Page 12 of Girl Anonymous

Maarja tried to think. She lifted her hand to rub her face and Dante caught it. “Don’t. You’re burned.”

“Um. Call my mom. Octavia Maldovitch. Make sure she knows I’m going to be okay. I don’t want her to try to get to the hospital. She’s better staying close to home.”

“Do you know her number?”

“It’s on my phone. Autodial.” She fumbled in her coveralls, trying to find it in her hip pocket.

The EMT handed a phone to Dante, who made a funny face.

“Also call Saint Rees. Leave a message. With the emergency van takeoff, he’ll be concentrated on that. You know his number. Leave a message, tell him to send someone to take me home when I get out of the hospital.”

“Right.” Dante stepped back.

“Wait!” She took a quivering breath. “Ask if my crew is safe. Ask if Alex…is safe.”

“Of course,” Dante said.

As the EMTs transported her toward a second ambulance, she caught glimpses of a scowling Béatrice, still clutching her oxygen mask, of an impassive Nate, arms crossed over his chest. Someone held a phone high above everyone’s shoulders filminghernow as if she were a high-strung actress dealing with a contretemps on the set.

In the emergency room, she was immediately and thoroughly checked out, given pills for stress and to sleep, ointments for her burns, and more fluids. The doctor told her to go to her own doctor in the morning, and she was released. When she asked about billing, she was assured the matter had been handled. Which meant Saint Rees’s well-thought-out insurance policy had kicked in. Julie, the young nursing assistant, told her she had a driver waiting, put her into a wheelchair and pushed her out the doors.

It was night, Maarja realized. Hours had passed since the explosion.

Grief had not passed. Drugs could only do so much. Time and again, she smashed into the unacceptable fact; she had failed to rescue Mrs. Arundel…More blood on my hands. Always blood and heartache and the slow erosion of self caused by loneliness.

There on the hospital’s brightly lit sidewalk, she expected to see Saint Rees or one of the people from his firm.

Instead Dante Arundel leaned against a black sedan. He scrutinized her and frowned. “You look like you walked through hell.”

She bit her lip and blinked away tears. “I’m fine.”

Julie frowned as sternly as he ever did. “Shock is a terrible thing, Mr. Arundel, and that attitude won’t help her.”

“I’m fine,” Maarja said again.

“Sure you are. So am I. We’re both fine.” She remembered how firmly he’d held her when she fought him, how he’d demanded she get medical help, be transported to the hospital, not rail at the villains who’d taken his mother’s life. How did a man who had lost his mother today manage to infuse the situation with such biting sarcasm?

As Julie set the wheelchair’s brake, he reached down to wrap his arm around Maarja’s back and help her out.

She flinched.

He halted. “Are you bruised? Bones broken I don’t know about?”

“No. No. I don’t like…” She knew better than to give too much information. “Thank you for your assistance, but I can stand on my own.”

“Mr. Arundel, you get in the driver’s seat. I’ll put her in the car.” Julie replaced his arm with her own.

Dante nodded curtly, opened the passenger door, and went around.

In a low voice, Julie said, “You don’t have to go with him if you’re afraid.”

“He wants to talk to me about what happened.” As Maarja spoke, she realized that must be the case. “The explosion. What I heard and saw.”

“You should be talking to the cops, not him.”

“Sooner or later I’m sure I will, but right now—he’s one of those men who gets his way. Surely you see that.”

“I don’t have to like him for it. Don’t put up with any shit from him.”

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