by Lis Wiehl
CHAPTER 2
Colleen?” Mia said after the sudden boom and clatter. “What the heck was that?”
No answer.
“Colleen?”
A gunshot, Mia thought. Her blood turned to slush. That was a gunshot.
No. That was impossible.
Wasn’t it?
“Colleen?”
She must have imagined the boom. Or misunderstood it. The clatter, though, the clatter made sense. Colleen had simply dropped the phone. Any second now and she would pick it up, laughing and apologizing for her clumsiness.
Mia pushed back her memory’s insistence that there had been a boom first. The memory that reminded her that the sound of the phone falling to the ground had come second.
Because the first sound could not have been a gunshot.
“Hello? Colleen? Hello?” Mia held her breath, straining to hear.
And after a second she did hear something. But it was another puzzle. A watery bubbling. Like the sound four-year-old Brooke made when she felt brave enough to put her face in the tub and blow bubbles. And then, terrifying and sharp and impossible to deny, a moan.
“Colleen?” she said again, but more softly. Part of her already knew there might not be an answer.
She had to call the police. But how? If she hung up on Colleen, she would sever her friend’s only connection to the outside world.
Her cell phone. In her mind’s eye Mia saw it on the kitchen counter. She raced up the basement stairs, rounded the corner, and snatched up the phone. The music thumped overhead. “Gabe!” she shouted as she dialed 911, still clamping the landline phone, the one connected to Colleen, between her right shoulder and ear. “Gabe, turn that off!”
“Police, fire, or medical?” a voice said in her left ear.
“Medical. And probably police.” Overhead the music dropped a few decibels.
“What is the nature of your problem?”
“I was just on the phone with Colleen Miller, my co-worker, when there was a loud noise. I think it was a gunshot.” Mia felt like she couldn’t speak fast enough. “Our connection is still open, so I called you on a different phone, but Colleen’s not talking. The only thing I can hear is her breathing, but it sounds all, all wet. And she’s moaning.”
Even the unflappable 911 dispatcher’s tone changed at that. In answer to her rapid-fire questions, Mia provided her own name as well as Colleen’s name, address, and phone number, and the fact that she lived alone. As Mia spoke she hurried up the stairs to the second floor. In her right ear she couldn’t hear the moan anymore, let alone the sound that must be Colleen’s sputtering breath. Had her friend stopped making sounds, or was it simply too noisy to hear her?
Mia flung open the door to Gabe’s room. He was bent over his electric guitar, his too-long bangs a brown curtain in front of his eyes. At the sound of the door banging open, he scowled and then stabbed a button on his computer keyboard. The music abruptly ceased.
“I already turned it d—” He stopped himself when he saw Mia’s expression and the two phones she held, one to each ear.
Mia answered another of the dispatcher’s questions. “As far as I know, Colleen doesn’t have any guns in the home.” Suddenly she thought of an explanation. “She was looking for something in her basement right before it happened. Maybe her ex left a gun behind she didn’t know about and she dropped it or something.” Even though Colleen and Martin had been divorced for fifteen years, anything was possible, wasn’t it?
Gabe’s mouth fell open.
“Has she said anything to you?” the dispatcher asked. “Can you still hear her?”
Mia held herself perfectly still and was rewarded, if that was the right word, with a faint sound pulsing against her ear. “Just that bubbling sound of her breathing, that’s all I can hear now. Nothing else. You’ve got to tell them to hurry.” She couldn’t bear to think of Colleen all alone and struggling to breathe.
“I’ve dispatched police and an ambulance to the scene,” the dispatcher said. “Don’t hang up, Mia. I need you to stay on the line and tell me anything you hear.”
“Look, I’m going to give my son the phone and have him listen. I’ll have him call you guys on his cell phone if she says anything. But I need to get over there, and I can’t do that and listen.”
In her ear, the dispatcher started to argue, but Mia was already hitting the button to end the call on her cell. Over the past few terrible months, she and Colleen had reconnected, becoming even closer than before. If Colleen needed her, Mia would be there, no ifs, ands, or buts.
With the sudden silence of no music and no 911 dispatcher, Mia listened again. Nothing except the faint gurgling sound that must be Colleen breathing.
“Mom—what’s going on?” Gabe had pushed the hair out of his eyes, and Mia suddenly understood why he might wear it like that. Gabe wasn’t old enough yet to have mastered how to hide his feelings, so he let his hair do it for him. His eyes were huge and dark, as vulnerable as a fawn’s.
“Something’s happened at Colleen’s. Maybe an accident with a gun. I need you to do two things for me. One, be here in case Brooke wakes up. And two, stay on the line and listen. It doesn’t sound like Colleen can talk, but if she says anything, I need you to listen carefully and write down exactly what she says. And if she can talk, ask her what’s wrong, what happened, and then call 911 on your cell and tell them what she says.”
Mia held out the phone, but Gabe didn’t take it.
“Wait—where are you going?” His voice cracked.
“To Colleen’s in case I can help. Look—all you have to do is listen.” Mia pressed the phone in his hand and ran back into the hall and down the stairs.
A few months ago Mia wouldn’t have asked Gabriel to watch his four-year-old sister, let alone insist he listen to those terrible sounds on the other end of the phone line. But a lot had changed in a few months.
She grabbed up her purse and car keys from the small table next to the front door and ran outside, twisting the lock behind her.
The drive to Colleen’s house normally took a little less than twenty minutes. Tonight it took about twelve. A police car, siren wailing, passed as she pulled over to the shoulder, and then another. A block or two from Colleen’s house, more lights slashed the night ahead of her.
Mia had to park a few houses back because of the number of police cars, marked and unmarked. She was at the top of Colleen’s driveway when a young cop stepped in front of her, arms spread wide.
“Ma’am, stop. You can’t go any farther.”
“But I’m a friend of Colleen’s. Is she okay?” Part of Mia already knew the answer. An ambulance was in front of the house, but it was just sitting there, no siren, not even any lights. Two paramedics leaned against the side panel, talking in low voices.
“Ma’am, I need you to get back.”
“Look.” Mia took a deep breath. “I’m an attorney with the King County Prosecutor’s Office, same as Colleen. I was on the phone with her when something happened. I’m the one who called 911.”
A man spoke behind her. “It’s okay, Orkney.”
Mia turned. Charlie Carlson, one of Seattle’s homicide detectives, had just arrived.
A wave of nausea swept over Mia as her stomach crammed itself into the back of her throat. She put her hand to her mouth. From behind the shelter of her fingers, she said, “Oh no, Charlie. If you’re here, it can’t be good news for Colleen.”
He didn’t answer her directly. Instead he said, “I heard you were back. Heck of a way to see you again.” He had a nose that bent at the tip and dark hair that Mia had always thought was really too long for a cop. But Charlie was known for coming close to the line—and sometimes crossing it. As Mia well knew.
“I was on the phone with her when she was shot. At least it sounded like a shot.” Mia’s thoughts suddenly flew to Gabriel. “In fact, my son—”
“You were on the line with her?” Charlie interrupted. “Did she say who shot her?”
“She wasn’t doing anything beyond trying to breathe.” She hoped Gabe hadn’t heard the moment when Colleen’s breathing must have ceased. “Look, my son could still be on the line with her. I asked him to listen in case she said anything. You’ve got to let me talk to him and tell him he can hang up.”
She started down the driveway, but Charlie put a hand on her shoulder.
“Hold up, Mia. You can’t go down there. This is a crime scene.”
Who was Charlie Carlson to tell her what she was allowed to do at a crime scene? She opened her mouth to protest. If Gabe was still on the line, the next voice she wanted him to hear was hers.
Before she could argue, Charlie said, “I’ll take care of it right now,” and started to jog down the driveway while pulling a pair of blue vinyl gloves from his back pocket. He called back over his shoulder, “What’s your son’s name?”
“Gabriel.”
Charlie ducked inside.
Mia waited in the darkness at the top of the driveway, hugging herself even though it wasn’t that cold. Men talked in low voices and radios crackled. Down the street, three crime-scene techs were pulling on their identical boots and white Tyvek suits. Farther back, neighbors gathered in clumps, talking or standing with their hands over their mouths.
Here it was quiet and pitch-black. The nearest house to Colleen didn’t have a single light on. It had been for sale for a couple of months, and now the For Sale sign listed to one side.
No stars out. Mia reminded herself that the stars were still there, just hidden by a blanket of clouds.
And suddenly Charlie was galloping up the drive to her, yelling as he went. “Mia, when I picked up the phone, no one was on it. But I could hear someone screaming in the background.” He had nearly reached her. “It sounded like a little girl.”
Mia’s vision spun like water swirling down a drain. Brooke. He was talking about Brooke.
And Brooke was screaming.
Screaming.
Charlie grabbed her upper arm and tugged her forward. “Come on! I’ll take you home with lights and siren.”
CHAPTER 3
After his mom ran downstairs and rushed to Colleen’s, Gabe sat very, very still. His suddenly sweaty hand pressed the phone against the side of his head.
In his ear was a sound like an aquarium. It was bearable if he thought of it like that. If he pictured bubbles rising through clear water filled with colorful fish and miniature plastic castles.
Not when he thought of it as a woman gagging on her own blood.
If there was one thing in the world Gabe didn’t want to be doing, it was listening to what sounded like his mom’s friend dying.
His shoulders hunched suddenly, and he shivered so hard the phone rattled against his cheek. Gabe felt like he had last winter when he had the flu. Shaky. Nauseated. Not quite real.
And this couldn’t be real, could it?
Their home phone had a button you could push to put it on speaker. He pressed it and set the phone down on his desk. The wet, almost slurpy sounds were still there, but they no longer felt like they were part of him, rattling around inside his skull.
Gabe tried to turn the sounds into background noise. Like the hum of an air conditioner.
His eyes fell on his history textbook. He should be reading it, but of course he couldn’t do anything right now. Just listen. Listen and hope that the ambulance people would get there in time to save Colleen Miller.
Three months ago Gabe would have said this was going to be a great year. High school instead of middle school. Getting a learner’s permit in the spring. Making the football team, even though he wasn’t that big. At least not yet.
But everything had changed, hadn’t it? And Gabe was just expected to suck it up and deal with it. Overnight, it seemed, his mom had become the enemy.
She was crabby all the time now. Always nagging. Always yelling. Sometimes at herself, but mostly at him. Even when she was just asking questions, it sounded like yelling. Where had he been, who had he been with, what had he been doing?
But most of her sentences began with “Why didn’t you . . .” Why didn’t you . . . finish your homework, make sure Brooke took a bath, tell me you had to bring in art supplies for class?
Gabe started when the tone of Colleen’s breathing changed. It roughened, paused—his stomach did a slow flip—then, after a watery gasp, resumed its rhythmic gurgle.
It was the most horrible sound he had ever heard. Gabe closed his eyes and tried to distract himself by thinking about how his mom wanted him to give up his whole entire life just because his dad wasn’t around anymore. Just because she had to go back to work.
It wasn’t like he didn’t love his little sister. But everyone else on the team hung out together after practice, and meanwhile he was stuck being Brooke’s unpaid babysitter. And there was dinner to start and the house to pick up, at least according to his mom.
She said they all had to pull together or they would fall apart.
But for Gabe, his new life was like being an adult without any of the good parts. He had all these responsibilities, but no money, no car, no freedom. If he were an adult, he could choose whether or not to have a kid. But he hadn’t gotten to choose Brooke.
“Taxation without representation, dude,” as his friend Tyler put it.
The only good thing that had come out of everything changing was his new phone. It could do everything, in addition to allowing his mom to call him a dozen times a day. She never texted him. She didn’t get that no one called anymore. You didn’t have to answer a text right away. Texting gave you time to think about what to say and a record of everything you had said.
From the landline phone on the desk, Colleen kept inhaling and exhaling in that strange, watery way.
He couldn’t take this anymore. He couldn’t just sit here and listen to these wet gasps.
Gabe picked up his cell and tapped out a text.
Gabe: You won’t believe what I’m doing.
Tyler’s reply came faster than he had hoped.
Tyler: What?
Gabe: Listening to some lady who’s dying. It’s horrible.
A faint groan rose from the phone lying on his desk. Bile flooded Gabe’s mouth. The only thing tethering him to sanity was the cell phone in his hands.
Tyler: JK?
Gabe’s thumbs flew over the tiny virtual keyboard.
Gabe: I wish. Mom was talking to friend on phone and then I guess she was shot. The friend, I mean. Now Mom’s going over there and making me listen in case she says something. Only she can’t talk. Just breathe. But it sounds all wrong.
Tyler: That’s awful. Do you know her?
Gabe: Sort of.
Colleen was old, even older than his mom. She had a daughter in college but seemed to have forgotten how to act around kids. Her attempts at conversation had a slightly desperate quality. Every time she saw him, she asked him what his favorite subject was in school. And every time he said, “Lunch,” she laughed in a fake-y, high-pitched way.
Only Gabe would give anything now to hear her fake laugh. Not this. He strained to hear sirens or footsteps or rescuers shouting in the background, but there was nothing but the harsh, irregular rasp of her breath. And then even that stopped.
Gabe: I just want to hang up and tell my mom we got disconnected.
But if he lied, his mom would probably know just by looking at his face.
Without warning, a scream shattered the night. Gabe’s whole body jolted like he had just stuck his finger in an electric socket. He let his cell phone fall to his desk.
The scream hadn’t come from Colleen’s house.
It had come from right down the hall.
From the room where his sister slept.
Gabe’s head whipped around. He saw no one in the hall. And he hadn’t heard anyone come in, although he had been so focused on the two phones he had blocked out the rest of his surroundings. Could a burglar have snuck in after his mom ran out? Had she forgotten to l
ock the front door?
Another scream pierced the silence.
“I’m coming, Brooke! I’m coming.” He jumped to his feet. At the last second he grabbed the landline phone, the one that was still connected to Colleen. As he picked it up, a new sound came from it. Something he didn’t have time to think about now.
Instead he ran down the hall and opened the door to Brooke’s bedroom.
Brooke was sitting bolt upright in her little pale blue wooden toddler bed. Her mouth was stretched wide in terror, and the whites showed top and bottom on her eyes. Her breathing was fast and shallow. She didn’t even turn toward him. Instead her staring eyes were focused on one corner of the room. The corner where the window was. The corner he couldn’t see because the door only opened three-fourths of the way and then was blocked by the dresser.
Gabe let the phone slip from his suddenly boneless hand. What was his sister looking at? Who was in the room?
Brooke screamed again, her hands coming up in front of her face, ready to ward off a blow.
Taking a deep breath, Gabe charged forward to put himself between whoever it was and his little sister.
CHAPTER 4
Dispatch informed Charlie Carlson that all available officers in the area had already been deployed—to Colleen Miller’s house.
That meant that whatever was happening at Mia Quinn’s house, Charlie would be the first officer on the scene.
Charlie and Mia, which might be a mistake. A kid screaming could mean a lot of things. Some of them very bad. Some of them things no parent should ever witness. He requested another unit to be scrambled from Colleen’s, but knew he would still beat them there. Mia had already told him the fastest route to take. Made even faster by how Charlie was driving.
Going sixty in a residential area was a dumb idea, despite the fact that he had turned on the siren, the alternately flashing lights in the grill, and the red-and-blue light bar in the rear window. He was traveling too fast for any pedestrian—and most drivers—to react. Charlie goosed it up to sixty-five, his eyes scanning back and forth. One evening jogger dressed all in black except for white earbuds, and that would be all she wrote.
