“A neighbor said you had a visitor when you got home.”
Surprise must have been written all over her face because the taller man smirked. “Your neighbor’s the curtain-peeking sort, I believe.”
“Missus Bellfort. Yes, she is,” Torie managed, gritting her teeth at a new wave of pain in her head. Snarky old biddie. It just figured she’d be watching everyone on the block. As usual.
“I hope she saw something useful.” Irritation made the headache worse. “The visitor was Dev, my cousin from New Orleans. He stopped by, wanted to come in, but I told him it wasn’t convenient.”
“You don’t get along with this cousin?” Marsden’s voice sharpened, every bit of his attention focused on Torie. It was weird to watch the switch from laconic to on-point.
“No, it’s not that.” Torie wondered how on earth to explain. “Dev’s my fourth cousin, a couple times removed. He’s in town on a conference. I knew he was going to be in town, we talked about getting coffee or something, but no firm plans. We share a great-grandmother. She sent a message that he felt needed to be delivered in person.”
“What are you leaving out?” This from Sorrels.
Crap. Mama had always said she was too easy to read. Torie sighed. “He wanted to take me out for dinner or drinks to catch up. I’d just come in from…” she hesitated, telling herself again that she had to call Pam, make sure their stories were straight. “Drinks with my friend, as I said. I just wanted to spend the rest of the evening in.”
“And you didn’t invite your cousin in as well?”
“It wasn’t, um, convenient. And he wanted to go out. He’s kind of a party guy.”
Men who came into her house got hurt.
Or worse.
She’d been trying to protect Dev as best she could. Besides, she had been tired.
“Ms. Hagen?”
“Sorry. My head’s hurting a lot. Anyway, Dev delivered my great-grandmother’s message, and headed back to his conference. I went into the house to put the groceries away, change, and take Pickle out.”
“Pickle?”
“My dog.”
“And your cousin’s full name? And the name of the convention, too, if you remember?”
“Devereaux Chance. The convention’s for green building technologies.” Marsden made a note, of course.
“And what happened then?”
Torie told them about the sound of breaking glass, the smell of gasoline, how she’d headed toward it, then been blasted back by the explosion. The two exchanged glances.
“You’re very lucky, Ms. Hagen. If you’d gotten into the room, you would have been severely injured.” She got the strong sense that Sorrels really meant she’d have been killed.
“Did anything else happen today? Anything unusual?”
“Nothing that I can think of. I got up, went to work, basic stuff.”
“Is there anyone who would want to hurt you? An ex-husband? Ex-boyfriend? Anyone with whom you work?” Sorrels probed.
“Old boss? Ex-fiancé?” Marsden chimed in.
When her eyes flew open at the last words, Marsden’s face took on that sharp look again.
“Tell me about the ex-fiancé,” he said, his gaze intense.
“Oh, not Todd. He would never hurt me. He can hardly kill bugs.” She rubbed at her forehead, which hurt more and more with each passing second. Her rubbing at it didn’t help. “He’s got this reverence-for-life thing going. Went to Tibet to find himself. He got back into town again, and called me yesterday. We were going to have lunch tomorrow after he met with his lawyer.” She had to remember to cancel that.
Todd’s face popped into her mind’s eye, the way she’d last seen him. Right next to him, looming large in her memory was Paul Jameson, Todd’s gorgeous, irritating frat brother, and lawyer. She never thought about Paul without reliving the horrible moment when he’d walked into the bride’s room as she punched Todd.
The images were accompanied by the terrible swimmy feeling in her senses, along with the pounding behind her eyes. “Wow, my head really hurts.”
The nurse had been silent up to this point, a chaperone in scrubs, but at Torie’s complaint, she cleared her throat. “I think you need to wrap it up, gentlemen. Ms. Hagen needs to rest.”
“What’s the ex-fiancé’s full name?”
“Todd Alan Peterson.”
“When did you, dum…uh, call off the wedding?”
Torie scrunched her eyes against the pain, which grew worse by the minute. “Five years ago,” she managed to grind out. “Exactly five years to the day, this Saturday.”
There was a lot of beeping and the sound of pings from the machines behind her head. The bed suddenly went flat and her head spun with dizzying force. It was the last straw for her stomach.
With a heave, she vomited. Then choked.
The last thing she heard was the nurse hollering in the loudest voice Torie had ever heard. It rang in her head for hours.
“I need a doctor in here. Stat!”
Chapter Two
There were flowers everywhere. It was only the next morning, but people had already heard about her house, her injuries. Torie counted no less than eight bouquets. They’d begun arriving early in the morning, once she’d been installed in a regular room. There were roses from her brother, who had also called. She’d reassured him that coming home from Russia wasn’t necessary.
There wasn’t much he could do really, and it wouldn’t help his business to fly home and do nothing. The office had sent a plant, and each of the divisions had sent flowers as well. Two of her major clients from TruStructure, her engineering firm, had sent flowers, and one had sent a really interesting looking cookie-tower-thingie from Harry & David.
Other than the fact that she had a concussion, had almost choked to death, hurt all over, and had a partially destroyed house, she felt pretty good.
“Alive and hurting is better than the alternative,” she said into the quiet of the room. She needed to hear something besides beeping.
Pickle was in the gentle and competent hands of her very own vet, thank goodness, so she didn’t have to worry about that anymore. Pam knew to cover for her for their little excursion after drinks and before the grocery.
A niggle of worry wormed its way into her thoughts. What about Dev? Her great-grandmother, GoodMama, had sent a warning. It had been about fire. Surely he’d heard from her, or heard about it on the news. And Todd. Where was he? Even after the horrible way things had ended, they’d somehow managed to stay friends. She’d left a message about lunch on his cell phone, saying she was in the hospital. She’d left the number, too. It wasn’t like him to not call. She looked at the bouquets again. None of them were from Todd, and he was a champion flower buyer.
“How’s my patient this morning?” a cheery voice called from the doorway. Her doctor, a spritely woman in her sixties, bounced into the room.
“I’m good, Dr. Suz, when can I go home?”
“When I say you’re ready.” Suz Pierce smiled and deflected Torie’s protests with the ease of long practice. “A concussion’s nothing to fool with young lady. Not to mention that you’ve got a lot of work ahead of you to get your house in order, so to speak. You don’t need to start on that until you’re fit for duty.”
“I’m bored,” Torie sulked. Even she could hear the petulance in the words. “Sorry, but I am.”
“Better bored than unconscious. Too hard to read?”
Nodding, Torie grimaced. Her head still hurt if she made too many sudden movements. “My iPod’s at the house, probably a pile of plastic goo, same as my laptop.” She managed to talk even as the doctor checked her eyes and gently examined the lump and cut on her head. The nurse who had checked her vital signs not ten minutes before came trotting through the door in time to hear Dr. Suz say, “Any friends coming to visit today? Maybe they could get you some magazines or something.”