‘No, I didn’t, Sky. Is that what they did to you? Oh God, baby, I’m sorry.’
‘We’d best get her checked for concussion,’ said the medic. ‘Keep talking to her.’ She signal ed for a stretcher to be brought over. Zed untied my legs.
‘I shot you,’ I told him.
‘No, you didn’t, Sky. The men were shooting at us, remember?’
I gave up. ‘I don’t know what to think.’
‘Just think that you are safe now.’
I had an image of an orange-skinned man in a suit swooping into the hospital to save me. Who was that?
The two medics lifted me onto the stretcher. Zed kept hold of my uninjured hand as I was wheeled out to the ambulance.
‘I’m sorry I shot you,’ I told him. ‘But you were attacking me.’
Why would my soulfinder attack me?
I could see other Benedicts gathering around my stretcher. They were evil, weren’t they?
Zed wiped the blood from my cheek. ‘I wasn’t attacking you and you haven’t shot me.’
The last I saw of the rest of the Benedict family was a grim-looking Saul as I was loaded into the ambulance. Zed tried to get in but I shook my head.
‘I shot him,’ I told the medic seriously. ‘He can’t come with me; he hates me.’
‘I’m sorry,’ the woman told Zed. ‘Your presence is upsetting her. Where are her parents?’
‘They’re booked into a hotel off the Strip,’ said Saul. ‘I’l let them know. Which hospital are you taking her to?’
‘The Cedars.’
‘OK, I’l stay away, let her calm down if you think that best,’ said Zed reluctantly releasing my hand.
‘Sal y and Simon wil be there. You hear that, Sky?’
I didn’t reply. As far as I could remember one or other of us should be dead. Perhaps it was me. I closed my eyes, my mind so overloaded I had to check out for a moment. Then I was gone.
It was the sounds that first alerted me to the fact that I was in hospital. I didn’t open my eyes but I could hear the hushed noise in the room—a machine humming, people murmuring. And the smel s—
antiseptic, unfamiliar sheets, flowers. Surfacing a little more, I could feel the pain, dul ed by drugs but stil lurking. My arm was bandaged and I could feel the pul of a dressing in my hair and the itch of stitches. Slowly, I let my eyes flutter open. The light was too bright.
‘Sky?’ Sal y was at my side in an instant. ‘Are you thirsty? The doctors said you must drink.’ She held a beaker out, her hand shaking.
‘Give her a moment, love,’ Simon said, coming to stand behind her. ‘Are you al right?’
I nodded. I didn’t want to speak. My head was stil messed up, ful of conflicting images. I couldn’t work out what was real and what was imagined.
Supporting the back of my head, Sal y held the water to my lips and I took a sip.
‘Better now? Can you use your voice?’ she asked.
There were too many voices—mine, Zed’s, a man saying he was my friend. I closed my eyes and turned my face to the pil ow.
‘Simon!’ Sal y sounded distressed.
I didn’t want to upset her. Perhaps if I pretended I wasn’t there, she would be happy again. That sometimes worked.
‘She’s in shock, Sal y,’ Simon said soothingly.
‘Give her a chance.’
‘But she’s not been like this since we first had her.
I can see it in her eyes.’
‘Shh, Sal y. Don’t jump to conclusions. Sky, you take al the time you need, you hear? No one’s going to rush you.’
Sal y sat down on the bed and took my hand. ‘We love you, Sky. Hold on to that.’
But I didn’t want love. It hurt.
Simon switched on the radio and tuned in to a station playing soft classical music. It flowed over me like a caress. I’d listened to music al the time during the years in a succession of foster and care homes.
I’d only spoken by singing strange little half-mad songs I’d made up myself, which had led the carers to assume I was crazy. I suppose I had been. But then Sal y and Simon had met me and seen that they could do something for me. They’d been so patient, waiting for me to emerge, and gradual y I had. I’d not sung a note since. I couldn’t put them through that again.
‘I’m al right,’ I rasped. I wasn’t. My brain was a junkyard of bits and pieces.
‘Thank you, darling.’ Sal y squeezed my hand. ‘I needed to hear it.’
Simon fiddled with an arrangement of flowers, clearing his throat several times. ‘We’re not the only ones who want to know you’re OK. Zed Benedict and his family have been camping out in the visitors’
lounge.’
Zed. My confusion increased. Panic zapped through me like an electric shock. I’d realized something important about him, but I’d slammed the door closed again.
‘I can’t.’
‘It’s al right. I’l just go and tel them you’ve woken up and explain you aren’t up to visitors right now. But I’m afraid the police are waiting to talk to you. We have to let them in.’
‘I don’t know what to say.’
‘Just tel them the truth.’
Simon went out to give the Benedicts the news. I gestured to Sal y that I wanted to sit up. I now noticed that her face looked strained and tired.
‘How long have I been here?’
‘You’ve been out for twelve hours, Sky. The doctors couldn’t explain why. We were very worried.’
Something made me glance up. The Benedicts were leaving the hospital. Zed slowed by the window in the corridor that looked into my room and our eyes met. I had a horrible sensation in the pit of my stomach. Fear. He stopped, placing his hand on the glass as if to reach for me. I clenched my fists on the cover. Deep inside I could hear a ringing note, discordant, violent. The water jug on the bedside table began to judder; the overhead light stuttered; the buzzer to summon the nurse jumped off the rail and crashed to the floor. Zed’s expression became darker, the sound harsher. Then Saul came up alongside and said something softly in his ear. Zed nodded, gave me a last look and walked on. The note stopped, snapped off; the vibrations ceased.
Sal y rubbed her arms. ‘Strange. Must have been a tremor.’ She returned the buzzer to its original position. ‘I didn’t know Vegas was in an earthquake zone.’
I couldn’t tel if it had been me or Zed. Was he so angry at me he wanted to shake me? Or had that been my fear trying to push him away?
Feeling numb, I let Sal y brush and plait my hair for me.
‘I won’t ask you what happened, darling,’ she said, taking care not to pul the hair around my cut, ‘as you’l have to go through it for the police and FBI, but I just want you to know that whatever happened wasn’t your fault. No one wil blame you.’
‘Two men died, didn’t they?’ My voice sounded distant. I felt I was watching myself go through the motions of talking to Sal y while real y I was hidden deep inside, hiding behind so many doors and locks that no one could reach me. It was the only place I felt safe.
‘Yes. The police and FBI arrived at the same time acting on separate tip-offs—it was a massive mix-up in communications, the left hand not knowing what the right was doing. The two men were kil ed in the exchange of fire.’
‘One of them was cal ed Gator. He had a curly ponytail. He was nice to me.’ I couldn’t remember why I thought that.
‘Then I’m sorry he is dead.’
There was a cough at the door. Victor Benedict stood in the entrance with an unfamiliar man in a dark suit.
‘May we come in?’ Victor was looking at me with particular intent. The tremor had not gone unnoticed and he looked, wel , wary of me, as if I was an unexploded bomb or something.
‘Please.’ Sal y got up from the bed and made space for them.
‘Sky, this is Lieutenant Farstein of the Las Vegas police department. He’s got a few questions for you.
Is that OK?’
I nodded. Farstein, a sun-bronzed, middle-aged man with thinning hair, pul ed up a seat.
‘Miss Bright, how are you?’ he asked.