by Lori Avocato
Jagger pushed me to the side so hard, that I stumbled into Lilla, knocking her down.
“Chéri!” she shouted.
“Sorry!” I yelled as I pulled her up, and we ran after Jagger-although my first instinct was to run in the other direction. I couldn’t let him face a knife-wielding Payne all by himself. I know Jagger would smirk at that, but still, I meant well.
We got to the office door and found Jagger standing there.
Standing there?
I figured Payne had hightailed it out the back door-until I got side by side with Jagger.
Lilla screamed and slithered in a faint, very sexy-like, down to the floor with one hand running along the wall.
I grabbed Jagger’s arm and my first words were, “Damn, there goes our suspect.”
The two of us stood staring down at Payne Sterling with the aforementioned knife sticking out of his chest. Heart level.
And we both knew calling 911 was out of the question-because ambulances didn’t carry dead bodies.
Ambulances didn’t carry dead bodies, I thought over and over to take my mind off the scene in front of me.
Lieutenant Shatley, Hope Valley homicide and close friend of Jagger’s-although I had no idea how they knew each other-gave orders to the police staff while I stood behind the yellow-taped area-trying to think of anything else but…a dead body.
Pansy had been notified, or make that heard the commotion, and hurried over. To this very minute, she was still wailing in grief.
I wondered if losing an identical twin hurt more than a regular sibling and then told myself that was crazy. However, I do think it was different, as they were way too close. And now that I thought about it, her wailing was eerie and strange and-I was ashamed to even think it-almost…fake.
I looked at her. She stood with one of the other secretaries holding her by the shoulders and glaring down at the body of her brother.
I realized I couldn’t do that if it were a sibling of mine. I couldn’t just stand there looking. Hmm. Maybe it was me, and I shouldn’t let my personal feelings get in the way.
Deciding to have a more Christian attitude, I felt a bit better, until I saw Pansy wiping her face.
No tears.
Had she cried herself out already? Or was it something else? Then again, she could have had some condition that dried up her tears. That was a reality for some people. But she acted as if she was crying.
And made me wonder if acting was the operative word here.
Once the lieutenant said to clear the scene, we all started to move about, and before I knew it, the undertaker was taking out Payne’s body.
And Pansy nowhere to be seen.
I knew, just knew, I’d be following the stretcher along, not ready to let go of a loved one so easily.
Lilla walked past me with a solemn look on her face. “Chéri.” She nodded.
For some reason I needed a bit of confirmation on my thoughts, and I touched Lilla’s arm. Before I let her startled look stop me, I asked, “If that was your brother, would you just let them-”
“Wheel him away like that?” she finished while shaking her head. “Never. I’d be clutching onto their shirttails to not take him.” She shrugged. “Guess we are all different.”
“That we are,” I said, making a mental note to observe dear Pansy much closer. Hopefully I wasn’t shifting suspicion onto her just because my number-one suspect was now deceased.
I hated when that happened.
Although a gloomy air now filled the TLC Land and Air halls, work resumed. No one joked around, but phones rang, clients came in and 911 calls never stopped.
Before I knew it, I heard, “Number Four five six, Code Eighty-three at 114 Buckingham Place.”
ER Dano rushed out of the lounge, grabbed me by the arm and said, “Get going!”
Not able to protest, I remembered why I was here-or make that what my cover was-and obediently followed him. Jagger was nowhere to be seen, and Dano didn’t seem to notice or care.
“Where’s Jagger?” I asked as Dano nearly shoved me into the front seat of #456.
He shrugged and said, “Breathing difficulty. Can’t wait.”
With that I fastened my seat belt, said a fast prayer to Saint T for the patient and myself (the driving, you know) and we were out onto East Main Street, siren blaring and Dano leaning back and driving as if in a kid’s bumper car.
I swallowed hard, refusing to let my lunch even near my mouth again.
After several deep breaths, we pulled into the driveway of a dilapidated house on Buckingham Place-not exactly the ritzy section of Hope Valley. Dano grabbed the bag of supplies, muttered something to me, and we ran up the stairs to the front door, which wasn’t locked.
For a fleeting second I thought, How convenient, until we ran down a long hallway into the kitchen.
Lying on the floor was a rather attractive woman dressed in tight jeans and a slinky black top-with a phone cord wrapped tightly around her neck.
Difficulty breathing?
Her coloring was pale, but her eyes were still open if not watery, and her lips were a bit cyanotic-that horrible grayish blue of someone in need of oxygen.
Dano immediately began unwrapping the phone cord while I dug into the bag for the portable oxygen and a mask. We worked for a few minutes until the woman looked a tiny bit better.
“How’d this happen, ma’am?” Dano asked.
She turned toward him and in a raspy voice said, “Er…I tripped. I tripped and got tangled in the cord.”
Dano and I looked at each other and I controlled the urge to shout out, “Are you kidding us?” Due to the seriousness of her condition, I only raised an eyebrow to Dano.
“Really?” he said, while taking her blood pressure and adjusting the oxygen mask on her face.
I assisted him with whatever he needed until I felt something. Something behind me.
Gradually I turned around to come face to knees with a pair of jeans.
I heard Dano mutter, “Shit.”
And I looked up into the barrel of a shotgun-aimed at my face.
Six
The barrel of a shotgun looks more like a cannon when it’s aimed at your head in such close proximity.
The guy holding it was gigantic, at least from my angle, with a huge potbelly, a red plaid shirt, and a beard that would rival Rip Van Winkle’s. He seemed to growl a bit, then clearly (as if we were morons) said, “If I’d wanted her to live, I wouldn’t have strangled her.”
I only wished that I lived long enough to repeat those words in a trial testimony against him.
Dano looked at me and then the guy. “You know what? You’re right, buddy.” As he spoke, he grabbed my arm and we stood. “She shouldn’t have called us. Fell and got tangled. Ha!” With that, he hustled me past the shotgun, which the guy now pointed at the woman.
I wanted to run and grab it before he shot her right then.
“We can’t leave,” I protested to Dano.
He gave me some kind of look. A dirty look one might say, but I had no idea what it meant. “Nope. She shouldn’t have called.”
“Dano, we can’t leave that woman!” I tried to push at his arm, but, even though I believed in equality of the sexes when it comes to…well…everything, there are things that some women (like moi) are physically not strong enough to do.
Right now, I couldn’t get away from ER Dano if I tried.
Continuing to push me, he said to the gunman, “We’re outta here. Have a nice day.”
“Have a nice day!” I said, as he shoved me out the front door.
I turned to give him a piece of my mind, but he slid into the dining room before the door shut.
“Dan-” If I said anything, he’d get caught. I stopped myself.
I ran to the ambulance, grabbed my cell phone out of my purse and called 911. If I didn’t have to wear stupid scrubs, I would have on a TLC uniform and a phone on my shoulder. “Give me the police!” I shouted, and then told them the situat
ion. I ran around to the back of the house. I couldn’t leave Dano and that woman in there alone.
I peered through a window, which, although covered in dirt and whatever, looked into the kitchen.
Dano had the guy in a choke hold, the shotgun lay on the floor and the poor woman was kicking the guy’s legs. But before I could blink, the guy did some kind of maneuver-looked like ex-military-and now Dano was on the floor next to the patient.
I ran into the house on a surge of adrenaline and not much common sense, and when I got to the kitchen, the guy had picked up the shotgun.
“No!” I shouted and pushed the barrel as a crack! filled the air. A loud crack!
The scene became a madhouse of screaming (me), shouting at me (ER Dano), longshoreman-type cursing (the guy) and the woman on the floor kicking at him with her shoeless foot. When Dano grabbed my arm to shove me to the side, the guy took the gun and aimed straight at Dano’s chest-and I suddenly thought of Jagger.
Not really thought about him. In reality it was more as if I felt him, his presence, and I reached beneath my scrubs and yanked out the pink locket Jagger had given me a few cases back.
This time I shoved my hip into Dano’s side to get past him, aimed, pressed the pump dispenser and let the pepper spray do its job. The guy screamed and cried like a girl.
Despite Dano telling me to get the hell out of there, I grabbed the gun from the guy and pointed it at his legs…despite the fact that I had no idea how to shoot.
“Oh, shit,” Dano murmured as he stepped back and leaned against the counter, more nonchalant than I think Jagger would have been.
Thank goodness I didn’t have to shoot, because what seemed like hours had passed before the sirens blared and the guys in blue stormed into the hallway, aiming their guns-at me.
Dano knew all the cops and made it clear that I was not the whacko, even though I held the shotgun, but I could swear he hesitated first.
Dano called TLC’s dispatch after we’d safely dropped the poor phone lady off at the hospital and the rest of the trip was silent. A few times I turned toward him to say something, but I only got the cold shoulder and decided to keep my mouth shut. I wanted to say that was a rude way to treat someone who had just saved his life-and then it hit me.
ER Dano was pissed that I, a woman, had saved his life!
I couldn’t help smile.
At a stoplight, he turned and glared at me.
Yikes.
I bit my tongue so as not to ask, “What?” which I would have done to Jagger. Although a hunk, ER Dano was a bit more…frightening…to me than Jagger ever was.
We pulled into the driveway of TLC and directly into the gigantic garage that housed the ambulances. Dispatch had cleared us for the day, and I couldn’t wait to get home.
Dano pulled into a space, shut off the ambulance, opened his door and turned to me. “Hose her out and replace the supplies,” he said.
My mouth often dropped to near chest level when I was surprised, shocked or merely astonished.
This time it almost made it past my waist.
I shut my mouth faster than Dano could spin around and pop out of the driver’s side.
Shoving my door open and jumping out, I ran after him-and made the mistake of grabbing his arm.
He swung around and I knew, just knew, if I were a guy, I’d be splayed out on the floor beneath Dano’s feet right now. Instead he yanked free and said, “What?” in such a gruff voice that I jumped back.
But I recovered quickly, straightened my shoulders and said, “What? What? It’s my first day! I’m not cleaning out the ambulance!”
He leaned really close.
Oops.
I swallowed and ran self-defense maneuvers through my mind even though, in reality, I never felt a second of fear for my life. “Yeah, I’m not doing it, Dano. Not alone,” I added, using my smarts to avoid letting him get the upper hand. Or at least that’s what I was telling myself.
He moved closer, looked closer and said, really closely, “Hose is on the wall, scrubbers next to it, soap’s on the shelf, stocking is self-explanatory for a nurse.”
My mouth went dry and my brain froze at the same time, and not like when you eat ice cream. For some reason-and help me to understand this, Saint T-having Dano so near and talking that way had some kind of mesmerizing effect on me.
Hot was the first word that came to mind.
Damn, the second.
And third, I came back to reality and said, “Fine, but you owe me a drink then.” With that, and as if some foreign power overtook me, I turned and walked away-all the while feeling ER Dano staring at my butt-which I unashamedly wiggled.
When I came out of the locker room, where I’d cleaned up after my “extra” duty with the help of darling Buzz L, I ran into Jagger in the hallway. “Where the hell were you?” I said.
He looked at me from head to toe. “You all right, Pauline?”
“Guess I should be honored that you are concerned I didn’t get my head blown off with a shotgun, but yeah, I’m fine.”
He grinned.
“Dano told you everything.” It wasn’t a question and Jagger didn’t look as if he was going to answer. “Any news on the demise of Payne?”
Jagger shook his head.
“Great. Why is it that I never get the proverbial open-and-shut cases? How come no one ever hands me a suspect?”
He shook his head again, but this time it was the typical Jagger shake that said he was annoyed with me. Who cared? I thought as I walked toward the employees’ door.
Just then the door to the men’s locker room swung open. Out swaggered Dano, all decked out in jeans and a navy tee. Over his shoulder he said to me, “Boz’s Bar and Grille on Dearborn, two blocks from Saint Greg’s.”
I knew it well, since that’s where all the hospital staff hung out, not to mention my dear Uncle Walt and his cronies. The seniors, however, stuck to the front room, while the younger crowd cavorted in the back.
Not that I planned to cavort with ER Dano.
He pushed open the back door while Jagger looked from Dano to me.
“I’ll be there,” Jagger said.
I’m not sure whose eyes were larger, Dano’s or mine. Wait. Mine.
Dano actually squinted.
“What’ll your one drink be?” Dano asked, looking at me-I mean, nearly through me.
Damn. The guy had gorgeous deep brown eyes and a way of using them that made a girl notice. And, for some reason, I just knew Dano used them to his benefit on more than one occasion.
“Cosmo, please,” I said, pulling the stool next to him from near the bar. He remained seated, not offering to help. Shades of Jagger, I thought, and looked around to see where he was. Maybe he’d changed his mind.
“He’s in the head,” Dano muttered then turned toward the bartender. “Give her a Cosmopolitan, Patty.”
The bartender winked at me. “You’ll probably need something sweet to balance his effects,” she said, and then laughed as she gestured with her head toward Dano.
As if I didn’t know whom she was talking about.
I laughed and then caught him staring at me and stopped. “What? That was funny.”
“What’s funny?” Jagger asked from behind me. Suddenly I felt like a sandwich-only the two pieces of bread were different kinds. Wheat and rye. And they really didn’t go together too well in my opinion.
“Nothing,” I said, taking a sip of my drink as soon as Patty put it down. Actually, it was still sloshing about, but I needed it quickly. When I took the napkin to wipe my lips, ER Dano turned to look at me, but remained silent.
Jagger eased himself next to me on the other side, and I knew I should get the hell out of there-’cause it was going to be one heck of a night!
A couple of EMTs came into the place, and I quickly realized it was a hangout for the TLC crowd, plus-by the looks of some of the other uniforms-several other ambulance companies. I’m sure with the stress of the job and the equal stress of comp
etition, they all needed to unwind.
Buzz Lightyear walked in with Lilla, and I knew she probably made his night by even walking next to him. The kid was so fresh and new-his patches actually stood out straight on his sleeves instead of being molded to the shape of his arm as ER Dano’s were. Poor Jeremy. Now I could only think of him as Buzz.
He came closer and said, “Hi, everyone!”
ER Dano turned. “You old enough to be in here, kid?”
Buzz laughed, and I knew he had a fondness for the experienced paramedic-although why, I couldn’t figure out. Actually, I figured beneath the rough exterior, ER Dano was a softie.
“Don’t sit next to me, kid,” Dano said, “Your new EMT smell is ruining the taste of my Coors.”
Buzz laughed hysterically. “New EMT smell! You mean like a new car smells. Right, Dan?”
Dano turned to him.
I was about to intervene before he embarrassed the hell out of Jeremy, but ER Dano merely rolled his eyes.
“That is what I mean, Buzz. That is what I mean,” ER said, then took what I thought was a very long, slow sip of his beer.
Jagger leaned nearer and touched my shoulder.
Wow. I wondered if I was going to make it out of here alive, or at least in decent condition. I swung around to him. “What?”
He gestured with his head to follow him and stood up.
I got up, said, “Excuse me,” as if ER Dano would care, and followed Jagger toward the pool table, all the while wondering if he wanted me to spend time with him alone-or, more likely, to discuss the case.
“Pick out a stick,” he ordered, and then racked up the balls.
I was not a very good player, and he probably knew that, but at least it gave us time to be alone and talk. From the corner of my eye, I could see Lilla doing her job of keeping ER Dano and Buzz busy.
She impressed me with how fast she had learned the PI business. I figured Lilla was going to be helpful on this case and, hopefully, future ones if immigration didn’t deport her back to Canada.
“You’re solid, Sherlock,” Jagger said.
