Ellie was there moments later, crouched on the ground as she assessed Randy’s injuries. He was calm and talking normally to Ellie as she played paramedic to his minimal bumps and bruises. To any outsider, it probably looked like the well-mannered businessman had been attacked by the quiet and withdrawn blue-collar employee. While Ellie tended to Randy’s wounds, Amelia took a step toward Caleb and pointed to his bruised right hand. He tested his fingers and then put his hand out in front of him where she took it in hers. His palm was rough, callused, but there was also something beautiful about his long slender fingers and the flecks of paint caught up in his cuticles.
“Are you still painting?” she asked, running her finger over a fleck of paint on his wrist. He glanced at it and then at his feet. There were so many other questions she should be asking, but this was the one that danced on the tip of her tongue and refused to retreat.
“Yeah, sometimes,” he responded, suddenly shy, a stark contrast to the man who’d towered over Randy and spoken with more force than she even knew he possessed.
With one last sweep of her thumb over his knuckles, she carefully loosened her grip until his hand dropped. He immediately put it into his pocket. Amelia couldn’t be sure, but he looked like he wanted to say something, so she spoke first.
“Caleb, what is happening next Tuesday?”
CHAPTER 29
ELLIE
Wednesday, May 11
5:26 a.m.
It was a bad sign when the nurses knew you well enough to wave you through at ICU. The floor was pretty empty: one car accident, one head injury, one unidentified illness that meant the nurses suiting up in what looked like hazmat suits before entering. Then, in the back corner was Amelia, the lights on full blast and three figures filling the space and one officer sitting sleepily on a chair just outside. Two were nurses doing their hourly check on Amelia, but there was also a man in a wheelchair pulled up close to Amelia’s bedside.
“Steve!” Ellie ran through the door, knowing she was both talking too loud and moving too fast for the ICU. She rushed to put her arms around his shoulders, still broad and taut under the hospital gown, but then she remembered his injuries and took his empty hand in hers. “You look so good! How are you feeling?”
Steve turned his hand so his palm pressed against Ellie’s, and she relaxed immediately. At least he was okay. It didn’t make anything better with Amelia, but if she could at least lean on Steve, she would make it. She wasn’t alone.
“I’m all right. It wasn’t very serious, just in and out. It grazed my lung, but they fixed it. I’m trying to convince them to let me leave soon. I’m sure the kids are a mess, and my parents don’t know how they are going to comfort them. My mom is here.” He gestured to her purse sitting on one of the open chairs to the left of Amelia’s bed. “She needed some coffee. She’ll be right back.”
“I’m so glad they came. I had to leave the kids with Chet and Dad last night.”
Steve shook his head. “You were right to be here. M needs you.” He placed his other hand over their clasped pair. “I need you.”
Ellie squeezed Steve’s hand, and they sat there in silence for a moment. It was good to know she was needed, wanted, loved. Then the nagging urgency in the back of her mind reminded her why she was there.
“Dad is missing.” Chief Brown meandered frequently, sometimes turning up at the fire station or Amelia’s house or just wandering around town, dazed and confused. She’d occasionally joke that they should fit him with a tracking device, but even with all the experience, it was scary whenever he went missing. “I need to go look for him but only if Amelia doesn’t need me. She seems pretty stable, right? It’s okay if I go?”
Steve looked over at Amelia’s monitors, the lines beeping and waving in some kind of steady rhythm.
“She’s as good as can be expected, I guess.” He got somber fast, tears in his eyes before Ellie could even ask what was wrong. “This is all my fault. Those men, they just wanted my money. I shouldn’t have hesitated. I should’ve just given it to them.”
“They were robbing you?” Ellie asked, dragging a chair across the room so she could sit at his level.
“Yeah, they both had masks on. They came in and demanded money from the safe. Amelia came in from the kitchen to bring me a cup of coffee, and, boom, the guy shot her. Then the second man got angry and said something about this not being the plan and started to leave, and the guy with the gun just up and shot him as he was running out the door. Then he pointed the gun back at me, and I said I’d give him the money. I thought it was the only way to get him to leave so I could get help for Amelia, but then I remembered that I had a gun in my safe. So, I went in, I pretended to grab cash, and then I turned around and held up the gun. That’s when he shot at me. The bullet hit me in the shoulder, and I couldn’t help it . . . the pain, the fear, Amelia on the floor . . . I fired back. I pulled the trigger till it wouldn’t pull anymore. I shot him, Ellie. I shot him in the face, I think.”
During the narrative, Steve had put his hands on his face to hide his tears or embarrassment. Now he looked up, his cheeks moist and eyes a deep red in a way she’d never seen, not when he’d gone into a house where the whole family, including the six-month-old baby girl and her three-year-old brother, was killed from carbon monoxide poisoning, not from joy when his kids were born, and not from fear when Amelia was so distraught over her father’s stroke that she completely shut down and walked around like a zombie for two whole days. This was a new Steve—a devastated Steve. She waited as he tried to form another thought sticking somewhere in his mind like peanut butter to the roof of the mouth.
“I don’t know how to tell you this, L, but I know who the guy was that got away.” His shoulders shuddered under his gown, shaking it with each movement. She knew what he was going to say, and she wanted to stop him, relieve him of this trauma. But then the words spilled out. “It was Caleb.”
She knew it was true. Caleb. She could see Caleb wanting to rob Steve. It all came together. Randy and Caleb must’ve been working together. You didn’t punch a stranger in the face. The whole question for Ellie had always been why Caleb would ever want to hurt Amelia. The answer—he didn’t. He wanted to hurt Steve.
“I know,” she said, patting his hand reassuringly. “And the other guy was Randy, that real estate agent Amelia had been working with.”
“What?” he asked, his mouth gaping open like his own best friend had betrayed him. “Why? Why would they do this? Why would anyone hurt Amelia?” And as her name came off his lips, Steve broke down, curling over into himself and pulling Ellie’s hand into his chest as he wept.
Ellie felt so helpless with her hands held there, no way to comfort and no promises of improvement for Amelia. Seeing Steve heartbroken was more painful than feeling her own heartbreak. “This is all my fault,” he sobbed, and then a fire rose in Ellie’s stomach. All night she’d been trying to figure out who was to blame and, yes, she’d even considered if it was Steve, but with everything she’d seen and heard in the past twenty-four hours, she couldn’t stomach this.
“Did you shoot M?” Ellie asked, trying to get him to look at her. He didn’t meet her gaze, but he did shake his head, his face red and a mess of tears. “Well, then, let’s stop with all this ‘my fault’ stuff. Randy is dead and they are out looking for Caleb, so soon enough the real culprits will be taken care of.”