The paramedics loaded her onto a gurney and strapped her in. He wanted to climb inside the ambulance and go with her, but leaving the scene of the crash wasn’t an option, especially not with his credentials and knowledge of crime scene protocol.
“Sir?” One of the paramedics waved at him. “Sir? We need to take her, but I think she’s asking for you.”
Noel reached her side in seconds. Yasmine’s eyelids fluttered, and her mouth moved, forming words he couldn’t hear. He bent low, and the curve of her lips sent him tumbling back into a memory he had no place holding in his mind at a time like this. He took her hand, rubbing his thumb across her smooth, golden skin.
“I’m right here, Mina.”
She coughed as she tried to speak, sending the paramedics into a frenzy.
“We’ve got to get her to the hospital,” one of them said. “She may be seriously injured.”
“Noel?” Yasmine coughed again, and they began to wheel her away. “Noel?”
He grabbed the side of the gurney and stumbled along next to her. “I’m here. I’m listening.”
“Need to tell you,” she said, whispering so softly that he almost didn’t catch what she said.
“Tell me what?” He gripped her hand tighter, struck with a strange fear of what she might say, though he couldn’t explain exactly why. “Yasmine, they’re taking you to the hospital to get checked over. I’ll join you as soon as I can. I’ll call your aunt and tell her what happened. Don’t worry. It can wait.”
“No!” She pulled her hand from his and pressed her fingers against his chest as he leaned over the gurney. “Daniel. We need to talk... Daniel. The person...who killed him. What if...they think...”
A paramedic came around to where Noel stood and pushed in front of him, a scowl on his face. “I’m sorry, sir, but we need to get her out of here.”
Noel wanted to jump into the ambulance, to ask her what she meant, to make sure she’d be all right—three attempts on her life in less than twelve hours, how was that even possible?—but the second the paramedics pulled her gurney from his grasp, Officer Wayne appeared and drew him aside.
“You need to have officers follow the ambulance,” Noel said to Wayne. “This is the third time someone has tried to kill that woman in twenty-four hours.”
Officer Wayne shook his head, and Noel felt an inkling of the frustration with him that Yasmine had shown. “I’m sorry, but I don’t have the manpower. Captain’s orders. We’re short on on-duty officers at this time of the morning.”
“What about the guys who came to spell me outside her aunt’s place?”
“Already off duty. Look, she’ll be fine in the ambulance.”
“You don’t know that. If you don’t send a car to follow in the next five seconds, I’m going to drive off in one of your cars myself.” He looked around the intersection again and realized with alarm that something was missing. The vehicle that had hit them. Dread and fury mixed in his stomach. That settles it. This was a deliberate act.
Officer Wayne looked Noel up and down with a grimace. “You do look like you need to get to the hospital and get checked over. You were inside the car at the time of the crash?”
“Yes.” Noel looked pointedly at the officer he’d thought he’d gotten along with the day before. “We need to go.”
Wayne glanced back at the other policemen setting barriers around the crash and directing traffic. “Technically, you should get checked out, too. We can deal with reconstruction later. If Miss Browder dies, we’re going to need to do a lot more than just take a few photos. I hate to admit that I was in the wrong, but it sure looks like someone wants Miss Browder out of the way. Guess she was right to be concerned, but I tell you, it’s a stretch to think it has anything to do with her brother, and the captain agrees with me.”
“She’s not going to die.” Noel pointed at the police cars in the intersection. Officer Wayne needed to stop talking and have a cop drive him to the hospital. He ground his teeth and touched his coat pocket, where his newly presented badge reminded him of what he’d devoted his life to. “She can’t.”
Not when I’ve just found her again.
* * *
Noel slipped in and out of consciousness as he reclined in the hospital chair by Yasmine’s bedside. The clock above the door read quarter to nine in the morning. He’d hoped to catch up on sleep as he waited for updates, but with nurses constantly coming and going and his mind racing to make sense of events, rest was a long way off.
Yasmine’s aunt had already visited and authorized him as a family visitor, and Noel had promised to call her as soon as the doctors or nurses bothered to tell him how Yasmine was doing. She looked pale and attached to too many tubes. His only consolation was that the hospital café opened at nine. He planned to imbibe at least two espresso shots and a large black tea so he could be functional as soon as Yasmine woke.
He stood, stretched, then crossed the room and opened the door, checking to make sure the officers stationed at either end of the hallway were still there. He’d send them on their way once the risk of falling asleep at Yasmine’s bedside had passed, but he was deeply grateful to Officer Wayne for convincing the captain to station two patrol guys here this morning. Both Wayne and the captain had agreed that three successive attempts on Yasmine’s life were no coincidence. They’d expressed a need to talk to her as soon as she awoke, but Noel wanted to talk to her first.
She had information about her brother’s death that obviously hadn’t been taken seriously, that hadn’t been included in the official reports. Daniel Browder had been killed in a workplace accident, Officer Wayne had said yesterday, showing him a file full of reports from various investigative parties. Daniel had worked at Newtech Inspections, a facility that manufactured and tested military equipment under contract with the Department of Defense. The entire facility underwent a workplace safety inspection after Daniel’s death and the incident had been ruled a tragic accident. Newtech Inspections hadn’t been deemed at fault.
Noel sighed and sat back down in the hospital chair. He couldn’t imagine what Yasmine must be going through, but all the evidence—the reports, the workplace inspection—pointed to a horrific freak accident. Nothing malicious there. These people after Yasmine, well...either she’d been holding something back and she knew exactly why she’d been targeted, or...frankly, Noel had no idea. People didn’t go to such great lengths to take another person’s life unless they had a lot to lose. A man had killed himself rather than get brought into the police station for questioning.
“Wake up, Yasmine,” he muttered. He stood and paced at the end of her hospital bed. “There’s something big happening here, and I’m ready to listen to whatever you wanted to say.”
The only response was the steady, soft beep of the machine beside her. Moments later, a nurse bustled in and greeted him with the tight smile of a person at the end of a long overnight shift. Noel waited until she’d roused Yasmine to check her vitals before asking the question that burned on his tongue.
“How’s she doing?”
The nurse adjusted the top of Yasmine’s blanket and gave Noel another smile that was far more genuine. “She’ll be fine. Bruised and battered and a little worse for wear, but I imagine the doctor will want to discharge her within a few hours. She’ll have to take it easy with those fractured ribs, though.”
Noel ran his hand down his face. Fractured ribs. That’d be fine to deal with, so long as she didn’t have to do any more running from bullets. “No concussion? Internal bleeding? The doctor mentioned checking for those.”
“No, we’d know by now if either of those things was an immediate issue. The doctor will want to give her some specific instructions on care and pain management before she leaves, though. With an impact like that, she’s very fortunate that her injuries aren’t worse. Somebody was definitely looking out for her.” The nurse flicked her eyes to
the ceiling as she passed Noel.
And it should have been me.
“Noel?” Yasmine blinked slowly, her eyelids heavy with sleep. “You’re here?”
He dragged the chair closer to her bedside and perched on the edge, resting clasped hands on the side of the bed. “Of course I’m here. I wasn’t going to leave you all alone.”
“Call my aunt?”
“She came, but I sent her home. She’ll come again in a bit when I give her an update.”
Yasmine sighed, a deep exhalation that seemed to encompass all of yesterday’s struggles. “You don’t need to be the one to stick around, though. Could call one of my friends, or—” Her eyes opened wide and she tried to sit up, grimacing at the movement. “The bakery!”
Noel popped out of his seat and pressed her shoulders back down. She didn’t resist, but her eyes were desperate with worry. “It’s going to be okay. You need to rest.”
“I need to get down there and start baking. There are orders to fill, and Mrs. Deaver comes in at eleven for tea biscuits for the book club, and—”
“Can’t somebody else handle that? You don’t run the place on your own, right?”
Yasmine’s eyes filled with tears, and he felt as though he’d been the one sitting in the passenger seat during the crash. He’d seen her cry once before—once and only once—when they were children, after the death of a family pet. This bakery meant a lot more to her than he’d assumed.
“You’re telling me you run an entire small business by yourself, with no one to help you?”
She turned her face away from him as though realizing what she showed him by allowing the tears to form. “I’ve been back here for only eight months. I’m hoping to hire an assistant soon, but I can’t afford it yet. This is my business, my life. You have no idea what kind of repercussions it has when a small business closes its doors without warning on a regular business day. People go elsewhere, and it starts a ripple effect.”
“It’s only one day, Yasmine.”
She looked at him then, and though her eyes were red and wet, the ferocity of her expression almost sent him stumbling backward. “I didn’t ask you to stay, Noel. If you’re going to stand there and question my knowledge about my business, then I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
Ouch. But she made a good point. “Fine. But I’m not exaggerating when I say that you can’t go in to work today. I’ll call my mother. She’s a good baker. I’m sure she can handle the basics. You have recipes?”
“Yes.” Yasmine sighed again and closed her eyes. “I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but call my aunt, too. She...well, some of the recipes are based on ones I learned from her and my mother.”
“Done.” He searched his contact list for his mother’s number. “They’ll need a key, right?” But when his eyes flicked from his phone screen to Yasmine, her face was relaxed and her breathing steady. She’d fallen back asleep.
She needed her rest in order to heal, and Noel wasn’t going to be the one to deny her that. He crossed the room with soft steps as the number connected and began ringing. He opened the door and slipped out, pulling it shut behind him. The phone rang for a fourth time when, out of habit, Noel glanced both ways down the hall.
And then did a double take. The policemen who’d been stationed there were gone.
“Hello?” His mother’s voice came through the receiver. “Noel? I didn’t hear from you last night. Is everything all right?”
“Sorry, Mom. Something’s just come up. Can you call Yasmine’s aunt and talk to her about opening the bakery for Yasmine today? Wish I could say more. Gotta go.” He hung up and dialed the station.
“Good morning, Newherst Central Police Station. Officer Rygel speaking.”
“Hey, Rygel? It’s Special Agent Black. You happen to know if the guys stationed down at Newherst General were recalled? They on shift change a few minutes early or something? Thought they weren’t scheduled to leave until nine.”
“Oh, hey, Black. No, they should be there. Wait, hang on.” The sound of yelling came through a muffled receiver. “There was a disturbance on the second floor, a violent patient who grabbed a sharp tool off a tray. He required restraint and use of force. Our guys went to help out. They’re not back yet?”
“Nope. Might want to do something about that.” He ended the call and slipped the phone in his pocket. Could be nothing, he tried to tell himself. You’re on edge from the wreck and everything that happened yesterday. This is a hospital. This kind of disturbance happens all the time.
A doctor approached from the end of the hall, holding a clipboard and flipping through the attached sheets. He turned toward Yasmine’s door.
“Hey. Hey!” Noel shot his arm out and stopped the doctor from turning the handle. “She just fell asleep again. Can’t you guys coordinate these things? This constant waking up can’t be good for patient health.”
The doctor tapped his chart. “Routine procedure, sir. We only have the patient’s best interests at heart.”
Of course. He trusted the doctors and nurses, sure, but how could she be expected to recover without proper rest? “Fine. You going to be in there long?”
“At least five minutes.”
Noel nodded and waited until the doctor entered the room before catching the attention of a nurse working at the central desk of the ward. “Hey, can you make sure no one else enters that room? I’m going to step away for two minutes. If you see anyone approach that shouldn’t be there, sound the alarm. I’m not joking.”
The nurse nodded at him with frightened eyes. Good. Two minutes was all he needed to run down to the second floor and find those officers and get them stationed back in place if they weren’t already on the way. With the doctor in Yasmine’s room for five minutes and the staff watching out for her, there wasn’t anything to worry about. Two minutes, maximum. That’s all.
He ran down the hallway and took the stairs, making it to the second floor in under twenty seconds flat, then continued to that ward’s central desk in another three seconds. He slammed his hands on the desk to catch the nurse’s attention. “Where was the disturbance? Which room?”
“Sir?”
Noel pulled out his FBI shield and flashed it at the nurse. “There were two officers down here helping out. Did they go back up to four?”
The nurse regarded him in utter bewilderment. “N-no, there were no officers. Everything’s been quiet down here all night. You’re supposed to be upstairs, aren’t you? I just sent Dr. Lawrie up to see you.”
“I know. I passed him already. He’s doing the check-up right now.”
“She.”
Noel froze. “Excuse me?”
“She. Dr. Lawrie is a woman.”
Noel didn’t waste time. He bolted back the way he’d come, pushing aside the fear as he took the steps two at a time. Less than a minute. He’d been gone less than a minute. She’d be all right. Just a misunderstanding. It had to be, because a fourth attempt on her life in less than twenty-four hours would be ludicrous.
He burst through the door of Yasmine’s room. The doctor had a syringe poked into Yasmine’s IV bag and was pushing a fluid into it.
Noel brought his gun up in a flash. “Drop it and step away from her.”
The doctor stared at Noel in surprise, then anger, but didn’t release the syringe. “I’m trying to help a patient, sir.”
“You can help her by stepping aside.” Noel came closer, hoping to deescalate the situation without discharging his weapon inside a hospital.
“I’m afraid I can’t do that.” The doctor removed the syringe and placed it on the rolling metal medical cart at the end of Yasmine’s bed. “You see, she’s quite critical.”
That didn’t make sense. “I thought she was going to be fine.”
The doctor shook his head and gripped the cart’s handle as though to
wheel it from the room. “I’m afraid not. And neither will you, if you continue interfering.”
Before Noel could react, the doctor shoved the heavy cart at him. The distraction gave the doctor the split second he needed to lunge, duck and roll past Noel, then rise to his feet and sprint out the open door.
“Hey!” Noel pushed the cart away, then reached across the bed to yank out the IV tube from the bag before taking off after him. He shouted at the central desk as he flew past, “Call the police and get those officers back here, now!”
One minute. He’d left her for one minute.
What was going on?
* * *
Yasmine awoke with a gasp. Pain flooded her limbs, and the sounds of beeping, wailing machines and anxious voices sent her head spinning. Or maybe that was the pain’s doing. So much noise, so much blurred motion around her, and everything hurt.
When she came to for a second time, the noises and people were gone. Her head throbbed with a dull ache and her vision had cleared. Noel stood at the end of the hospital bed, staring at her with such intensity it was a wonder he didn’t set the hospital room on fire.
“Hey,” she said, but it came out as a harsh croak. Her throat felt scratchy, dry. Noel must have read her mind, because it took only seconds for him to offer her a glass of water, slipping his hand underneath her head and tilting the glass to her lips. She couldn’t remember ever being so grateful for a drink of water before, but it felt marvelous as it slid down her throat and cooled her from the inside.
Outside the Law Page 5
