Chapter Four
Rose didn’t wake up until the next day. To be more exact, she didn’t wake up until early the next morning. So early that the darkness outside of the hospital window threw her for a moment.
Not as much as the overwhelming pain that went through her head the moment her brain seemed to connect the dots around her.
Beeping machines. Something in her arm. A bed. Not her clothes.
Hospital.
She wasn’t dead.
She was in the hospital.
Rose didn’t have the time to take comfort in that fact before nausea bowled her over.
She might have realized where she was but that didn’t mean she was fully oriented.
She jolted up, covered her mouth and looked over the side toward the window, hoping that there was a trash can to catch what was about to happen.
There wasn’t.
There was, however, a takeout bag.
It appeared like magic right where it needed to be just as the pain in her head came from her mouth.
There wasn’t time to feel self-conscious about it either. She couldn’t spare the time to worry about the hand that touched her back as it happened or the low rumble of the voice behind the action.
“I did the same thing,” he said. “Just don’t be like me and refuse the pain meds when they offer them the first time.”
The hand was heavy and warm and stroked a small path there on her back until the waves of nausea finally stopped. Then the warmth was gone, along with the bag. A tissue found its way to her next.
Rose wiped at her mouth and let a shaky breath out.
A doctor she hadn’t seen before took the bag she’d just gotten sick in and headed out to the hallway without another word. He was back a few moments later.
Rose took the remote attached to her bed and pressed a button to adjust the bed until she was sitting upright. She leaned back and sighed as the man mimicked the lean on the couch next to her. He met her eye when both had settled, and smiled.
“Now that you’re awake, I have some good news and some bad news.”
James Keller looked like he was the bad news.
His hair was tousled, maybe wet, his face was bruised, and there was a split in his eyebrow.
It was a crack above a stare that felt kind and patient and unbothered.
There wasn’t an IV attached to him and he wasn’t wearing a hospital gown like Rose, but she could see he was wearing loose sweats and a baggy T-shirt.
He was probably bandaged somewhere. She thought there might have been a wrap of some kind on his wrist. But she also wasn’t on her A game and the lighting wasn’t the best. There was a lamp on in the corner and backlights around the machines, but the overhead light was off.
The clock read 3:00 a.m.
She noted James was wearing slippers, not full shoes.
Was he a patient still?
He arched an eyebrow at her obvious inspection.
She fought to focus back on what he said.
“Good news and bad news, huh?” she repeated.
He nodded.
“Are we a good news first kind of lady or a Band-Aid rip off kind of gal?”
Rose didn’t have to think on that long at all.
“Rip it off.”
James clasped his fingers together. He rested his hands on his lap, a picture of relaxation. Which made his words quite the contrast.
“The bad news is, you were right about the bomb,” he started.
“I don’t know the details—I’m assuming you’ll find out more and faster than me—but from what I’ve been told it was attached beneath the passenger’s seat, and I really did trigger it by sitting on it.
The sheriff came in here all hot about it and said he has some experts doing their job to figure everything out and that they’d update me when they had an update.
But, again, I’m sure you’ll get more than I will, considering you’re the law. And, well, it was also your car.”
Rose had already figured that she had been right about the bomb. If only for the fact that she’d woken up in the hospital in pain. And the next morning. The blast or the fall must have knocked her out. The last thing she remembered was pulling James.
After that, not a thing.
“The good news?” She had a lot more to ask and say but that seemed to be the better to aim at.
James undid his hands to point a finger gun at her.
“The good news is, you were right about the bomb.”
It was Rose’s turn to arch her eyebrow in question.
James explained with a smile.
“Most people would have thought they were jumping to conclusions and not some character in an action movie. But you jumped and landed right on the truth.” His smile fell.
He sobered a little. “Your sheriff said that if you hadn’t acted as fast as you did, there were a few separate times we both probably would have bitten the dust. So, good news that you were right, and you acted when you did. And thank you for that.”
Rose heard the sincerity.
She had heard the same before.
It made her…uncomfortable.
She smiled to be polite and gave a little nod.
That nod took her smile and rattled her pain back to the forefront.
James’s eyebrows knitted together.
“I saw the nurse in the hallway earlier. She said the doc will be here in a minute but let me see if I can’t hurry him—”
Rose waved her hand to cut him off.
“I’m okay,” she said, pushing through a wave of nausea and hoping her statement was true. “I’m concussed, right?”
James didn’t look convinced, but he did nod.
“You have some bruising too. Oh, and two stitches on your leg. I didn’t see it but the nurse had me look away while she checked so I think it’s probably high up there.”
He paused while Rose did a quick inspection.
Sure enough, there was a bandage on her upper thigh and hip. Right where her underwear should have been.
Good on the nurse for having James turn away.
Though it did pose a question Rose hadn’t thought to ask about yet.
“You’ve been here since earlier? Why?”
A look Rose couldn’t place passed over James’s expression and tugged the corner of his lips down. He seemed to think carefully before he answered but it was simple enough.
“They said no one else was coming.”
An uncomfortable heat climbed up Rose’s neck and started to slide onto her cheeks. It wasn’t embarrassment—she wasn’t embarrassed at her lack of emergency contact—but it wasn’t all gratitude either. Instead, she had traveled back five months prior to the same hospital but on a much different floor.
She was staring at a doctor, seeing her lips move as she spoke, but all Rose could focus on was the body covered by a sheet behind her.
Derrick Tillman hadn’t had an emergency contact either.
And because of Rose, he would never need one again.
“Hey, don’t go getting all weird about it.
” James’s words broke through the memory with surprising ease.
Rose let her gaze refocus on the man. He waved a hand as if wiping it away.
“I have a thing about hospitals,” he continued.
“When I was a kid, I woke up in one alone and it really did a number on me. Now I try to make sure that it doesn’t happen to others if I can. ”
He dropped his hand and snorted. There he was, playing nonchalant again. Casual and cool.
So very far from what Rose was currently feeling.
“But you did save my life,” he pointed out. “The least I could do was keep you company to say thanks.”
It was true, she supposed. He was there because he was thankful. Because he felt indebted.
Rose didn’t like either feeling.
She tried to smile into the new discomfort and play it off.
“Well, thanks, but next time don’t worry about me,” she said. “I don’t mind waking up alone. If something was really wrong, though, I’m sure the sheriff would pop in to check up on me. It’s just a hazard of the job.”
James rolled his eyes. Actually rolled them like some annoyed teenager. Yet, the look was oddly intriguing on him. Like a massive man being called Tiny. He was at odds with his own image. Rose couldn’t help but give him a questioning look in return.
“I’ve never been in this situation before, but I think you’re really underselling the whole saving us from a bomb thing,” he said.
“Most people would probably have already filled this room up with flowers and cards and would be trying to name their kids after you. I think waiting for you to wake up to say thanks is way less than you should get.”
Rose felt that heat again, moving up her neck.
Again, it wasn’t embarrassment, but she couldn’t quite figure out the feeling.
Instead, she tried to match the man’s casual attitude with her own.
“I don’t do what I do for praise.” She sighed.
It hurt. She certainly was going to be sore for several days.
“If I wanted flowers, I’d buy them myself.
If I wanted a kid named after me, I’d have my own and name them myself too.
Helping people is the job. I shouldn’t be doing it in hope of getting something in return. ”
After the bus incident she had seen the room full of flowers, heard the cries of gratitude, and undying promises to return the favor. Rose understood wanting to thank someone who had helped them, but to do so much and stretch that gratitude out… Well, it made her skin crawl.
Did that mean she wanted James to leave now?
She wasn’t sure.
His eyes seemed to find something in her expression that was interesting enough. His gaze didn’t leave her as he opened his mouth to say something, but the door opening to her left stopped him.
It was the doctor—someone Rose was more than familiar with. He had a nurse with him, and he looked caught between a man doing his job and a father about to scold a child for doing something reckless.
This was what she was used to, this was what she wanted.
No special treatment, just treatment.
Rose didn’t speak to James again after that. Not in as much detail as before at least. Somewhere between the doctor summarizing her injuries and talking about what happened next, James left.
After the doctor and nurse had gone, Rose looked at the spot where he had been sitting. She closed her eyes after a while.
The next time she opened them, sun was peeking through the slit in the blinds over the window. Someone was taking up the same space, but it wasn’t him.
Deputy Price Collins had his phone in one hand and a coffee in the other. He grinned when he saw that she was awake.
“Even on her off days, Deputy Little manages to set the world on fire,” he said in greeting. “When I say you could have your own TV series, I’m not at all exaggerating.”
Rose didn’t mean to, but in the moment, all she could think about was the man who had sat there before, smiling at her.
Then, she wondered where James Keller was.
Then she wondered why she had wondered that at all.
* * *
THE MAIN MECHANIC at Keller Auto might have survived the explosion but the shop itself hadn’t been as lucky.
James fiddled with the bandage on his forearm before dropping his hand deep into his coverall pocket. There was no reason to wear what he normally worked in, since the building in front of him could no longer be considered a building. Or, at least, a safe one.
The explosion had been small, he was told. Minor compared to what most thought of when the word bomb came into play. That was the only reason why he and Rose had survived at all. It had been a targeted attack, meant to decimate the vehicle it was hidden in.
And the people sitting inside.
“On top of that, I’m not sure the person who made it knew their stuff. I’m told it was sloppy,” the sheriff had said at their last conversation earlier that day.
Sloppy had almost been enough.
For the building, it surely had been.
Keller Auto had stretched across the middle of a two-acre lot and was just over 4,000 square feet, shop, lobby and office included. Most of that space had been the two bays themselves.
Now the building had been halved. The first bay had exploded, and the second bay had gone down in the aftermath.
The lobby and office hadn’t suffered from the impact but the small fires that had broken out had eaten through most of the former.
The fire department’s hoses had brought on the final damage, water destroying the bulk of what the fire hadn’t.
Only a few items had survived the impact, the aftermath and the rescue.
Those were in a plastic tub sitting in the back of Mr. Donahue’s RAV4.
He was wholly apologetic. Every part of his face seemed to fall all over again as he patted the top of the container.
“One of my nephews was on the fire crew,” he started, motioning with his other hand to the fallen Keller Auto. “He knew how important this place was to your and your daddy’s history, so he thought quick and managed to grab a few things. Sorry it isn’t more.”
It had been three days and two nights since the bomb had gone off. It felt like nothing and a whole lot of everything all at once. James didn’t think he was overwhelmed yet. Maybe, instead, he was still circling shocked.
He didn’t feel much at all when he gave thanks to the older man.
“The fact that anything was salvaged is a good thing,” he said.
“I’ll have to thank your nephew in person some time.
And thanks for coming out to give it to me.
I can’t say when we’ll have a place for you to come around for a chat again, though.
Dad’s been dealing with the insurance people, but we can’t do much until the investigation is over. ”
Mr. Donahue was all solemn.
“It’s tiring enough to be a walking miracle. You don’t need to add apologizing to it too.”
They stood for a moment, not saying much.
James had been surprised that Mr. Donahue hadn’t joined the masses trying to get gossip out of him since leaving the hospital.
It had been a jarring experience. Mostly because all the people who had come asking after him had actually just been trying to get information on the woman at his side.
Wildcard Rose had made the news again.
And everyone wanted a piece of her.
Even now, it irritated James.
“What happens next, then?” Mr. Donahue asked, forgoing the questions he probably really wanted to ask. James was grateful for his restraint.
“Dad’s still at my uncle’s, so I told him to just stay there, and I can handle anything that pops up here.” James shrugged. “As for everything else, I guess I’ll take it a day at a time. There’s not much else I can do.”
Mr. Donahue nodded, but after James said it, he thought of the deputy.
There had been one question he had asked the sheriff, more than one time.
Keller Auto might have taken damage, but it was Rose Little who had been the target. And, if the bomb hadn’t been proof of that, the men who had disappeared between the explosion and the sheriff’s department showing up certainly had been.
James did want to know what happened next, but not for himself.