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And stopped with a wrenching pain. What the hell?

At first I thought my long hair had caught on something. And in a way it had, but it was not something. It was someone. Someone’s fist.

I’d gone still at the pain, confused but not alarmed, not yet. I was raised from out of the water. For a split second, I caught a glimpse of a man, more his figure than his face, but before I could react, I was thrust down again, not into the water but against the side of the pool, the rounded edge. I had time to turn my head so most of my face was preserved, but that did nothing to protect the side of my head, which made heavy, solid contact with the concrete once. Pound. Once. It hurt so much. Pound. Twice. I tasted blood. Pound. Again. My brain was muddled. Pound. Again. I tried to struggle. All I managed to accomplish was a futile squirm mid-water. My feet found no purchase. I was too disoriented to place which way the ground was. Pound. Again. I reached up, scratching at the wrist that held my hair. There. The ball of my foot made contact with something, and I pushed with all my might up. I gasped in a blessed shock of air. I tried to scream, but it was only a piteous sob before my head was shoved back under. Pound. The world went black.

CHAPTER

THIRTY-TWO

I came to in a wash of unpleasant sensations.

The slow scrape in and out of air squeezing through a raw throat. My mind was filled with a wealth of disconnected nightmares that I couldn’t remember, but I could still taste like copper at the base of my throat.

My whole body hurt, but nothing throbbed so badly as my head. It was a pulsing agony, and I wanted instantly to be unconscious again.

I was assaulted with beeping, buzzing sounds in my ears, and the astringent smells of a health clinic. I’d never been hospitalized before, but I’d spent more than my fair share in them, and I knew instantly where I was. I hated hospitals. They always made me think of my mother, dying in one while I was hundreds of miles away.

It was a struggle to pry my eyes open, and I instantly flinched, closing them again. I took a few more breaths and tried again. All I could see once the initial brightness passed were a pair of tormented silver eyes.

“Noura,” my husband breathed, squeezing my hand. His gaze was blaring into mine with utmost relief. Like he’d been worried he wouldn’t get the chance again.

I squeezed faintly back and let my eyes fall shut again. It was all too much. The pain, the confusion, the rush of powerful emotions that punched through me in a jumble.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“Like I shouldn’t have woken up,” I replied truthfully, the words coming out in a croak through my tortured throat. I heard him suck in a sharp breath.

Little details were already floating to the front of my brain. The pool. The struggle. The certainty that I was going to die. Someone had tried to kill me.

“How long have I been out?” The words scraped out of me, and I instantly decided it was my last question. Speaking wasn’t worth the pain.

“Four days.” He said the words with a desperate kind of pain. Like four days was an eternity. It kind of felt like it had been from my end, too.

“Pain meds,” I rasped.

“Of course,” he replied instantly. “I’ve rung for the nurse.”

There was a rustle of noises. The nurse sweeping in, a murmur of talk, the sounds of buttons being pushed. All the while I felt Banks’ stroking my hand comfortingly. Vaguely I mused that it was the only thing I felt that wasn’t pure pain. The drugs must have been fast-acting because I felt myself slipping away again shortly.

My relationship with consciousness took quite a dive for a bit after that. It was touch and go. I’d wake up, ask to be drugged, and sleep again. This went on for days. As far as I could tell, Banks never left my side. He was always there for my brief lapses into wakefulness. I’d lost count of how many when I woke up to the sound of my father-in-law’s voice. I didn’t open my eyes. That still hurt.

“You don’t look surprised,” he was telling someone in angrily, voice drenched in contempt.

“Of course I’m not surprised,” Banks replied, just as angry. “I’m the one that told you.”

My whole body went cold, almost numbing the pain. Almost.

What did that mean? I didn’t like the sound of it, but I was quickly distracted from exploring the thought.

I must have moved in some kind of way, something that betrayed my wakefulness because the next thing my father-in-law said was, “I think your wife’s awake.”

I opened my eyes, directly meeting Pasco’s. In spite of his disdainful tone with his son, his expression was soft with concern as he studied me. “How are you, dear?”

I smiled wryly. “I’ve been better.”

“Do you remember what happened?”

I did, mostly. It had all returned to me in blurry patches as I drifted in and out. “Someone tried to drown me,” I said softly. My throat sounded better, at least, though it still felt like hell. I had a horrifying thought for the first time. “Is Chester okay?” He must have been the one that saved me, but that very fact meant he’d most likely been in direct contact with whoever had tried to drown me.