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stop her.  He was used to her odd little behaviors now.  He didn’t even find them that strange anymore.  Or, at least that’s what he told her.
    She felt herself being pulled in a certain direction.  The tingling along her skin drew her down the hallway into the hospital, to the right and up a set of stairs to the second floor.  It was all patient rooms up here.  The nurses at their station smiled at Darcy politely, then ignored her.
    She walked down a line of numbered doors, some open, some closed, most of them with patients lying in their beds.  At room number two-fifteen, she stopped.  Her skin practically shivered and she knew she was supposed to see who was in this room.
    She entered slowly, carefully stepping closer to the sleeping form of a man on the hospital gurney.  His leg was in a cast and held up by a sling suspended from the ceiling.  Machines beeped as they monitored his condition.
    His face was turned away from Darcy.  One step at a time, she walked around the bed, closer to the room’s window, to look at him from the other side.
    Darcy stopped still, not even daring to breathe.  The wide face had a bruise around the right eye.  His messy red hair was even more mussed now from lying in bed.
    There was no mistaking it.  This was Ray Stephenson.
     

Chapter Thirteen
     
    Back down the stairs Darcy raced.  In the waiting room she scanned for Jon.  He wasn’t there.  The same hospital worker at her desk caught Darcy’s eye and nodded her head toward the Emergency Department door.  “He went in there, honey,” she said to Darcy.  “Your sister’s awake now.  Go on in.”
    In her room, Grace was sitting up, her eyes sad and her smile weak.  “Hey, Darcy.  Guess I really did myself in there, didn’t I?”
    “It’s not that bad,” Jon said for her.  He was sitting on the edge of Grace’s bed, one leg folded up over the other.  “You just need to rest and get your strength back.  I have to tell you, I wouldn’t be doing any better in your spot.”
    Darcy grabbed Jon’s arm.  “I found Ray Stephenson.”
    “You…wait, what?”  Jon stood up, searching her face.  “You mean with, uh, your abilities?”
    “No, no not that.  He’s here.  He’s here in the hospital, Jon!”
    Grace was watching them intently.  “You mean, that teller who got taken with Aaron?  He’s in the hospital?  We need to go question him.  Right now!”
    She struggled to get out of from under the sheet on her bed.  It was obvious how hard it was for her.  Jon reached over and easily put her back down.  Grace was furious, and she slapped at Jon’s arm, but she didn’t have the strength to fight him.  “Jon, stop it!”
    “Grace.  Let me and Darcy take care of this, okay?  You need to rest.  For the baby.  And for Aaron, too.”
    Grace looked like she wanted to murder Jon where he sat, but she nodded and laid her head back down, staring fixedly at the ceiling.
    Jon motioned Darcy out into the hallway and when the door to Grace’s room was closed behind them, he asked her, “What did you see?”
    Darcy filled him in on what she had found upstairs in room two-fifteen.  “I don’t understand,” Jon said when she was done.  “How come nobody told us about this?  We put out the message to all the local hospitals that first night.”
    “You put out the information about Aaron,” Darcy reminded him.  “We didn’t know anything about Ray Stephenson until today.”
    “Yesterday, you mean,” Jon corrected her.  “It’s after midnight now.”
    “Well, I’m not waiting another day to find out what’s going on,” she said to him.  “Let’s find somebody who can tell us what’s going on.”
    They went up to the work station in the center of the Emergency Department.  Behind the rectangular outline of the desk were three nurses and a doctor chatting quietly.
    “Excuse me, doctor?” Jon said.  He displayed his badge to them.  Darcy could tell it got their