Read K.J. Emrick - Darcy Sweet 12 - Death at the Wheel for Free Online Page A

was a relative. 
    She told them something else, too.  Lindsay’s husband was in the room with her.  He’d stayed here in the hospital until Lindsay had come out of surgery and he’d been here in the ICU ever since.
    There were only three rooms here, lined up on the right side of the hallway that comprised the entire Department.  The rooms on the left were offices and closets.  Lindsay’s room was the last one on the end.  As they stood in front of room 2C, Rosie looked uncertain.  She drew in a deep breath as Darcy smiled her encouragement.  After a moment, she straightened her dress and pushed the door open.
    The room was painted in shades of cream and light green.  Two hospital beds were surrounded by monitors and strange machines on poles and other pieces of equipment.  Only one of the beds had a patient at the moment.  The redhead Darcy had seen at the accident scene lay there in a white hospital gown, the bed elevated so she was nearly sitting upright.  Her right arm was in a straight cast that started at her shoulder and left only her fingers poking out of the end.  A sling supported from a hook on a ceiling track kept the arm elevated and stationary.  Her face was bruised and both eyes were black.  Her breathing was slow and even as she slept.
    Next to the bed, in a chair on the other side from the door, sat the man Darcy had talked to at the accident scene.  Alan Harlow.  He was in the same blue shirt and black slacks that he had been in before, ripped and torn from the crash, his left sleeve cut away so that a bandage could be wrapped around his shoulder and upper arm.  He sported a bruise of his own on the side of his face, dark stitches holding a cut closed in the center of it.  He blinked at them from behind his glasses.
    “I remember you,” he said to Darcy.  “You were at the accident scene.”
    “Yes.  I, uh, own a store right there on Main Street.  You’re Alan, right?  You’re Lindsay’s husband?”
    He stood up, slowly, favoring his left hip.  He held his hand out to Darcy.  “I am.  Her husband, I mean.  We were coming to meet her mother.”  He took his hand back and offered it to Rosie.  “I’m guessing that would be you?”
    Rosie held Alan’s hand in both of hers, hesitantly, her gaze watery.  “I’m Rosie.  Lindsay called me just last week to say she was coming to see me again with the new man in her life.  She didn’t tell me anything about him.  About you, I should say.  I’m so sorry that we had to meet like this.”
    They stood there for a long moment until Lindsay shifted on the bed and drew Alan’s attention away.  He went back to his seat next to her.  “She’s been doing that ever since they brought her in here.  She’ll lie so still for so long and then there’s this little movement that makes me think she’ll wake up.”
    There was another chair against the wall at the foot of the bed.  Rosie sat down in it, carefully watching her daughter for any other signs of movement.  Darcy leaned against the wall near the porcelain sink.  Apparently any more introductions would wait for Lindsay to wake up.
    The silence stretched, punctuated by Lindsay’s slow breathing and Rosie’s periodic sighs.  Darcy could feel the emotional tension permeating the room.
    “I heard the driver didn’t make it,” she said to Alan, needing to say something.  “I’m sorry.  He was your friend, right?”
    “Who?” he asked.
    Darcy racked her brain to remember the name Jon had told her.  “Uh, Jarred.  The one who was driving your car.  He was your friend, right?”
    Alan stared at her blankly for a few seconds.  Then he blinked and shrugged, like he had just grasped what Darcy was talking about.  “Yeah.  Jarred and me.  We were friends for years.  He was happy when Lindsay finally agreed to marry me.”
    His hand went to a chain he wore around his neck, pulling on the ring at the end of it.  A man’s wedding band, Darcy realized.