She was on me so fast, she became invisible in the space between us. My feet were lifted from under me, and the floor thwacked the back of my head.
She was so fast. I’d never seen anything like it, even in Antonio. The knife was a streak of blue light against the darkness, and my instincts acted where my mind was too slow, turning my head to avoid the blade. I jerked my hips and threw her off me just as the door opened. A solid wedge of light poured in, and the decibel level of the alarm doubled.
I was alone on the floor, sprawled like a drunk.
“Miss, there’s a fire alarm on this floor,” said the orderly, turning on the light. “Let’s go.”
I spun to look for Donna Maria Carloni, scanning every last place she could hide, but she was nowhere to be seen. The door to the pump room was closed. I pointed, but the orderly dragged me out.
forty-three.
theresa
onna Maria had terrified me, but she’d propelled me into action. If she hadn’t tried to kill me, I might have poked around for Antonio, trusting that he’d planned our reconnection.
How long did I have? I followed the orderly and the crowd down the hall until he checked the next doorway, then I slipped away.
Donna Maria had to kill Antonio herself, despite what she’d said to freak me out.
Right?
Unless someone else was supposed to inherit Antonio’s territory?
I had a moment of doubt when I worried that he’d intended this. That he’d given himself to death to save both of the women in his life, and Donna Maria had come to me to make sure I wouldn’t avenge a death he chose.
I couldn’t believe that. I trusted him.
I opened the emergency door just as a throng of staff and patients headed toward me. Jesus, a lot of people worked the late shift.
“Turn around,” said a ponytailed woman my age, wearing dark blue scrubs and pulling a gurney.
She took my arm, still guiding her supine patient. We were followed by a crowd of professionals acting calm and bored with a sense of urgency to their motions. The doctor let go of my arm, and as the crowd pushed down the hall, I took one step back into the lunch room. She was gone.
Hoping another staffer wouldn’t detain me, I got back out into the hall. I acted official, as if I was heading back into the burning hospital for official life-saving business that couldn’t wait.
My father was a piece of work. A fire. Did he make sure there was a real fire? Or did he just pay someone five figures to pull the wrong lever somewhere in the guts of the building?
Once in the hall, I grabbed a clipboard and trotted against traffic as if I belonged there. I had to get to the cardiac unit. If I could find Valentina, maybe I could retrace his steps. My family was on that floor with Jonathan.
The hall was mostly empty when I passed a room with the door open. It was the third I passed, but for some reason, I stopped. Inside was a man lying down, eyes taped shut, head in a kind of plastic box. I stepped in. The lights flashed against the patient’s skin. Fat tubes came out of his mouth, his bow lips gauzed against friction.
“Paulie,” I said, my voice drowned out by the klaxon.
He didn’t answer. He never would.
I backed out. I wasn’t there to make my soul right. I was there to find Antonio. In the reflection in a chrome tray, I saw a dark-haired woman come from around the corner. I dodged and ran to the stairwell.
I clutched my clipboard and fought the traffic to go to the stairs to find the cardiac unit on the fourth floor. Once I got to the third floor, the mad dash stopped. The alarm stopped.