I was going to crash. I could see it unfolding in my mind even before it happened, the car hitting the concrete barrier on the side of the road and flipping, rolling several times before it would come to a stop in the median.

I was about to die and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

"Logan..."

Madison I vaguely heard Rawn's cellphone ring, the chimes of his chosen ringtone sinking into my dreams, making them a little more fevered than they had been before. It stopped after a moment, and I settled back into sleep. But then it rang again, the same insistent chimes eating away at my peaceful sleep.

I rolled over and found him curled up beside me, contentedly sleeping through the annoying sound. I grumbled a little as I reached over him to retrieve the phone, pleased to see that all my nerves and muscles seemed to be working a little better today.

"Hello?" I mumbled into the phone after I accepted the call.

"I'm looking for a Mr. Rawn Jackman."

"He's sleeping. Can I take a message?"

There was some hesitation on the other end of the line. Then the voice said, "Would you happen to know if Mr. Jackman owns a 2015 Lexus RC?"

I sat up, a few of my muscles-especially around my joints-screaming in protest. "He's co-owner of the car. Why? Has it been stolen?"

"No, ma'am. It's been involved in an accident."

"An accident? That's not possible. I left the car in my friend's driveway." And then it hit me.

Annie.

"I'm sorry, ma'am, but if I could talk to Mr. Jackman..."

I slapped Rawn's shoulder hard enough to leave a red handprint on his skin. "Something's happened to Annie."

He sat up and took the phone from me. He grunted a greeting and stared at me, as he listened to the voice on the other end of the line. And then his eyes fell, and I knew the worst had happened. I quickly climbed out of bed and began pulling on clothes, shoving others back in my overnight bag.

"There's been an accident," he began to say. But I didn't need to know. I just needed to get to her.

Chapter 9.

Madison We rushed into the hospital's emergency room-a scene that was becoming much too familiar to me these days-and Rawn approached the nurse's station, telling the woman sitting there who we had come to see.

"She's been moved up to the surgical floor. Fourth floor."

Rawn glanced at me, then his eyes slid to Logan's face.

Logan had returned to his house last night and found Annie gone. He didn't call her; he didn't call me or Rawn. He didn't think it was his place to send out the alarm because of everything I had said. And that had allowed Annie to be on the highway in the middle of the night where she was run off the road by some maniac.

"A drunk driver, they think," Rawn had said, after speaking to the California Highway Patrol officer in charge of the investigation.

But it didn't take a wild stretch of the imagination to realize that it wasn't as impersonal as that.

The three of us rushed to the elevator, our adrenaline still pumping after the furious rush to the airport that morning to get here as quickly as possible. Logan had asked if we should call her parents, but I was torn. It might be more logical to call my parents. Annie was closer to them than her own.

But I made the call anyway.

They said to let them know if it was life threatening.

Another nurse's desk, another bored nurse who couldn't care less about the drama that was suddenly dumped in our laps first thing this morning. She told us to wait; the doctor would come out and tell us what was going on.

I paced, my arms wrapped tight around my chest.

"Should I call Mellissa and Conrad? Maybe they should be here if things..." I bit my lip, as much for the pain that ripped through my chest as to take my mind off the small sound Logan made.

Rawn shook his head. "We'll wait a minute. See what the doctor has to say."

I nodded and continued to pace, moving around the tacky green and blue chairs and the cheap end tables, the tiny nugget of fear that I had been able to control for hours suddenly swelling and growing in my belly.

All the what-ifs began to play in my head.

What if I hadn't had that meltdown at dinner? What if I hadn't caused Annie and Logan to fight? What if I hadn't left my car at Logan's house? What if I hadn't driven to LA at all, if I had flown down with Rawn?

And then the other what-ifs...

What if she was paralyzed, or so badly hurt that she had to stay in the hospital for months? What if she couldn't finish school? Would she lose her scholarships? Would she lose her place in grad school? Would this change her entire future?

And then the biggest what if- What if Annie was dead, and they just didn't want to tell us?

I couldn't deal with the unknown.

That's how it had been with Allison, all the waiting in hospitals, not sure if she was still alive or not. Every time they came out and told us that she had survived another attack, that her pneumonia was finally responding to the antibiotics, that she would come home again, it was a little hope that made that final moment, the moment they told us that she would not survive the night, that much harder to accept.

I didn't want to go through that again.

And I didn't want the people I loved to go through it either.

I paced because I didn't know how else to contain the fear. I couldn't stop the wheels turning in my head, the thoughts chasing one another like a hunting dog flushing out rabbits. An inhuman cry came from a room on my left. I turned and watched as a family was escorted out, the woman being consoled by the people around her, all of them so pale that they might have been extras in a horror film. I knew. I knew that walk. I knew they had just lost someone very close to them. But then the woman who had screamed, the woman being consoled by people who could only be her grown children, saw me watching, and she nodded.

She nodded.

She had just lost someone close to her, and she had enough wherewithal to nod at me.

Then, I turned and found both Logan and Rawn watching me, concern etched across their faces. And that's when I realized I wasn't giving anyone the benefit of the doubt, not even myself.

As individuals, we were strong. Rawn had survived his mother's alcoholism. Logan had survived the reality of his disease. Annie had survived me, her heartless parents, and life in general.

And I...I had survived the worst pain the world could dump on me-the loss of my sister-and the uncertainty of my disease. I survived a kidnapping, the heartache of loving a man I was unsure of, the darkness of someone else's secret.

Individually, we were strong.

Together we were even stronger.

We could do this. No matter what happened, we could do this.

That realization didn't stop the stuttering of my heart when the doctor approached.

"Annie Warby family?"

Rawn stepped up beside me. "How is she?"

"She is a very lucky girl." The doctor touched my arm lightly, speaking directly to me. "She has multiple broken ribs and lots of bruises and scratches. The most significant injury was her arm. She broke it in several places, so we had to go in and set it surgically with a few rods. She'll likely set off metal detectors for the rest of her life, but she's going to be fine."

Relief washed through me so quickly that my body went slack. Rawn slipped his arm around me and pulled me tight against his chest as I lost it and sobbed against his chest.

They told us we could see her a short time later. I gestured for Logan to follow, but he turned away.

"Give us a minute, okay?"

I nodded and watched Rawn approach Logan before I followed the nurse to Annie's bedside.

They had moved her out of the surgical recovery room and into a private room of her own. She had her eyes closed, her left arm in a dramatic cast with a rod that held it up at an angle from her hip. Her face was nearly unrecognizable, so swollen and bruised. There were bandages on her chest, her other arm, clearly covering the some of the many cuts the doctor had mentioned.

It physically hurt me to look at her, but I was so grateful that she was still alive that I would have been happy to see her in almost any condition.

"Hey, chick," I said softly as I sat in the chair at her bedside and slipped my hand into hers.

"Hey." She peeked at me through one swollen eye. "You're here."

"Of course I'm here."

She started to smile, but it must have caused her some pain because she grimaced instead.

"You sure know how to make a dramatic exit."

She grunted. "I'm sorry about your car."

"Cars are replaceable. Best friends aren't."

She peeked at me again, then her eye shifted to the door. "Logan?" she asked softly.

I didn't answer at first because I didn't know how to tell her that he wouldn't come see her. But I apparently didn't need to say anything because she turned her head away as a single tear coursed down her face.

"I'm sorry," I said softly, lifting her hand to my face. "I never should have interfered. I should have trusted that the two of you could handle whatever came your way."

"It doesn't really matter now."

I squeezed her hand. "You shouldn't give up. The Annie I know, she never lets an obstacle stand in her way."

I smoothed my hand over the back of hers and waited for her to say something else. But she didn't.

"I suppose the cops have talked to you about the accident," I said after a while.

She peeked at me again. "They said someone ran me off the road."

"Did you see who it was?"

"I didn't even know there was someone behind me. He must have had his lights off because I don't remember seeing headlights."

I nodded, swallowing my disappointment. I had hoped that she saw something that could help us figure things out. I still wanted some sort of proof before I told Rawn what I had remembered. The last time I started pointing fingers without evidence, he had Conrad arrested.

I really didn't want to get this wrong.

"There was one thing."

I looked up at Annie. "What?"

"After the accident, I was in the car, upside down. But I saw legs, a man's legs. He was wearing suit pants, like he had just come from the office. And I heard a voice say, "Fuck, Madison. You must have nine lives."

My heart sank low in my belly, as my mind went automatically to that moment during my kidnapping, that moment when that familiar voice said my name.

"Was he wearing wingtip shoes?"

Annie's swollen eye widened. "Black with a glossy shine."

And that was the connection.

The door opened behind me, and Logan stuck his head in. I stood and leaned close to Annie. "Thank you," I whispered against her cheek.

Then, I stepped away, touching Logan's shoulder as I passed him. I stepped out into the hallway and paused, Logan's voice floating to me through the partially open door.

"So, here's the thing. I have Wilson's disease..."

I smiled, as I pulled the door closed and walked away.

Rawn and I stuck around a few more hours, but there didn't seem to be much reason for it. Logan was at Annie's side constantly, and the doctor assured us she would be able to go home in a few days. Rawn promised to send the jet back for them, and we left, headed back to Portland and the disaster that waited for us there.

Conrad had been working on the press release that was supposed to put pressure on Rawn's tormentor and make him back off the resignation demand. Rawn called from the plane and updated him on everything that had happened over the last twenty-four hours, asking him to check in with his police contacts and find out if we could get a copy of Annie's accident report sooner than later.

As they talked, an idea crossed my mind and I asked Rawn for the phone.