4. Chapter 4
Chapter four
T he blessed relief of the pain medications was beginning to wear off. Elio shifted as far as he could in the narrow hospital bed, feeling like a wolf with its paw in a trap.
If I could gnaw off one of my hands to get free, I think I might just do it , he thought.
But all he could do was lie there on his back, pain darting through him more sharply by the minute. He ruminated over what had gotten him into this predicament and how he was going to get out of it.
After Dr. Rissa Mahoney (according to her name tag) brought him water and finished treating his other injuries, she had, once again, left the room. That had been several hours ago, and she still hadn’t returned.
He thought of the troubled look in her blue eyes as she held the water bottle to his lips and watched him drink.
“What’s the matter?” he had asked as she screwed the cap back on the bottle. Her eyes darted to the officer glowering by the door. The doctor turned her gaze back to him, her dark, perfectly arched brows lifting in surprise.
“Nothing, I just—had a rather strange interaction with some of my colleagues,” she said after a moment.
Elio nodded. Realization dawned on him quickly from past experiences. Often, all it took for regular, law-abiding people to start treating him like a plague was the mention of his name or the part of town he hailed from.
“You’re spending too much time with me,” he guessed quietly, and Rissa’s expression of surprise was all he needed to know he was correct. “You should go help with the others,” he advised. The medications made him sleepy, slowing his speech and making it a struggle to stay focused.
He let his eyes roam back over the doctor’s body, imagining what she would look like in fitted jeans and a crop top—or a sexy bikini. He knew a good figure when he saw one, and Rissa Mahoney’s was way too good to be hidden away behind generic scrubs. He imagined slipping his fingers between the elastic waistband of her slim pants and her warm skin, then sliding them down over her smooth, toned thighs.
The doctor cleared her throat, and Elio yanked his gaze back to her face, noticing the flush that had risen in her neck and flooded her perfect features. Apparently, she had noticed him looking. He was too high on pain meds to feel at all guilty, but he managed to pull his attention back on what he had been trying to tell her.
“I’ll be fine for a bit,” he said slowly. “Go ahead.”
She pressed her full lips together and nodded. “That may be a good idea. Someone will be in to check on you soon.”
But no one had come. Not sooner. Not later.
Elio sighed, fighting the urge to yank at the handcuffs fastening him to the bed or groan aloud from the headache that was, once again, pounding through his skull. He glanced at the cop by the door, but the man had long since made himself comfortable in the one chair in the room and dozed off. There would be no help from that quarter.
Focus, Elio, he snapped at himself inwardly. You are a suspected bomber. And you’re going to be a lot worse than that unless you can figure some way out of this—soon.
Almost subconsciously, he already knew that he was working to get Dr. Mahoney on his side. Even telling her to go help with the other patients had been based on ulterior motives. She wouldn’t be much help to him if her coworkers suspected her of having sympathy for him.
He readily admitted to himself that he was attracted to her in a way he hadn’t been to anyone in a long time. There was something about her that caught his fascination and held it. Obviously, she was physically stunning, but there was an underlying strength, a stubborn force of character that made her stand out like a jewel among ordinary stones.
Beyond all that, he desperately needed someone on his side, and the virtuous doctor was his best bet. He recalled the words she had snapped at the detectives before shooing them out of the room like scolded children. “Innocent until proven guilty.” Unfortunately, it wouldn’t take much for law enforcement to determine that he was as guilty as sin.
In the narrow window between the medication wearing off and his pain returning full force, Elio’s mind felt the clearest it had since the explosion hurled him across the foyer of the concert hall and buried him in the rubble. How and why, he wondered, had the cops targeted him so quickly? Something told him there was more to it than just his name and whatever meager evidence allowed them to arrest him on-site.
Why did I agree to that one last job? Elio berated himself. If he hadn’t let his grandfather talk him into delivering that package to the fundraiser, he wouldn’t have been anywhere close when the bomb went off.
But Angelo Accardi was a hard man to resist. He was used to giving orders and having those orders obeyed even on pain of death. Of course, Elio had always been the problem grandchild, the one who had never wanted to be involved in the family business. In their last argument, Angelo had turned that against him.
“This is your family, Elio!” the old man had cried, his voice lifting with passion. “Don’t you care about family? All I ask is that you do one thing to prove to me that you love your family—and you won’t even do that!”
“Why does it always have to come down to this, Nonno?” Elio had asked, his frustration building as he paced the kitchen of the big house, telling himself not to give in. “Why does it always have to be us against the world? This has nothing to do with whether or not I care about my family. It’s about the kind of life I want to live. This isn’t it!”
Angelo’s glare had been heavy with disappointment as he shook his head and looked at Elio like he had just betrayed him for thirty pieces of silver. Then, he had returned to his lunch of cheese and grapes and sausages, shrugging his massive, sloped shoulders.
“All I ask is this one thing,” he had said sadly. “It is so little.”
And of course, Elio had given in, yearning for his grandfather’s approval even after all these years.
Did Nonno know this was going to happen? he wondered now, his thoughts growing bleary with pain again. Surely not.
But his grandfather would know how to get him out of it.
Elio stilled, closing his eyes and compelling himself to focus on the plan of action that was slowly coming together in his bomb-addled brain.
His eyes were still closed when he heard the door open, and a man’s voice said, “Hey, Kern. Wake up, you slob. Time to switch.”
“Oh, what? Good,” the groggy voice of the guard at the door replied, and Elio heard his belt and shoes creaking as he rose from his chair. “Fuckin’ guard duty. How long have we got to keep this up? Do you know?”
“Nah,” the other cop said nasally. “But it won’t be long. As soon as we can get the hot doc to clear this asshole, it’s off to the lockup with him.”
Elio was surprised by the spike of jealousy he felt at hearing the admiration for Dr. Mahoney in the cop’s voice. Why was he feeling protective of a woman he hardly knew? Instant sexual attraction was one thing, but it was unlike him to attach himself strongly to anyone early on—and it wasn’t like he had any legitimate claim.
She’s not your girlfriend, he scolded himself. And then he almost laughed aloud at the idea. He was handcuffed to a hospital bed after all, almost certainly on his way to prison if he didn’t come up with a way to extricate himself. I’m probably not even her type.
There was a pause in the cops’ conversation when Elio sensed both men studying him to see if he was actually out of it. Then, the cop with the nasal voice continued in a slightly lower voice, “All the evidence is coming together as planned. And it’s going to stick to this pigeon like glue. No worries there.”
Elio forced himself to remain still, breathing evenly despite his rising pain as the men switched out and his new guard settled noisily into the chair by the door. His heartbeat quickened, each beat drumming adrenalin through his veins.
It appeared he would have no chance to clear himself.
Escape it was.