inched toward the desk, where she’d left her cell phone. Her head and neck ached. Nausea washed over her. She raised herself far enough off the floor to grab her cell, tapped in 911 and turned to glance over her shoulder, using the light from her phone to scan the darkness.
A body.
No. Please, God, no.
Mary Kate lay in a pool of blood.
“Nine one one.” The operator’s raspy voice sounded in the stillness. “State your emergency.”
“Children’s Care Clinic on Amish Road.” Ella gripped the phone with her trembling hand and forced the words from her mouth. “An...an intruder attacked two women. Send an ambulance.”
“Ma’am, could you—”
Scooting closer, she gasped at the gush of blood from the young woman’s side. Grabbing a towel from the nearby supply cabinet, Ella wadded it into a ball and pressed the thick terry cloth against the wound. With her right hand, she found the carotid artery, grateful to feel a pulse.
“Tell the ambulance to hurry,” she told the operator. “I’ve got a patient who’s bleeding to death.”
“Stay on the line, ma’am. The police and ambulance are on the way.”
Ella wasn’t sure they would arrive in time.
* * *
Criminal Investigation Division Special Agent Zach Swain stood at the side entrance of the rural clinic that led into the doctor’s office and blinked back the memory of another medical facility long ago. A patient lay sprawled on the floor, and a doctor knelt over her, forcing air into her lungs. Fear clenched his gut as he was once again the eight-year-old boy screaming for the doctor to save his mother’s life.
Swallowing down the vision from his past, Zach focused on the swirl of activity before him and the information Officer Van Taylor, a young Freemont cop who had checked Zach’s identification, was continuing to provide.
“Her name’s Ella Jacobsen.” Taylor, tall and lean and midtwenties, pointed to the woman sitting on a straight-backed chair.
“She runs the clinic?” Zach asked.
The cop nodded. “She bought the three-bedroom ranch and attached a clinic to the side of the residence. Local families and some of the Amish who’ve settled in this area appreciate having a doc close at hand.”
An older police sergeant, probably fifty-five, with a receding hairline and bushy brows, stood near the woman. Zach read his name tag: Abrams. The sergeant held an open notebook in his hand.
Zach couldn’t hear their conversation, but he recognized the ashen paleness of the doctor’s face and the bloodstains that covered her blouse and the slicker that lay next to her on the floor.
“She’s a northerner,” the younger officer explained. “Moved here from Pennsylvania and opened this clinic for kids five months ago.”
All of which sounded admirable. “So what happened tonight?” Zach asked.
“The power went out, only it wasn’t the storm that caused the failure.”
Zach raised his brow. “Someone tampered with the line coming to the clinic?”
“Seems that’s what happened. He also fiddled with the spark plug on the generator the doc couldn’t get to start. One of our men got it working until the repairman from the power company restored the main feed.”
“I call that good customer service this far from Freemont.”
Taylor leaned closer and lowered his voice. “The guy on call from the power company is married to Sergeant Abrams’s daughter, so he rushed here to help.”
“Keep it in the family, right?”
The young cop smiled. “In case you’re interested, we took the doc’s prints and collected samples from under her nails.”
Which meant she had tried to defend herself.
Taylor pointed to his supervisor. “Looks like the sergeant is ready to wrap up his questioning, sir, if you want to talk to Dr. Jacobsen.”
Zach nodded in appreciation.
Abrams closed his notebook, said something to the woman and then headed across the room. As he approached, Zach extended his hand and stated his name. “I’m with the Criminal Investigation Division at Fort Rickman, Sergeant Abrams. One of your men notified our office that active duty military personnel were involved in the case.”
The sergeant returned the handshake. “Good to see you, Special Agent Swain. What we know so far is that an intruder attacked Mary Kate Powers, whose twin girls were being treated by the doctor. The woman’s a military spouse. She suffered a gunshot wound to her side and is being transported by ambulance to the hospital at Fort Rickman. Doc Jacobsen tended to her injuries before the EMTs arrived. Saved the woman’s life, according to our emergency personnel.”
Zach glanced again at the doc’s scraped face and disheveled hair. “Looks like the assailant took out his anger on the doctor, as well.”
“She claims to be all right, although she can’t remember much. Probably due to shock.”
“Do you have a motive?”
The sergeant shrugged. “Could be drugs. The doc doesn’t keep much on hand in her clinic, but dopers don’t make good choices.”
“Was the assailant able to access the meds?”
“Negative. Still, that seems the most logical explanation at this point.”
Logical or convenient? Zach wasn’t as easily convinced as the sergeant. “Mind if I talk to her?”
“Be my guest. Corporal Hugh Powers, the wounded woman’s husband, is in one of the treatment rooms. You’re welcome to question him, as well.”
Zach appreciated the cop’s openness to having a military presence in the investigation. As the sergeant and Taylor stepped outside, Zach grabbed a chair and placed it next to the doctor.
She glanced up. Blue eyes rimmed with dark lashes stared at him. Her brow furrowed, and her full lips drooped into a pronounced frown. She scooted back in her chair warily.
Zach introduced himself. “I’m from Fort Rickman. If you don’t mind, I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“I don’t understand.” Her hand went protectively to her throat. “Why would Fort Rickman be interested in what happened at my clinic?”
Zach eyed the dark mark under her ear and the hair on the side of her head that was matted with blood. “The Criminal Investigations Division is called in when military personnel are injured or involved in a crime.”
“You’re referring to Mary Kate?”
“That’s right. Mary Kate Powers. You were treating her daughters?”
The
