Annette Dashofy - Zoe Chambers 03 - Bridges Burned

by Annette Dashofy

  “Hawaii?” she squeaked.

  Sylvia’s ferocity had softened. “You didn’t know?”

  “No.”

  Earl rubbed Zoe’s back, encouraging some of the earthbound blood to flow back into the brain. “Hey, look at it this way. If he moves to Hawaii, you don’t have to worry about leaving Vance Township.”

  Zoe glared at him. “You aren’t funny.”

  He gave her a cock-eyed grin and a shrug.

  Sylvia reclaimed the letter, which Zoe had forgotten she was still clutching. “Pete Adams may be a hardheaded jackass from time to time, but he’s as good a man as they come. And he loves you.” Sylvia reached out and took Zoe’s hand. “And I know as sure as I’m standing here that you love him, too. Whatever’s come between you two isn’t worth losing each other over.” She released Zoe and turned, tottering back to her car.

  Zoe eased away from her partner. “Hawaii.”

  Earl’s grin faded. He crossed his arms and fixed her with a hard stare. “That’s a heck of a long way to go to escape. Pete must figure you have a pretty strong pull on him to have to run that far away.”

  She let out a breath and sat down on the ambulance’s running boards. “It’s also a pretty strong statement.” She met Earl’s gaze. “Quitting his job? Moving to the end of the earth? If that isn’t the final farewell, I don’t know what is.”

  “He’s not gone yet.”

  Earl’s words hung in the sultry air around Zoe, echoing in her mind. Yet. Pete wasn’t gone yet. Before she could ponder a way back to the point before things had gone sideways, her cell phone rang from its perch inside the ambulance bay. She climbed to her feet and jogged inside to grab it.

  The number wasn’t familiar.

  “Hello?”

  “Zoe? This is Kevin Piacenza.”

  Pete’s officer. Her heart froze. Had something happened to Pete? “Is everything okay?”

  “Uh, yeah. I’m…uh…on duty and working on the arson out at your barn.” He ended the sentence in an upbeat, as if it were a question.

  Immediately Zoe knew what was really going on. Pete had a question but was sending his officer to ask it. “And?”

  “One of the kids…a, uh…” Zoe could almost hear him reading his notes. Or Pete’s notes. “Brianna Vallina…said she talked to a man in the barn on Saturday who claimed to be looking to possibly board his horses there. She didn’t recognize him and couldn’t give much of a description. Have you had any inquiries from potential new boarders lately?”

  “No.” And there wouldn’t be any new boarders either, but she didn’t think Kevin cared to hear her problems. “Sorry. I can’t help you. Do you think he might be the one who set the hay on fire?”

  “I really don’t know. Just covering all bases.” Kevin’s nervous laugh filtered through the phone. He thanked her and hung up.

  “What’s going on?” Earl asked.

  “Someone was asking about boarding at the farm Saturday. Which reminds me. I need to start telling everyone they’ll need to move their horses out.” Zoe’s eyes grew hot, and she considered sitting down on the pavement next to the ambulance and having a good cry. “I don’t know where they’re all gonna go. I don’t know what I’m gonna do with Windstar.” She flung up her arms. “And I sure don’t know where I’m gonna go.”

  Earl, ever the big, brotherly partner, put an arm around her squeezing a little too hard. “You can sleep on my couch. My wife won’t mind. And the kids will love having their Auntie Zoe around.”

  She grunted. “And what about the cats and my horse?”

  Earl waved away her concerns. “The cats will get along fine with our dog. And Lilly’s been bugging us for a pony for at least a year. Your horse can sleep in her bedroom. She’ll be thrilled.”

  Zoe laughed in spite of herself. “I can see it now.” She gave him a playful shove. “We’d better finish washing the ambulance.” She opened the unit’s door to toss her phone inside when it rang again. “Now what?”

  The number on the display was a Brunswick exchange.

  She tapped the screen to answer. “Hello?”

  Silence greeted her, followed by a groan.

  “Who is this?”

  A sharp intake of breath came through the line. “Zoe?”

  “Holt?”

  His voice was little more than a hoarse whisper. “I need help.”

  Zoe grabbed a clipboard from the center console of the medic unit and flipped to a blank call sheet. “Where are you? Are you hurt?”

  Another gasping breath. “I’ve been shot.” A pause. “Sleep EZ—room fourteen.”

  The same dump where he’d been staying with Maddie before Zoe had invited them to live at the farm. “I’ll get an ambulance there right away.”

  The only response was a thunk.

  “Holt? Holt?”

  Nothing. Zoe grabbed the bucket and heaved it out of the way while holding her phone to her ear in case he replied.

  Earl was already reaching for the driver’s door. “What’s going on?”

  “We’re going to Brunswick. Gunshot wound.” Zoe stuck her head into the empty office. “Tony!”

  Footsteps thudded from the crew quarters, and Crew Chief Tony DeLuca appeared in the doorway, munching chips from a bag in his hand.

  “Radio Control for a police and medic response to the Brunswick Sleep EZ Motel, room fourteen. Gunshot wound. Earl and I are headed there, too.”

  “What?” Tony chewed and swallowed. “Why? We’re a half hour away. They’ll respond a unit from the downtown garage.”

  “Because the victim is a friend.”

  Tony appeared on the verge of arguing, but instead waved at her. “Go. I’ll call it in.”

  With Earl behind the wheel, lights and sirens the entire way, they made the thirty-minute trip to Brunswick in twenty—still not fast enough to suit Zoe. Where was Maddie? Was Holt all right?

  Police vehicles and news trucks choked the motel’s parking lot. A police officer waved Medic Two through the line they’d established to keep onlookers at bay.

  Another Monongahela County EMS unit was backed up to room fourteen, its back doors standing wide open. Earl wheeled their ambulance alongside. Zoe leapt out before they’d come to a complete stop. He yelled after her, but she didn’t catch his words and didn’t go back to ask him to repeat them. She sprinted to the motel room’s doorway. And froze.

  Police officers in uniforms from an assortment of jurisdictions—City of Brunswick, Monongahela County, Pennsylvania State Police—gathered around the periphery. At the center of the room, two paramedics from the downtown station knelt over their patient, blocking her view of him. Dark red pools and streaks marred the already stained carpeting. The phone from the nightstand sprawled on the floor, the corded handset lying next to it.

  Zoe scanned faces. Across the room, Wayne Baronick watched her, his expression grim. A few other officers looked vaguely familiar.

  No Maddie.

  Zoe stepped inside, careful to avoid the blood on the floor. Wayne skirted the rescue effort in the center of the room and caught her before she could reach the paramedics.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  She craned her neck, trying to see the patient. “Holt called me. He said he’d been shot.”

  The detective grabbed her arm. “What else did he say?”

  “He told me where he was, but that’s it.” She tried to pull free. “Let go.”

  “No. You need to stand down, Zoe.”

  The paramedics shifted. “Let’s do it,” one of them said. The other one moved their gurney closer. They moved around the patient, one to the head of the backboard to which he was strapped, one to his feet.

  It was Holt all right, pale, his clothes bloodied. IV lines, oxygen
tubing, and EKG cables trailed from his motionless body. The heart monitor showed a rhythm, and his chest rose and fell with each breath.

  Zoe shoved away from Wayne to move to Holt’s side. She and another police officer bent down to grasp the edge of the backboard.

  “On three,” one of the paramedics said. He counted, and they hoisted the backboard and Holt up and onto the gurney.

  As the other paramedics strapped him down, Zoe leaned closer. “Holt?”

  His eyes fluttered open. “Zoe?” His voice rasped with the effort.

  She touched his arm. “I’m here. Where’s Maddie?”

  He squeezed his eyes closed in a pained grimace. “You have to find her. He’s going after her.”

  “Who? Ryan Mancinelli?”

  “Let’s go,” one of the medics shouted.

  “Wait,” Zoe called as they started to wheel the gurney away.

  “There’s no time,” the medic said.

  And looking at Holt, she knew there was no use either. His eyelids had drifted open as his eyes rolled back in his head. He wasn’t going to answer any more questions right now. She only hoped he’d be alive to answer them later.

  Zoe trotted along behind as they rushed him out of the room and into the waiting ambulance. A very big part of her longed to climb into the patient compartment with the other crew and stay at Holt’s side. Biting her lip, she resisted, watching as they closed the doors. Holt was getting the best care. His little girl, on the other hand…

  “We have to find Maddie.”

  Wayne held up a wait-a-minute finger at Zoe as he phoned in the latest development. Maddie Farabee was missing. Someone—a man—was going after her.

  Why?

  None of this made sense. If only Holt had stayed conscious long enough to tell her who was going after his little girl.

  While Wayne continued his conversation, Zoe took another look around. The same crime scene unit guys who had crawled all over her basement yesterday morning were now photographing the motel room. A gun lay on the floor near where the ambulance crew had worked on Holt. She hadn’t noticed it before, probably because it had been hidden from her view by the medics. And once they’d moved, the only thing Zoe had focused on was Holt.

  “Zoe.” Wayne interrupted her thoughts.

  “Huh?”

  “Don’t suppose you have a picture of the girl, do you?”

  “No. Check Holt’s phone. I’m sure he has some on it.”

  Wayne shook his head. “His phone isn’t here. It wasn’t on him either.”

  Zoe glanced at the room’s phone on the floor next to the bedside table. The unfamiliar number on her caller ID. “Whoever shot him must have taken it.”

  “That’s what I figured, too. But I need a photo of the girl to put out to law enforcement and the media.”

  Why hadn’t she taken any pictures of Maddie when she’d been at the farm? Maybe some of the other kids had caught her in one. But it would take time they didn’t have to call every boarder and ask around. “Wait. The day of the explosion, Holt had left Maddie at a friend’s house.”

  “A friend of Holt’s?”

  “No, Maddie’s friend. I bet they’d have pictures.”

  “Give me a name.”

  “I don’t know. Pete would. Or Seth Metzger. He drove Holt from the fire to go pick up Maddie.”

  Wayne gave her a thumbs-up. “Great. Do me a favor and call Pete. Tell him what’s happened and ask him to get a photo and send it to me ASAP.” The detective turned his back on her before she could explain that Pete Adams would probably not pick up the phone if he saw her name on the caller ID. An officer was dusting the room’s phone for prints. She could go outside, find Earl, and borrow his.

  Stop it. Maddie’s life was at stake.

  Zoe took a deep breath and keyed in Pete’s number.

  Twenty-seven

  Pete had just stepped out of the shower when he heard his cell phone. Slinging a towel around his hips, he charged out of the bathroom and snatched the phone from his dresser. The clock next to his bed showed it was a few minutes past eight p.m. and the phone screen indicated the caller was his evening shift officer. “Kevin, what’s up?”

  “We may have a situation here.”

  “What kind of situation?”

  “Mrs. Romanakis called to report a missing child.”

  Pete reached into his closet for a clean uniform. “Go on.”

  “She said she’d been babysitting and took the girl and her two kids to the pool at Phillipsburg Park. Says she only turned her back for a minute to get some ice cream at the concession stand and when she looked back, the girl was gone. She tried calling the girl’s father, but there was no answer.”

  “Get the fire department out there to start a search. And get Seth and Nate to come in to help. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  “Um, that’s not all, Chief.”

  Pete stopped with one leg in his uniform trousers. “What?”

  “This missing girl? It’s Madison Farabee.”

  “Damn it,” Pete muttered.

  “And there’s more.”

  “More?” What else could there be?

  “A report just came over the air. There was a shooting at the Sleep EZ Motel in Brunswick.”

  Pete shifted the phone to his other ear as he pulled on his shirt. “There are always shootings at the Sleep EZ Motel in Brunswick.”

  “Yeah, but this time the victim is Holt Farabee.”

  Pete’s jaw tightened. “What’s his condition?”

  “All I know is he’s being transported to Brunswick Hospital.”

  In other words, he was alive. So far. Pete wondered if Zoe knew. “Any word on Ryan Mancinelli’s whereabouts?”

  “Nothing yet.”

  “Put out a statewide BOLO on him. Wanted for questioning in the shooting of Holt Farabee. And call Ashley to make sure he hasn’t contacted her.”

  “On it, Chief.”

  Pete hung up and tossed the phone on his bed. He was tucking in his shirt when the phone rang again. Zoe’s name came up on the screen. He hadn’t expected to see that happen again anytime soon. Clearly she knew about either the shooting or Maddie’s disappearance. Or both. “Hey,” he answered.

  “Holt’s been shot.” Her voice was so fragile it sounded as if it might shatter.

  “I know.”

  “I need you to find out who he used for a babysitter for Maddie. Probably the one he’d left her with the day his house blew up.” Zoe’s words tumbled over each other. “I need a photograph of her. Before Holt lost consciousness, he told me someone was going after her, but he didn’t get a chance to tell me who or where Maddie is. Wayne needs a photo—”

  There were some muffled voices in the background and it sounded as though she’d dropped the phone. “Zoe?” Pete said. “Are you still there?” As he strained to make sense of the garble, one question echoed in the recesses of his brain. What the hell was Zoe doing with Farabee when he’d been shot?

  More muddled, incomprehensible voices filtered through the phone before she came back on the line with a sob. “Wayne just told me he’s received word Maddie’s missing.”

  “Yeah. I’m on my way to the park now.” Pete grabbed his duty belt and his Glock and strode out of the bedroom. “Zoe, what exactly did Farabee say to you after he was shot?”

  “What I just told you. He is going after Maddie. But I don’t know who ‘he’ is.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll find her. Where are you?”

  “At the Sleep EZ. But I’m coming back there to help with the search.”

  Pete slammed through the door between his kitchen and garage. “You’re too upset. I don’t want you behind the wheel.”

  “Earl’s driving.”
<
br />   So she was there in an official capacity. “Good. I’ll call you if I hear anything.” When silence was the only response, Pete looked at the screen. She’d hung up. He let out a growling breath and climbed into his SUV.

  Trees cast long shadows across the road as Earl gunned Medic Two north on Route 15, heading back to Phillipsburg. Zoe hung up her cell phone, all too aware the search for Maddie would be racing nightfall.

  “What did your nurse friend say?” Earl asked.

  “Holt made it to the Emergency Department alive, but he’s in critical condition.” Zoe stuffed the phone back in her pocket. “They’re getting him ready for surgery.”

  “He’ll make it.”

  Zoe glanced at Earl’s profile. “You have a crystal ball?”

  A brief smile played on his lips. “No. I have kids. He’ll fight for every breath so he can get back to his daughter.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  Earl took his eyes from the road for a second to meet Zoe’s. “We have to concentrate on finding her. He’ll want her there when he comes out of surgery.”

  Zoe rested her forehead against the passenger window and watched the familiar scenery. What on earth was going on? First the gas explosion appeared accidental, but turned out to be rigged. Then the fire at the barn. Then Stephen Tierney’s murder and his body moved into her basement. Now Holt was fighting for his life, and Maddie… Zoe closed her eyes. She couldn’t let herself think about what Maddie might be going through right now.

  Someone had it in for Holt. That much seemed clear. But who? And what did Tierney have to do with it? Holt may have had a motive to kill him, but who else? None of it made sense. Zoe opened her eyes again as they passed the Kroll farm. Home. For the moment. What would that beautiful hillside look like dotted with oversized, cookie-cutter houses populated by city folks who thought they wanted to live in the country?