“Randy,” she whispered, “what happened?”
Randy’s face was no longer white or even green—it was crimson, which looked odd mixed with the patches of brown facial hair on his chin. He looked like he was holding something inside, more than a breath or a thought but something physical, like a gun holding back a bullet ready to be expelled. Once his hands were back on the wheel, Amelia expected him to speed ahead, make a dramatic turn toward Broadlands, tires maybe squealing a little, but he didn’t. Instead, he shook the wheel violently, the veins in his arms bulging in a snake-like pattern. A guttural scream crawled up from his chest, to his throat, and out his mouth.
“Argh!” He threw his head down till his forehead was resting on the wheel. “Damn it. Damn it. DAMN IT!”
Amelia recoiled, unsure how to comfort a man who was little more than a stranger when she didn’t even know the details of the situation. But an instinct in the back of her mind told her that Randy would regret any additional delays that kept him from Dawson and whatever was going on. Time—that was something Steve used to talk about a lot as a fireman. The statistics that went along with survival rates often came down to response time. Time was the difference between a few stitches and a blood transfusion, between a limb-salvage operation and an amputation, between saying hello to a loved one coming out of surgery and saying good-bye forever.
“Randy,” she repeated in a measured voice like she was approaching a wild animal or a scared child. “What is wrong with Dawson?” When he didn’t respond, Amelia reached out her hand, planning to place it on his back, but just as she was about to touch him, Randy sat up. There were wet trails on his cheeks, and his well-trimmed beard was wet where the drops had soaked in.
“Dawson . . .” Randy’s voice cracked when he said his son’s name. He cleared his throat and swiped a hand across his face. What she saw in front of her was a broken man, the way her father looked when the doctor came in and told him that her mother had not survived surgery.
“What happened to Dawson, Randy?” She could feel tears rising in her own eyes, all of her motherly fears filling in the blanks.
Randy put his foot on the gas, hard. The forward momentum tossed Amelia back into her seat, the leather cradling her like a ball in a catcher’s mitt. The speed limit was only forty-five on the highway, but the needle on the speedometer shot past fifty almost instantly. Amelia grasped at the armrest on the door.
“Dawson is gone.”
CHAPTER 21
ELLIE
Wednesday, May 11
2:42 a.m.
The curtain fell back, revealing—blood. There was a lot of blood. If this was all from Caleb, then he was in bad shape. He should at least have a transfusion. Who knew what kind of internal damage had been done.
“Collin, what the HELL?” She reached for her back pocket to grab her cell phone, completely forgetting that she was still wearing a pair of scrubs and that she’d left the phone in the car.
“You are not trying to call the police, are you?” Collin worded it like a question, but it sounded more like an accusation. He grasped her hands and turned them up, searching for her cell phone.
“I’m not calling anyone,” she said, yanking her hands away, frightened at the strength of his grip. “But I would if I hadn’t left my phone in the car.”
She glared at Collin and took another step into the room, trying to work out the pathology of the scene. Most of the blood was by the sink and some in the tub. Maybe Caleb had been hiding in Collin’s tub all this time, bleeding and in pain from a gunshot wound instead of in surgery like Amelia and Steve. It couldn’t be too serious if he was up and walking around, or at least that was what Ellie told herself.
“Ellie, you can’t call anyone. He’s really hurt and he’s going to leave town, but until then, we’ve got to keep this a secret.”
“Your brother was seen leaving the scene of a crime and carrying a gun. Leaving a crime scene where my sister was shot, and as a result of those injuries she might die.”
“He didn’t do it.” Collin grabbed a handful of bandage wrappers and tossed them into the wastebasket by the sink. Then he ran the grungy hand towel over the counter, the one he always forgot to change when he did the laundry every few weeks. “Caleb said that the guy with the mask shot him and Steve. He thought Amelia was dead. I told him she wasn’t . . .” The sentence trailed off because they both knew how that sentence ended. She wasn’t dead . . . yet.
The white-marble counter was now streaked with red swirls. Ellie knew that as a paramedic and as Collin’s fiancée she should be worried about Caleb. She should be trying to find a way to help him, protect him, or at least get his statement so she could help the police figure out what happened inside that office. But she couldn’t think past the intensity of Travis’s warning back at the hospital and the grainy black-and-white image Travis described of Caleb walking out the office door, bleeding, yes, but also running away from her bleeding sister, whom he claimed to love, rather than finding a way to help her.
Collin ditched the soiled towel and bits of paper into the waste bin and then yanked out the plastic bag lining the container. He knelt down to pick up a few pieces of what looked like string but Ellie knew was surgical suture. The room started to spin. Collin had been helping his brother because he was hurt, but he didn’t seem to consider that he was also helping a fugitive.
“Collin! Stop. This is all evidence. You can’t get rid of it. We have to call Travis.” Ellie knelt down eye to eye with her fiancé.
“Ellie, no. You can’t,” Collin responded simply. In the dark, he had seemed agitated and annoyed, but in the light, she could see a smear of blood on his cheek and another splash on the lenses of his glasses. He was in this now. If she called the police, this room would be a crime scene. Collin would be in trouble for aiding and abetting. Ellie could be detained for questioning. She might never get back to the hospital. In fact, her phone could be ringing right now, right this second, with a message about Amelia.
“Damn it. DAMN IT!” She slammed her hand against the door of the cabinet under the sink. “What the HELL were you thinking, Collin? Huh?” Ellie rocked back on her heels, the devastating Catch-22 of the situation starting to sink in.