Meg and Webb threw open their doors. Meg grabbed for the SAR bag at her feet, while Webb opened the cab door on his side and called for her dog. Hawk threw Meg a quick look and she gave him the hand signal to go. She pulled on the pack and ran around the back of the truck.
“Hawk, come!”
They tore across the narrow space to the low, decorative fence and didn’t even confer. They simply vaulted over it, landing on the neatly trimmed grass, and bolted up the hill, not bothering to take the stairs.
Meg reached the door first and grabbed the knob, rattling it. Locked tight. “He may not have come in this way. He might have found another way in.”
“Doesn’t matter where he got in. We’re going in here.” Webb pulled his Henley off over his head and wrapped it around his left hand. “I’m a firefighter. We don’t pick locks.”
He rammed his padded fist into the decorative leaded glass window and it shattered, glass raining down in musical shards onto the floor inside. He pulled off the Henley, and carefully threaded his hand back through the jagged opening and flipped the deadbolt on the other side. He extracted his hand and then pushed open the heavy front door, standing out of the way. “Go!”
Meg stepped into the front foyer, sweeping the loose shards of glass off to the side with her boot to protect Hawk’s bare paws, all while taking a quick scan of her surroundings. Antique oak planking covered the floors, and the walls were painted a pale cream. Doors opened up on either side of the foyer, both rooms and the foyer itself filled with exhibits, the spotlights over them dark. A single flight of steps hugged the right wall of the foyer, disappearing into the upper level of the house. Meg bent down to her dog, running a hand over fur slightly crusty from his swim through murky river water. “Find her, Hawk.”
Hawk took all of two seconds to scent the air; then he lunged for the stairs, leaping up them, his nails clicking on the hardwood floor. Meg and Webb followed, taking the steps two at a time to keep up with him.
“How does he know who he’s tracking?” Webb asked. “He doesn’t know her, and you don’t have anything of hers for him to get the scent from?”
“He’ll go after the freshest scent, which will be hers. Look at him! He knows exactly which way to go.”
Hawk rounded the landing and took the last four steps in two springs. Without hesitation, he took off down the hallway, passing open doorways, lit only by the light pouring in through the uncurtained windows. He half slid as he took the corner too fast and headed straight for a doorway on the far side of the house. Meg and Webb pounded after him as he shot through the door, disappearing from view. Webb slowed enough to let Meg go through first and then followed her inside. They both jolted to a stop inside the room.
The far end of the room was a tableau of a Civil War operating suite, with an old door balanced on piled crates serving as a makeshift surgical table. Under the table lay a bloody sock and a blood-soaked boot. An open divided crate of replica medical supplies sat next to the table and green glass bottles were close at hand. A metal jug and bowl sat nearby. The figure of a bearded man in a Union uniform stood at the bottom of the table, partially bent over, his hands held out as if to cradle something.
But the figure on the table was not the mannequin intended to be part of the tableau. It was a woman, with pale skin and dark hair, bound to the table with cord, her hands secured beneath the table. Duct tape covered her mouth, adhering to the stark white skin of her cheek. Only the faintest sounds of labored breathing came from her.
Webb sprang forward, pushing past the display cases and into the tableau, now not just a re-creation of a battlefield memory, but a living nightmare. He stepped over the inanimate form of a prone man with blood pouring from his foot, no doubt the missing part of the tableau. He ripped the duct tape from the woman’s mouth, but she barely responded to the sharp pain.
Webb started a lightning-fast assessment. “She’s in respiratory distress. Blood on her shirt over the left breast.” He unceremoniously ripped open the placket on the blouse she wore, buttons flying off to ping onto the floor. “Small wound, looks like a small penknife or maybe an ice pick, likely just a few inches deep from the amount of blood. No major vessels hit.” He pressed two fingers against her throat. “Pulse is weak and thready. And we’ve got jugular vein distention and tracheal deviation.” He leaned in close. “Ma’am? Ma’am, can you hear me?” The woman’s eyes stayed closed, her features slack. He glanced back at Meg. “Call 911. We need an ambulance. I can hold her, but I need help.”
Meg quickly made the call, once again giving her designation and their location. “Done, what else can I do?”
“Stand back in case there’s some spray.” His unflinching gaze met her expression of confusion. “We’re in agreement with McCord’s assessment of the situation?”
“Yes.”
“What I see are all the indications of a late-stage pneumothorax. She’s suffocating to death, to the extent her blood vessels are blowing up.” He reached into his pocket, struggling against the damp denim, and pulled out a sealed plastic bag. “I don’t need your permission, but I’m just letting you know I’m going to perform an invasive technique to hopefully save her. What I’d really like is a chest X-ray, but that’s simply not happening. Without this procedure, I don’t think she’ll survive until the ambulance arrives. She’ll go into cardiac arrest first.”
“I trust you. Do what you need to do.” Meg stepped back several paces. “Hawk, come.” She pointed at the ground at her feet. “Sit.” Hawk sat, but watched Webb with his tilted head.
Webb ripped open the bag and pulled out a pair of latex gloves, quickly tugging them on. Small squares came out next and he ripped several open to reveal alcohol wipes. His gloved fingers found the woman’s collarbone, then moved down, finding the second rib and then the sunken soft spot between it and the third rib. He used the wipes to quickly disinfect the skin, and then he pulled out a long, thin object in a sealed sleeve.
Meg only had a moment to wonder what it was before he stripped it out of the sleeve and then out of the plastic holder it came in. She had to hold back a gasp at the wicked three-and-a-half-inch needle he pulled free.
Webb bent over the woman, found the spot again, and quickly, without hesitation, pushed the needle slowly into her chest. It penetrated one inch, then two; then a great gust of air whistled from the open end of the needle and Webb froze. “Gotcha,” he murmured. Grasping the shaft just below the hub of the needle, he pulled upward, extracting the needle itself and leaving behind a sheath Meg hadn’t even spotted before. Webb dropped the needle into the nearby metal bowl with a clang and checked the sheath. “The catheter is in place.”
He bent over the woman again, who suddenly seemed quieter, and the deadly white of her cheeks flushed ever so slightly. “Ma’am, can you hear me? You’re going to be all right. Can you hear me?”
The woman’s eyelashes fluttered slightly and she moaned.
“How’s she doing?” Meg asked, still not moving an inch.
Webb slid his fingers against her throat and paused for a moment before answering. “Better. She’s going to need real medical treatment, but her pulse is steadier and her breathing is easier.”
“What did you just do?”
He threw her a quick glance. “The original wound opened up the pleural space, which I told you about earlier. Her chest cavity was filling with air, compressing her lungs. A wound like that is like a one-way valve. Air could get in, but couldn’t get out, and was building up in the chest cavity. I let that air out to relieve the immediate pressure. I’ve done it before, and when it works, it’s pretty much instantaneous. It’s stabilized her in the short term.”
“Where did that”—Meg pointed at the woman’s chest—“come from?”
“The needle catheter? You were busy with the Coasties when they came for your sister, but I grabbed one of them, explained who I was, told him I needed a few items and why, and he slipped them to me. I had to hope McCord was right, becaus
e I otherwise might not have the right supplies. If I didn’t have those few things, I’d be doing CPR on her right now, and I’m not sure I could have held her.” The far-off sound of sirens wailing slipped in from the distance. “Although they’re coming in pretty quickly. From Sharpsburg, I guess.”
“I didn’t ask, but I’d guess that’s their home base. Hawk, stay.” Meg moved to the table to look down into pale blue eyes and a face that was, once again, startlingly like her own. “Ma’am, I’m Meg Jennings from the FBI. You’re safe now. Can you tell us your name?”
The woman took a shallow breath. “Julie . . .” Another breath. “Moore.”
“Okay, Julie. Is there anyone we can call for you? Someone to meet you at the hospital?”
“My . . . husband.” She slowly gave his name and a phone number, which Meg put into her phone.
“I’ll contact him as soon as I know where you’re going.” The scream of the siren came closer and then abruptly died. “I’ll go bring them up,” Meg told Webb.
Ten minutes later, Julie was strapped onto a gurney and being carried down the stairs, with Meg, Webb, and Hawk following behind. They stood aside as the paramedics loaded her into the ambulance, and then set off for Frederick Memorial Hospital, nearly twenty miles away, with lights and sirens going.
“Two women. I can’t believe we actually pulled that off.” Suddenly feeling a little unsteady, Meg reached out to grab the top of the picket fence.
“You okay? You’ve gone gray.” Webb caught at her arms, steadying her when she started to sway, and then backing her toward the front steps to lower her down to sit. He crouched down in front of her. “What’s going on?”
“I kind of didn’t tell you, but I got a concussion on Saturday. Grade-three.”
“What?” Concern streaked across Webb’s face and the look he gave her was suddenly clinical as he assessed her.
She braced a hand against his shoulder. “I’m fine. I made it through everything today okay, didn’t I?”
“Only by pushing it way more than you should have. Any headache? Nausea? Blurry or double vision?”
“I currently have one hell of a headache, but other than that, I’m fine. I think the adrenaline rush kept me pumped up enough that I wasn’t feeling any symptoms until now. I’ll go home and take a nap, I promise. Once I’ve seen my sister. And Julie.” She gave a groan. “And talked to my boss. And probably his boss.” She dropped her head into her hands. “They may fire me for this. I was told that under no circumstances was I to work this case while I was suspended.”
Webb’s eyes went to slits. “ ‘Suspended’?”
“Saturday might not have been my best day. Although since we saved a victim, I take that back, it was a good day.” She gave him a wan smile. “I guess I need to catch you up on a few things—from the explosion we got caught in on Saturday morning to my meeting with the executive assistant director this morning, when he suspended me for disobeying a direct order.”
He simply raised one eyebrow.
“I know we’re starting something here, you and me, but I don’t really know where the lines are yet. So maybe you’ll give me a break this time?”
“Maybe. As long as you keep me in the loop next time. When you have someone special in your life, you can’t keep that person in the dark about stuff like that. That goes for me too.”
“Fair enough.”
“Are you going to be in trouble for this?”
Meg sighed and leaned back on the step, bracing her elbows on the tread above. “Quite likely. My only saving grace is that Cara and Julie survived. If they’d died, my career would be over for playing fast and loose with lives like that. There’d never be a way I could explain myself out of it. But now, Hawk and I have a leg to stand on.” She reached out and ran her knuckles over the line of his jaw, the stubble rough under her skin. “Two saves today for you. Not bad, Mr. Firefighter.”
“I wasn’t so sure about that last one, but yeah, not bad. Rescues are always a crapshoot. You never know what you’re going to get or whether you’ll get the victim out alive.” He grinned and echoed her sentiments. “Today’s a good day.”
“It is.” But her smile melted away and her voice went rock hard as she looked over his shoulder, out at the farm fields that surrounded the Pry House. “You know, there’s nothing I’d like more than for him to take a shot at me right now. No more substitutes. Me.”
“Hey.” The steel in his voice drew her gaze. “I want you to promise me not to do anything stupid.”
“Like take him down?” she said sweetly.
“Jesus Christ, Meg, I’m not kidding. The man is dangerous.”
“You think I don’t know that? Do you think I can ignore what he did to those women?” Her voice became dangerously quiet, but the fury behind her words was unmistakable. “What he did to my sister?”
“And I don’t blame you for being pissed, not that ‘pissed’ can even come close to describing what you must be feeling. If that happened to someone in my family, I’d be murderous right now, and not feeling one bit of guilt over it.”
“I’m glad you see it my way.”
“So I’d expect one of my brothers to step in and set me goddamn straight. And since you don’t have a sibling handy who isn’t involved, I’m going to do it for you. You’re not thinking straight, and that’s entirely justified. You need to not do anything stupid right now, or he wins. You can handle this one of two ways—stupid or smart. Stupid lands you in jail, or worse. Smart lands him in jail.”
“Or worse.”
“Yeah, maybe. But you’ve got the smarts and you’ve got some time. And you’ve got people willing to help. Don’t you think we can outsmart one measly lunatic? Let’s be smart, and make him pay. Only then will there be justice for all the women he’s hurt. Including Cara.”
Meg considered his words for a moment, then slid him a sideways glance. “I like the way you think,” she said. “Now we just need to figure out how to get him.”
CHAPTER 22
USS Indianola: In early 1863, the new ironclad USS Indianola was damaged after running aground in the Mississippi River near Vicksburg and was captured by Confederate troops. Union naval commander David Dixon Porter had his men construct a mock-up of a giant ironclad, painted black, and flying the “Jolly Roger.” The ship sailed past Confederate shore batteries unharmed, and as rumors of a giant, invincible warship swirled through Vicksburg, Rebel salvage crews abandoned the Indianola without destroying her.
Monday, May 29, 6:21 PM
Inova Urgent Care Center
Woodbridge, Virginia
“There she is.” Meg came through the door, half hidden by an enormous bouquet of flowers, Hawk in his FBI vest at her side. Webb brought up the rear, his arms full with several large paper bags, and he balanced a tray of fast-food drinks in his hands and McCord’s messenger bag over his shoulder. McCord’s boots dangled from where they were tied to the bag’s strap.
Cara lay propped up in the hospital bed, while McCord slouched in a stiff plastic visitor’s chair by her side, his bare feet crossed on the edge of the mattress while they talked. As soon as he saw them, McCord straightened, his feet slapping to the floor as the chair screeched back an inch on the tile floor. “There you are. All I got was the message ‘Two for two.’ You were successful?”
“We were,” Webb said.
Meg set the flowers down on a table beneath the window and rushed to Cara, sitting down on the edge of the bed to catch her up in a tight hug. She gave herself a moment to just hold on, rocking her sister back and forth, until the gentle pat of Cara’s hand on her back caught her attention. She pulled away, laughing. “You’re not the one who’s supposed to be comforting me. It’s supposed to be the other way around.”
“Clay caught me up with everything he knew. With the day you’ve had, I’m not sure who needs comforting more.” Cara let herself fall back onto the pillows and looked her sister over with an assessing eye. “You look terrible.”
> Meg rolled her eyes. “Just another day at the office. But a good day.” She glanced at Webb, who flashed her a quick grin. “Look, we brought food.”
“You’re an angel.” Cara’s gaze fixed on the bags in Webb’s hands. “You did not go to Five Guys.”
“We absolutely did.” Meg reached for one of the bags, opened it and peeked in. The tantalizing aroma of grilled meat and fresh fries drifted out. “Got you a cheeseburger, Cajun fries, and a salted-caramel milk shake. You are allowed to eat, right?”
“Oh, I’m allowed. There just hasn’t been anything here actually worth eating.”
“That’s what I thought.” Meg dove into the bag and started handing out food.
Webb reached into his bag and pulled out a foil-wrapped burger, which he extended to McCord, who had just finished putting his socks and boots back on. “Hope a bacon cheeseburger, fries, and a chocolate shake is okay. I figured, you’re a guy and we like meat.” His eyes narrowed suspiciously and he pulled the burger back a few inches. “Unless you’re one of those New Age vegan types.”
“God forbid. Hand it over. It’s been a long time since breakfast and I could eat the whole cow right now.” He snatched the burger from Webb’s hand. “Thanks.”
Webb dragged a chair over to the foot of the bed, set out fries and drinks for himself and McCord, pulled out his burger and dug in. For a few minutes, the room was quiet.
McCord finally couldn’t take it anymore. “You guys are killing me. I need details. Was the location right?”
Meg blotted a smear of grease from her lips with a napkin. “Sure was.”
McCord turned to Webb. “Pneumothorax?”
“Yup.” Webb took another bite of burger.
McCord continued to stare at them, his gaze darting from one to the other, his burger held loosely between his hands. Then he exploded with questions. “So what happened? What shape was she in? Who was she? Did you find any new clues about the perp?”
Before It's Too Late Page 21
