The Marshal's Witness Read Free

man in green let go of her arms and she pulled them against her chest. She turned her head on the pillowto put a face to the voice she’d heard. An unsmiling man stood on her right side. Instead of the white smock she’d expected, he wore an immaculate dark blue suit, his short, blond hair lightly curling around his face.
    “Miss Adams, do you know where you are?” he asked.
    She looked at the bed’s metal railing, the IV pump, the stethoscope draped around the doctor’s collar. “Hos...hospital,”she rasped.
    “That’s right. Cohen Children’s Medical Center.”
    Children’s? That didn’t make sense. Wait...wasn’t that in Long Island? She was in Louisiana, wasn’t she? She tried to speak again but her throat was too dry, too tight.
    The doctor motioned to the older woman standing beside him, dressed in a Daisy Duck smock. “Get her some ice chips.”
    The woman left the room. Theman in green adjusted the IV drip. When the woman returned, she held a yellow paper cup to Jessica’s lips.
    “Let these melt in your mouth, sweetie. I bet your throat’s as dry as dust about now.”
    Jessica gratefully accepted the cool ice chips, instantly liking the short, rotund woman whose voice she recognized as the lady who’d wanted to give her morphine.
    When her throat lost someof its dry, scratchy feel, she offered the nurse a weak smile. “Thank you.”
    The nurse patted her hand and motioned to the man the doctor had called David. They both left the room.
    The doctor flashed a light in her eyes and listened to her heart. “Do you remember the explosion?”
    Explosion? Oh, no. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut as horrific images assaulted her. The boom she’dthought was thunder, so loud her eardrums ached. The blast of heat. Burning, tearing pain as something ripped into her flesh. A sickening crack. A moment of intense agony when something hit her head with the force of a battering ram.
    She gasped and opened her eyes. “I remember.”
    “Excellent.” He didn’t seem to notice her distress. “The headache you’re experiencing is from a cracked skull.That was your most serious injury, but you’ve got enough stitches in you to sew a patchwork quilt. Minor burns, scrapes. You had a collapsed lung when you were taken to the ER. Your face—”
    She tried to focus on his words, but in her mind’s eye she saw Ryan Jackson back at the courthouse, running toward her, shouting her name. Why? What had he seen?
    “—multiple contusions,” the doctorcontinued. “I’ve kept you heavily sedated to control the swelling in your brain, but you’re past the danger point now. I expect you’ll make a complete recovery.”
    She twisted her fingers in the sheets, noticing for the first time that they were pink, covered with cartoon fairies and flowers. The walls were painted in soothing pastels. “Where am I?”
    He sighed impatiently. “Cohen Children’sMedical Center,” he repeated, “in Long Island. Apparently some very bad people are after you. Your bodyguard transferred you here once you were stable. He seems to think that no one will look for you in a place like this.”
    “Long Island? Bodyguard?”
    The doctor looked past her toward the other side of the room. “You have five minutes.” With his crisp order lingering in the air, he strodeout the doorway.
    Bewildered by the doctor’s abrupt departure, Jessica turned her head and met the icy stare of Marshal Ryan Jackson, sitting in a chair across the room.
    Something about that look filled her with dread.
    She recoiled against the sheets before she could stop herself. The mocking look on his face told her he’d noticed her reaction.
    “You’re as pleased to see me asI am to see you.” His harsh voice raked across her nerve endings, making her head pound harder. He slowly unfolded his long, muscular body from the chair and crossed the short space to stand by her bed.
    She could feel the heat from him, smell the light, clean scent of his soap. In