Wyoming Christmas Ransom. Nicole Helm

       Chapter Four

      “There’s evidence of tampering.”

      Gracie looked up at Laurel, who stood in the waiting room at the hospital, dressed in her detective khakis and county sheriff’s department polo, looking serious and stern.

      Believe me now? Will’s words kept looping around in her head whether she was dozing or awake while she waited to hear the extent of Will’s injuries. Which they wouldn’t tell her because she was no one to Will.

      “Can you find out how he’s doing?”

      Laurel smiled thinly. “You know I can’t. They’re not going to tell you anything, either. Why don’t you go home? Get some rest. Come back later.”

      Gracie shook her head, linking her hands in an effort to keep her composure. If she dug her fingernails into the tops of her hands she could focus on the pinch instead of the guilt swamping her.

      She’d been this close to deleting his message unheard, and she just... He would have died. He would have died. He’d be dead if she had done that. “What kind of tampering was it?”

      “You know I can’t tell you that, either.” Laurel was firm, but apologetic. If Gracie didn’t know Laurel as well as she did she might have tried to beg, wheedle or manipulate, but Laurel wouldn’t budge. She took her badge more seriously than she took just about everything.

      “He’s in danger,” Gracie said flatly.

      “I think that’s a safe assumption.”

      Gracie met Laurel’s gaze. “You know what this means.”

      Laurel sighed. “Not necessarily. If it has something to do with Paula Cooper’s crash... It’s been years. There was no tampering done to her car back then. There’s no evidence this connects at all.”

      “Yet.”

      Laurel sighed again and slid into the seat next to Gracie. “I’m going to look into it. If I find a link, I’ll investigate it, but you both need to understand this is for the police to figure out.”

      Gracie knew Laurel was right, but she also knew Will had come to Rightful Claim, told her he’d figured out a pattern and then his car had been tampered with. Those couldn’t be coincidences.

      Laurel would be thorough, Gracie had no doubt. Even if Laurel wasn’t getting married to a Carson, Gracie knew her cousin too well to ever think she’d not follow a lead just because the deceased was a Carson. If there was some connection, Laurel would find it.

      Eventually. But Will was in a hospital room with who knew what kind of injuries and Gracie knew she didn’t have time for eventually.

      “Gracie.” Laurel’s voice took on a sterner tone. “Promise me you two will let the police handle this.”

      Gracie didn’t want to lie to her cousin, but she also didn’t know how she could possibly agree.

      “Ms. Delaney?”

      Both her and Laurel turned to the nurse, who smiled kindly. Melina knew both of them because their work often brought them to the hospital and since Melina had been Gracie’s babysitter once upon a time. “Not you, Deputy. Gracie, Mr. Cooper is able to see visitors now, and he’s asked for you, if you’d like to go back.”

      Gracie hopped to her feet, but so did Laurel.

      “I’ll need to speak with Mr. Cooper.”

      Melina nodded. “That’ll be fine, but he specifically asked for Gracie. Room 203.”

      Laurel started striding that way, but Gracie hurried in front of her. “Laurel, listen, I need you to do me a favor.”

      “I’m here in a professional capacity.”

      “Please, let me go alone.”

      “Gracie.”

      “Please, just... Just give me a few minutes alone. I’m not asking you not to question him, I’m just asking that you let me... Look...” She swallowed at the emotion clogging her throat. “Maybe you don’t understand why, but I feel responsible. At least partially. If I’d handled this even remotely differently—”

      “You don’t know what would have happened.”

      “Maybe not, but... As my best friend and my cousin and just the best human being I know, please give me five minutes alone with him. Personal minutes.”

      Laurel sighed heavily. “Five minutes. And I’m right outside the door.”

      Gracie gave Laurel an impulsive hug. “Thank you.” Five minutes wasn’t enough really. She’d probably cry when she saw him again. After all, she’d cried in that ambulance. Hopefully Will didn’t remember that.

      Still, she’d need those few minutes to try to work through all this...stuff. Guilt. Worry. The desperate need to fix what she’d almost irreparably broken.

      She and Laurel walked silently to the room number Melina had given them. Laurel gave a little nod and leaned against the wall next to the door. She glanced at her watch meaningfully.

      Five minutes. Gracie blew out a breath and knocked on the door before pushing the door open. It was a small room, but the blinds were open to the bright sunshine outside.

      Will sat in his bed and slowly turned to look at her as she closed the door behind her. One arm was in a cast, and his face was a maze of bandages. There was a hospital sheet over the bottom half of his body so she couldn’t see what kind of damage had been done down there.

      He was beat-up and clearly a mess, and still he loomed too large in that bed. Like it didn’t matter he’d been pulverized by metal and concrete, he could take it. She almost believed it when he simply sat there and stared at her.

      “Hi,” she offered from where she stood rooted by the door.

      “Hey,” he returned, and his voice didn’t sound like him at all. She couldn’t read his expression, either. Maybe it was just pain.

      She walked haltingly to his bedside knowing she had to say whatever it was she was going to say before her five minutes were up and Laurel came in to question him.

      He frowned at her as she came to stand beside his bed. “You... You’ve been here the whole time?”

      It was then she realized what he was looking so quizzically at. The dried blood on her sleeve she’d gotten from touching him out there on that frigid roadside.

      When she looked back at his face, he was staring hard at hers.

      “You haven’t slept,” he said, as though that