Flawless(64)

She turned to look at him. His features were tense.

“Don’t tell them anything, not yet. You can say I’ve opened my eyes a few times. I’m not ready to talk, do you understand? I’m not ready.”

Bobby’s grip fell away as he relaxed his features and closed his eyes.

Seconds later special agent Craig Frasier walked in.





CHAPTER

TWELVE

CRAIG LEFT MIKE in the hall, talking to the officer there, as he entered the room. The latest report was that Bobby O’Leary had yet to reach full consciousness, though the doctors said things were going well.

Kieran was sitting by the old man’s bed, her fingers curled around his hand where it lay on the covers. She was leaning down, resting her head on the bars of the bed, as if she had been resting. He saw that she was sitting in a chair that could fold down into a bed, and something told him that she was planning to use it, stay for the night, keep her eye on Bobby and hold his hand.

“Anything?” he asked her softly.

Her long dark auburn hair seemed especially vibrant tonight, falling over the white sheet. She lifted her head, and her eyes were especially blue in the harsh lighting.

“I think he’s doing well. The doctor said there’s no sign of water building up on his brain, no swelling.” She glanced down at Bobby, and Craig thought she sounded a little uneasy when she spoke again. “He’s opened his eyes a few times, but it never lasts.”

“Good to hear. I’ve been calling in all day, but all I got was ‘no change, stable condition.’ I’m really hoping he’s going to be able to help us out.”

“Do you think he saw anything?” she asked. “If he was attacked from behind...”

“He may still be able to tell us something. Even if he couldn’t see his attacker, he might have noticed something. Like the scent of soap or aftershave,” Craig said. “Or maybe he heard something, his attacker’s voice, the way he breathed...something. You never know. All we can do for now is hope.”

“It was probably some random thing,” Kieran said. “Wrong place, wrong time.”

“Or it might have been someone who knew he spent his days in the pub and thought he might have heard something or know something,” Craig said.

“Do you really think so?” Kieran asked. “It seems strange that...that someone would go to such lengths to attack Bobby, of all people. I still think it was a robbery like—”

“Nothing was taken.”

“Maybe the mugger was interrupted. Maybe a taxi went by, or even a cop car.”

She sounded defensive, Craig thought. And that wasn’t good.

“Kieran, don’t you want this solved—no matter what?” he asked her.

“Of course!”

The door opened, and a nurse walked in. She looked Craig up and down and nodded—with approval, he hoped—and then turned to Kieran. “Honey, you want some bedding for that chair?”

“It’s not necessary.”

“You might as well. You need to sleep, and we have monitors all over Mr. O’Leary. If anything happens, we’ll know at the nurses’ station.”

“In that case, thank you,” Kieran said.

The nurse left, and Craig smiled at Kieran. “I figured you’d be staying,” he said softly.

“Of course.”

“Listen, we really need to talk to him, and as quickly as possible,” Craig said. “You’ll call me if he wakes up and is coherent?”

She didn’t look at him as she nodded.

“Well, then,” he said softly. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

She still didn’t look up.

Because she was lying to him. He knew it. What he didn’t know was why.

Or just what, exactly, she was lying to him about.

*

Kieran wasn’t sure if Bobby O’Leary was still faking it at that point or if he was really out of it again.

Whichever, he didn’t speak anymore that night.

Molly brought sheets, a pillow and a blanket, and Kieran did her best to settle in and sleep for the night.

Time seemed to tick by very slowly as she found herself unable to sleep. She lay there and thought about everything that had happened. She wondered what Craig knew that he wasn’t telling her.

She worried about Daniel.

He would never kill anyone.

But was he involved, even unwittingly?

When she wasn’t worrying, she was remembering the events of two nights ago.

Thinking about Craig.

Every time she should have backed away, she’d been incapable of doing so. She genuinely cared about him.

Or was it pure physical attraction?

Something in the underlying scent of his skin that sent her mind reeling and made everything else in her ache with longing?

Angry with herself, she groaned, then tossed and turned and finally caught a few minutes’ sleep every so often, waking up every time a member of the medical staff came in.

At seven, when she woke up for good, she was surprised to see someone peeking in the door, and it wasn’t one of her brothers or even Mary Kathleen. Julie had come.

“Hey,” Julie whispered softly, tiptoeing in. “How are you doing? How’s Bobby doing?”

“Well, I think,” Kieran whispered, trying to get her “bed” back into chair mode as quietly as possible. She almost managed it, but the sheets got tangled in the mechanism and she had to start over. “Sorry, Julie, just give me a minute here. There’s a chair on the other side of the bed, if you want to sit down.”