Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Her throat felt funny. Achy. And something was tugging on her hand. Not the palm, but…on top of her hand. Her eyes cracked open as she peered over at her right hand.
What in the world…? Was that an IV hooked up to her hand?
She swallowed, her throat ached a bit worse, and as she took in her surroundings, Charlotte realized that she was in a hospital.
“Don’t freak out.”
Logan’s voice.
Her head slowly angled to the left. Toward his voice.
He sat near the bed. No tux coat. But still wearing his fancy shirt.
The sleeves had been rolled up to his elbows.
He also still wore his expensive pants. His hair appeared disheveled, as if he’d hauled his fingers through it over and over again, and a dark line of shadow covered his jaw.
“Seriously. Don’t freak. A nurse is going to come in soon. She’s going to call me your husband, and that is just totally cool, so roll with it, will you?”
What?
He flashed her a wide smile. “Hi, there. Glad you’re back with me.” He leaned forward. “Don’t do that shit ever again.” A growl. “I will be extremely pissed if you do.”
She squinted at him. “Where am I?”
“Hospital.”
That was what she’d suspected. Sort of hard to miss the white walls, the antiseptic smells, and the, well, hospital bed that she seemed to be using. “Why?” Why had he brought her to a hospital?
“What’s the last thing you remember?”
Her mind seemed cloaked with too many cobwebs and waking up in a hospital bed was never, ever a good situation. Though she supposed it was better than not waking up. At all. “What happened to me?” Her voice hitched up. Did her voice sound rusty? She thought it did. “What is wrong with me?”
“Nothing. Nothing is wrong. You are fine.” He reached for her hand, the left one. The one not currently connected to an IV needle. His fingers threaded through hers. “You are safe. I’ve got you.”
His words reassured her. She was able to pull in a deep breath. “Logan—”
The door flew open. Her head whipped toward the door, and Charlotte saw a young, cute, blonde nurse stroll inside. A wide smile curved the woman’s lips. “You’re up! Fantastic!” She strolled around the bed. Stopped next to Logan and put a hand on his shoulder.
What is that about? Charlotte’s eyes narrowed on the nurse’s hand. Why was the woman being so touchy with Logan?
“I told your handsome husband that you were going to be just fine. Assured him that you’d get the best care possible.” The nurse’s hand still lingered on Logan.
And Charlotte’s gaze lingered on that hand. “Why are you petting him?”
A twittering laugh spilled from the nurse as she pulled her hand away.
“I bet you are thirsty, aren’t you? I’ll just get you some fresh ice water and be right back.
I’ll do a full check of your vitals when I return.
” She bustled for the door but paused. The nurse looked back and said, “Now that you’re awake, there’s a detective outside who will want to talk with you.
She’s out in the waiting area. She arrived not too long ago, so just get ready for her. ”
A detective?
The nurse left. The door closed.
Charlotte realized her heart was racing. Probably not good for that promised check of her vitals. “What. Is. Happening?”
“Here.” He reached for a brown pitcher on the tray near him. “It’s still pretty cold. At least, I think it is. You don’t have to wait for her to come back.” Using the pitcher, he poured some water into a white cup for her. Then, gently, he brought the cup to her lips.
She was angled halfway up in bed, with the top of the mattress elevated behind her.
“Drink, sweetheart,” he urged.
“I can hold the cup myself.” A grumpy rasp. She hated being so confused. She also hated her achy throat.
And she hated the way the nurse had been petting Logan.
“Yeah, I know you can hold it. But just drink, would you?” He kept right on holding that cup.
Fine. Whatever. She stared into his eyes, parted her lips, and drank that utterly amazing water. Maybe she gulped it all down until she emptied the cup, and her aching throat felt so much better.
“Good,” he praised her. “You’re probably sore from when I insisted they shove that tube down your throat.” He put down the cup.
“What?”
“Don’t look at me like that. It had to be done.”
“A tube had to be shoved down my throat?”
“How else were they going to pump your stomach?”
“Someone pumped my stomach?” Then it was there, a fast flash.
Her memory surging back. The study. The spinning room.
Fighting with the stupid lock on the study door as she clung with all of her strength to consciousness.
She’d needed to get to Logan. She’d known he’d help her. If she could just get to him…
He sat down beside her again. Hauled his chair even closer to the bed, even though it had already been plenty close. “You were drugged. At least, that’s what I think and—”
The door opened again. She expected the pretty nurse to bound back inside, but it wasn’t the nurse.
It was Jezebel. Holding a pitcher of water. The door shut behind her. “If anyone asks,” Jezebel said as she advanced toward the bed, “I’m a detective with the Las Vegas Police Department. That’s what my ID says, and that is who I am.”
“You can’t be here.” Real horror filled Charlotte.
She shoved at the sheets. Then realized she was just wearing a thin paper gown, so she yanked those sheets right back up over her body.
The IV in her hand stung with her jerky movements.
“You know better than to be out in public on a mission! And you can’t come see me.
That will make a connection between us. It’s too risky for you! ”
“It’s fine. I took precautions.” Utter unconcern.
“Didn’t you hear her?” Logan murmured. “Jezebel’s a Vegas Detective. She’s got this.”
Jezebel put the new pitcher down on the hospital bed’s tall tray. She slanted an assessing glance toward Logan. “I’m a detective, and I hear you’ve moved up to the position of husband. A dramatic development, I believe.”
“Yeah, well, when I arrived at the hospital with her last night, they were asking me all kinds of questions about being next of kin. Said her next of kin had to make medical decisions. Seeing as how Charlotte told me her family members were dead, I figured I needed to step up my game.” A shrug of one shoulder.
“I lied. You lied, Jezebel. Let’s just call it even and move to the important part of the conversation.
” He sucked in a hard breath. “Is that fucking asshole Ares locked in a cell yet?”
The hard fury in his voice caught Charlotte by surprise. Also, had he said…last night?
“He’s not in a cell,” Jezebel admitted.
Logan lunged out of his chair. He even took two steps, as if he was—what? About to run out of the hospital room and go grab Ares?
But Jezebel stepped into his path. “We don’t know for sure that it was him.”
“His party. His place. His freaking champagne.” Each word from Logan seemed bitten out.
Charlotte vaguely recalled the champagne. “It was opened right in front of me.”
Both Logan and Jezebel glanced toward her.
“Right in front of me,” she repeated as she furrowed her brow. “And I only had like…two sips. Three, max.”
“I recovered the bottle,” Jezebel revealed to her.
“Well, technically, the real Vegas police detective, Meredith Reece, recovered it. But I stepped in, pulled some strings, and I have my people running a tox screen on the contents. You know the CIA can work way faster than the locals. If the bottle was drugged, we will know soon enough.” She motioned toward Charlotte.
“The docs did a full tox screen on you.”
“How do you know that?” Hadn’t the nurse said Jezebel had just arrived? “Did you read my medical file or something?” Knowing Jezebel, she’d probably had someone at the CIA hack into the hospital’s patient records.
“I texted her updates on you.” An easy confession from Logan. “While I was texting her, she was sharing updates on what was going down at Ares’s place. Worked better that way. One of us needed to stay with you. The other had to keep an eye on the investigation.”
Charlotte did a double take. “Holy crap.” She wet her lips. “You’re partners.”
“We are not,” Jezebel denied.
Logan nodded. “Yeah, I think we kinda are.”
Jezebel’s eyes could not narrow more. “Let’s focus on the topic, shall we? I don’t have long to spend here.” Her jaw firmed. “At this point, Charlotte, you appear to have attracted the attention of the perpetrator that we are after.”
“Oh, you think?” Logan snapped. He rolled his eyes. “You think she attracted his attention? Considering that she was drugged I’d say that she definitely attracted the bastard’s attention.”
Jezebel’s nostrils flared the faintest bit. “We do believe the other victims may have also been drugged. They were highly capable individuals. Like Charlotte, the last victim even had CIA training.”
Charlotte’s fingers tightened around the sheets. The last victim had been an operative that she knew. That Jezebel knew. Far too well.
“It would take a great deal to catch these individuals unaware,” Jezebel continued in her brisk, emotionless tone.
“Because they are highly vigilant. Sorry, because they were highly vigilant women, that’s the entire reason our profilers suspected drugs were involved in their abductions.
The perp would need the drugs in order to control the vics. ”
“Hold the hell up.” Anger simmered in Logan’s voice. His fierce stare blazed as he leaned toward Charlotte.
She almost hunched in the bed because, wow, he sure looked furious.
Through gritted teeth, he demanded, “You expected some asshole to drug you?”
Well…
“How about you mention a detail like that to me? So we can make sure it does not happen.” He yanked a hand through his hair, making the thick mane even more disheveled.
In her defense, “I watched the champagne be opened in front of me.” She’d thought it was safe. “I barely had any of it. Seriously, maybe three sips.”
“We don’t know that drugs were in the champagne.” Jezebel’s crisp voice.