Chapter 1

“You should be dead,” the ER nurse stated as she adjusted something on my IV. She was more husky than fat, with too much eye makeup, and hair that had been dyed a nasty shade of reddish orange. When I didn’t immediately respond she glanced my way, as if to assure herself that I really was awake and aware. “You realize that, right?” she demanded. “You’re pretty damn lucky to be alive.”

“Um . . . okay,” I muttered. Beneath the sheet I ran a hand over my stomach, frowned. “Have I been in a coma or something?” I asked.

Her thin lips pinched together. “A coma? No. You were brought in a few hours ago.” She paused, set her hands on her hips. “You overdosed.”

I scrubbed a hand over my face, shook my head. “No, I was in a car accident,” I insisted. “I remember being injured.” Didn’t I? “I was bleeding,” I added, less certain as I ran my hand over the unbroken skin of my stomach again.

She gave a dismissive snort. “There’s not a scratch on you. You must have hallucinated it.” Her eyes narrowed with contempt and disapproval. I didn’t care. I was used to seeing that when people looked at me.

Glass and blood and metal. A broken body beside me. Teeth and hunger. Gobbets of flesh ripped away. . . .

Cold sweat broke out on the back of my neck. How could that have been a hallucination? Hallucinations were strange and hazy and jumbled. I knew. I’d had a few.

Making an annoyed noise in the back of her throat, she snagged the chart from the end of the bed. “Unknown white female. Hmmm. Do you remember your name, sweetheart?” She flicked her eyes back up to me and gave me a sugary-bitchy smile that didn’t have an ounce of true concern in it.

“Yeah, I know my damn name,” I snarled. “It’s Angel Crawford.” I wanted to add, And you can write it down with the pencil that’s stuck up your ass, but I managed to hold it back. I knew that nurses had the power to make your life suck worse than it already did, and it was clear that this bitch considered me to be one step away from starring in my own loser reality show. Screw her. I was at least two steps away.

The nurse gave a sniff as if she didn’t truly believe I was smart or sober enough to know who I was. “Let’s see what all was in your system—THC, hydrocodone, alprazolam, oxycodone. . . .” She rattled off a couple of other drug names that sounded long and scary while I scowled blackly at her. After she finished she gave me a look full of smug satisfaction, hung the chart back up and left the room in a pompous waddle before I could respond. Good thing too, because what I wanted to say to her would have been too much even for a Jerry Springer special.

My anger withered as soon as she was gone, overwhelmed by my confusion and sick fear. I lifted the sheet up to see for myself—again—that I was uninjured.

I struggled to make sense of it. I remembered the blood. Lots of it. There’d been some sort of long gash across my stomach, and I had a nauseating memory of seeing the jagged end of white bone poking from my thigh, blood pumping out and all over. But now there was nothing out of place. No scrapes, no bruises. Just perfectly normal flesh all over. A coma could explain that, right? A couple of months or so, enough time for me to heal up.

Except that I didn’t have any scars, either.

Sighing, I dropped my head back to the pillow. I hadn’t been in a coma. The nurse wasn’t lying or messing with my head.

No, I was simply a loser.

Overdose. Great. Well, this was a new low for me, and it didn’t help that it was totally believable. The only possibly shocking aspect was that it hadn’t happened sooner. I didn’t remember taking as many drugs as the bitch nurse had said, but the fact that I was in the ER was proof enough that I obviously had. The nurse hadn’t gone and altered my lab results either. I did that all by myself, the old-fashioned way.

Weary depression rolled over me as I stared at the speckled tile of the ceiling. Beyond the door I could hear the frenzy of a stretcher being wheeled by and voices raised in brief concern. I knew what would happen next. Some social worker or psychologist would come in and tell me I needed rehab or counseling or some crap like that, which was a stupid suggestion since I didn’t have money or insurance. Or worse, I’d get a seventy-two-hour commitment for “psychiatric evaluation,” since I was clearly a danger to myself, and I’d probably end up in some nasty charity ward. There was no way I was gonna put up with that. I felt perfectly fine now and more than ready to get the hell out of here.

I kicked the sheet away and slid off the bed. The tile was smooth and cold against my bare feet. I needed shoes and clothes. I was wearing the stupid hospital gown, and my own clothes were so covered with blood that I’d draw all sorts of attention if I tried to walk out in them.

I shook my head. No, the blood had been a hallucination.

There was no sign of my clothes in the room. No closets—only one cabinet and an intimidating variety of medical equipment. I started to move toward the cabinet, remembering the IV a step before I accidentally yanked it out of my arm, then spent a couple of seconds trying to decide if I could carry the bag out with me instead of pulling the needle out. Needles freaked me out, but leaving it in would probably be worse than removing it myself. Hell, that was the only reason I’d never gone for the harder drugs like heroin or meth. Too chickenshit to stick a needle into me to get that kind of high. Pills were easy. Plus I could tell myself that I wasn’t a real druggie.

Except that now I’d almost killed myself just as dead as if I’d ODed on heroin.

Pushing that unpleasant thought out of my mind, I peeled off the tape on my arm then clenched my teeth and pulled the needle out. I braced myself against the wave of nausea that always hit me whenever I saw blood—especially my own—but to my relief it didn’t hurt at all, and I didn’t feel sick. A tiny bead of blood welled up from the puncture site, and I wiped it away with the hem of my gown before I even remembered that I was supposed to be nauseated by it.

Maybe that’s why I’d hallucinated about being covered in blood? There wasn’t much that would freak me out more than that.

The door to the room opened again, startling me, and I dropped the IV line with a guilty flush as a different nurse walked in. She was a lot younger than the other one—maybe in her early twenties or so, with sleek blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail and the sort of fresh no-makeup look I wished I could pull off. I looked like death without makeup, and while my hair was blonde as well, it was that way because I dyed it myself, which meant it was a frizzy, damaged mess.

Her eyes flicked to the discarded IV, but she didn’t seem to be upset that I’d removed it. “I wanted to make sure you were awake and decent,” she said with a smile that was kinder than I expected. “There are a couple of detectives here who want to talk to you.”

A frisson of terror shot through me. “Wh-why?” I asked, though I was pretty sure I knew. They were here to take me to jail. My probation officer had found out about the drug use and my probation was being revoked. Or they wanted me to squeal about where I got my drugs.

I must have gone pale because she closed the door and gave me a reassuring smile. “They only want to talk to you. You’re going to be fine. Here,” she said, gently but firmly pushing me back to sit on the bed. She didn’t make me lie back down—simply pulled the bed sheet around so that my lower body and bare feet were covered. “That’s better. I know I can’t talk to anyone with any sort of authority if I’m half-naked,” she said with a wink.

Her unexpected niceness had me a little off-balance, especially after the open hostility of the previous nurse. “Where are my other clothes?”

“You, uh, weren’t wearing any when you were brought in.”

Oh, shit. I swallowed hard. “Did they take them off in the ambulance?” Surely it wouldn’t be as bad as if I’d—

“The cops found you on the side of the road . . . naked.” Her face twisted in embarrassed sympathy.

My throat tightened. “Was I—I mean, had I been . . . ?” I couldn’t say the word.

Her eyes widened. “No!” She shook her head emphatically. “No, the doctor, um, checked. You weren’t assaulted.”

I scrubbed at my face and fought the urge to cry. Overdose and naked on the side of the road. This kept getting better and better. And not even the victim of a crime, just a stupid drugged-out skank.

The nurse made a concerned noise in her throat, reached out and gave my upper arms a firm rub. “Relax now. Everything’s going to be fine. These detectives want to have a word with you, then you’ll be ready to get out of here.” She turned and left before I could form any sort of coherent response.

Right. Everything’s going to be fine, I thought with a sour laugh. She didn’t know. She couldn’t possibly understand why I was freaking.

I didn’t have to stew in my panic for long. No sooner had the door swung shut behind the blonde nurse than it opened again and two detectives walked in. But they weren’t probation officers or narcotics detectives. That threw me. At least I was pretty sure they weren’t narcs. Those guys usually went around in jeans and T-shirts, but these two were in dress shirts and ties. The first one in was a burly guy—at least six feet tall and stocky with a bit of a pudge working around his middle, blondish brown hair, and a scruffy-looking mustache. The second detective wasn’t as tall, but he was big in a muscled way. No pudge on him. I could tell he worked out, and hard. He had dark hair, dark eyes, and an equally dark expression on his face. Both had guns, badges, and handcuffs on their belts.

In other words, they intimidated the ever-living shit out of me simply by walking into the room.

“Ms. Crawford,” the burly one began, “I’m Detective Ben Roth and this is Detective Mike Abadie.” He cocked his head toward the dark-haired detective. “We’re with the Saint Edwards Parish Sheriff’s Office, and we’d appreciate it if you could take a couple of minutes to answer some questions for us.”