Danica didn’t know that Al was out of commission in a broom closet down the hall. And she hadn’t stopped long enough to wonder how I got away from him.
Danica took a step toward Rosie. “Then tomorrow morning when you tell that reporter from the Times that you made it all up,” Danica reached for the tissue box next to Rosie’s bed, “you’re going to say you got that cut on your cheek from an unknown intruder, whoever killed the cop outside in the hall.” She tossed the box on the bed. “Here, wipe your face.”
Rosie spit more blood. “Why would I say any of that?”
Danica cocked her head toward me. “Because if you don’t, then tomorrow morning will be the last morning your friendly dean will ever see.”
Rosie slumped.
Danica moved toward me. I lunged for her gun hand, but she was too fast for me and dodged to the door. With one hand on the door handle, she opened the door a few inches. She aimed the gun at my belly and I instinctively put my hands over it. She waved the gun slightly. “Come quietly, Dean Solaris. Unless you want another gunshot wound.” She stuck her head out the door. “Al, come here.”
“If you take her, I’ll tell that reporter everything,” shouted Rosie, now standing beside her bed. “I’ll tell him how you pimped out twelve-year-olds and how you beat up the girls who disobeyed you or tried to run away. I’ll give him names and dates and street corners.” Rosie wiped the blood from her mouth. “And I’ll tell the cops everything too. You brought girls across state lines, so that will bring the feds in, Mama D. You’ll have no place to run to anywhere in this country. You’re cooked, lady. You’re all over.” Rosie was breathless by the time she finished, but Danica seemed unmoved by her threat. She waved the gun at me again and motioned for me to come to the door.
Danica called again out of the open doorway. “Al, come here. I need you.” She waited a moment and then called out again, “Al, get your ass in here.”
A frown appeared on her face.
I made another decision. “Al’s not going to be much help tonight,” I said. “You’re going to have to deal with both of us on your own.”
Danica waved the gun from me to Rosie and then back again. Her eyes were full of hatred and then fear. “What happened to Al?”
“I happened to Al.” My voice was hoarse.
“Is he dead?”
“I sure as hell hope so.”
She paused, then stepped back and raised the gun up with both hands. The barrel was pointed directly at my forehead. Danica was about to fire again when a dark figure appeared in the doorway behind her and grabbed her wrist. Another shot rang out and shattered the overhead light. The room fell into darkness except for the light over Rosie’s bed. I could hear the sounds of a struggle but my eyes could not make out the dark figure.
Through the dimness I heard, “God damn you, let me go.” I heard the voice of the dark figure say something but I couldn’t make out the words. The pain in my shoulder became more intense and overwhelmed me. The room began to fade as I passed out.
Chapter 25
A brilliant white light shown above my head, and far in the distance, a man’s voice said, “You’re in surgery, Dr. Solaris. Now, please count backwards from 100…”
I obeyed. “99, 98, 97…” The baby? Oh God. Did anyone tell them I was pregnant?
“Keep counting.”
“96, 95…”
Orange leaves, everywhere, floating in front of me. I sat under a brilliant maple tree at the far end of a courtyard. In the distance I saw people dancing. Some were clustered around Nell, who was wearing a silk brocade suit that matched her curly hair. Wynan stood beside her in a tuxedo. I put my hand on my belly. It was enormous under a dark purple maternity dress.
The wedding must have happened.
I looked again at Nell and the dancing people. They were walking off the dance floor, following Nell and Wynan down a hill toward a lake in the distance. A photographer led the way. Why wasn’t I with them if I had been in the wedding?
“That should have been you down there by the lake.” Evangeline sat down beside me and sipped from a glass of Champagne. “You should have had one of these for yourself,” she said.
“Champagne?”
An ironic smile. “No. A wedding.” Then her face became sad and she looked older than when I had seen her in Sacramento.
“It didn’t work out,” I said but did not know why.
“I know. That’s why I’m here. I took a leave,” she said, twirling her empty glass. “You’ll need someone here for the first few weeks.”
The orange leaves began to swirl around me, blocking out the scene. Then they fell to the ground in a great heap over my feet. I looked up at Evangeline. But she was gone. The leaves blew up again swirling madly, a sea of orange. Then nothing. I was alone.
“Meredith,” I heard a woman’s voice whisper behind me. I turned but no one was there.
“I think she’s coming round,” said the voice.
“Red. Honey.”
I opened my eyes and found myself staring into the face of a man who needed a shave, and judging by the redness around his eyes, had not slept in a long while.
He leaned over me and bent down to kiss me gently. I could feel the sharp stubble on his chin brush across my lips.
“I gather she’s more to you than just a witness,” said the woman’s voice.
He sat back and a nurse appeared from behind my bed and took my wrist in her hand to read my pulse. I looked up at her. “How long have I been out?”
“About twelve hours,” she answered, still looking at her watch. She was the same nurse who had attended Rosie, the woman with the round face and the old-fashioned braid circling her head. Her touch was soft and she had kind blue eyes. She injected something into the tube that ran into my arm. “This will help the pain,” she said.
“What time is it now?” My voice sounded raw.
“Nearly noon,” she said.
I cocked my head toward the man. “How long has he been here?”
She smiled. “Since early morning, I would say. This nice detective hasn’t left your side for so much as a cup of coffee.”
I turned to the man. “Good to see you, mister. I’ve missed your face.”
A smile cracked through the stubble around his mouth. He took my other hand and raised it to his lips. “You had me scared for a while there.”
“Are you home for good?”
“I am.” A light went on in his dark green eyes with a look of such tenderness it made my throat close.
“God, I missed you,” we said simultaneously.
Joe reached in and stroked my cheek. “I gather you’ve been taking risks again.” His voice was gentle without a hint of disapproval.
“What happened? I remember Danica Boerum with a gun threatening Rosie. She shot me in the arm and then I went blank.”
“The doctor says the bullet went through the fleshy part but missed the bone,” he said.
“Your arm will be sore for a while, but you should make a decent recovery,” said the nurse, walking to the door. “I’ll tell the doctor you’re awake.”
A terrible cloud passed over my mind. The image of a pale girl with blood all over one side of her face. “Rosie? What happened to her?”
Joe leaned forward and took my hand again. “Rosie’s okay. She’ll have a badly bruised face for a while, but no bones were broken. She’s devastated about what happened.”
“And Danica?”
“In the Landry jail, waiting for the feds to come and take her to federal prison.”
“Did you stop her? I remember someone coming in while she was aiming that gun at my head.”
“No. That was a young patrolman who I guess Norm had assigned to the room. Something Donovan. I didn’t get here until it was all over.”
“Norm?”
&n
bsp; The light went out of Joe’s eyes. “Gone. Rosie still hasn’t stopped crying for him.”
I remembered the stocky figure barreling down the hall dragging the young patrolman who fell for Rosie and had probably saved our lives.
“Norm stayed here last night because he wanted to protect us.”
“And if Big Al recovers from the beating he took, he and his sister will be tried for the murder of my good friend, Norman O’Hare.”
I remembered that last moment in the closet when I had brought the heel of my shoe down on Al’s temple. I was wearing leather flats with an inch heel, sharp around the edges and hard as steel. I had hoped to end big Al with that move. “How bad is he?”
“Serious brain damage.” Joe leaned back in his chair and regarded me with his cop face, unsmiling and a little intimidating. “That was your work, wasn’t it?”
“It was. And at the time, I hoped I had killed him. He dragged me past Norm’s body and through Norm’s blood to get into that closet.”
Joe shook his head as if to get rid of the image. Then the green eyes came back to me. “The police on the case said you were shot and bruised but there was no evidence of rape, even though Al’s pants were down around his knees.”
I let out a long breath. “He never got that far. That self-defense course you insisted I take finally paid off.”
Another tiny smile played around the stubbled mouth. This one was bittersweet. “I should have known that bastard would come looking for you when he got away from the police raid at his house.”
“Did you know he was Danica Boerum’s brother?”
“Until this morning, all I knew about Al Boerum was that he was the chief thug who hired me to drive his underage girls up to Reno.” Joe ran his thumb across his chin. “But I did know he was interested in you, because all he could talk about after you saw me was the hot redhead who owed him one.”
“And Danica is going to federal prison? Why federal?”
“She took girls across state lines. It even appears she took some by force back in the old days. So there’s been a federal warrant on her for some time. She should do a lot of time. Particularly if there’s any evidence she helped her brother kill Norm. They’re checking the knife for prints. His and hers.”
The pain in my arm throbbed and I began to wonder what other injuries I had sustained. Instinctively my good arm and hand went to my belly. “Did any other part of me get hurt?”
Joe’s face came closer to mine. “Sweetheart, a gunshot wound is serious enough. As far as I’ve been told, the rest of you is bruised but okay.”
I shuddered and changed the subject. “How’s Rosie’s cousin?”
Joe took my hand. “I think she’ll be all right. Snowbird is Cathy again. It took me and a counselor most of last night to convince her to go to that rehab home in Colorado. Then I ordered in some strawberry ice cream and she began to take me seriously. I told her Rosie had sent me after her, that Rosie was in the hospital and she was determined Cathy had to be rescued. She finally agreed.”
“Strawberry with sprinkles?”
“You got it.”
“Great. Do you still have to be arraigned?”
“No, thank God. After he learned what happened here, Wynan drove to Reno at the crack of dawn and got me released. The Reno squad thanked me and gave us a police escort. We must have been doing ninety on the highway.”
“I’m so glad you’re here.”
“So am I, sweetheart.”
“There’s something else we have to talk about.”
The door opened and a familiar face appeared and came to the foot of my bed, engrossed in the chart she carried. Dr. Helen Ferguson came around to my side, looked briefly at the bandaged arm and then put her stethoscope to my chest.
“Joe, this is my regular doctor, Helen Ferguson. Helen, this is Joe Morgan.”
“Your beloved?” she asked, looking at Joe’s tired face without letting go of the stethoscope.
“Yes.” I felt an unusual blush as she ran the scope down to my belly.
“The docs here say you’re going to be fine, just a flesh wound to that shoulder. Rest of you seems good. The fetal heartbeat sounds strong,” she said.
Joe’s eyes narrowed. “Fetal heartbeat?”
“Joe just got back from a mission, Helen. He’s a detective and was undercover. We…uh…haven’t talked yet,” I heard myself stuttering.
Helen’s head came up. “Oops. Sorry about that. I shouldn’t have assumed.” She spun around and headed for the door. “Guess you two need to talk. But I thought you’d want to know the baby’s doing fine.”
“What baby?” Joe’s eyes were wide open.
I gulped. Here we go. No delaying this. I put my hand under the covers and crossed my fingers. “The baby you and I are going to have sometime in late October or early November.”
He leaned forward in his chair, face very close to mine. The light was back in his eyes. I took that as a good sign. He put his hand on my belly where Helen’s scope had been. I took that as an even better sign.
He rose up halfway and kissed my forehead, then leaned down and put the side of his head on my belly for a long time, as if he was listening to the baby’s heartbeat.
After a few moments, he sat back. He reached for my arm and began a slow stroking with his fingertips, just the tips of his fingers lightly going back and forth on the inside of my arm. It was something his mother used to do for him when he was a small child. She called it soothing. And it was.
I waited for him to speak.
After an eternity, his mouth opened. “I suppose if it’s a girl, you’re going to want to name her Sadie.”
“Sadie’s full name is Seraphim.”
He gave me a long serious look, the tip of his tongue between his lips. “I’m not doing Seraphim.”
He continued the delicate stroking on the inside of my arm. “Sadie Morgan will be a good name for a girl of ours.”
Ours. Thank you, God.
I smiled and relaxed. “What if it’s a boy?”
His turn to smile. “Well, then we both know what name we’ll give a boy.”
“Won’t our dog be confused?”
“Probably.”
THE END
(Book #3)
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About the Author
Bourne Morris began writing at Bennington College where she studied under the late poet laureate, Howard Nemerov. After college, she worked at McCall’s Magazine and then went to Ogilvy&Mather, New York during the “Mad Men” era. David Ogilvy and his colleagues treated her wonderfully, promoted her several times and then sent her west to become head of their agency in Los Angeles. She had a splendid run in advertising.
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