It seems as if nothing at a crime or accident scene is ever done with any haste. Honest. There were a lot of people walking around, most of them uniformed, and most of them not actively doing anything other than talking to other people who were doing the same thing. Radios squawked, and people talked into them. Evidently they’d found the spot from which the shot was fired, and forensics people were going over the area. Red talked on his radio. Keisha repacked stuff. No one was in any hurry, and that was reassuring, too.

“I need my bag,” I said, and Keisha retrieved it from my car to set it on the gurney beside me. Being a woman, she understood how much a woman needed her bag.

I fished in the bag for a pen and my date book. I flipped to the back to the blank pages for taking notes, and began writing. Man, this list was getting long.

Wyatt appeared at the open doors of the ambulance. His badge was clipped to his belt, and his pistol was in a shoulder holster worn over his polo shirt. Lines bracketed his mouth. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” I said politely. I wasn’t, not really, because my arm was really, really throbbing and I felt weak from blood loss, but I was still mad at him and not inclined to lean on him. See, men want you to lean on them, because it satisfies their protective instincts, which are pretty much hardwired, and by refusing his sympathy, I was telling him he was in the dog house. You have to read between the lines on these things.

His green eyes narrowed. He got the message all right. “I’ll follow the ambulance to the hospital.”

“Thank you, but there’s no need. I’ll call my family.”

The eyes got even more narrow. “I said I’ll follow you. I’ll call your parents on the way.”

“Fine. Do what you want.” Which meant, I’ll still be mad.

He got that message, too. He put his hands on his hips, looking all macho and masculine and disgruntled. “What has you in such a snit?”

“You mean, other than being shot?” I asked sweetly.

“I’ve been shot. It didn’t make me act like a-” He stopped himself, evidently thinking better of what he’d been about to say.

“Bitch? Spoiled brat? Diva?” I supplied the choices myself. Up front, Red was sitting very still as he listened to the argument. Standing off to the side, waiting to close the doors, Keisha was pretending to look at a bird in the sky.

He gave a grim smile. “You choose the ones that fit.”

“No problem. I can do that.” I wrote another item on my list.

His gaze arrowed in on the date book. “What are you doing?”

“Making a list.”

“Jesus Christ, another one?”

“The same one. I’m just adding to it.”

“Give me that.” He leaned forward into the ambulance as if to snatch the date book away from me.

I jerked it back. “This is my book, not yours. Don’t touch it.” Over my shoulder I said to Red, “Come on, let’s get this show on the road.”

“Blair, you’re pouting-”

Well, yes, I was. When I felt better I might relent, but until then I felt my pouting was well-deserved. You tell me, if you can’t pout when you’re shot, just when is it called for?

As Keisha closed the ambulance doors, I said, “Just see if I ever sleep with you again!”

“You’re sleeping with Lieutenant Bloodsworth, huh?” Keisha asked, grinning.

“I have in the past,” I said, and sniffed. So what if the past was just that morning? “He shouldn’t hold his breath waiting for the next time.” I was a bit chagrined that I had blurted out something as personal as details of my love life, but I’d been provoked.

It seemed to me that Red was driving inordinately slow. I didn’t know if he was always that careful-which might not be a good thing when you have someone dying in your ambulance-or if he just wanted to listen to as much of our conversation as possible before we arrived at the hospital. Other than Keisha, no one, absolutely no one, seemed to think my condition was worth any extra worry or attention.

Keisha, however, was a woman after my own heart. She’d given me Fig Newtons, and she’d got my bag for me. Keisha understood.

“That would be one hard man to turn down,” she commented thoughtfully. “No pun intended.”

“A woman’s gotta do what a woman’s gotta do.”

“I hear you, sister.” We shared a look of total understanding. Men are difficult creatures; you can’t let them get the upper hand. And thank God Wyatt was being difficult, because that gave me something to think about other than that someone was trying to kill me. I just wasn’t ready to deal with it yet. I was safe for the time being, and that gave me some breathing space, which was all I needed. I would concentrate on Wyatt and my list until I felt better able to handle the situation.

At the hospital, I was whisked away and put in a private little cubicle-well, as private as anything can be that has a curtain for a door-and a couple of friendly, cheerfully efficient nurses cut away my blood-soaked top and bra. I really hated that the bra had to be sacrificed, because it was this beautiful seafoam lace and matched my underpants, which I would now be unable to wear unless I bought another matching bra. Ah, well. The bra was ruined anyway, because I doubted any treatment would get bloodstains out of silk, plus I now had bad memories associated with it and probably wouldn’t have worn it again anyway. I was draped in a blue-and-white hospital gown, which was in no way fashionable, and made to lie down while they did a preliminary workup.

They also peeled the bandage off my arm, and by now I felt steady enough to get a look at the damage myself. “Ewww,” I said, wrinkling my nose.

Now, there’s no place you can get shot that you won’t have muscle damage, except maybe in the eye, in which case you don’t have to worry about it because you’re probably dead. The bullet had torn a deep gouge in the outside of my upper arm, just under the shoulder joint. If it had gone any higher, it would likely have shattered the joint, which would have been much more serious. This looked bad enough, because I didn’t see how the gouge could be closed with a few stitches.

“It isn’t so bad,” said one of the nurses. Her name tag said Cynthia. “It’s a flesh wound; nothing structural’s damaged. Hurts like the dickens, though, doesn’t it?”

Amen to that.

My vital signs were taken-my pulse was a bit fast, but whose wouldn’t be? Respirations normal. Blood pressure a little elevated over my norm, but not by much. All in all, my body was having a rather mild reaction to being shot. It helped that I was healthy as a horse, and in great shape.

There was no telling what sort of shape I’d be in by the time this arm was well enough for me to work out again, I thought glumly. In a couple of days I’d start doing cardio, then yoga, but there wouldn’t be any gymnastics or weight training for at least a month. If getting shot was anything like the other injuries I’d had in the past, muscles took a while to get over the trauma even after the initial symptoms were gone.

They gave the wound a thorough cleaning, which didn’t make it hurt any worse than it was already hurting. I was lucky in that my top had been sleeveless and there weren’t any fabric fibers caught in the wound. That greatly simplified things.

The doctor finally came in, a lanky guy with wrinkles in his forehead and cheerful blue eyes. His name tag said MacDuff. No joke. “Rough date, huh?” he asked jokingly as he pulled on plastic gloves.

Startled, I blinked at him. “How did you know?”