Chapter Two

Leah came bursting into the triage room.

“Are you all right?” she exclaimed as she looked at Shannon.

“They said I burst my eardrums,” Shannon told her. “Can’t hear much of anything at all right now. Grab a notepad and write down what you wanna ask me.”

Leah nodded, pulling her favorite pen and a full-size spiral notebook out of the huge handbag that Shannon always teased her about.

Guess the cavern she insists on lugging around isn’t useless after all, Shannon realized, and grinned despite the circumstances.

Leah uncapped her pen and scribbled furiously for a moment, then whipped the notebook around where Shannon could see the result.

First – Are you okay?

Second – What happened???

A tear slid slowly down Shannon’s cheek, and she took a deep breath before she started to tell Leah the evening’s events.

But the man in the black suit that knocked on the doorframe then strolled casually into the room stopped her short.

“Miss Rivers?”

“Her eardrums got screwed up, she can’t hear you,” Leah snarled. “And you are?”

He held up his hands to show he wasn’t there to harm.

“Easy, Miss…”

“Culverton,” Leah snapped. “Leah Culverton.”

“Miss Culverton,” the man said, and smiled. “I am just gonna reach for my badge, okay? It’s all good.”

Moving slowly, never breaking eye contact, he dipped his thumb and forefinger into his interior jacket pocket and pulled out the folded leather containing his shield and ID card. Holding them flat in his palm, he stepped slowly forward and extended his hand to her.

“I’m here to help, I promise. My name is Larry Fuller,” he said gently. “I’m with the FBI.”

Leah reached forward and took his offering, then

scrutinized the photo ID closely, comparing it against the man standing in front of her.

Satisfied, she nodded once, handed it back, then wrote ‘his name is Larry Fuller. He’s FBI’ and showed it to Shannon.

Shannon nodded her understanding, and said, “Come on in, Agent Fuller.”

“I hope you don’t expect me to leave,” Leah stated.

“No, Miss Culverton,” he said. “Not at the moment.”

Her eyebrows raised.

Shannon snapped her fingers to get their attention, then said, “What’s going on?”

He’s letting me stay, for the moment, Leah wrote out and showed her.

“Letting you? For the moment? Let’s get something straight right now, buddy. After the night I’ve had, I’m not talking to anybody by myself,” Shannon announced, the monitor she was hooked up to beginning to beep rapidly as her heart rate and speaking volume both increased. “She’s my best friend, and whether she hears it now, or later, she will know all about it, regardless. She stays. Now, write down what you want to know.”

Agent Fuller shrugged, then nodded.

“I take it you want her to start from the top?” Leah asked.

“Yes, please.”

Leah held up the notebook and pointed to her second question she’d written, and Shannon noticed that Fuller pulled out his own, much smaller notebook to record her answers, as well.

Shannon closed her eyes briefly, then began to speak, walking them both through her date with Robert all the way through to its fiery conclusion.

“You mean he’s…” Leah’s voice trailed off, her dark brown hair looking almost jet black now against her pale face. Then she realized Shannon was frowning at her and muttered “sorry” before presenting the statement in written form.

“Yeah,” Shannon said sadly. “And if I hadn’t had to go back inside for my purse, I’d have been sitting right next to him in the car when it blew up. Being forgetful is the only reason I’m still here.”

Leah’s hand flew to her mouth as she paled. She was silent for a bit, then started to write another question, but Agent Fuller beat her to it.

“Did she notice anything unusual? Anyone following them, or paying a little too much attention to them at dinner or at the movies?”

Leah scribbled his question instead.

Shannon’s brows knitted together as she thought about it, then answered, “Not that I noticed.”

“What was Robert’s mood?”

Shannon read Leah’s written version.

“When he first picked me up, he looked… haggard. Haunted. Seemed really, really tense. Over dinner he seemed to relax, and by the time we left the theater he was his usual smiling self. I just thought maybe all the hours he’s been putting in had taken their toll.”

Now Shannon’s color fled again as she mentally assembled puzzle pieces, and exclaimed, “You don’t think it was an accident. Otherwise, the FBI wouldn’t be here. Am I right, Agent Fuller?”

Before he could answer, the three-way interview was interrupted by medical staff, who had come to collect Shannon for a CT scan.

“We’ll have her back here in about forty-five minutes,” one of the nurses said. “You’re welcome to wait in the lobby.”

“Meet you back here,” Shannon called to Leah and Agent Fuller when she saw them leaving the room.

***

“Where are we going?” Shannon asked nervously.

CT Scan, the nurse wrote on the whiteboard hanging up on the wall.

“Oh, yippie,” Shannon mumbled. Closed-in spaces didn’t terrify her quite as much as rodents and heights, but they came pretty darn close.

The nurse at her right shoulder could see Shannon’s stress level rising and patted her arm as a way to try to comfort her. Shannon, meanwhile, focused on her breathing, and then on the light fixtures as she was wheeled down the hall, through a sharp left turn, and into what looked like a service elevator. One floor later, the doors opened, and two more right turns signaled the end of their trip.

She looked at the machine, with its menacing, gaping maw, and shuddered.

“I really, really don’t want to be in that thing,” she stammered.

The tech, having been told of her hearing loss, grabbed a clipboard, paper, and pen, and wrote a note to her.

I know, Miss Rivers. It’s going to be all right, I promise. There’s more room in there than you think. And I will go as fast as I can, okay? We’re just looking at your head, so, there won’t be any need to hold your breath or anything. But you will need to stay completely still.

She read his note and gave him a shaky thumbs-up.

The tech and one of the nurses assisted her in moving from the gurney to the platform.

“Is there any way we can put some padding down for her?” the nurse asked him. “She’s got second-degree burns across her upper back, and I don’t know if she’ll be able to put pressure on them and try to hold still for you for very long.”

The tech thought it over, and answered, “I don’t see why not, as long as we position it properly; it’s not like we’re scanning her chest or anything, just her head.”

Although Shannon had no idea what was being said, she figured it out once they folded a blanket and lined it up with approximately where her upper back would come to rest on the platform once she laid down.

She leaned back slowly and winced.

“She needs more. What about a pillow?”

The nurse helped her sit up again and the tech maneuvered a pillow into place, then indicated for Shannon to recline.

It was still uncomfortable, but the pain was down to a manageable level, and she gave them the ‘okay’ sign.

I just wanna get this over with, she thought to herself, and gritted her teeth when the platform began to slide into the imaging unit.

Shannon tried her best to hold still and not succumb to claustrophobia during the thirty-minute CT scan of her head. When the tech finally pressed the button that moved the hard, uncomfortable platform back out of the mouth of the machine, she sighed in relief, then sat up quickly to take the pressure off of her back.

But the quick motion combined with the ache of lying on burned skin made her lightheaded, and her upper body swayed as the room swam in her vision. She blinked rapidly several times as she took deep calming breaths. Eventually, the sensation passed, and with the tech’s help she maneuvered back over onto the gurney for her trip back down to triage.

***

She’d been settled back in for almost fifteen minutes when Leah and the agent returned. Shannon immediately sensed the tension between them. She started to ask about it but opted to wait when she saw the attending physician had stepped in right behind them.

Leah explained the setup – written questions – and the doctor nodded.

“First let me say, your hearing should return within a couple of weeks,” he said. “I didn’t see anything that would lead me to believe your ruptured eardrums won’t heal themselves.”

Shannon smiled, giving him a thumbs-up after she’d read his message.

“The burns and scrapes should be completely healed in the next couple of weeks, as well,” he continued, and Leah wrote it out and showed her, earning them all another thumbs-up from the patient.

The doctor went over wound care and forty-eight-hour concussion protocols with Leah, then announced, “Okay, let’s get you out of here, young lady.”

When it was relayed to her, the last statement garnered applause from Shannon, and the doctor chuckled as he left the room.

“Can’t wait to be home,” Shannon said, then frowned when she saw Leah and Fuller exchange a glance.

“What?”