Gone Ballistic (A Robin Starling Courtroom Mystery)
Page 22
“You look like you’re going to live,” he said.
“Not quite the same as saying I’m looking good. I know. It’ll be a relief to get my hair washed.”
“I wasn’t sure I should visit while you were still in ICU. I know we’re often antagonists, and I don’t want to elevate your blood pressure while you’re recuperating.”
“It’s all right. Until this morning they were worried about my blood pressure being too low.” I glanced at the monitors, but they’d been disconnected in anticipation of my move.
“I wanted you to know that the charges against Willow Woodruff have been dismissed, and she’s been released. We’ve got a police officer posted at Carter Fox’s door to take him into custody when the hospital releases him.”
“Thank you for coming by to tell me. It’s good to know things are wrapping up.”
“Wrapped up, really. I’m not even going to file charges for the shell game you played with the guns.” His quick smile looked more like a grimace of pain, though.
“One less battle to fight. Thank you.”
“You really can’t do things like that, you know.”
I nodded. “One advantage to the police finding the gun in a neutral place, though, is that you couldn’t place it in Willow’s possession—and it didn’t belong there. She never had it.”
“It was her gun.”
“From the murder on, she never had it,” I amended.
“It was the murder weapon. You can’t just throw it away.” He was getting agitated, and I felt my own pulse quickening.
“Nobody threw it away,” I said. “The police got an anonymous call almost immediately.”
He gave me a long, speculative look. “The officer who took the call said the call came from a man.”
I shrugged, and he sighed, shaking his head.
“You’re going to make me old before my time, Starling.”
The stream of visitors who came to see me in ICU had been pretty tiring, and I’d fallen asleep on them more than once. The group waiting for me in my new hospital room was a crowd—my mom and dad, Mike and Brooke, Willow Woodruff and Caden, and of course Paul. Even so, my brother wasn’t there: he’d had to return to his medical practice in Charlottesville.
There was a cake, a big chocolate cake in the shape of a labrador retriever’s head. “It was as close as we could come to bringing Deacon in to see you,” my mother said.
“They have some kind of rule about letting deadly attack dogs roam the hospital corridors,” Mike said.
“Deeks isn’t deadly,” I said.
“You should have seen Carter Fox when Deacon got through with him,” Paul said.
“They’re not. . .Nobody’s talking about putting him down, are they?”
“Virginia does still have the death penalty,” Mike said. “If you’re talking about Carter Fox.”
“I’m not talking about Carter Fox. I’m talking about. . .”
Paul took my hand. “We know. No. Nobody’s talking about putting Deacon down.”
“Defending another from imminent bodily harm is legal justification for the use of force,” Mike said. “Evidently even for canines.”
A tension went out of me that I hadn’t known I’d been feeling.
Later in the afternoon, it was just Brooke and me. “I’m beginning to go stir-crazy,” I said. “I need to get out of here. And Paul owes Deacon and me a steak dinner.”
“I just heard him promise Deacon the steak dinner.”
“We go together.”
“You and Paul?”
“Me and. . .” I looked at her. “You know what I meant.”
She nodded. “Mike and I are talking about a June wedding.”
“You are. Wow! That’s news.”
“June 30 is a Saturday. What do you think?”
I moved my hand to the bed’s controls and pushed the button to raise myself. “I think that’s great,” I said. “You know I’ll be there. I’ll be there with bells on.”
“Have you ever been to a double wedding? It seems like it could be nice.”
“A double wedding! Who else is getting married?”
“We thought maybe you and Paul.”
“Who thought? You and Mike? You and Mike thought me and Paul?” I gave a laugh that came out sounding a little shaky. “You’re premature on that one. He hasn’t even asked me.”
She nodded. “Maybe he hasn’t had much encouragement.”
I thought about it. “Maybe not,” I conceded.
“He doesn’t want to mess things up between the two of you.”
“Life is full of risks,” I said. “Faint heart never won fair maiden.”
“Shakespeare?”
“I’m not sure, actually. Not Shakespeare, though.”
“When do you get out of here? Do you know yet?”
“Soon, I hope. I’m going to press the doctor on it the next time I see him.”
“When is that?”
I sighed. “Tomorrow morning, I’m afraid.”
She left shortly after that. She, after all, had a life. I took a nap and dreamed a rather incoherent dream in which I was home with Deacon, and Paul was there, and I felt the same sort of peace I’d felt under the influence of anesthetic. When I opened my eyes, Paul was beside my hospital bed.
“You look miserable,” I said, reaching for his hand. It was too far away, and I let my hand drop back onto the blankets. “Are you okay?”
He moved his head equivocally.
“Paul?”
“I’ve got something to ask you.”
A fist of tension knotted my insides somewhere in the vicinity of my solar plexus. He opened his mouth, hesitated, closed it again without saying anything. I opened my own mouth, then closed it without saying anything either. Wordlessly, Paul placed a small, velour-covered box on the bedclothes over my abdomen.
I tucked my chin to look at it.
“It’s a ring,” he said, and my eyes cut toward him.
“I figured it was a ring,” I said. A few seconds went by, but it felt like an hour.
“Do you want to see it?” he said.
I nodded. He reached for the box with both hands and opened it, his forearms resting against my side. The ring was a thin gold band set with a marquis diamond that was bigger than it should have been.
“You can’t afford this,” I said.
“I’ve been saving.”
My gaze went from the ring to his face. “If you ever cheat on me, I’ll castrate you with the pruning shears. You know that.”
A smile spread across his face like a ray of sunlight. “That sounds like a yes,” he said.
I cut my eyes away from him. It did sound like a yes, didn’t it? I met his eyes again and gave him a tentative smile.
“I guess it does,” I said.
The Robin Starling Legal Thriller Series
Trial by Ambush (Robin Starling #1)
Juggling Evidence (Robin Starling #2)
Dog Law (Robin Starling #3)
Laughing Heirs (Robin Starling #4)
The Case of the Unsympathetic Client (Robin Starling #4.5)
Gone Ballistic (Robin Starling #5)