Dressed in black, a magnificent tower of a man with ebony hair stood astride her, hands on his hips. He was scowling—eyes narrowed. He leaned closer and stared. Surely, this beautiful male creature was the angel of death, come to release her from the pain.
She looked into his gold eyes, glad this would be her last memory. She would leave life with the image of this perfect face in her mind and his forceful voice in her brain. Even through the mirage-like haze of pain, she noticed the well-developed muscles in his arms as he reached behind his head and drew out a long, brilliant sword from a sheath behind his back. He held it over his head like a knight from Arthurian Legend, the glimmering tip of the blade pointing down at her chest.
The pain felt like it was far away as she focused on his beautiful, fearsome form. Elena found herself calm rather than frightened as she stared up at the amazing creature preparing to plunge a sword into her heart.
She had never envisioned death like this. She had always assumed it was a horrible, shattering experience. This was…almost pleasant.
“I’m ready,” she whispered.
A puzzled expression crossed his face. “I can’t understand you. If you have last words, spit the blood out of your mouth so you can speak.”
She closed her eyes, beginning to slip away under the surface of unconsciousness. Strong fingers on her jaw jerked her head to the side.
“Spit!” he ordered.
She smiled at the memory of the beautiful face of her angel of death as she succumbed to the darkness.
Chapter Two
The lights were bright enough to shine pink through Elena’s closed eyelids. No pain. Certainly this was heaven.
“Miss Arcos?” It was a woman’s voice. Alto. Sweet.
Elena felt too good to open her eyes. The last thing she remembered was the searing pain of the gunshot wounds, and then his golden eyes. “Mmm hmm?” She remembered a sword…
“Miss Arcos, are you awake?”
“Mmm hmm.” And the body of a god.
“There are two investigators here to talk to you about the robbery.”
Nope. Not heaven. She opened her eyes to find a woman staring at her from the end of the bed. She was in her midfifties, wearing cranberry medical scrubs with her short, brown hair pulled back with barrettes.
Elena shot bolt upright. The hospital. Damn. She marveled again that there was no pain as she reached behind her to pull the open back of the gown together.
Maybe she had dreamed the whole convenience store robbery—gorgeous, golden-eyed death angel and all.
When she reached up to run her hands through her hair, her fingers got tangled. She pulled her blood-matted curls over her shoulder to examine them. Her blonde hair was darkened with sticky, dried blood. She could hardly find her voice. “What happened?”
The nurse shifted nervously at the foot of the bed. “You’ve been unconscious for a while.”
“What happened to me?”
“Well, that’s what the investigators are trying to find out. May I bring them in? They’ve been waiting a long time to talk to you.”
Investigators? The last thing she needed was to be interrogated. What in the world had happened anyway? If she wasn’t dead, then she was the one who needed answers, not them.
The nurse pushed a button on the side rail, raising the head of the bed so that Elena was sitting up. She pulled the covers up to her neck as the nurse left to summon the police investigators. As she replayed the robbery in her mind, she could find no explanation for what was happening.
She was dead.
There was no way she could have lived through the second shot. And if she had, she certainly wouldn’t be pain-free like this. But she was covered in blood—at least her hair was.
She had to get out of here. She looked around the room in an attempt to figure out which hospital she was in, but it was just a typical ER exam room. Could have been any one of the Houston Medical Center anchors.
Ah ha! A Central Hospital OSHA protocol was plastered to the cabinet in the nurses’ station—just like the one that hung on her lab door at work. She could see the poster through the glass wall at the end of the room. So private—like a fish tank. At least she was in the hospital she worked for.
Elena jerked the rough sheet higher under her chin. Through the glass wall, she saw the nurse leading two men toward her room. They joked and laughed with each other until they reached the door, where they became somber and businesslike.
Both of them were somewhere between forty-five and fifty. As if they had planned their outfits in advance, they both wore short-sleeved button-downs and tan slacks. The shorter one with sandy-colored hair spoke first. “Miss Arcos, my name is Jack Knowles, and this is Edward Gonzalez. We’re investigators with the HPD Robbery/Homicide Division. May we ask you a couple of questions?”