Chapter twenty nine

"MY GOD, DID you hear that?" Catherine exclaimed as she and Rebecca stepped from the elevator.

"Sounds like a hell of a fender bender," Rebecca muttered, instantly alert, "and it was awfully close."

Suddenly, the sounds of frantic shouting were audible from just outside and Rebecca hurriedly pushed through the door to the street. Directly in front of her at the foot of the steps leading to the entrance, Sloan's Porsche was canted onto the sidewalk with the engine still running. She glanced inside through a spider web of shattered safety glass. Empty. From the far side, she could hear strangled cries. "Catherine, stay here for a minute."

"Rebecca, someone's hurt. I'm a doctor," Catherine said urgently from just behind her. "I need to attend to the victims."

"I know that," Rebecca said sharply, not used to having her authority questioned at a scene. "But you'll have to wait. I don’t know what happened here. It might not have been an accident and I don't want another victim." Especially not you.

There was no time for discussion, and the detective didn't wait for a reply. Instead, she climbed over the rear bumper of the parked minivan which now housed a portion of the front of Sloan's abandoned vehicle, her cell phone in one hand and her automatic in the other. Even as she assessed the activity in the street, visually searching for possible assailants, she called for an ambulance and back-up in clipped, commanding tones. From the corner of her eye, she checked the figures in the street. Sloan, blood streaking her face and arms, was on her knees above the prone body of an unconscious blond woman Rebecca did not recognize. She couldn't tell how badly either was injured and she couldn't allow her concern to divert her mind from more important tasks. Like insuring that there were no further threats remaining in the immediate area and preserving any evidence of the crime.

Catherine clambered over the wreck after her and Rebecca cursed. "Keep down at least," the detective barked, blocking the three women as best she could from the street with her body, scouring the windows in the buildings on both sides of them, searching for any kind of movement behind the many darkened windows. She could see nothing suspicious, but it was impossible for her to tell if any of the people in the densely packed buildings might represent a danger. Curious onlookers were approaching from down the block, but fortunately there were no vehicles to be diverted yet. She glanced down once more and saw a widening pool of blood beneath the blond's head. "Catherine, keep them right there until back-up arrives."

"No one is moving her without a backboard," Catherine said grimly after one quick look.

Mitchell and Jason burst from the building. "Oh god," Jason gasped, stopping in his tracks and staring in horror.

Rebecca, turning at the sound, ordered, "Mitchell, secure the scene. Backup is on the way. I'll call for a crime scene unit and find out where the fuck the ambulances are. This was a hit and run at best."

"Right," Mitchell responded crisply, her face tight with shock but her voice strong as she clipped her badge to the waist band of her jeans. Glancing once at the badly smashed car, she asked in a quiet voice only Rebecca could hear, "Intentional?"

"We have to assume so, until proven otherwise," Rebecca affirmed, noting approvingly the officer's quick, intelligent assessment. "Keep your eyes open. Just because this was a vehicle hit doesn't mean there won't be someone in the crowd or on a rooftop with a gun. I'll call Watts down to canvas with you."

"I'm on it," the officer replied, heading off in the direction of a group of civilians who were rapidly approaching.

"Jason," Rebecca added brusquely, "you get back inside."

Unsurprisingly, he ignored her and made his way to Sloan.

"Fuck," Rebecca muttered in surrender and phoned Watts.

Sloan, still on her knees, curled protectively over Michael's motionless form, her hand gripping her lover's limp one, a world of anguish on her face. "Call an ambulance..." she implored to no one in particular, her eyes fixed on Michael's pale face. "Oh, Jesus, please... Michael."

"Sloan," Catherine said gently, carefully placing her hand on the dark-haired woman's shoulder. "I need to be where you are so I can evaluate her." The injured woman lay nearly under a parked car and Catherine couldn't get room to assess her status.

"No." The sound was choked, agonized. Looking up into Catherine's face, eyes unfocused, Sloan insisted desperately, "No. I'm not leaving her."

"No, of course you're not," Catherine said quietly. "Just let me close enough to help her."

Jason moved forward and knelt next to his friend. "Sloan--let Catherine help Michael. Just move back a little bit. You don't have to leave her."

Sloan looked at him as if she didn't recognize him, and then she blinked and her eyes seemed to clear. "It was supposed to have been me, Jason. It's my car. She was driving..."

"It's okay. We'll worry about it later." His voice trembled on the words.

Mutely, Sloan shifted a fraction, tenaciously gripping Michael's right hand. Catherine gently displaced her further until she could lean down and place her fingers on the woman's neck, searching for a pulse. Automatically, as often happened when examining a patient no matter whether physically or psychologically, she observed many things at once, assimilating impressions almost unconsciously. While her fingers registered the faint, thready beat of blood through the artery she probed, her mind noted how achingly beautiful the injured woman was. The perfect unmarred features fit for an artist's canvas, incongruously free of any sign of pain, as if she were only peacefully slumbering. The left hand lying gently between her breasts, a heavy platinum band glinting in the halo of light from the streetlights overhead. The lover bending to her, devotion etched in every line of her hauntingly handsome face. Only the maroon circle of blood rapidly darkening to black cast a nightmare pall over the ethereal tableau.

Catherine wrenched her gaze from Michael's face. Quietly, she murmured to Sloan, whose shallow, tortured breathing spoke of unbearable grief. "Listen to me. She's alive. That's all that matters. We'll have her in the hospital in a few minutes where she can be taken care of. Do you hear me?"

Sloan coughed and tried to catch her breath. She couldn't think; she couldn't feel. She wasn't even certain her heart was beating. All she could sense was terror. A helpless terror that made her want to pound her fists against the stone. "Please. Please don't let her die." She looked at Catherine, her eyes fathomless pools of anguish. In a voice beyond torment she repeated, "Please."

Catherine couldn't offer her the one promise she begged for, so she said nothing. She placed the fingers of one hand beneath Michael's chin, keeping her airway open, and carefully slipped a folded handkerchief which Jason had supplied behind her head to staunch the flow of blood from a large open wound. Rebecca paced back and forth in front of them, one eye on the street, the other on them, snapping orders into her cell phone. Mitchell, amazingly, had found crime scene tape somewhere and was cordoning off the street while instructing gawkers to stay back.

In the distance, sirens approached.

An hour later, Rebecca walked into the brightly lit trauma unit waiting room where an anxious group waited. Catherine approached, her green eyes darkened to nearly black with concern.

"Any word?" Rebecca asked in a low voice, running one hand down Catherine's arm in lieu of a kiss.

Catherine shook her head slightly, but some of the tension left her chest at the sight of her lover. The waiting room, the waiting, Sloan's torment—all of it brought back too many images still too fresh. Not long ago it had been Rebecca. Rebecca lying so still, so pale, bleeding, so much bloo...

"Hey," Rebecca said softly, alarmed by the faint trembling she felt beneath her fingertips. "You okay?"

"Yes," Catherine said hoarsely, forcing the memories back behind barriers still too fragile to contain them. "No word yet. I've been doing what I can to get updates, but it's Saturday night, and it's a mad house in there. All I know is that she's still being evaluated."

Rebecca nodded, looking past the psychiatrist to the other occupants of the cramped windowless space that might have been any of a dozen such hospital rooms she'd waited in during the course of her career. She concentrated on deflecting the pain that filled the air, needing to keep her distance so she could work. "Who's the redhead?" she asked, remarking on the woman in the blue print shirt and chinos sitting with one arm wrapped protectively around Sloan's waist.

"Sarah Martin," Catherine replied, following her gaze. "Jason's partner—and Sloan's best friend apparently."

"Huh," Rebecca remarked with interest. Now I'll bet that's a story.

"What's happening back at Sloan's?" Catherine asked, needing to think about something, anything, other than this nightmare.

"I finally got Watts out of bed, and he and Mitchell are running the scene. They’re canvassing the neighborhood, interviewing anyone who was around. Or anyone who will admit to being around. There's a tavern on the corner and they'll need to talk to everyone they can chase down who was there. That'll most likely take all night and a good part of tomorrow. Flanagan’s team showed up -- they're getting the crime scene photos, analyzing the impact patterns, looking for identifying tire treads. The usual. Flanagan's fast, but it will still be at least a day or so before she has anything concrete. This kind of crime leaves a ton of physical evidence to sort through."

Neither of them laughed at the irony of that statement.

"Was it intentional?" Catherine asked quietly, because she had to know. She had to know how close death had come this time.

Rebecca hesitated, then exhaled raggedly. "Looks like it, yeah. Someone was expecting Sloan to come back and had set it up so she'd have to get out of the car. Obviously, it didn't go down the way they planned."

"Why Sloan?" Catherine asked carefully, fighting to ignore the churning in her stomach. "Why not...you?"

Rebecca's eyes shot to Catherine's, instantly concerned. "It wasn't me. It's not going to be me."

They both knew there was no way to guarantee that, but it wasn't the time to discuss something they couldn't change. "Still, why Sloan?"

"More importantly," Rebecca said darkly, "why now?" Although she hated to do it, she needed to find out. "I have to interview her."

"Oh, Rebecca," Catherine murmured. "She's so vulnerable right now. Can't it wait?"

Rebecca heard the censure in her lover's tone, and it hurt, but nothing showed in her face. "This was attempted murder. No, it can't wait."

Catherine watched her walk away, wishing she could take back the words. She of all people should know what it cost Rebecca to do the job she did. If the image of Sloan's agony hadn't been so fresh in her memory, she would have remembered that.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-16