Undead and Unwelcome

Chapter 58

Between Marc and Sinclair, they pulled enough strings to get the wounded to the hospital without us having to fill out reams of paperwork or answer unanswerable questions. Not for the first time I appreciated being married to a rich man who knew people . . . not to mention having Dr. Spangler as a roommate.

Sinclair carried Laura to the room she’d been staying in and laid her on the bed. She was going to have an unattractive shiner, but Marc checked her over and pronounced her merely unconscious.

We still had no idea where Tina was, so I stayed in the room listening to Laura’s soft breathing, waiting for her to wake up.

After about half an hour, her eyes opened and she stared at the ceiling, then at me.

“Welcome back.”

“Is it true?” she asked hoarsely, and I realized with a stab of pity that she was afraid. “Did my mother have something to do with all this?”

“Yeah, Laura. It’s true.”

“I was so sure it was a good plan, the right plan. Instead of running from those—those people, I thought I was—oh, Betsy! How am I ever supposed to know what’s my idea, and what’s part of her plan for me?”

The time was past for comforting lies. “I don’t know.”

“I’d rather be dead than be her puppet.”

“Can’t we find a happy medium between those two?”

She suddenly seemed to notice my ruined suit, the blood, my mussed hair, the way I was covered with bits of soot, wallpaper, and plaster.

Her face crumpled and she clapped her hands over her eyes. I leaned forward, grasped her wrists, and gently pulled her hands away from her face.

“Come on, Laura. It’s not fatal. This is why God invented dry cleaners. Also, it’s going to be really, really awkward between us for a while. It might even ruin Christmas.”

My lame-​ass joke fell flat—deservedly so—and Laura burst into tears. “I’m sorry,” she managed, pulling free of my grip. “I’m just so, so sorry.”

She rested her forehead on my shoulder and I stroked her (blond) hair while she sobbed all over my already filthy suit. “It’s all right, Laura. We’ll figure it out. Come on, enough with the waterworks.”

“I could have killed you.”

“But you didn’t.” You just killed a bunch of my people. But I’d have to address that later. I wasn’t looking forward to it, that was for damned sure. “You let me hurt you—punch you out like we were brawlers in a Western—rather than killing me. You know what that makes you?”

“No.”

“One of the good guys. Your white hat is in the mail.”

“No, it’s not,” she said again, and wept harder.