the man, which also brought them closer to the exit. Thankfully, she was on the first floor and the gate was up, so she didn’t have to slow down too much.
After exiting the structure, she cranked the wheel hard to the right, taking them far away from the bright lights of the hospital into the inky darkness. Risking a glance at her rearview mirror, she tried to see where the guy was.
There was no sign of him. Her shoulders slumped in relief, until it hit her.
Obviously, he must have a car there, too. Was he right now jumping inside to follow them?
“Take another right,” Mitch said, drawing her attention from the knife guy. “The freeway on-ramp isn’t far.”
“The freeway?” She glanced at him in confusion. “Where are we going?”
“Anywhere. Preferably as far away from this hospital as possible,” he muttered in a grim tone. “We need to make sure he hasn’t followed us.”
She couldn’t deny she wanted the exact same thing. She drove through the night, the bitter taste of fear coating her tongue.
The events that had taken place in the past few minutes seemed unreal. The more she thought about it, the less it made sense.
“But why?” she pressed, tightening her grip on the steering wheel. “Why would he follow us? I don’t understand what’s going on.”
“Frankly, I don’t, either.” Mitch tentatively felt along the side of his neck, where the oozing blood was beginning to congeal into a tacky mess. “But I have a bad feeling I’m being set up.”
She took the on-ramp and pressed the accelerator down to get up to freeway speed. As her compact car ate up the miles, her thoughts whirled.
Had Mitch suffered some kind of head injury? Or was he just being paranoid? There was no denying the knife-wielding guy had intended to cause him harm, but to show up at the hospital? Who did that? This whole situation was downright crazy.
“Set up for what, exactly?” she asked.
Mitch was silent for a long moment before he finally spoke. “Murder.”
Bracing himself with one hand wedged against the glove compartment, Mitch scanned the area, trying to think of a way out of this disastrous turn of events.
He hated the fact that he’d dragged sweet Dana Petrie into it, too, but there hadn’t been another option. No way was he leaving her behind. Not considering that his assailant knew what she looked like. Although there had been something about the way he moved that seemed familiar. If only he’d gotten a look at his face.
“Murder?” Dana’s voice rose a notch. “What are you talking about?”
There were several sets of headlights behind them, making him nervous. What if one of them belonged to his attacker? “Take the next exit,” he directed. “We need to change directions.”
“No.” Dana’s mouth thinned into a stubborn line. She’d cut her blue-black hair since the last time he’d seen her, wearing it in a chin-length silky bob that accented her dainty features. She was as beautiful as he remembered. “I’m not driving around willy-nilly until you tell me exactly what’s going on. Why do you think you’re being set up for murder?”
He ignored the ache in his head and forced himself to concentrate. “Please,” he said in a low voice. “Please take the next exit. I promise I’ll explain everything, but I need to be certain that man isn’t following us.”
“Fine,” she muttered harshly, taking her foot off the accelerator and heading toward the exit. “Happy? Now start talking.”
“I was attacked earlier this evening at the site of a warehouse fire,” Mitch said. “Just before I was hit from behind, I saw a pair of jean-clad legs sticking out from a pile of rubble.”
She stopped at a stoplight, then turned to face him. “What makes you think the body was a result of murder?”
“The light’s turned green,” he said.
She scowled and hit the gas. “You’re not making any sense.”
He rubbed his temple and acknowledged she was right. He needed to start at the very beginning. “My boss, Fire Chief Rick Nelson, left me a message telling me to meet him at the warehouse at nine,” he explained. “I didn’t get the message right away, so I was almost thirty minutes late. When I arrived at the warehouse, which also happened to be the site of a recent fire that I deemed to be caused by arson, I thought the place was empty. But then I went inside and saw a pair of jean-clad legs in the beam of my flashlight. Before I could go over to investigate, someone hit me from behind. I turned, so the strike connected along the side of my neck and shoulder, but there was enough force that I fell to the ground. My head bounced on the concrete.” He gingerly felt along the back of his head, fingering a lump the size of a golf ball.
“Should I keep going straight? Or head west?” Dana asked when she came to the next intersection.
“West.” He didn’t have a destination in mind, other than to avoid going to his place or hers. There was the slim possibility that the guy chasing them might have gotten her license plate number.
“I still don’t understand.” Dana turned the steering wheel to head west. “The police are notified for each ambulance call. They would have met up with you here in the ER and would have placed you under arrest if you were suspected of murder.”
“I’m aware of how it works,” he said in a dry tone. “A few of my brothers are cops. Thankfully, I only blacked out for a few minutes. When I came to, I went over to check on the person lying half buried in the debris. The body was that of a young woman with long blond hair, and she was dead from a gunshot wound to her chest.” He wasn’t quite ready to admit that he not only knew the dead woman but had dated her a year earlier. “I heard the sirens and knew that whoever had hit me must have called the police. I managed to get away before they arrived.”
“You drove yourself to the hospital,” she concluded.
“Yes. My goal was to get stitched up and quickly discharged. I didn’t anticipate that I’d be found and attacked again.” He was ticked off at how ruthlessly the guy had come after him, not even caring about injuring an innocent woman in the process. Then again, maybe he was the same guy who’d murdered Janice Valencia in the first place? If that was the case, the guy was capable of anything. “I’m sorry for dragging you into this mess.”
“It’s hardly your fault,” she said, but her tone lacked conviction. “Do you want me to take you home?”
He closed his eyes and shook his head. “I can’t go home. This guy obviously knows who I am. Which means he’ll easily be able to figure out where I live. I have no idea why someone has decided to frame me, but it must involve the dead girl somehow.”
“Okay, so where to, then?” Thinly veiled frustration convinced him that Dana was clearly anxious to get rid of him, not that he could blame her.
“Maybe a motel,” he said, thinking out loud.
