Chapter 12
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Pamela studied Anderson, then suggested, “Hey, let’s get you a coffee and a chance to settle down. You’ve contacted everybody?”
“No, I’ll send this off to Levi as well. He’s an old army buddy of mine, and he’s sending us a man to give us a hand on the investigative side of this shit show. So Levi needs a copy of this.”
She waited for him to be done, her ear on the babies, but he was taking his time. “I’ll go put on coffee.”
“I’ll see you down there in a few minutes,” he murmured.
She nodded and headed downstairs, wondering how this had gotten so ugly. And yet maybe it was to be expected.
Something terrible had happened to Talia, and that needed to be accounted for.
And, if this guy, Tim, Talia’s husband, was guilty of hurting the babies or hurting his wife, beating her to the extent that he possibly had, that was a devastating thought to consider.
And, if he hadn’t, what was his connection to all this?
Why was he trying to get into her hospital room?
Yet he came to the house first.
The whisper in the back of her mind was too loud to ignore.
Indeed, he’d come to the house first. The fact that he had gone to the hospital should have been good, except that he hadn’t gone openly.
There had been no attempt to establish himself as her husband, to explain his presence or his absence to date, or to even ask about her condition.
Tim wanted to be in Talia’s hospital room, without anybody knowing, and that was disconcerting too.
Worried, Pamela put on a pot of coffee, checked in on the babies again, not surprised to see that they were still soundly sleeping.
It would mean they wouldn’t go down as early tonight, but that was okay too.
They’d obviously been pushing the lack of sleep thing and needed more.
As soon as she had the coffee ready, she called up to Anderson.
He came down the stairs right away, his phone still in hand. “I can’t believe you yelled like that. Weren’t you afraid of the babies waking up?” he asked in horror.
She smiled. “You would be surprised. Normal household noises aren’t something you generally need to be afraid of making.”
“Maybe,” he conceded, shaking his head, “but no way I would chance waking them up.”
“They’ve already had a good nap, so realistically we’ll have to wake them up before too long anyway,” she explained. “Plus, if you don’t make a sound when they’re asleep, they’ll become light sleepers, and that’s not a good thing right now.”
He frowned. “If you say so.”
“I do,” she confirmed, laughing. “No change in your sister’s condition, huh?”
He shook his head, his expression grim. “The doctors aren’t worried in the sense that they’re keeping her sedated intentionally, while her body heals, but it is still rough to see her like that.”
“Of course it is,” she agreed. She poured him a cup of coffee and handed it to him.
He slumped down in the nearest kitchen chair, really considered her, and asked in an odd tone, “Why are you here?”