They seemed to swim inside Cilla’s head as she paced the hospital waiting room. It was so quiet there, quiet enough to hear the swish of crepe-soled shoes on tile or the whoosh of the elevator doors opening, closing. Yet in her head she could still hear the chaos of sirens, voices, the crackle of static on the police cruisers that had nosed together in the station’s parking lot. The paramedics had come. Hands had pulled her away from Boyd, pulled her out of the booth and into the cool, fresh night. Mark, she remembered. It was Mark who had held her back as she’d run the gamut from hysteria to shock. Jackson had been there, steady as a rock, pushing a cup of some hot liquid into her hand. And Nick, white-faced, mumbling assurances and apologies. There had been strangers, dozens of them, who had heard the confrontation over their radios. They had crowded in until the uniformed police set up a barricade. Then Deborah had been there, racing across the lot in tears, shoving aside cops, reporters, gawkers, to get to her sister.
