Oliver stops swabbing the multitude of tiny cuts that mark my face, pausing to give me a displeased look. “Oh, you are, are you? Funny, that. I haven’t seen you around here for a while now. I thought maybe you’d ditched all of this and joined the circus or something.”
I try to smile, but my face hurts. “Wouldn’t you? Better hours, and the food’s actually edible.”
“Yeah. I bet.” He chucks the swab into the HAZMAT bin and folds his arms across his chest. With me sitting on the gurney in the emergency room, I suddenly get to see how disconcerting it is when a stern-looking doctor is looming over you. I’m never this grim, though. At least I hope I’m not. “Are you going to tell me where you’ve been, Sloane?” Oliver asks.
I cringe. “Hawaii?”
“Alright, fine. You’ve been in Hawaii.” He snaps his rubber gloves off and throws them in the bin, too. He turns to leave.
“Oliver, wait? What the hell’s the matter with you?”
He spins around, his sneakers squeaking on the linoleum floor. I find myself leaning away from him when I see his drawn-together brows and the firm set of his jaw. “Remember that kid we treated for photodermatitis last year?”
“The kid who was allergic to daylight?”
“Yeah, that one. You look like her right now. You haven’t been sunning yourself on a beach in Hawaii, Sloane. You look like you haven’t stepped foot out of Seattle in the last ten years.”
“Well, you’re wrong. I did leave Seattle.”
“But you didn’t go on vacation, did you?”
I bite my lip. I hadn’t expected the third degree from Oliver. He’s a friend, a good one if I’m honest with myself, but I’ve never considered that he’d be this bothered about what I’m doing with my time. “So what, Ol? Does it matter?”
He leans down, placing his hands on his knees, bringing himself lower so that his eyes are level with mine. “Yes, it matters, Sloane. It matters when I receive a panicked phone call from you, and then I find out you’ve been brought into the ER in a fucking ambulance. It matters when I see a circular of a guy, a dangerous fucking guy, tacked to the notice board in the locker room and I recognize him, Sloane. I recognize him as someone I’ve seen you talking to in the hallway. It matters when the Monterello guy who was shot and brought into the ICU, the one the cops were warning us that very same guy you were talking to might want to kill, is then murdered the same night. It matters when you disappear from work unexpectedly without telling anyone where you’re going, when you don’t answer your phone or reply to your email, or let anyone who cares about you know that you’re safe. And it especially matters when you then lie to me.”
Fuck. Monterello was killed? And Oliver did recognize Zeth. That stupid circular that the cops brought around—Oliver hadn’t seen it properly when they pulled us aside, but I hadn’t even factored in the possibility that Zeth’s mug shot might be pinned to a damn notice board. That Oliver might see it later on after passing me and Zeth in the corridor, and recognize him. I don’t say anything. I’m too busy trying to come up with a way to get out of this without compromising myself or Zeth.
Oliver straightens up. “You don’t want to deny the fact that you know this guy?” he asks.
“No. I do know him. And I know he didn’t kill Archie Monterello.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because he left town right after seeing me. I watched him drive away.”
“Oh, right. So you watched him drive away. And there’s absolutely no way he could have parked up somewhere, gone and eaten a delicious steak dinner and then come back and slit one of our patient’s throats later on, then?”
“Someone slit his throat?”
Oliver’s body tenses, his arms folded across his chest again. “There was arterial blood on the fucking ceiling, Sloane.”
My stomach twists. We see a lot of things in the hospital, but I’ve never seen someone who’s had their throat cut. Shot and stabbed, but never that. “He didn’t do it, Oliver. You have to trust me on that.”
Oliver laughs. “I do trust you. But I don’t trust that you realize what you’ve gotten yourself into here. You can’t know this guy properly, Sloane. The police have an APB out on him. They told us he spent time in prison for killing a guy, and guess what? His throat was cut, too. Doesn’t that ring any alarm bells for you?”
So that’s why Zeth was in jail. He killed a man? And in the exact same way Monterello was killed. And I already know he killed Frankie. My head suddenly feels very full, packed tight from the inside, like a huge, living pressure is trying to force its way out. “Am I okay to leave?” I ask.
Oliver huffs out a deep breath. “You should probably stay overnight, but I know you’re not going to.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Then will you at least go back to my place. You can crash in my bed; I’ll take the couch. At least that way I know I can check on you when my shift is up.”