He kept his head down, wrapping my ankle with a bandage. “Just hit too hard, I guess.”
“Did you hurt yourself?” I asked.
He kept his head down but shook it. “Nah.”
“Weird,” I said.
“Lucky,” he said, still not looking up.
I was studying him. “If you hadn’t fallen right then, you would have won.”
“You don’t know that,” he said, head still down.
“Rookie,” I said then, lowering my voice. “Did you fall on purpose?”
He finished wrapping and taped it in place. Then he lifted his head and looked straight into my eyes—and I knew the answer.
“Rookie,” I said, gearing up to scold him.
But he leaned in. “There was no way in hell you were quitting the department today. Not if I had anything to say about it. You deserved to win, and you won. Now shut up.”
I could have kissed him.
I also could have argued. I could have insisted that he come clean to the guys. I could have demanded a do-over—at some future date when my ankle was healed.
I didn’t get a chance to do any of those things.
Before I had time to respond at all, my phone rang. It was in my bag across the room, but Six-Pack jogged it over to me.
It was Josie. “Hey,” I said.
“Hey. I’m sorry to call you at work.”
“It’s okay,” I said. Something was wrong.
“It’s about Diana,” Josie said. “She collapsed. Actually—that’s not right. She had a seizure.”
Twenty-two
SHE HAD A seizure.
Normally, a word like “seizure” would prompt my usual sense of calm-in-the-storm to kick in.
That’s not what happened this time.
I was always at my best in a crisis. But not today.
This time, kind of like when you see lightning flash, and then you hear a clap of thunder, panic flashed through my chest, and then I heard it in my voice. “What happened?”
“She was making breakfast, and the seizure hit. She fell to the floor, but she smacked her head on the counter as she went down.”
My brain was like a lightbulb with a short in it. “You called 911?”
“Yes. We’re already at the hospital. Rockport County.”
That counter was granite. “Does she have a concussion?”
“They’re assessing her now,” Josie said. “She has a bruise on her forehead the size of an apple.”
