One Last Breath

by Lisa Jackson

  “But Geoffrey shouldn’t have been. He was seated next to his wife and had just walked up to talk to Liam and find out what was going on because the bride was late.”

  They’d been over it a thousand times. Mick was inclined to knock out Derek, Geoffrey, and the officiant from the list of targets. The preacher and Derek had been farther back when the shooting began, Geoffrey just walking up the aisle. The crime scene techs had proven what had been obvious, that the shooter had aimed for the aisle area, before the spray had widened in an arc into the guests seated at the ceremony. It had been the police department’s theory that the arc of bullets was an afterthought, that the shooter had only moved the gun after he’d hit his target, trying to make it seem more like a wild, random attack. Or that someone or something had made him change direction. Had his arm been hit? Had he found another target? Was the fact that the bride hadn’t appeared the reason the attack wasn’t more focused? Or did he want to kill or maim as many as possible?

  No one knew.

  The idea that Rory Abernathy Bastian was the target still had some merit. Everyone had expected her to come in on Aaron’s arm when the Bridal March began. Maybe the shooter just had a premature ejaculation of his firearm, saw Aaron and assumed she was there, though a calm assassin wouldn’t have been fooled. A billowing white gown would have been hard to miss. He scratched behind his ear in frustration. And then there was the fact that she’d run . . . after a struggle where someone had been wounded, possibly seriously wounded, though no one had shown up at any of the local hospitals requiring stitches that couldn’t be explained. “The blood on Rory Abernathy’s wedding dress wasn’t hers,” Mick mused.

  “And it wasn’t Pete DeGrere’s. He was picked up after the convenience store robbery and had no injuries, and it wasn’t a match anyway.”

  He didn’t know where Rory Abernathy Bastian fit in to the picture. What had she run into that had stopped her walking down the aisle? Had it saved her from death? Or was Aaron the target, or one of the Bastians?

  “Maybe Geoff Bastian was the target,” Mick said. “He didn’t want that do-over wedding. It was all his wife’s idea. Keeping up with the Joneses. Bastian damn near blamed her for what happened to him. Like it was her fault he got hit.”

  “It put him in a wheelchair, so he lashed out. But he sure got over it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “They’re still married, aren’t they?”

  Mick grunted. There was no accounting for why people stayed together. “All right. DeGrere’s dead and that’s a fact, so what have we got? Harold Stemple as a prison inmate, the guy whose son was killed during the shooting. Aurora Abernathy still missing, Stemple’s stepdaughter, blood on her wedding gown that she ditched before disappearing. Somebody waiting for DeGrere to get out so he could kill him. Picking him off at a nearby strip club, one of the first places he would go as soon as he was out.”

  Shanice shifted, reached into her pocket to retrieve her phone and glance at its small screen. A text, he guessed. She slipped the cell back into her pocket. “Deon,” she explained. “Supposed to meet him in half an hour.”

  Mick was still rolling the case over in his mind. “It sure as hell would make sense that Harold Stemple’s somehow involved with DeGrere and the wedding shooting. There are connections there. Maybe the police’ll figure it out and finally lay it on Pete.” Or not.

  “That what you want?” Shanice asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Bullshit, Mick. You want this collar yourself. You know you do.”

  “I’m no longer a cop. You just made that very fine point.”

  “But being a cop isn’t about just wearing a badge. You’re still one. Yes, you are. Where it counts.” She pointed to her heart as she opened the door. “I’m gonna head back to my place and meet Deon. If you get hit by the answer, you let me know.” She sketched a wave, then headed into the reception area where her desk was located, but she didn’t stop there and made her way to the hall, where the door banged closed behind her.

  Mick sat at his desk for another hour, staring into space, thinking about Pete DeGrere. Poor dumb ass. Sure, he’d wanted to nail the man for the Bastian wedding shooting, but someone had ended his life first, which really pissed Mick off. Now, he was going to have to come at the crime from another angle, but the only thing he knew for sure was that this morning he’d had one unsolved crime that kept him awake at night.

  Now it looked like he was going to have two.

  * * *

  “Rory.”

  From her chair in the hospital waiting area near the ICU, Rory glanced up and saw her mother hurrying down the hall toward her, Darlene’s Birkenstocks hardly making a sound. Mom’s latest style was apparently Earth Mother as she wore a flowing, printed dress that fell to her ankles, her hair having grown out long and gray and currently clipped away from her face. It was much better than the spiky heels and skintight dresses she’d worn when she’d first started dating Harold Stemple, but, as ever, Rory thought it would be nice to have a mother who just fit in with everyone else’s dress code for once.

  “How’s our girl?” Darlene asked, hazarding a quick look toward the closed doors to the ICU.

  “It’s the flu.”

  “Well, that’s good, isn’t it?” Darlene asked cautiously.

  “A bad strain. I don’t know. I just saw Charlotte and she’s . . . the same,” Rory choked out. As she tried to appear calm, to hide the fear in her heart, she added as much for herself as Darlene, “Charlotte’s okay. She’s going to be okay.”

  With worried eyes, Darlene settled into the chair next to Rory’s. “Of course she is.” She clasped Rory’s hand and squeezed hard.

  The action brought tears to Rory’s eyes. She’d learned from listening to the nurses that another Portland hospital had lost a three-year-old boy to the flu that morning. And two elderly adults, a man and a woman, had passed as well. In the last twenty-four hours.

  “You need to come stay with me,” Darlene said briskly, and blinked behind the lenses of her glasses.

  “I won’t leave Charlotte.”

  “Yes. I know. What I meant is that you both need to come stay with me as soon as Charlotte’s ready.”

  “I just want her well.”

  “Yes, of course.” She patted their clasped hands, then looked around and finally stood up, releasing her grip. “We need to talk to someone.”

  As if on cue, the door to the Intensive Care Unit opened mechanically and one of the nurses, a petite woman with large doe-like eyes and a quick smile, slipped through. Her gaze found Rory as she stood. As she approached, her smile brightened. “Ms. Johnson?” she said, as they’d been introduced earlier, “Charlotte’s awake and asking for you.”

  Rory was already on her way to the doors, but when Darlene tried to come in with Rory, she was detained. “Just her mother for now.” The nurse was polite but firm.

  Inside the unit, patients’ beds spread out in a semicircle around a nurses’ station, privacy curtains separating each case, but each bed visible to the attending staff.

  Rory hastened to her daughter’s side. Oh, God, again she was struck with how small her daughter was. There had been talk of moving her to the children’s wing, but so far, that hadn’t happened. Hopefully she would be released before being transferred.

  “Hey, honey,” she said softly as she neared.

  Charlotte’s flushed face scared Rory, but her daughter was awake enough to track her mother’s approach and complain that she didn’t feel good. “I want to go home.”

  “Me, too, honey, and we will,” Rory lied. Where the hell was “home” now? Certainly not in Point Roberts, the only home Charlotte had ever known. But the fact that Charlotte was thinking about leaving and could voice her complaints was an improvement.

  “When?”

  “As soon as the doctors say so. Since you’re getting better, it will be sooner.”

  “Now,” Charlotte said a little crossly, but Rory was able to
placate the little girl, and as she smoothed her daughter’s hair and held back tears, she watched Charlotte start to nod off again. She was allowed to stay until Charlotte fell back asleep. “She’s stable,” the nurse said, when Rory pressed her. “We’re just not taking any chances.” The pinned-on smile had become smaller, the nurse’s dark eyes more serious.

  “I know others have died of the flu,” Rory said, her throat hot.

  The nurse sighed, her face suddenly a mask of empathy. “But your daughter’s doing well.”

  “Can I stay in here with her?”

  “Yes”—the nurse was nodding—“but your other guest isn’t allowed.”

  Rory had dropped Darlene from her mind. Now she looked at Charlotte, then at the nurse. “I’ll be right back.”

  Outside the doors, Darlene was pacing. When they opened and Rory appeared, Darlene shot to her daughter’s side. “How is she?”

  “Better.”

  “I want to see her.”

  “I know, Mom, but right now it’s impossible.” Rory explained that no one but Rory could visit at this time.

  “Are they keeping her? How long? Why is she in the ICU? Shouldn’t she be in a children’s ward or something? Don’t I count as a family member, for God’s sake?” Darlene barraged Rory with questions she couldn’t answer, and then as if finally realizing her daughter had told her as much information as there was, she suddenly stopped. “When was the last time you ate or slept? You look like hell.”

  “Thanks, Mom. And last night. For both.”

  “For the love of Saint . . . come on! Let’s get some food in you,” Darlene said. “There’s gotta be a cafeteria somewhere.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Well, you need to eat. We’ll share something. Come on. Then you can go back to Charlotte and I’ll head home.” She paused at the desk in front of the double doors, explained where they were headed, and after getting sketchy directions, shepherded Rory toward a bank of elevators situated near floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the parking lot.

  Rory let herself be dragged to the cafeteria, where she picked up a tray and, following her mother along the counter of offered selections, she picked up a salad and ordered a bowl of soup from a bored-looking cafeteria woman who ladled the chowder without any expression. Darlene, shunning Rory’s choices, picked up a processed turkey sandwich on wheat toast. Darlene paid for both their meals at a register.

  Rory had argued about Darlene paying the bill, but gave up when her mother inserted her debit card before Rory could utter any further protest. Nonetheless, Rory couldn’t help feeling guilty when she thought of the neat stack of bills Uncle Kent had slipped into her purse. She just didn’t have the heart or gumption to argue.

  “If I can’t feed my own daughter, what kind of mother am I?”

  After they sat at a semiprivate table with a window view of the hospital’s ER portico, Darlene wolfed down every last bite of her sandwich while Rory picked at her meal. The soup and salad proved to be mediocre at best. And truthfully, she had little appetite, while Darlene tore into the pickle that had come with her turkey-on-wheat.

  “I just wish I could get my eyes on that little girl.”

  “It’s not going to happen, Mom. Hospital policy.”

  “Oh, drat. Fine.” Darlene pushed crumbs around the plate and shot Rory a look from under her lashes. “You gonna tell Liam?”

  “Mom. You know what the situation is! No.” But hadn’t she considered letting him know?

  “Okay. Okay. Well, really not okay.” Her eyes met Rory’s. “It’s just that Charlotte is his daughter and, well . . . how are you going to pay for this?”

  Oh. God. Rory felt the back of her neck tighten. “I’m not dropping this news on him so he can pay for it!”

  “Oh, goodness. So dramatic.” Darlene rolled her eyes.

  “You know what happened at the wedding! I have to keep Charlotte away from them!”

  “The Bastians? Darling, you don’t know that. I’ve gone along with your secret all these years, but I’ve never really understood it. Maybe it’s time to rethink this. You’re here in Portland already. Maybe you should stay, start a life here.”

  “I have to protect Charlotte. That man who attacked me specifically threatened her.” She pushed her bowl aside, remains of the soup slopping onto the table. “I can’t let them know about her. Someone threatened her life and she hadn’t even been born yet!” She’d kept her voice down, aware of people at other tables nearby, but her hands were flat on the table, anger and fear tensing every muscle. “I just wish I knew who the hell he was.”

  “We don’t. But we know who he wasn’t. Right? Harold was in prison at the time.” Her lips pinched. “And . . . and it wasn’t Everett—”

  “We don’t know that,” she put in quickly.

  Darlene rambled over her. “—nor Aaron, poor boy.” She shook her head sadly. “It’s not Everett. He’s turned over a new leaf. Married a good woman. I told you that.”

  Rory snorted. “Married a good woman,” she repeated sarcastically.

  “And of course it wasn’t any of the Bastians, either,” Darlene went on. “They were the ones under fire, for God’s sake.” She fussed in her purse for a tissue and dabbed at the perspiration that had gathered on her forehead. Darlene never liked to talk about the wedding. No matter how she defended the Stemples, Rory knew she worried that the events had somehow been caused by their family. “So, let’s talk about something else. You know I can sense things, that I have good instincts. I know you’re skeptical, but sometimes I can feel what’s going to happen. You’ve seen it. So I went to Laurie and she said—”

  “Mom, please. No psycho bullshit right now.”

  “You always say that, Rory.” She sighed.

  “I can’t listen to it. I’ve got to think of what’s best for Charlotte and I don’t want the Bastians involved.”

  “Well, they would help you financially, that’s all I’m saying. And, as I said, Liam is Charlotte’s father.”

  “I know, Mom! Believe me, I know.” Rory wanted to press her hands to her temples. “You said you were going to help me. This is not the help I was looking for.”

  Darlene tossed her hands up and then back down again in annoyance.

  Rory added, “If you really want to help me, then make Charlotte well, right now. Let her be her usual bubbly self. Abracadabra and then we can go!”

  “Rory,” she muttered, disgusted.

  “Then, Mom, don’t take this the wrong way, but please, please, shut up with the psycho stuff. Okay?”

  Darlene pressed her lips together, looked at her daughter, then snapped her head in a nod. She’d never liked it when Rory used “psycho” instead of “psychic.”

  Rory looked away from her mother, pulling herself out of her anger. It was no good getting mad at Darlene for her foibles.

  At the cash register, a thin, fortysomething man with longish hair was buying a cup of coffee. He reminded her of someone, and that in turn reminded her of her sightings of Everett in Point Roberts. “When was the last time you saw Everett?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I told you, I thought I saw him once or twice, like he was following me.”

  “I know,” she said again. “And Rory, he shouldn’t have come into your room, that is true. But it was never as bad as you made it out in high school.”

  “Mom . . .” Rory warned.

  “I’m just saying. People change. Everett is traveling his true path now. He’s a Scorpio, and scorpions sometimes have to sting themselves to death before they—”

  “Mom!”

  “—see what to do.”

  “I don’t think people do change,” Rory muttered, pushing back her chair. “I think Everett was in Point Roberts. And I’m sick of being scared.”

  “You’re not going to confront him, are you?” She looked horrified.

  “I don’t know. I don’t even know where he is, and no . . . I mean, I just want Ch
arlotte well!”

  She headed out of the cafeteria and heard Darlene’s rushed, muffled footsteps hurrying to catch up. As Rory slammed her palm on the elevator call button, her mother said, “I guess I’d better go,” and scrounged through her purse for her keys. “I do have some errands to run . . . an appointment I shouldn’t miss, and since I can’t see Charlotte. . .” Retrieving her keys, she sighed loudly, then said, “Listen, I’ll call you later. Don’t be mad. Please.”

  “I’m not mad. I’m . . . scared,” Rory admitted and sagged against the wall.

  Darlene blinked rapidly and bit her lip, then suddenly as the elevator dinged, announcing the car’s arrival, she blurted, “Charlotte’s going to be fine. I know you don’t want to hear it, but Laurie read your horoscope and everything’s going to be straightened out, and . . . and good. Yes, good. By August seventeenth.”

  “I won’t hold my breath.”

  “Oh, darling, you’ll see.”

  Then, blowing a kiss as the elevator doors whooshed open, Darlene bustled away, pushing open a side door while Rory stepped inside the waiting elevator car. She couldn’t worry about her mother with her whacked-out psychic mumbo jumbo. All she could be concerned with at the moment was Charlotte.

  And then there was the problem with Liam.

  Darlene’s words, like the haunting moans of a ghost, swept through her mind over and over: It’s just that Charlotte is his daughter . . .

  Chapter 11

  Thursday morning Liam wheeled his Tahoe into the circular drive outside his parents’ house. He felt a little clearer about the future despite his disappointment at not finding Rory. A good night’s sleep at his condo, six hours straight after he’d thrown himself onto the bed, then a quick shower this morning, had put things right. He’d then met with Les Steele at the Hallifax work site. They were moving ahead with the project but hadn’t replaced the broken windows yet, though all the replacement panes had been ordered. “Kids,” Steele had said, staring at the vandalism.

  “Let’s hope.” A random attack was less complicated than some kind of coordinated neighborhood uprising, or worse.