By Your Side

by Candace Calvert

  He shifted position, wincing as his arm bumped a stack of ammo boxes crammed between two gas cans. The fumes made his eyes water. Crowded in here and lying downhill on his belly was more than uncomfortable. He groaned, remembering his father’s words as they crawled over buckbrush and through blackberry thickets that bit into skin like barbed wire. “Quit your whining, Son. Man up. You want your shot or don’t you?”

  He needed this shot.

  It took patience, but he’d do it. Lie here, wait. Make sure he had everything right. He shifted the box a quarter of an inch to the left, slid the barrel forward, and squinted through the scope. Perfect. Even from across the street, the sign looked close enough to trace a finger over the letters: Southside Bank.

  21

  “THIS CHECKLIST WILL HELP YOU gather the few remaining items we’ll need,” the loan officer explained. “Does that help?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  Macy would bet her next paycheck this bank employee wasn’t much older than she was. Though her classic gray suit, perfectly cut hair, and pearls—who had real pearls that young?—made her seem older, far more accomplished. And made Macy wish she had more than two decent outfits beyond hospital scrubs. She wasn’t sure she’d been successful in cleaning the stains off the knit top she was wearing right now. Annie Sims’s blood, from the freeway shooting incident. But great clothes had never been a priority—couldn’t be. It was month to month, pay the bills, and save for the future. And now the future was here, not-quite-white blouse or not.

  “Because your checking and savings accounts are here at Southside Bank, it will make things a bit easier,” the woman explained. “Maybe cut some time off the process. I understand you’re eager to make an offer on that house.” Her smile was whiter than her pearls. “Your first home. Such a big step. I’m excited for you.”

  Macy struggled to quell her shaking insides. “I’ll get the prequalification letter, then?”

  “I can’t say officially. We need the rest of those items on the list. Including that employment verification from Sacramento Hope. But . . .” The young woman glanced at the printout of Elliot’s latest e-statement. The trust set up by Lang Wen. “But I would think your income, credit rating, and very substantial assets are more than enough to obtain a loan of this size.”

  What would happen to that pearly smile if Macy confessed she had no intention whatsoever of using a dime of the trust money? If she told this loan officer that, despite what it said on that paper, Macy Wynn—not Wen—refused to be seen as an almost millionaire? The very idea made her ill. What Southside Bank saw right now was what they’d get: a nurse in a tainted blouse, willing to spend all of her savings, take a loan on her retirement account, and commit to working bruising overtime . . . because I love my sister. And she needs a home.

  “Great,” Macy managed, watching as the loan officer slid the paperwork into a folder embellished with the bank’s logo. “I’ll get that back to you.”

  “Fax or e-mail is fine. The contact information is on my card. In the folder.”

  “Good—thanks.” Macy picked up her cell phone and stood, grateful her knees weren’t as wobbly as they felt.

  The loan officer came around the desk and offered her hand. “Thank you, Miss Wynn. I’ll look forward to—”

  “Help!” An elderly man with a cane lurched through a side door of the bank, expression frantic. “Get some help. A woman collapsed in the parking lot. She’s on the ground. Out cold.”

  “Call 911,” Macy instructed, pointing her finger at the loan officer, “and watch my purse—I’ll go see what I can do to help.” She took off at a jog, dodging customers and personnel already moving toward the door. “Let me through. I’m a nurse.”

  “She’s over there.” The man hobbled back through the open door, pointed his cane. “On the ground in the employee parking lot. It’s right next to the handicapped spaces.”

  “Right behind you, miss,” a balding security guard rasped, hurrying forward. “That’s the lot to your right.”

  In moments, Macy saw her. A young woman sprawled on her side on the asphalt, motionless. Fainting episode? Seizure? Possible diagnoses tumbled through Macy’s brain as she closed the distance. She dropped to her knees.

  “Ma’am . . . hey.” Macy grasped the woman’s shoulder, her concerns doubling. Too pale—far too pale. Eyes open, ominously vacant . . . Is she even breathing?

  “Make sure an ambulance is on its way!” Macy shouted to the security guard as she hurried to cradle the woman’s head, open her airway, and—blood? Macy pulled her hand back, stared. Her palm was dripping with bright-red blood. The back of this woman’s head, her scalp, was gushing. How could that—?

  There was a sharp cracking sound. The security guard crumpled to the asphalt.

  A man shouted in the distance. “Someone’s shooting!”

  No.

  Everything happened in a blur—people running, screaming. What should I do? What . . . ? Macy crouched lower, heart pounding her senseless as her gaze darted toward the distance, then back to the bleeding woman next to her and the downed guard.

  “Leave us, miss,” the security guard pleaded, eyes intense as they gripped Macy’s. He coughed, blood speckling his lips. “Go hide. . . . Save yourself. Go!”

  There was another sharp crack, and Macy’s vision tunneled down to survival circumference, its periphery as black as the asphalt tearing into her palms and knees as she belly-crawled, gulping at the air in terrified gasps, toward the thick shrubbery ahead. Closer cover than the nearest car. Stay low. Keep moving. Odds said she had a better chance to survive than those people on the ground. But the shooter wouldn’t stop until—

  I won’t let you kill me.

  Macy’s knuckles smacked the curb, and she heaved herself onto her knees, then flung her body shoulder-first at a shrub. Branches tore at her face, yanked her hair as she struggled to disappear inside its foliage, hide herself. Finally, teeth chattering but determined to her core, she grasped the thick, peeling trunk and hauled herself in. Then she drew her legs up and hugged them tight, head down. A fetus in a hostile womb. No, a warrior—she’d do this. Had to. For herself and for Leah. But . . . Macy thought of that poor woman, the guard, and fought back a surge of bile. There was nothing she could do for them now. And if she didn’t stop trembling, she’d shake this entire shrub. The shooter would see that. And she’d be a goner too. She was too tough to be that stupid.

  Macy ignored her cramping muscles, talked herself out of making a run for it half a dozen times . . . waited endlessly, straining to hear more bullets or sounds of rescue. She lost track of time, had no idea how long she’d been there. Only that—

  Her phone buzzed in her pocket, bringing another vicious wave of trembling. She didn’t want to imagine what could have happened if it wasn’t muted. . . . Was anyone coming to help?

  Someone laid on a car horn. Sirens wailed. The air thrummed. A helicopter?

  “Stay inside. Stay under cover—nobody move!”

  Boots thudding. Coming her way? Macy’s heart had wedged so tightly in her throat she could barely breathe. Is it him? The shooter? She’d fight. She had to. She raised a fist close to her lips, then recoiled when she tasted the coppery salt of the dead woman’s blood on her fingers.

  More boots. Voices.

  “Two down. Bank employees. Looks like at least one fatality. Ambulance is standing by, but we can’t let them in until—”

  Cops. Macy’s chin sagged to her chest, a rush of relief making her physically weak.

  Another set of boots. “It came in as a medical aid call. Fire got here ahead of the first patrol car. Then dispatch got flooded with reports about a shooter and a car speeding away. They moved civilians from the parking lot into the bank through the side door . . . the injured guard, too.”

  “What about that nurse? The one who ran outside to help—did anyone find her?”

  “Here.” Macy shoved against the shrub’s trunk, swept the branches aside. “I’
m here,” she called out in a voice she barely recognized. “I’m coming out.”

  Fletcher’s heart stalled as Macy entered the side door of the bank, escorted by two officers. He’d heard on his radio that they’d found her but couldn’t let himself believe it until he saw her with his own eyes. She’s okay. Thank you, Lord.

  “It’s the nurse,” a deputy said, nodding in that direction. “The one the loan officer was talking about. Looks like we won’t have to add kidnapping to this sorry scenario.”

  “No.” A hostage situation had been Fletcher’s first thought after recognizing Macy’s Audi in the parking lot, then hearing she was missing.

  No, his first thought had been that this courageous, take-charge nurse had been hit, and they’d find her body under one of the parked cars. He’d called her cell phone but gotten no answer. The last fifteen minutes had felt like hours.

  “She looks okay, considering.” Fletcher watched as Macy declined the offer of a blanket from one of the firefighters. If they tried to check her over, they wouldn’t have an easy task. But then none of this was easy for anyone.

  He glanced around the bank; the building had become a temporary shelter until people could be safely moved to another building—once it was determined this was no longer an active shooter scenario. It had been so chaotic, the incident morphing from a call for medical aid to a possible bank robbery to what now appeared to be a third sniper episode. Officers from every agency had raced to the scene. The dead woman, still outside, was thirty-two and had recently been promoted to a management position . . .

  “Command post is set up two blocks north,” the other deputy advised. “SWAT’s en route. If we can’t get that ambulance in here in the next few minutes, we’ll need to load that security guard into one of our cars and drive him out to meet it.”

  “I’m parked right outside the doors,” Fletcher said.

  His gaze moved to the area manned by county fire, where a lone paramedic accompanying the fire truck was kneeling on the carpet beside the security guard. The man had a bullet wound in his upper chest. With a collapsed lung, someone had heard, and maybe spinal cord injuries. Getting him to a level II trauma center was critical. If they wanted to load him into Fletcher’s car, it was fine with him.

  The big-screen TV mounted to pacify waiting customers had been switched from the Food Channel to local news.

  “Residences and businesses immediately surrounding the bank,” the anchor was saying, “remain on lockdown. Traffic continues to be diverted, only emergency vehicles allowed in or out. The identities of the shooting victims are being withheld at this time. We have word that a bank customer, a local nurse, attempted to give aid to the victims and—”

  “One lucky nurse,” the other deputy opined. “Medic said that bank employee was probably dead before she hit the ground.”

  “Yeah . . . lucky nurse.” Fletcher’s pulse quickened as Macy’s eyes connected with his across the room. “I’m going over there.”

  He tried not to wince at her appearance as he got closer: multiple scratches on her face, mussed hair littered with leaves, blood smears on her hands and down the front of her shirt. There was that anxious look in her eyes, the same as before, on the freeway. Fletcher forced a grim smile. “We should stop meeting like this.”

  “We should.” Macy reached a shaky hand toward her hair, then stopped, staring at her fingers. “I need to wash. Where’s the—?”

  “I’ll take you there,” he offered, resisting a strong urge to scoop Macy up in his arms, carry her out of here . . . save her from all this. He caught the eye of a firefighter instead. “I’m going to show Miss Wynn to the ladies’ room.”

  “Fine by me.”

  If he’d thought Macy was quiet on that walk to the car last night, it was nothing in comparison to this. His mother would say it was traumatic shock. And she’d probably be right, though he would expect Macy to deny it to the bitter end. “A chaplain team will be available when we get folks to the other building,” he heard himself say.

  She stretched a stained hand toward the door and turned to look at him. “I’m fine. But I should call my sister. In case my name gets out—I guess it’s possible. Tucson news might cover this.”

  “Might.” Fletcher decided no good would come from telling her the news had already gone national, maybe even international by now. US shootings, especially involving a sniper still at large, incited a media feeding frenzy. Macy would be hounded without mercy.

  “I got my purse back, but I can’t find my cell phone. I think I must have dropped it when I was crawling out of the bushes.”

  “Don’t worry,” Fletcher said, seeing in her expression a first glimpse of the vulnerable and lost child she’d been. “We’ll get you connected with your sister.”

  “Thank you.” Her beautiful eyes shone with unshed tears.

  Somehow he was going to find a way to make this better for Macy.

  When she emerged from the restroom five minutes later, the leaves were gone from her hair. She’d cleaned the scratches on her face and rid herself of the blood on her hands—as well as that earlier look of vulnerability. Now he saw hints of the kickboxer.

  “Better,” Macy told him. Then frowned as one of the other officers beckoned to her. “I guess I’m going to have to answer a lot of questions. Even if I know absolutely nothing.”

  “We’re ready to move folks out of the bank,” Fletcher explained, glad to see additional paramedics coming through the door; the ambulance had been allowed in. “You’ll be sequestered at another site, a restaurant across the street. Witnesses will be interviewed by detectives and probably the FBI, too. It’s important. Sometimes when you retell an incident, new details come to mind. And that could be very helpful to the investigation.” He caught her gaze. “After all that, when they let you go home, will your roommate be there?”

  “Roommates. Two. But one is in Colorado visiting family and the other works weekends in Fresno; she stays over with a friend. I babysit her dog.” Macy rubbed the side of her neck. “I’m comfortable being alone, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “I was only going to say that I’m working swings, but I could drop by.” He hoped his shrug was casual. “Check on things and see if you need anything.”

  “I’m sure I won’t. Thank you, but no.”

  It wasn’t until Macy got home and switched on the TV news that the horror of it really struck her. The full-color, HD reality: aerial footage of the bank and the church parking lot across the street. With a fuzzy, distant image of what was apparently a fresh oil stain on the church asphalt—perhaps, investigators speculated, where the shooter’s vehicle had sat as he lay in wait.

  Then came photos of the victims. That young accounts manager, her résumé photo and a candid shot taken on a beach vacation with her husband and two small children. The security guard was a grandfather to eight. He’d survived surgery for the chest wound but would likely live the rest of his life as a paraplegic. One news channel even showed a photo of the dead police dog and several shots from the initial freeway incident, including a close-up of a cracked windshield that looked a lot like the bullet damage to Elliot’s BMW.

  “We should stop meeting like this.”

  Fletcher had tried to offer her comfort today. Like he had last night in Old Town. That seemed so long ago now. But his grim cliché had been true. One of the TV reporters implied the same thing when they flashed a publicity photo of Macy taken at the chaplaincy gala. “This Sacramento Hope emergency department nurse offered aid at two of the three sniper incidents. What are the chances of that?”

  Macy didn’t believe for a moment that she was some sort of target, though theories on the shooter’s motives were coming fast and furious. FBI profilers would eventually put the puzzle together. Meanwhile, she was left to face the very real fact that she’d come close to death twice in the past ten days. It only served to reinforce what Macy had always believed: there was no certainty in this life. She could only count on h
erself. And that made it all the more important to—

  She reached for her phone, returned by the sheriff’s department. Tapping Leah’s contact listing, she waited while it rang . . . and rang. Then went to voice mail. Again. Macy caught sight of the bank folder she’d set on the table next to the old brass door set. “Hey, sis,” she began after taking a slow breath. “I’m still fine, just like I told you in my message earlier. But give me a call back. I want to tell you something else. Something I know you’re going to like. Love you.”

  Macy disconnected. She took a sip of her tea, then hugged her arms around herself as tightly as when she hid in that awful bush today. She tested the words out loud for the first time.

  “I’m buying that house, Leah. We’re finally going to have a home.”

  22

  FLETCHER PULLED OFF FLORIN ROAD into an empty parking lot and let the patrol car idle as he lowered the driver’s window. The chaplain pulled alongside, angling his SUV so they were as near to face-to-face as they could be—without a couple of Starbucks cups. A much better idea, except Fletcher had no time. Between shift trades and overtime, he’d missed church too.

  “Swing shift yesterday and here you are back again.” Seth shook his head, reaching into his pocket for his ever-present antacids. “You’ll be asleep before the Giants’ seventh-inning stretch.”

  “Fully caffeinated.” Fletcher lifted his gas station paper cup. “Had to be downtown early for a big multiagency briefing.”

  “The shooter.” Seth’s forehead wrinkled. “He’s directing my day too. Taylor and I are doing a debriefing with the Sacramento Hope ER staff, and then I’ll be talking with the bank employees this afternoon.” He turned his head to glance toward the road. “You notice how light the traffic is? Even for a Sunday. Freeway too. Folks are afraid to go out. Good night to be in the pizza business—unless you’re the nervous delivery guy.”

  “That fits the scattered MO as well as everything else: gravel trucks, German shepherds, bank employees . . .”