Sighing with relief, I pushed off the wall, searching for the stairwell as the blue lights flashed. Moving toward it, I was just about to take a step down when I felt the sudden and frightening sensation of someone at my back.
A mouth grazed my ear and a deep, male voice snarled, “Nick sends his love.”
Hands slammed into my back and fear coursed through me as I flew forward, unable to stop the momentum of my fall down the dark stairwell.
40.Murray
My eyes slammed open.
For a second or two, my brain tried to work out what had just happened.
Then I realized I’d jolted awake. Not the usual slow progression out of sleep but abrupt and sudden. It was a horrible feeling because instantly I wondered why. Had I heard something that had awoken me?
Sitting up, I reached for my phone to check the house’s security camera app and startled to realize there were several missed calls from Tierney. The phone buzzed in my hand, and it was Tierney calling again.
I must have accidentally put my phone on silent.
Why was she calling in the wee hours of the morning?
Fear sent my heart racing as I picked up. “Tierney, what’s wrong? My phone was on silent.”
Her voice shook when she responded, “It’s London. She’s in the hospital.”
Nausea rose in my gut as I jumped out of the bed, storming across the room to shove on my jeans. “What happened?” I demanded, trying to curb my frantic terror as I dressed.
41.London
The doctors had assured me there were no broken bones, no concussion, just a few bumps and bruises. But boy, did those few bumps and bruises ache as I got off the train in Oban.
Cammie refused to let me deal with my luggage, so she was handling mine along with her own like a champ.
I felt awful for ruining their Sunday. They’d spent the morning in a Glasgow hospital with me while the doctors ran a bunch of tests. The hotel had refunded our stay after Nee gave them a scathing dressing down about the use of the blue light system and the too-high pitch of their fire alarm sirens. She thought that had led to my disorientation that precipitated my fall. Once they realized they were talking to the daughter of hotel empire royalty, I think they quickly shit themselves.
In an effort to appease her, they refunded our whole stay. Of course, the sirens and lights were only partly to blame, but Nee didn’t know that until we got on the train to Oban.
Taran had stayed at the hospital with me while Nee and Cammie dealt with the hotel and packed up all our luggage. They brought it back to the hospital just as I was discharged and we hailed a taxi to Glasgow Queen Street Station.
“I told Murray you’d left your phone at the hotel,” Nee had assured me when I realized my cell was dead. “He knows everything. I’ve updated him. But you can use my cell to call him if you want.”
I wanted to.
But say what?
Nick tried to kill me through some unknown associate?
Part of me wondered if I’d imagined it, but I knew I hadn’t.
Someone had deliberately pushed me down the stairs. It hadn’t fully knocked me out, but I was definitely dazed, hurt, and in shock. The alarm and lights had gone off (we found out there was no fire and someone had pulled the alarm, surprise, surprise) and that’s when Nee spotted me collapsed on the stairwell and an ambulance was called.
No one had wanted to move me in case I’d broken anything, and I was too in shock to know for sure.
My ribs ached so badly I was sure they were broken, but scans concluded I had only a tiny hairline fracture on a rib on my right side. They did note an older, bigger fracture that had healed in one of my left ribs and I lied and said it was from a car accident. It wasn’t.
It was from Nick’s foot.
The fresh, tiny hairline fracture was enough to hurt like a motherfucker. The doctors informed me the pain was inflammation and put me on a course of anti-inflammatories.
Having to deal with all this while on my period was super fun.