Save Your Breath

by Leigh, Melinda

“Anytime. I’m going to do some more digging and see what I can come up with,” Ryan said. “I’d love a solid lead on this group if they’re dealing in illegal weapons.”

  “You’ll call me or Stella if you find anything?” Sharp asked.

  “I will,” Ryan promised.

  Sharp disconnected. He looked up to see that Stella had walked back into his office. She was staring at him, grim-faced.

  His heart stuttered, and his stomach curled up in a defensive ball. “What?”

  “Olivia’s car was spotted about twenty minutes from here.”

  Sharp jumped to his feet. “Where? Is she in the car?”

  Stella held up one hand. “They don’t know yet. It’s in a ravine.”

  He felt the blood drain from his face, leaving him light-headed. A moment later, Stella was holding his arm, but he hadn’t noticed her walk closer.

  Had Olivia been in a ravine, dead, for the past two and a half days? Could she be alive? People had survived longer. So many thoughts, hopeful and dire, ricocheted through his head. Sharp could barely form questions.

  He sputtered, “What condition is the car in?”

  “I don’t know.” Stella shook her head. “I spoke to the state trooper on scene. They can only see the rear bumper. It looks like the car went off the road just before the bridge. The trooper was driving by, noticed snapped saplings, and pulled over. The incline is steep and covered with trees and brush. They’re going to need rappelling gear to get down to the car.”

  Sharp headed for the door on shaky legs.

  Stella lifted his jacket from his coat hook and handed it to him. “Why don’t you call Lance and let him know?”

  He nodded. His throat felt rusty, and he couldn’t form words. In silence, he put on his jacket. Adrenaline pumped through his system, and his pulse felt thin and too quick. Nausea churned in his empty belly as he led the way out of the building and locked the back door. In the passenger seat of Stella’s cop car, he used his phone app to engage the office security system. He performed these functions on automatic pilot. His brain was consumed with only one train of thought.

  In what condition would they find Olivia?

  His thumb sat poised over the buttons to call Lance. It felt stupid, but he hoped Lance could get to the crash site. He was the closest thing Sharp had to family.

  In thirty minutes, would he know whether she was alive or dead? And would he then wish he didn’t know?

  What if not knowing was better?

  Stella had her radio turned low. He stared out the windshield and listened to the soft chatter. She drove out of town and picked up speed on the interstate. He wanted her to drive faster, but at the same time, he didn’t.

  Because most of all, he was dreading arriving on scene in time to identify Olivia’s dead body.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Lance pulled over behind two state trooper vehicles and Stella’s dark-blue cop car. “I don’t even know what to hope for.”

  “Neither do I.” In the passenger seat of the Jeep, Morgan exchanged her heels for the flats from her giant bag. “What could this mean?”

  “I don’t know. Let’s wait and see what we find in the car.” He glanced at her. She was shivering. “There’s a warmer jacket in the back.”

  They’d been close to Scarlet Falls when Sharp had called. Lance had changed course to head west toward the crash site. Then he’d pushed the Jeep to ninety.

  They climbed out of the Jeep. Morgan opened the hatch and exchanged her wool jacket for his heavier coat. It was wind- and waterproof. She pulled gloves from one pocket and a hat from the other.

  Lance spotted Sharp and Stella behind the ambulance and hurried over. Sharp’s face was as white as the line running down the shoulder of the road. Stella introduced the two troopers. Lance didn’t catch their names. He was focused on Sharp—his pallor and the darkness swirling behind his gray eyes. Then Lance moved to the side of the road and looked over the edge.

  He tracked a line of broken underbrush and small trees. At least forty feet down, a white car was ass end up. The vehicle appeared to have been stopped by a stand of large trees. The first half of the descent was steep, but then the slope dropped straight down for the last twenty-five feet. They definitely needed rappelling equipment.

  Could anyone have survived that crash?

  “We just got here a few minutes ago,” Stella said. “A fire crew is en route with rescue gear.”

  Trooper One said, “ETA is ten minutes.”

  Sharp pointed toward the ravine. “That’s my girlfriend’s vehicle. I’m not waiting. I’m going down.” He moved away from the group. He turned to Lance. “You have rope in your Jeep?”

  “I do.” Lance pivoted. There was no changing Sharp’s mind. If it had been Morgan’s car in that ravine, nothing could have stopped Lance from climbing down. Nothing. But he wasn’t going to let any harm come to Sharp either. “I’m going down with you.”

  “Thanks.”

  Lance opened the cargo area of his Jeep. He kept his vehicle stocked with emergency supplies, and this was not the first time he’d needed to use them. He handed a coil of nylon rope and a carabiner to Sharp and set the same aside for himself.

  Starting with the midpoint on his left side, Sharp fed the rope around his waist, between his legs, and around both thighs, forming a half hitch on each hip. He tied the rope off with a few more knots on his left side, away from his dominant or brake hand, giving him an emergency rappel harness, also known as a Swiss Seat. He attached a carabiner to the front of the makeshift harness.

  Lance followed suit. He slung two more sections of rope over one shoulder. Sharp returned to the group, and Lance backed the Jeep closer to the ravine. With no tall trees on the side of the road, they tied their ropes to the tow bar on the back of the Jeep.

  They picked their way around rocks, brush, and tree trunks, then paused at the top of the drop-off. From this angle, Lance had a better view of the vehicle. “The car isn’t at the bottom. Those trees are keeping it from sliding any farther.”

  Sharp looked over his shoulder. “The clearest path is on the driver’s side.”

  “Right,” Lance said. “We don’t want to land on the vehicle in case our weight makes it fall the rest of the way to the bottom.”

  Another twenty-foot drop could kill anyone who might still be alive inside.

  “Watch the broken trees.” Lance went over the edge backward, letting out his rope slowly, making his way down the ravine. Sharp descended next to him. They stopped parallel to the car. The roof was partially caved in, and the exterior badly dented and damaged. Spider cracks and holes covered the windshield. The driver’s door hung open. Lance stopped, bracing his foot on a tree root, to lean out and peer into the vehicle. The driver’s seat was empty.

  “She’s not in the front,” Lance said.

  Broken glass and debris filled the inside of the car. The airbag had deployed and deflated. Despite the damage, the interior of the vehicle remained intact.

  Sharp stared down at the ravine floor. “The occupants could have been ejected in the crash or fell or climbed down afterward.”

  “It’s possible.” Lance looked for blood on the seat, steering wheel, and dashboard. “I don’t see any blood in the car. I would expect to see some blood if a person rode this car all the way down that slope.”

  Sharp nodded. “Maybe whoever was driving got lucky.”

  “Maybe.” But Lance doubted it. Even restrained by a seat belt, a person would have been banged up in that crash.

  “The driver would have been hanging by the seat belt. The belt wasn’t cut. It wouldn’t have been easy to get out of it and the vehicle.”

  “No.” Sharp paused. “We’ve already decided Olivia was kidnapped from her house.”

  “We could have been wrong about her being put in the cargo area. Maybe he sat in the back and forced her to drive at gunpoint.” Lance scanned the car. “Or she somehow caused the driver to crash the car.”

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p; Sharp scanned the inside of the vehicle. “I really think there should be blood.”

  “Maybe no one was inside the vehicle.” As Lance considered the interior, this seemed the most likely scenario. “The car could have been pushed off the road to dispose of it.”

  Sharp dropped a few feet. “I’m going to the bottom.”

  Lance followed him to the ground and unclipped his carabiner, letting the rope dangle. At his feet was a side mirror ripped from the Prius. Pieces of broken red plastic, possibly from the brake light cover, were scattered on the ground. He looked up at the car precariously perched in the trees above them. The wall of the ravine was nearly vertical at the bottom, but there were some thin trees and brush protruding from the earth. But would they hold an adult’s weight?

  Lance took out his cell phone and sent Morgan a text: No Olivia. Checking ravine.

  “I’ll go this way.” Sharp headed south.

  Lance went in the opposite direction. He kept his eyes on the ground, looking for broken underbrush, footprints, drops of blood, scraps of fabric, anything that would suggest a wounded person walked that way. But he saw nothing. He traveled about a hundred feet and turned back.

  Lance returned to the vehicle. He cupped his hands around his mouth and called out, “Sharp!”

  “I’m coming,” Sharp called and appeared two minutes later.

  “The sooner we climb back up, the sooner the troopers can organize a search. I didn’t see any tracks, but it’s still possible.”

  Sharp nodded. “I didn’t see anything either. I don’t know whether to be relieved or not.”

  “I know.” Lance started climbing. The trip to the top took longer than the descent had. By the time they reached the road, an ambulance, fire truck, and tow truck had arrived.

  They relayed their findings to the responders and stepped aside while the firemen and tow truck driver discussed extracting the Prius from the ravine. Lance stepped out of his Swiss Seat. Sharp did the same. They stood on the side of the road.

  Sharp gestured to the ribbon of blacktop. “There aren’t any skid marks. If I were driving toward the edge of the road, I’d lay on the brakes.”

  “Me too,” Lance agreed.

  “I think you’re right. No one was in the car, and whoever took Olivia pushed it off the road.”

  Morgan brought Lance and Sharp bottles of water from the Jeep. Sweat coated Lance’s chest after the climb. The exertion had put some color into Sharp’s cheeks, but his eyes were lost.

  Morgan’s phone rang. She stepped away to answer the call.

  “What did you find out in the city?” Sharp asked.

  Lance summed up their interviews with Olivia’s agent and editor. “The editor was the man who visited Olivia Thursday night. But even if we could weaken his alibi, Morgan couldn’t locate a property owned by him or his father. Olivia wasn’t at the bar, and it seems unlikely he could hold a woman captive in a fourth-floor walk-up.”

  “What is our most likely lead?” Sharp asked. “Joe Franklin is the only person we haven’t been able to question.”

  Morgan hurried across the pavement, her mouth set in a grim line. “Gianna is really sick. Grandpa was worried enough to call Mac and have him take her to the ER.”

  Stella approached, took one look at her sister’s face, and asked, “What’s wrong?”

  Morgan explained.

  Stella had known Gianna before Morgan. More than two years before, Gianna had overdosed. Stella had saved her with a dose of Narcan. But the young woman’s kidneys had suffered irreversible damage.

  “I’m going to the hospital now.” Morgan turned to Lance, her brows raised in question. “You can stay with Sharp.”

  “Go, take care of Gianna.” Stella waved them away. “I’ll take Sharp back to the office later. I’m sure he wants to stay here until we pull the car out of the ravine.”

  “I do.” Sharp’s eyes were dark. Was he thinking of Lance’s father, whose car had spent twenty-three years on the bottom of a lake? When it was finally discovered and pulled out, they’d found a skeleton in the trunk. Sharp would want to examine the vehicle more closely. Sharp turned to Lance and said, “You go with Morgan. Gianna is part of your new family. They need you.”

  Morgan was already striding toward the Jeep.

  “I’ll drive Morgan to the hospital and come back for you.” Lance fished his keys from his pocket and pointed at Sharp. “Promise me you won’t go to Joe Franklin’s place without calling me.”

  “OK.” Sharp held up both hands in surrender. “I promise. Recovering the Prius isn’t going to be quick or easy. We’ll be tied up here for hours anyway.”

  Lance turned and jogged away.

  “Call me when you have news about Gianna!” Stella called after him.

  Lance waved over one shoulder. He ran to the Jeep and climbed behind the wheel.

  Morgan fastened her seat belt and white-knuckled the armrests. “I should have insisted she go to the doctor yesterday.”

  “People get sick. It’s not always serious. I’m sure your grandfather was just being cautious. She could have a simple virus. As soon as school starts, one of the kids always seems to have a runny nose.” Lance pressed the gas pedal and hoped he was right.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Morgan jumped out of the Jeep in the ER parking lot. Not waiting for Lance, she hurried across the pavement. Lance caught up before she reached the entrance.

  “Hold up.” He grabbed her arm.

  Distressed, she whirled and shook off his hand. “What?”

  “Take a deep breath. You will scare Gianna if she sees you like this.”

  “Grandpa doesn’t panic. If he sent Gianna to the ER, it’s serious.” Morgan brushed her hair out of her eyes. Her stomach was clenched into a tight fist. Emotions swirled inside her, fear and guilt tumbling over and over until she couldn’t tell them apart.

  She should have been paying better attention. Dialysis put Gianna at risk for complications from illnesses that were mild for most people. But Gianna’s overall health had improved so much since she’d come to live with Morgan that they’d all become complacent.

  Lance put his hands on her biceps. “Just take three deep breaths, and then we’ll go inside.”

  She inhaled. The chilly air cooled her.

  “Better.” He squeezed her arms, then dropped his hands.

  Morgan faced the doors. She reached for Lance’s hand and held it. The automatic doors swished open, and they walked into the waiting room side by side. She scanned the room. No Mac or Gianna. They walked up to the registration desk and gave the nurse Gianna’s name.

  The nurse checked her computer. “She’s in bed number seven. You can go on through.”

  She pointed to a set of double doors. When Morgan and Lance approached, the doors swung open. Gurneys were lined up in curtained-off bays like cars in an auto shop.

  Morgan spotted number seven and hurried over. Mac sat on a folding chair, but the bay was empty. Morgan’s stomach turned over. “Where is she?”

  Mac stood. “They took her for some tests. She’ll be back soon.”

  “How bad is she?” Morgan gave him a quick hug.

  Mac frowned. “She spiked a fever this afternoon, and your grandfather didn’t like the way she looked.”

  “He has good judgment.” Morgan checked the hallway. No Gianna yet.

  “The doctor thinks her dialysis graft could be infected.” Mac swept a hand through his shaggy surfer hair. A biology professor at the local university, he spent a good deal of time outdoors and volunteered with search and rescue. He was perpetually tan.

  Lance shook Mac’s hand. “Thanks for bringing her.”

  “I’m glad to help.” Mac gestured toward the chair. “Why don’t you sit down, Morgan? You look tired.”

  She shook her head and paced. “I assumed she’d caught a cold. I should never assume anything with Gianna. She’s been so normal, sometimes I forget how sick she is.”

  “They didn’t rus
h her into ICU or anything,” Mac said. “The doctor isn’t panicking, so relax.”

  But Morgan worried. Before Gianna had come to live with her, no one had cared about the girl. Her mother had been a prostitute who had started her daughter hooking at age thirteen. Gianna’s mother was currently in jail for cooking meth. The girl had never had a father in her life. Coming to live with Morgan was the first break Gianna had ever received.

  The squeak of wheels caught Morgan’s attention. An orderly was pushing a gurney down the hall. On it, Gianna huddled under a white thermal blanket. Morgan moved aside as the orderly turned the gurney into the bay.

  Gianna was pale, with a feverish splotch of ruddy color on each cheek. Morgan used the hand sanitizer mounted on the wall, went to the bedside, and touched her forehead. Her skin was warm.

  “I’m all right,” Gianna said in a weak voice.

  “Do you need anything right now?” the orderly asked.

  Gianna shook her head.

  “OK then. The doctor will be in soon.” The orderly closed the curtain and left.

  Morgan squeezed Gianna’s fingers. “I’m sorry I wasn’t home.”

  “You can’t be everywhere.” Gianna pulled herself a few inches up on the gurney.

  “We should have gone to the doctor yesterday,” Morgan said.

  Gianna lifted her arm and frowned at it. The dialysis access site was normally a hard lump under the skin, but today it was swollen and red. “My arm didn’t look like this yesterday, and I didn’t have a fever. There was no reason to think it was anything serious.”

  “Hello?” The curtain swished aside, and a doctor in blue scrubs walked in. He introduced himself. “As I suspected when she first came in, her dialysis access is infected. We’re going to schedule her for surgery to remove the infected graft. We’re also putting her on IV antibiotics.”

  “How will she get dialysis without a graft?” Morgan asked.

  He shone a penlight into Gianna’s eyes. “We’ll use a central venous catheter until the infection is cleared, and then the surgeon can decide where to place a new graft.”

  She’d need at least three surgeries just to get back to where she’d been before this weekend, and she’d have to live with a temporary catheter poking out of her chest for the next month or two. Gianna would never complain, but this had to be disappointing.