as soon as they’d gotten up to the room, Abigail realized as she noticed she was still wearing one sock—the other tucked into her shoe. Anxiety flared up in her chest; if her shoelace hadn’t come undone, would they have been in that passage to be mugged? Was this actually her fault?
“It’s super hot,” she said, banishing the thought from her mind and pouring the scalding liquid into the thick ceramic mug.
“Perfect,” Byron said, stepping into the room, “how’s the shoulder?”
Abigail winced. “I forgot about it until I tried to—”
She broke off, remembering what she had been trying to do.
“Uh… move the covers,” she finished.
“You sure you don’t want it seen?”
“No!” she said firmly, handing him the cup. “I have enough medical trauma, I don’t need to pay five grand to have some overworked emergency room nurse tell me it’s sprained and take an aspirin.”
In order to avoid his pointed stare, Abigail busied herself, fussing with the other things on the tray.
“Do I remember you saying something about the captain offering us a ride?” she asked.
She remembered that it had not been accepted, but Byron hadn’t seemed pleased about the offer, so she was taking a risk that it would either distract him enough or annoy him enough to change the subject.
His eyes darkened and flicked away from her, “he did, but that was totally unnecessary, too much. I haven’t seen him in years.”
Abigail ran through the texts she definitely shouldn’t have seen on his phone with the local police captain in Newport. He had apparently been giving her the cold shoulder. Byron raised his arms above his head and stretched from side to side, his tight T-shirt pulling up to reveal a taut stomach and what she could have sworn was a...
“Is that...?” she started to ask, but bit off her question in miracle time.
“Hm?” he asked as he pulled his arm across his chest to stretch the other direction.
“Uh, sorry, I was going to say ‘is that so’ but I figured it, um, wasn’t any of my business...”
He eyed her from across the table. “Mm, well, it’s not exactly confidential—we were in the same intake. We were friends. I changed directions, he is still eyeing off an eventual political career. I’m eyeing off a nice, early retirement where I get to build things.”
Byron smiled, and while she could see that it was genuine, she also saw something guarded in his face.
“Sure...”
They sat quietly together for a few minutes while Byron flicked through the notes he had taken the previous night. Abigail realized how many times she had reached for her phone only to realize that it was gone.
“Ugh!” she exclaimed after the fifth or sixth time. “I really need to spend less time on my phone...”
He gave a quiet chuckle, “Ah, people worry about that too much—besides, you’ve got a special license to be extra attached, you’ve got kids overseas.”
“Don’t remind me,” she groaned. “I’m still freaked out. I can’t even think about how I’m going to tell them without them panicking. As well as all my notes and stuff—I’m not sure what backs up to the cloud and what doesn’t....”
“Well,” Byron said, “It’s not going to solve everything, but I did take another old friend up on an offer...”
Abigail’s eyes narrowed as she stared at him suspiciously, “What did you do?”
“Nothing bad!”
He reached behind him and looked for the shelf that ran through the room, she hadn’t even noticed the yellow envelope there before.
“What… did… you… do?” she repeated.
“Garrett was around last night, and he offered to lend us two of his old phones,” Byron replied, “you can sign in to some of your accounts and let the girls know you’re all right—and Cleo, definitely tell her. She’d be scarier than the guy who robbed us if she found out you kept that from her.”
Abigail stared as he fished out a clunky-looking phone. “Your buddy just happens to have multiple old phones at work that he just gave to you after not seeing you in... how long?”
“Garett? Only about six months,” Byron replied, though he did look guilty about something.
She still took the phone, though; there was no way she was going to pass up the chance to talk to the girls.
“Oh hey,” she said when her email had successfully logged in, “whoever it was tried to open my phone a hundred and twelve times.”
“Damn...” Byron said, glancing up from his own screen, “bet they were hoping you had pin access enabled for your banking apps.”
“Little jerk,” she said, thinking she wanted to call the guy something much stronger. “I’ve received emails from the bank, too—they’ve frozen all my cards, but won’t issue me new ones.”
“That sucks... Can you call them?”
“It’s Sunday, only their fraud line will be open and the cards are frozen... this says I’ll have to go in with ID. What ID do they think I have?” she said, glaring at the phone and adding loudly. “My wal-let got sto-len!”
She let out the last few words as if shouting down a bad connection and Byron cackled at her tone, which earned him a playful glare.
“Anyway,” he said, recovering, “Garrett wants to see us today. He said he’d buy us lunch.”
“Well, that’s sure nice of him, phones and lunch, what a keeper. Is he going to buy me new clothes too?”
She flashed a sarcastic smile, but her face froze as she read an incoming text preview.
“What is it?” Byron asked, noticing immediately.
“Uh... you, uh, may have been right... about the whole parcel thing,” she said as she read, wincing as she read out the text.
From Shelley: OMG! OMG! OMG! You’ll never guess the insane day I’ve had, the FBI came to my house! The actual FBI! Apparently someone stole the first parcel I sent you! I had no idea they took mail theft quite so seriously.... they wanted to know what was in it, but I told them I didn’t know as it was all your stuff. You might be getting a visit... sorry, babes!