63

The ambulance had arrived within minutes. Piper remembered bits and pieces. Riley talking to her outside under the shade of a pine tree. The sound of the ambulance and paramedics, police officers running in and out of the house.

She was already at the hospital when she heard that Owen Whittaker was dead. The police officers outside her hospital room were talking about it. He had attacked Lazarus, and Lazarus had no choice but to shoot. She didn’t remember hearing a gunshot.

She felt a disconnect, like she was floating outside her own body. She would have visited Lazarus, but even the act of getting out of bed seemed too hard. Glancing out the only window, she noted it was afternoon. Had she slept at all? She couldn’t remember.

Bandages wound around her calf, hiding the stitches underneath. They kept mentioning shock when she asked why she was still there. Eventually, they said she could leave but couldn’t drive due to the pain medication.

Her first thought was to call her grandmother to pick her up.

Pulling together the last of her strength, she dressed and found Lazarus waiting for her in the hallway.

“I’ll take ya home.”

They had given her a crutch in case it was too painful to walk on her torn calf. He walked patiently with her down the hospital corridor as she got used to it.

Once in the car, he started it, and they sat there for a moment.

“I don’t think you should go home by yourself. You should stay with me.”

She didn’t have the strength to object and say she would get a hotel.

Lazarus drove her to his apartment and then led her to his bedroom. She lay down on the bed, and he draped a blanket over her. She felt dizzy and weak, but the apartment smelled like leather and it reminded her of horses and distracted her from the intense nausea.

He left the bedroom and shut the door, and she began to cry and didn’t stop.