Читать книгу Emergency Reunion - Sandra Orchard - Страница 12

THREE

Sherri dove to the dirt, scarcely escaping the giant feedbag that swung off a branch. The sack caught Dan in the back and sent him crashing against the gurney, which pitched onto her and punched the breath from her lungs.

Cole tore the gurney off her and propped it on its edge like a shield between them and the house. “You okay?”

A pleasant sensation fluttered through her chest at his protective presence. “Now I am.” She army-crawled toward her groaning partner.

“I’m fine.” Dan pushed her hand away. “Just give me a second to catch my breath.”

Cole pointed to the trip wire Dan’s foot must’ve caught. “You may not have a second! Get back to the ambulance. Both of you.”

“The trauma bag.” Sherri reached for it.

Cole ripped off the straps securing it to the stretcher and shoved it toward her. “Go,” he barked, drawing a gun from his ankle holster.

Heart in her throat, she pushed to her feet alongside Dan and ran hunched over to the back of the ambulance.

As soon as they jumped inside, Cole rounded the rear door and called for backup. “The call. What was it for?”

Sherri snatched up her stethoscope to check Dan’s lungs. “Asthma.”

Cole squinted at Dan. “Are you up to transporting a patient if this call turns out to be legit?”

She fumbled the stethoscope. Legit? He thought the feedbag was meant for her.

“Yeah, I can drive.” Dan stopped rubbing his chest and dropped his hand to his side. “Just got the wind knocked out of me. Good thing Sherri ducked when she did. It would’ve taken her head off.”

Cole’s strangled gasp left her own chest tight. That and the gun he had trained on the house.

Reflexively, her palms clapped over her ears, the shot that had ripped through Luke’s chest blasting through her head. Breathe. Cole’s safe. Dan’s safe.

“You okay?” Concern edged Cole’s voice. And the heart-in-his-eyes look he swept over her, as if he desperately needed reassurance she was truly unharmed, felt...nice. Really nice.

Slipping her hands from her ears, she forced her gaze away from the deadly steel in his hands to his attire—black jeans and T-shirt, not his deputy uniform. “What’s going on? What are you doing here?”

The muscle in his cheek flinched and her stomach fluttered. Had he followed the ambulance to keep watch over her?

He slanted a glance down the street, then returned his full attention to the house, not her. “I was in the neighborhood.”

Confused by his gruff response, she squinted through the deepening twilight at the truck parked at the curb a few houses away. His truck. And it had been there before they arrived. “How did you know about the trap?”

“Someone came out of the house,” Dan hissed, peering out the window on the ambulance’s side door.

Sherri squinted over her partner’s shoulder as a dark figure disappeared into the detached garage. “What do we do now?”

With an intensity that knotted her stomach, Cole peered past the ambulance’s back door he was using as cover.

“You can’t go after him. Not without backup!”

A sheriff’s cruiser whipped around the corner and careened to a stop behind the ambulance, silencing her objection. Cole flashed his ID. “We’ve got a booby-trapped property. One male in the garage. Unknown number in the house. Cover me.” Without waiting for a response, Cole snuck along the side of the house using bushes as cover.

Bushes! What good would a bush do him? It wouldn’t stop a bullet. Please, Lord, don’t let another man get shot because of me.

The sheriff’s deputy hunched behind his cruiser, his gun pointed at the garage as he barked orders into the radio on his shoulder.

The garage door rumbled open, accompanied by the roar of an engine.

Cole darted closer.

“Look out,” the deputy shouted as a motorcycle blasted from the garage and screamed away.

A deafening explosion blew out the windows of the house, rocking the ambulance.

“Cole!” Sherri shoved open the side door and sprang to the ground. Shielding her face from falling debris with her arm, she scanned the area she’d last seen him, except the explosion could have thrown him anywhere. Smoke stung her eyes as she silently pleaded with God to let her find him.

“There!” Dan jumped to the ground behind her and pointed to a dark shape on the far side of the driveway.

She sprinted toward him and scooped her arms under his armpits to pull him away from the fire.

“Through here.” Dan helped her pull him through a scraggly section of hedge into the next yard, where she instantly dropped to her knees at his side.

“Cole, talk to me. Cole!”

The deputy ordered emerging neighbors back into their houses between demands into his radio for fire trucks and someone to catch the man on the motorcycle. “Is he okay?”

Sweat slicked her trembling hands. “I don’t know. He’s not responding.” She forced herself to take deep breaths. Oh, God, I can’t have a panic attack. Not here. Not now.

“Try a sternal rub,” Dan ordered before dashing back to the ambulance.

Cole moaned at the pressure, but didn’t open his eyes or answer her.

“Cole, tell me where you hurt.”

Dan dropped the trauma bag beside her. “Anything?”

“He responded to pain, but isn’t talking.” Sherri checked his airway. “Airway clear.” She slid her fingertips to his wrist as Dan pulled out a stethoscope. “Pulse a hundred twenty and strong.”

She palpated his stomach and was rewarded with another groan. “Abdomen soft, no internals, yet. Cole, can you hear me?”

“He’s got decreased breath sounds on the left side. Could be looking at a collapsed lung.”

“How bad is that?” A kid skidded to his knees beside her.

Sherri’s breath stalled in her throat. “Eddie? What are you—?”

Dan surged to his feet. “You again?” He grabbed Eddie’s collar and hauled him away from her. “You made the call. Didn’t you?”

Sherri’s heart jumped to her throat. Eddie had set her up?

Dan shoved him up against the side of the cruiser. “What kind of sick—?”

“Hey, what are you doing?” The deputy rushed toward them.

“This punk attacked my partner yesterday trying to get drugs,” Dan growled. “He’s got to be behind this crank call, too.”

“I’m not,” Eddie cried. “You’ve gotta believe me!”

Disturbingly, Cole didn’t react to Dan’s accusations, didn’t even open his eyes.

The deputy snapped open his handcuff pouch. “This true, ma’am?”

Ignoring the question, she raised Cole’s left eyelid. “Cole, are you with me?”

Both eyes blinked open and a slow smile curved his lips. “Hi,” he said softly, then sheer panic swept over his face.

“Cole? Dan, forget the kid. I need you here.” She struggled to tamp down the alarm edging into her voice. “Cole, what’s wrong?”

Dan shoved Eddie at the deputy. “Keep him away from her.”

“I didn’t do anything,” the kid bellowed. “I need to stay with my brother.”

Cole rolled to his side and tried to push himself up. “Let him go. He didn’t—” His voice cut out on a frown.

“You need to lie still.” Sherri exchanged a worried glance with Dan as he caught Cole’s shoulder and compelled him to stay put.

Cole’s gaze shifted to her lips, his forehead wrinkling. “I can’t hear.” He pressed the heel of his hand to his temple, his gaze bouncing from her to the commotion around them. “I can’t hear anything.”

She leaned over him so he’d see the reassurance in her face and maybe read her lips. “You need to lie still so we can help you.” She flicked her penlight over his eyes. “Pupils round and reactive.”

His gaze darted back to his brother.

She laid her palm on his pounding chest and waited until he looked at her, her own heart galloping at how vulnerable he looked lying there. “Eddie’s fine.” She stuffed down the silly disappointment that Cole hadn’t been here for her as she’d first supposed.

“He’s got a contusion on the side of the head,” Dan reported. “No bleeding or fluid from the ears. Check for broken bones.”

Mentally cataloging the serious injuries they could still be looking at, she continued her palpitations, her fingers trembling. “Breathe,” she coached. He’d only been here because he’d been following his brother, not her. She wasn’t to blame.

Not this time.

Below his hipbone, Sherri’s fingers pressed into something hard. Probing it, she felt the distinctive shape of a prescription bottle. Glancing up, she found Eddie’s gaze fixed on her hands and swallowed the bile rising in her throat. They’d been buying drugs?

Cole’s hand locked on her wrist. “Please, don’t,” he whispered, a soul-deep pain shadowing his eyes.

Disappointment clutched her chest. He must’ve followed his brother here, confiscated the drugs Eddie had just bought. He wasn’t helping Eddie by covering for him. But just like the silly teenager who’d have agreed to anything if it’d meant Cole would notice her, she couldn’t say no. Was ignoring what she found the same as lying? Her heart seesawed in her chest, her gaze fixed on Cole’s. His brother had held a knife to her throat. Only an idiot would keep this to herself. Eddie was a danger to himself and anyone who came between him and a fix.

“You find something?” Dan’s voice cut into her thoughts.

She held Cole’s gaze for a long moment. She couldn’t not keep his secret. Not after he’d just saved her hide. No matter why he’d really been here. She tugged her wrist free of Cole’s grasp and quickly palpated the rest of his leg. “No broken bones.”

“Okay, our gurney’s toast. I’ll bring the ambulance around. We need to get it out of the way of the fire trucks anyway.”

“I can walk,” Cole said, his hearing apparently returning. He tried pushing himself to a sitting position with a frustrated groan.

She cupped his elbow to help him. “On a scale of one to ten, how bad’s the pain?”

“Three,” he said through gritted teeth.

She rolled her eyes. “I’ll give you some meds anyway, tough guy.”

“Thank you,” he murmured.

Warmth surged through her and with it the memory of the last time he’d thanked her for nursing his wounds. His soft kiss. Her first. And the hug that neither of them had seemed to want to end. She’d relived that moment too many times to count in the seven years since. She blinked away the memory, cleared her throat. “Just doing my job.”

He started to shake his head, winced at the movement. “I mean thank you for trusting me.”

Her heart flip-flopped. He was talking about the drugs he’d asked her to keep secret. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

* * *

Two days later, Cole walked into the sheriff’s office, his head still throbbing along with his ribs, but at least his hearing was back to normal.

Or at least enough not to miss Zeke’s gloating stage whisper to the deputy beside him that his nephew wouldn’t have been off on sick leave less than a week into a new job. Cole pressed his fingertips to his forehead and temple, wondering how much of today’s headache was due to the mild concussion the doctor said he’d suffered and how much from dreading this interview.

He’d had every intention of handing over the drugs he’d found on Eddie to the sheriff and explaining the situation. But that was before Sherri had showed up and everything had blown apart. He hadn’t needed to hear what her partner had ranted to the deputy to know he figured Eddie had lured her there.

He had a bad feeling that whoever made the 9-1-1 call had deliberately set up Eddie. But who? And why? Questions he had hoped to have answers to by now. Cole sliced a glance at Zeke. The whole scenario had played nicely into his disgruntled partner’s agenda, but...that didn’t mean he’d set it up.

According to Eddie, the same guy who’d prodded him to raid Sherri’s ambulance had given him the tip on the supposed great deal at the drug house—not Zeke. Trouble was Eddie still couldn’t identify the guy.

The deputy who’d taken control of the scene outside the drug house motioned Cole to an interrogation room. “I figured you’d appreciate some privacy. Don’t pay any attention to Zeke. Trust me, no one else wanted his nephew to get the job.”

Taking a seat, Cole opted not to respond, since he had no idea who might be listening in on the other side of the two-way mirror.

I hope you know what you’re doing. Sherri’s words whispered through his mind for the hundredth time as the lanky deputy straddled a chair and laid a file folder on the table.

“Okay.” The deputy tapped his pen against the folder. “Why don’t you start by telling me why you were in the neighborhood?”

“I already told you.” At least a half dozen times when the deputy had interrogated him in the hospital. “It’s no secret that my brother’s an addict. I spotted him sneaking out his bedroom window. Figured he was up to no good. Followed him to the drug house and yanked him out before he could make a buy.”

“Did he stop at the variety store on the corner?”

Cole’s insides jumped at the new question. “No.”

The deputy studied him for an uncomfortably long minute. “You’re sure?”

“Yes, why?”

“The 9-1-1 call that summoned the ambulance was made from a phone booth there.”

The knots in Cole’s neck eased at the confirmation that his brother couldn’t have secretly made the call without Cole noticing. “I already told you he didn’t make the call. Since when is a deputy’s word not a reliable alibi?”

“You’re his brother.”

“Yeah, and I’m Sherri’s friend.” He winced at the memory of their argument in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. She’d been furious that he’d asked her to keep quiet about the pill bottle in his pocket. Or more accurately “to shelter Eddie from the consequences of his actions.” Consequences that might get him the help he needed...or so she thought.

Never mind that the pill bottle had turned out to be an old codeine prescription of their father’s. But yeah, the fact that Cole had asked her to conceal it a mere day after his brother had held a knife to her throat was testimony to how hard he’d smashed his head.

Any other woman would’ve been jumping at the chance to get Eddie off the streets. Except—Cole planted his elbow on the table and buried his fingers in his hair—with her hovering over him, those beautiful blue eyes filled with concern, he hadn’t had a hope of thinking straight.

Worse than that, he’d asked her to compromise her principles.

“You okay?” the deputy asked.

Cole blinked. Massaged his forehead. “Yeah, sorry, still nursing a headache.” And still nursing a seven-year-old infatuation that had started when Sherri found him pounding his fist into the fence that had separated their yards after he’d learned his father had been cheating on Mom.

Sherri had dabbed antiseptic on his grazed knuckles, and he remembered feeling as if just by allowing her to help him, he’d been sullying her somehow, tainting her innocence by exposing her to his family’s mixed-up morality.

Seven years later nothing had changed. Same girl. Same infatuation. Same insurmountable obstacle of his family.

Cole glanced at the clock on the wall behind the deputy and wondered if Dad was keeping a better eye on Eddie today. As much as he would have liked to avoid his dad, he’d had no choice but to allow Dad to visit him in the hospital to warn him about the prescription Eddie had stolen on top of sneaking out of the house to buy more drugs. The fact that Dad had seen the conversation as an invitation to pick up where’d they’d left off the day before his selfishness blew apart their family was proof of how mixed up his morality was.

But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

Cole rubbed his forehead harder, wishing he could rub out the scripture verse that had flitted through his mind too many times since. He dropped his hand to the table and returned his focus to the deputy. “What are you doing to keep Sherri safe?”

“Sending a patrol car along on any calls. Not much more we can do.”

That was something anyway. It would give him time to hang with Eddie without having to worry about Sherri every second. Helping Eddie escape the mess he’d made of his life was the whole reason he’d moved back to Stalwart. The attacks against Sherri had sidetracked him, but getting through to Eddie was no less urgent. Kids younger than him died of drug overdoses every day. And Eddie was clearly addicted.

The deputy grilled Cole about what he’d seen around the house before the explosion, which amounted to nothing helpful. The fire marshal had already confirmed it was a drug house, but they had yet to identify, let alone catch, the guy who’d escaped on the motorcycle.

“The house was a rental,” the deputy explained. “And the name on the lease agreement turned out to be fake. Our working theory is that he’d already had the house rigged to blow to give himself a chance to get away if the need ever arose. It doesn’t seem likely he could’ve done it in the short time you were there.”

Cole studied the descriptions of the renter offered by neighbors. “Yeah, I’m not buying that he’s the one targeting Sherri, either. Not when he had to know his operation would be outed by luring her to the house. I think we need to look for the guy who gave Eddie the tip.”

“Sure.” Skepticism flickered in the deputy’s eyes. Apparently he wasn’t buying that Eddie was being framed. “But your brother’s description doesn’t give us much to go on.” The deputy closed the file. “The guy’s heavier than the motorcyclist and balding. That probably describes half the men over thirty in town.”

Yeah, and chances were the suspect wouldn’t risk making contact with Eddie again anytime soon. But if Cole could convince Eddie to show him around his usual haunts they might find him that way.

As Cole stepped out of the police station a few minutes later, the urge to drop in on Sherri before seeing Eddie drew his gaze across the street. The fire station blocked his view of the ambulance base, so he meandered toward the street. After all, the least he owed Sherri and Dan were coffee and a donut to thank them for yanking him away from that drug house the night before last. He pressed the butt of his hand to his throbbing temple. Besides, the caffeine might help kill his headache.

A guy in faded jeans and a dark hoodie skulked along the side wall of the ambulance base, his hands bunched in his pockets.

Cole quickened his steps. The guy who sideswiped Sherri’s ambulance had worn a hoodie. Cole’s gaze fixed on the punk’s pocketed hands. The uneasy feeling that they concealed a weapon tripped his pulse into overdrive.

Sherri stepped out the front door, calling “Double? Double?” over her shoulder, oblivious to the threat lurking around the corner.

“Watch out!” Raising his hand stop-sign style, Cole dodged traffic, narrowly escaping being hit by a horn-blaring car. He glanced at it only a moment, but when he turned back to the ambulance base, Sherri was gone.

So was the punk.