Fire and Ice (Ice 5)

Everything hurt. Jilly didn’t want to open her eyes—the light overhead was too bright and whatever she was lying on was too narrow. She knew where she was without looking—the sounds and smells of a hospital were unmistakable. She wondered idly if she was going to die. The thought wasn’t particularly distressing, as long as it didn’t hurt too much. She’d dodged a bullet, literally, so many times in the past month that maybe her time had run out. She ought to be able to summon up some kind of emotion, but right at that moment all she wanted to do was breathe. And not hurt.

“Oh, my sweet baby!”

Shit. Lianne was there. Jilly opened one eye, very carefully, to look at her mother.

Lianne was exquisite, of course, dressed in a designer evening gown and her diamonds. “Hi, Ma,” she said, her voice a croak. “You didn’t have to dress up just for me.”

Lianne did her version of bursting into tears. It never involved actual eye-leakage, which would smear her makeup, but Jilly could tell by her expression that she was relatively disturbed.

“I’m fine,” Jilly said, not quite convinced of it.

“You never call me ‘Ma’ anymore!” Lianne sobbed.

“Don’t worry about it. I think they’ve got me on drugs.”

“Of course they do. You were in a car accident!”

“I remember that much,” she said dryly. “Who hit me?”

“It was a hit-and-run. It was just lucky there were people around to call the police and the ambulance. Your car almost flipped over onto the freeway.”

Jilly tried to sit up, but her head started whirling, and she sank back again. “Hit-and-run?” she echoed. Not happy, definitely not happy. An accidental fall in front of oncoming traffic could be explained, a hit-and-run accident within a half an hour of the fall was just a little too coincidental.

Except who would want to hurt her in L.A.? All the bad people were dead, weren’t they?

“I want to go home,” she said after a moment.

“And I’ll take you home, sweetie. Tomorrow. They want to watch you overnight, make sure you’re all right. And I have a charity thing that I can’t miss, so it works out better this way anyway.”

Of course you do, Jilly thought, feeling put upon. “What exactly is wrong with me?”

But Lianne had already risen, ready to be off. “You’ll have to ask the doctor about that. Apart from a sprained ankle, I think you’re just badly shook up, but they want to be sure before discharging you.”

“Great,” she grumbled. “I survive a car crash and my injuries aren’t even interesting. Are you sure? I can’t even open one eye.”

“It will be fine once the swelling goes down. They’re going to move you to a private room in a little while. You just get a good night’s rest and I’ll have the chauffeur pick you up in the morning.”

Jilly closed her eyes again. Whatever they were giving her was knocking the hell out of her. She was just as happy to sleep. “Goodbye, Lianne,” she said, dismissing her.

Even with her eyes closed she could feel her mother’s hesitation. “Baby, if you want me to…”

Jilly opened her eyes again, ignoring how much her head hurt. “Yes?”

Lianne bit her artificially enhanced lip. “If you want me to, I can come back with Jenkins in the morning. If you want my company. I can change my plans.”

“No need, Lianne,” Jilly said, closing her eyes. And a moment later her mother was gone.

She really must be pumped full of drugs, Jilly thought, as tears seeped out from behind her closed eyes. She had no more illusions about Lianne, and hadn’t had any since she was twelve years old, maybe even younger. She’d just been feeling so vulnerable recently, and the drugs were breaking down any of her lingering defenses. She hadn’t needed a mother in a long time. She needed to remember that.

It was a good thing Summer wasn’t around. Jilly had had a hard-enough time convincing her sister that nothing had happened with Reno. Summer had come racing back to California as soon as she heard what had happened. And she knew Jilly far too well. Right now there was nothing she wanted to do more than bawl her head off, and Summer, already skeptical, would jump to conclusions. And really, she wasn’t crying about Reno. She was just crying.

She tried to shift on the narrow bed, then realized she had things attached to her. IVs and blood-pressure monitors and even something attached to her finger. Whatever they were giving her was doing a decent job of killing the pain—maybe just a little bit more would knock her out completely. If only she could find a button to push.

A little oblivion, just for the night. Tomorrow she’d deal with her aches and pains, accept the fact that her mother had the emotional attention span of a gnat, and she’d make plans. She wasn’t sure what those plans were going to be, but they’d include being far away from here. Far away from anything at all familiar.

Tomorrow she was going to figure out where to run. One thing was certain—she wouldn’t come back until she damned well wanted to.

It would serve Reno right if she just disappeared. Not that she knew where he was. Her misery had nothing to do with him, and no one would be likely to tell him she was gone. She’d managed to convince her sister nothing had happened, and Taka would politely ignore anything he’d happened to observe.