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Rocky we wouldn’t have been here, either.
    Conahegg walked us through the station, ignoring Swiggly who watched openmouthed, and took us out the back way to his patrol car. We drove to the hospital in two minutes flat. He hurried inside for a wheelchair and returned with three nurses.
    They wheeled Sissy away and I started to follow but Conahegg stopped me.
    “I’m sorry,” he said.
    “Yeah, well, so am I.”
    He put a hand on my shoulder. A gesture of support, commiseration. “I mean it.”
    “Why should you care?”
    For a moment he hesitated. I tried to read the expression on his face but couldn’t. “It’s my job.”
    That wasn’t the answer I wanted, but don’t ask me what I expected him to say.
    “I’ll come back to question your sister after they’re finished examining her,” he continued.
    “I gotta go.” I pulled away from him. I had to get to Sissy and find out what she wouldn’t reveal in front of Conahegg—the name of the man who’d beaten her and the reason why.
    “Allegheny,” he called out as I reached the pneumatic doors. I stopped and the doors opened, but I didn’t turn around to look at Conahegg.
    “Yes,” I called over my shoulder.
    “If she tells you anything I expect you to relay the information to me, even if it means implicating your sister in something illegal.”
    This time I did turn. “What are you suggesting?”
    “I don’t know what your sister is involved in, but I promise you I will find out who hurt her. And he will pay.”
    T HE HOSPITAL RELEASED Sissy at 6:00 a.m. Conahegg had returned once to check on us and told me to call for a squad car when we needed a ride home, but I’d declined, having had enough of Conahegg and his crew for one day. I talked to an emergency room nurse I knew, Glenda Harrington, and sheagreed to give us a lift, but she didn’t get off until seven. We were stuck for another hour.
    “I wanna see Rocky,” Sissy whined. “Just for a couple of minutes.”
    “Sissy…”
    “Ally, please.”
    “Are you going to tell me who beat you up?”
    Sissy hardened her jaw, ran a hand through her spiky, midnight-black hair and looked away from me. We were sitting in the emergency room waiting area with two bleary-eyed drunks and an elderly lady who’d fallen fast asleep over her knitting.
    “I don’t want to talk about it.”
    “You knew the guy, didn’t you?”
    Sissy shrugged. “It’s no big deal.”
    “Some thug bloodies your nose, blacks your eye, hits you in the belly and you tell me it’s no big deal.”
    Who was my sister protecting and why? I wanted to take her by the shoulders and shake some sense into her but she’d been through enough for one night.
    “Could we drop it?”
    “Does it have something to do with your pal Rockerfeller Hughes?”
    Sissy’s expression confirmed my suspicions. The tip of her nose turns red when she lies. “You’re wrong.”
    “What do you see in him, Sissy? He borrows money from you that he never pays back, he makes promises he doesn’t keep. He does drugs for heaven’s sake, and he’s not even cute. I don’t get it.”
    “You don’t understand,” she said. “How could you when you can’t even get a man of your own?”
    Ouch. Her comment hurt more than I cared to admit. The truth is, I haven’t even gone out with a guy in over threeyears. My life is too busy, my past history with the opposite sex too shaky. Plus, I haven’t found anyone who interested me. Until tonight. Until Conahegg. But why him? Why now?
    “It’s not that I can’t get a man,” I retorted. “I don’t have time to date, not between taking care of you and Mama and Denny and Aunt Tessa. My social calendar is a little full.”
    “Nobody ever asked you to play martyr, Ally, but it’s your favorite role.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “Take it any way you want.”
    My pulse quickened, anger surging through me. Okay, the anger was born of hurt. I sacrificed so my family could survive, and I get