Split Second - Catherine Coulter [104]
Lucy needed another pain pill onboard. It wasn’t only her head, it was all of her. Her muscles ached, and she had bruises everywhere. She felt exhausted, the aftermath of all the adrenaline that had rocketed through her.
He opened her car door, stood looking down at her. Finally, she gave him her hand, and he pulled her out. He saw she wasn’t all that steady on her feet, and supported her along the walkway. He unlocked the front glass doors, the panes, she saw, a colorful display of Art Deco, and led her into a good-sized lobby with a bank of mailboxes along one wall and three healthy-looking palm trees in Italian pots along the other.
He got his mail, took her elbow, and escorted her to the elevator. He pressed four.
The hallway was wide, covered with a stylish dark blue carpet with green splashes, but the track lighting was too bright, and it made her head hurt worse.
“Hang in there, Lucy. I’ll give you some water when we get inside, and you can take another pill. I’m thinking a nice nap would be a good thing for you; then I’ll order in our Szechuan.”
She nodded, but nothing was okay. On the other hand, she was alive, and for now, that was enough.
She’d been trying to think, of course, as best she could manage. Coop was right, it had been a pretty well-planned execution, and she should be dead. Pros? But who would hire pros to murder her? She shivered. No one had ever wanted her dead before, not she herself the target. And why should that happen now, today, if not because of the ring?
Of course, Dillon and Coop and everyone wanted to know everything, but what could she say? She couldn’t be sure who had tried to kill her, though, she had to think of her Uncle Alan. Did her grandmother tell him about the ring and what it could do? Did he or someone else who knew about the ring so many years ago find out her grandfather had left it for her? But how? And had the killers been told she kept the ring with her? And to take it off her dead body? Another big-time shiver.
She thought of the letter from her grandfather, tucked away in a book in her grandmother’s library. Did someone in the law firm know what her grandfather had left her? Surely not Mr. Claymore. Or had someone found the letter in the library? The McGruders had the key, and so did Uncle Alan. The painkillers still in her system tumbled and tossed the thoughts in her brain.
Coop unlocked the door at the end of the corridor and helped her inside. She felt like falling over, but she forced that aside and walked into the square entry hall with its red-and-blue Gabbeh carpet on the polished oak floor. He walked beside her into a large rectangular living room with huge windows on both open sides, with more Gabbeh carpets in yellow and green scattered over the polished oak floor. The furniture was solid, kind of Spanishy, she thought, and the pale lemony walls held vivid oil paintings, again, many of them Italian landscapes. The room felt peaceful, a strange word to come to her mind just then, but it was true.
“This is beautiful, Coop.”
“Thank you. I, well, I’ve put some time and thought into how I wanted it to look. The building went condo about two years ago, so I own it now. No yard work, and that means I go to Savich’s house to play basketball with Sean.”
“The paintings, they make me feel like I stepped into Tuscany.”
“I spent some summers riding through Italy, picked some of these up in little out-of-the-way towns whenever I could afford them.”
“A motorcycle?”
He led her to a big overstuffed chair, lightly pushed her down. “Nah, motorcycles are too dangerous.”
“I suppose you speak Italian?”
“A bit. I wave my arms around a lot while I talk, makes me more fluent. I’m getting you a glass of orange juice, that’s what Dr. Mom recommends for anything from a sprained ankle to a bullet in the head.”
He spoke Italian, he had great taste, he wasn’t a playboy—she fell asleep.
She felt fingers lightly stroking over her forearm, and heard a low voice. “Lucy?”
Her eyes flew open, and she grabbed for her SIG.
He touched her hand. “No, it’s