Nicole Helm - Wyoming Christmas Ransom

Still, she’d need those few minutes to try to work through all this...stuff. Guilt. Worry. The desperate need to fix what she’d almost irreparably broken.

She and Laurel walked silently to the room number Melina had given them. Laurel gave a little nod and leaned against the wall next to the door. She glanced at her watch meaningfully.

Five minutes. Gracie blew out a breath and knocked on the door before pushing the door open. It was a small room, but the blinds were open to the bright sunshine outside.

Will sat in his bed and slowly turned to look at her as she closed the door behind her. One arm was in a cast, and his face was a maze of bandages. There was a hospital sheet over the bottom half of his body so she couldn’t see what kind of damage had been done down there.

He was beat-up and clearly a mess, and still he loomed too large in that bed. Like it didn’t matter he’d been pulverized by metal and concrete, he could take it. She almost believed it when he simply sat there and stared at her.

“Hi,” she offered from where she stood rooted by the door.

“Hey,” he returned, and his voice didn’t sound like him at all. She couldn’t read his expression, either. Maybe it was just pain.

She walked haltingly to his bedside knowing she had to say whatever it was she was going to say before her five minutes were up and Laurel came in to question him.

He frowned at her as she came to stand beside his bed. “You... You’ve been here the whole time?”

It was then she realized what he was looking so quizzically at. The dried blood on her sleeve she’d gotten from touching him out there on that frigid roadside.

When she looked back at his face, he was staring hard at hers.

“You haven’t slept,” he said, as though that were some great surprise.

“I was waiting to hear... I didn’t know how bad off you were. You passed out in the ambulance.”

“I don’t... I don’t remember that. The ambulance.”

“What do you remember?”

“Your voice.”

Gracie inhaled and then forgot to exhale. It didn’t mean anything that she was the thing he remembered. It didn’t mean he cared or this mattered, and as guilty as she felt about almost letting him die , she couldn’t let herself get wrapped up in thinking there was some change here. He was still Will, and she was just...his supplier.

“Gracie.” His non-cast arm moved and before she realized what he was doing, he’d taken her hand in his. There was a bandage on top of his hand, and still he gripped her tight. She stared at it.

“Gracie, look at me.”

She forced herself to take her gaze off his much bigger, and far more battered, hand squeezing hers.

His blue gaze was earnest and desperate. A look she recognized, and one that made her heart pinch. Because before last night she would have felt sorry for him, wondered if he needed therapy.

Today, she knew that desperation wasn’t out of place, and that maybe, just maybe, Will’s obsession with the case wasn’t wrong or sad or an attempt not to deal with the complicated feelings about his wife’s infidelity or death.

“You have to get me out of here,” he said, his gaze never leaving hers. “As soon as possible.”

* * *

WILL HURT JUST about everywhere and he knew pretty soon a nurse would come in and pump him full of all sorts of crap.

He preferred the pain. The pain kept him centered, and it reminded him of one simple truth.

He’d been right. All along, he’d been right. Whoever Paula had been having an affair with—whether they’d been involved in her death or not—needed to keep it a secret. He didn’t know how someone had figured out Will had a clue, but clearly someone had.

Still, Gracie wasn’t saying anything. Her hand was limp in his, but she leaned closer. She was a mess. Maybe not physically abused like he currently was, but exhaustion was etched across her sweet face. She had his blood on her shirt and a rip in her jeans. He wondered if it had come from kneeling next to him on the rough asphalt.

He didn’t remember much of anything. Not the crash itself, not the ambulance ride, but he remembered those few seconds of in between where he’d been lying there on fire and freezing at the same time and Gracie suddenly being next to him.

“Will,” she whispered. “Laurel is right outside.”

He blinked. Then nodded. “We’ll discuss it later then.”

“There isn’t anything to discuss. You have to stay in the hospital till a doctor clears you.”

But she still whispered, as if she was afraid her cop cousin was listening. It gave him some hope he could convince her, but it’d have to wait. He was just afraid he didn’t have much time.

He was hurt, which meant he couldn’t fight anyone off. He probably shouldn’t drive with his arm in a cast, and hell, he didn’t have a car anymore anyway. He’d decided his only chance of survival had been to jump out of the car.

Had he jumped out? He couldn’t actually remember it. But they hadn’t found him in his car, so he had to have done it.

He lifted his nonbroken arm and pressed fingers to his temple, trying to concentrate on the here and now instead of all the fuzziness around the accident.

Here. Now. He needed help, and Gracie was the only one he could trust. He looked up at her. “You do believe me now, don’t you?”

She finally wrapped her fingers around his, just a slight pressure. “Of course I do. How could I not?” She swallowed, and she lifted her free hand as if to touch him.

He found himself intensely wishing she would, but instead she dropped the hand. “I’m sorry.”

“About what?”

“You don’t know how close I was to not listening to your message,” she said, her voice still a whisper though he didn’t think it was about not being heard this time. She looked miserable and devastated. “I was going to delete it. I was cutting you off and it haunts me. If I’d deleted it—”

He hated that look of anguish and guilt on her face. He’d never understood why she’d taken so much of him on her shoulders, and he’d never spent much time trying to figure it out. But she’d been helping him for two years, the only actual person who’d stayed a part of his life after Paula’s death. She shouldn’t feel guilty about anything when she’d been the only one who’d stuck. This girl who had no connection to him prior to telling him his wife had died.

“You would have been right to delete it,” Will said firmly. He didn’t need her guilt. He needed her help. “I get lost in it all and I don’t see beyond it, but you do. You have a life and people who care about you and I know I sound crazy half the time. How could you be as invested in it as me? She wasn’t your wife or even anyone you knew.”

She studied his face as if she was searching for some particular emotion, but he didn’t know what she was looking for, what she wanted. So, he needed to bring the conversation back to where it belonged.

“I need to prove that I’m right. If someone killed her they should pay. There should be some justice.”

“You’re right. Someone tried to kill you . You should have justice, too. And I’m going to help you find it.” She held his gaze, bent over him like this, hand still in his. “I promise you, no matter what happens, I’m going to help you find the truth.” Her dark eyes blazed with that promise. She had such a certainty about her, such an earnestness. He’d never known anyone quite like her. Dedicated and sweet. She cared about people enough to act on it, enough to help.

He didn’t understand her at all, and still she stood over him in this obnoxious hospital bed, her light brown hair glowing near to red in the sunlight streaming through his window. Something fluttered low in his gut, a kind of awareness that prickled over his skin.