Observation? The man wasn’t even in the room, and unless there was some video camera taping her unaware, no one was watching her other than Sawyer. And he could do the same thing at home.
Hospitals always reminded her of her father. He’d picked many of their marks in them, preying on people’s vulnerability. He pretended to care about their well-being when all he cared about was what they could do to make him a buck. There were all different schemes. At one small-town animal hospital, he even sold a bogus cryogenics policy to a widowed elderly woman that would allow her and her dying dog to be frozen together, preserved for all eternity until doctors could bring them back to life.
The scams were bad enough. But he’d used Lisa and her brothers to help reel the marks in. She’d been the one to tell that poor woman in the animal hospital that her very own grandmother had been frozen with her poodle and that someday soon, she’d get to see them both again.
Lisa had been only six years old.
Who taught a six-year-old to lie?
“Blood pressure is normal. Any headache? Dizziness?” the nurse asked, reading off a list in front of her.
“She was dizzy when she got out of bed,” Sawyer offered up just as she answered no.
Lisa glared at him and then smiled sweetly at the nurse. “A little bit, but it was from the drugs you gave me.”
The nurse peered up at her from her clipboard. “Perhaps. But to be on the safer side, why don’t you follow the doctor’s orders and hang out here with us a little longer.”
Between Sawyer and the nurse, she wasn’t going to win this argument. When the nurse left her room, she turned to Sawyer. “Do you really think someone tampered with the brakes on the car?”
“Think?” He dropped into the chair. “I know someone tampered with it. Someone was trying to kill us.”
Her thoughts went straight to her father. But he was dead. “Why do you assume they were trying to kill us both? It’s me they want.”
He kicked out his legs, playing it casual, even while his body radiated his tension. “And yet it was my rental car they messed with. Whoever it was had to have done it while I was at your office. Which means they not only know their way around cars, they did it without anyone seeing them.”
“It’s not exactly like there were people hanging out in the parking lot on a Sunday. No one was around except us.”
He folded his arms across his chest. “And your brother. Don’t you find it strange he shows up and this happens?”
Her chest tightened in anger. Asa would never hurt her. “Well if I did, I’d also have to find it strange that it happened after you showed up at my office, too. Should I also consider you a suspect?”
“Do you really think I’d harm you?”
She sighed. “No. I don’t know what your plan is with me, but I do trust that you’d never harm me. At least not intentionally.”
“You keep mentioning this plan of mine. There’s no plan, Annaliese.” He leaned forward, placing a hand on her thigh. “I wish you’d trust me.”
It didn’t make sense to her. What did he have to gain by spending a week with her other than sex? “Don’t take it personally. When you spend your entire life lying, it’s hard to believe in honesty.”
“Then stop lying and start believing.”
Her eyes burned from unshed tears. “I wish it was that simple.”
He scooted his chair closer, the sound of metal grinding on the floor. “It can be. I—”
The curtain opened again, and the nurse peeked her head in. “Think you’re up for some company? I have a couple of concerned friends outside who’d like to come back and visit.”
Frowning, she racked her fuzzy brain to remember if she had made any calls to her friends about the accident. She turned to Sawyer and raised a brow in question.
“Logan and Rachel,” he said, standing.
He’d called them? She loved Rachel, but the woman was a nosy journalist. If she got an inkling of a story, she’d want to track its scent like a bloodhound.
With a donut in her hand and a smear of chocolate to the left of her lips, her friend came rushing into the room, Logan right behind her. “Are you okay? I was so worried when Sawyer called and told us about the accident.”
“I’m fine,” Lisa said, surprised at how normal she sounded despite the fact that the room was now spinning.
Rachel lowered the guardrails on one side and plopped herself down beside Lisa. “What happened?”
“It was just a little accident,” she said, waving her hand as if they’d gotten into a minor fender bender with a parked car.
She slid her gaze to Sawyer, begging him with her eyes to corroborate her lie. It’s not that she didn’t trust Rachel. She trusted her more than she trusted almost anyone—which unfortunately, wasn’t that much.