The paramedic said, “Tuesday. Why?”
Which meant she’d only been out for a few hours. “How did you find me?”
“Anonymous tip,” he said, looking past her to confer with someone outside her line of vision.
Her brain jammed on the information, which didn’t make sense. Fairfax had said something about the escapees being well away by the time she came around, but she’d only been out for a few hours. Had he changed his mind and made the call himself? Had—
The spiraling questions bounced off each other inside her throbbing skull and logjammed, and a sudden shiver wracked her body. “I’m f-freezing,” she managed between chattering teeth.
“We’re working on that,” the paramedic replied. “We’ll have you out of here in a jiff.”
It wasn’t until he and his partner lifted her that she realized she was on a stretcher, swathed in blankets and strapped down, which explained the feeling of immobility.
She was aware of commotion around her as she was carried out of the cave and back along the wooded trail. She caught glimpses of concerned faces, many of them belonging to cops she saw in the ME’s office on a regular basis. She wanted to stop and talk to them, wanted to tell them what had happened to her, but her lips didn’t work right and the light was all funny, going from the blue of dusk to a strange grayish-brown and back again.
When they reached the ambulance, Sara was there waiting, tears coursing down her cheeks when she saw Chelsea. Her lips moved; the words didn’t make any sense but Chelsea knew her friend well enough to guess Sara was apologizing for leaving her out on the loading dock.
It wasn’t your fault, Chelsea tried to say. Don’t blame yourself. I’ll be okay—Fairfax saved me. But the words didn’t come out. She couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t do anything but let the world slip away as the paramedics loaded her into the waiting ambulance.
Everything faded to the gray-brown of unconsciousness.
She surfaced a few times after that—once as she was being wheeled through the hospital corridors, the fluorescent lights flashing brightly overhead, and once again during some sort of exam, when she heard doctors’ and nurses’ voices saying things like, “That doesn’t make any sense” and “Check it again.”
She didn’t come around fully until early the next morning. She knew it was morning because of the way the light of dawn bled pale lavender through the slatted blinds that covered the room’s single window, and the way her body was suddenly clamoring for breakfast and coffee, not necessarily in that order.
A quick look around confirmed that she was, indeed, in the hospital, and added the information that homicide detective Tucker McDermott was fast asleep in the chair beside her bed.
The realization warmed her with the knowledge that her friends had closed ranks around her already.
She knew Tucker through the ME’s office, and more importantly through his wife, Alyssa, who was a good friend. Alyssa, a forensics specialist within the BCCPD, was quick-tempered and always on the go. In contrast, Tucker was a rock, steady and dependable. He might’ve had a flighty playboy’s reputation a few years back, but marriage had settled him to the point that he’d become the go-to guy in their circle, the one who was always level in a crisis, always ready to listen or offer a shoulder to lean on.
He made her wimpy side feel safe.
She must’ve moved or made some sound indicating that she’d awakened, because he opened his eyes, blinked a couple of times, then smiled. “Hey. How are you feeling?”
“I’m—” She paused, confused. “That’s weird. I feel fine. Better than fine, actually. I feel really good.” Energy coursed through her alongside the gnawing hunger, but there were none of the lingering aches she would’ve expected from her ordeal. Lifting a hand, which didn’t bear an IV or any monitoring lines, she probed the back of her head and found a bruised lump, but little residual pain. Oddly, though, she didn’t feel the brain fuzz of prescription-strength painkillers. “What did the doctors give me?”
Tucker shook his head. “Nothing. By the time you arrived, your core temp was coming back up and your vitals were stabilizing. They decided to let you sleep it off and see how you felt when you woke up.”
“I’m okay,” she said weakly, her brain churning. “Okay” wasn’t entirely accurate, though, because the more she thought about her ordeal the more scared and confused she became, as terrifying images mixed with the memory of the convict who’d saved her life, and the coworker who’d lost his.
“Jerry’s dead, isn’t he?” she asked softly.
She remembered the gunshot, remembered him falling, even remembered him lying in the van, limp in death, but a piece of her didn’t want to accept that he was gone. She wanted to believe he’d been stunned like she’d been. Not dead. Not Jerry, with his cold nose and ski-bunny girlfriend.
But Tucker shook his head, expression full of remorse. “I’m sorry.”
Chelsea closed her eyes, grief beating at her alongside guilt. She should’ve done something different. If she hadn’t been staring at Fairfax, she might’ve been quicker to recognize that there was a problem with the delivery. She might’ve been able to—
“Don’t,” Tucker said. “You’ll only make yourself crazy trying to ‘what if’ this. If you’d done something different, they probably would’ve killed you, too.”
“They did, sort of,” Chelsea whispered, her breath burning her throat with unshed tears.
Tucker shifted, pulled out his handheld, which acted as both computer and cell phone. “You okay if I record this?”
She nodded. “Of course.” No doubt she’d have to go through her statement over and over again with a variety of cops and agents, but this first time she’d rather talk to Tucker than anyone else.
Haltingly at first, she told him what had happened, her words coming easier once she got started, then flowing torrentlike when she described waking up in the van and realizing she’d been kidnapped by the escapees, followed by Fairfax’s strange actions. She kept it facts only, reporting what he’d done and said, and figuring she’d leave it to Tucker and the others to draw their own conclusions.
When she was done, she glanced at Tucker and was unsurprised to see a concerned frown on his face.
“That sounds…”
“Bizarre,” she filled in for him. “Like something from a not-very-believable action movie. I know. But that’s what happened.”
He nodded, but she could tell he didn’t believe her. Or rather, he probably believed that she believed what she was saying, but thought her so-called memories were more along the lines of drug-induced hallucinations shaped by her penchant for spy movies that always included at least one double agent and a couple of twists.
Then again, she thought with a start, what if he was right? She felt terrible that she’d been paying more attention to Fairfax’s butt than to her job and the potential security risks, opening the way for Jerry’s murder. What if her subconscious had taken that guilt and woven a fantasy that cast the object of her
