Driven to Ink (30 page)

It was brighter here, too, the streetlights doing a better job than the one up the road. I turned to confront Jeff about the speed of the car when I saw it.

The gun had blown a hole through more than the windshield.

Blood was pouring out of Jeff’s shoulder.

I
felt myself start to hyperventilate, but I took a couple of deep breaths. I still held my phone, but I hadn’t opened it yet.

“You have to stop, Jeff,” I shouted. “You’re bleeding.”

“We’re going to the hospital. Call the cops. Tell them what happened.”

My hand was shaking as I flipped up the cover on the phone. Instinct made me call Tim.

“What, Brett?” He sounded annoyed.

“Tim,” I said breathlessly, still looking at Jeff’s shoulder. All that blood was making me woozy.

“Talk to him, Brett,” Jeff said sternly, although his voice wasn’t nearly as strong as it should’ve been. “Don’t look at me.”

I closed my eyes.

“What’s going on, Brett?” Tim’s voice echoed through my head.

“It’s Jeff. He’s been shot.” It was all I could concentrate on at the moment.

“Shot? Where?”

“In the desert.”

“Where are you?”

I opened my eyes and looked through the windshield. The shattered glass gave it a sort of magnifying glass appearance. The lights from the strip malls and the gas stations and the apartment complexes glimmered against the broken windshield and bounced back off it in a halo effect. How on earth could Jeff see to drive?

“We’re on the way to the hospital,” I heard myself say, the question about Jeff’s driving still bouncing around in my head like a pinball. “He’s been shot.” I didn’t say he was at the wheel.

“Which hospital?”

There was only one on this road, so I figured that’s where we were heading. “University Medical Center.”

“I’ll meet you there.”

“Um, Tim? We hit the guy who shot at us. He’s back there—I don’t know—somewhere on the side of West Charleston Boulevard in Summerlin. Near a streetlight that’s out. He forced us off the road. Then he shot at us. Jeff ran him over. We left him there.” I couldn’t stop talking; I didn’t want to stop. I felt as though if I stopped, something even more awful would happen. My hand was still shaking as the phone vibrated against my ear.

“Brett, stay calm.” Tim’s voice was soothing. “Did you recognize the guy who shot at you, the guy you hit?”

“No, I never saw him. Even when he hit the car”—the words got stuck in my throat for a second—“I just saw a body. Not his face. Nothing to recognize.”

“That’s okay; don’t worry about it. I’ll meet you at the hospital. I’ll send someone out to Summerlin. How’s Jeff?”

I looked over at him. He was focused on the road; his hands were holding the steering wheel tight. The blood was spreading, and his breaths were short and shallow.

“He’s okay,” I lied to Tim, then closed the phone.

We were almost at the hospital. We’d run every red light, but, remarkably, we didn’t see any cops. The emergency entrance was up on the next block. I sighed with relief.

Too soon.

As we approached the driveway to the hospital, the car suddenly swerved as Jeff’s arms fell from the wheel.

I braced myself as we slammed into an ambulance. My neck snapped back and hit the headrest.

Security guards, paramedics, and doctors surrounded the car in seconds. Faces peered through the windows. The door opened, letting in a cold gust of air that made me shiver. Jeff was white as a ghost; he looked as though he’d passed out. My heart leaped into my throat as someone tried to pull me from my seat.

“Help him,” I begged, although they were already doing that. Jeff was out of the car; they had him on a gurney; they were rolling him away.

It was only then that I let myself be brought out of the car, unlatching my seat belt, reaching for my bag at my feet. My legs got caught for a second in the air bag before I wrenched them free and stepped out of the car. I felt as though I’d been at sea for days; my knees buckled, and I almost went down. Hands were under my arms, pulling me back up.

A familiar voice asked, “Are you okay?”

I turned my head to see Colin Bixby in his white lab coat, holding me.

I tried for a small smile, but I couldn’t carry it off. “Yes. But Jeff . . .”

“We’re taking care of him. Don’t worry about him.”

I wanted to worry. “He lost a lot of blood.” I saw it then, on my arm, on my shirt. It had splattered all over me. Bixby was looking at me, wondering whether I’d been shot, too. “I’m okay,” I said, lying again. Sister Mary Eucharista was giving me a pass, though. I asked her to look after Jeff.

“You weren’t shot?” Concern laced Bixby’s words.

“No.”

He helped me around the ambulance, and I glanced back at the Pontiac. There was blood on the hood.

My knees buckled again, and I started to fall. Bixby leaned down and swept me up in his arms, carrying me like a child through the sliding doors into the emergency room waiting room. People who’d probably been waiting here for hours watched as we went through another set of sliding doors into the emergency room. I’d been here once before.

Bixby set me down on a bed and pulled the curtain around.

He peered into my face and gently touched it. I winced when his fingers probed my nose.

“Air bag?” he asked.

I nodded.

“It’s not broken.”

I sighed. “I feel like a truck ran over me.” And then I thought about Jeff, helpless and bleeding on a gurney. Never having shot his gun during a war. But getting shot by a crazy person in the Vegas desert. The tears started then, and Bixby let me cry. His fingers probed my arms, my legs, my torso without a word. I barely felt them.

Finally he stepped back and said, “You’ll be okay.”

I sniffled. “Thanks.”

The curtain snapped back then, and my brother came in. He didn’t say anything. He came over and put his arms around me, pulling me into a tight hug.

It made me start crying all over again.

Bixby stepped back. “I’ll check on Coleman,” and then he disappeared, making sure the curtain was giving us as much privacy as possible.

“He’s in surgery,” Tim said. “He lost a lot of blood.”

I nodded against his chest.

“What were you doing out there?”

That’s when I saw him. Detective Kevin Flanigan was standing behind him. Tim saw where my gaze had settled.

“Tell us what happened,” Tim said softly.

I knew it was procedure, but it still felt like an imposition. I didn’t have a choice. I reared my head back and frowned. “We were coming back from Rosalie’s. We had dinner with her and Sylvia and Bernie. Jeff was taking me home.” It all sounded so benign, considering everything else that had gone on in the past couple of days. In the last hour. Who would try to kill us? Granted, I had been poking around a little too much maybe, but I didn’t know diddly about anything. Although perhaps the guy shooting thought I did. I shivered at the thought.

“Can you tell us what happened?” Flanigan asked, a little notebook in his hand. His voice was kind, as if he had some empathy after all.

In fits and starts, I told them what happened on the road out there in the desert.

“I don’t know why . . .” I said when I finished. “Who would do that?”

“You didn’t recognize him?” Flanigan asked, the same question Tim had asked on the phone earlier.

I shook my head. “I just saw a shadow. He rolled onto the hood of the car, but I didn’t see his face. The windshield shattered. I couldn’t see much of anything too clearly.”

Tim and Flanigan exchanged a look, and I could see they knew something.

“What?” I asked.

“The timing is convenient,” Tim said to Flanigan, ignoring me.

Flanigan put his notebook and pen into the breast pocket of his pin-striped suit. He looked dapper, even when interrogating accident witnesses.

“What timing?” I asked.

“Let me see if we can locate him,” Flanigan said, nodding a good-bye to me and disappearing around the curtain.

I turned my gaze on Tim. “You have to tell me. What timing is right?”

“Dan Franklin. We let him go about two hours ago.”

T
im’s words sunk in slowly.

“You let him go?” I finally asked.

“We didn’t have anything to hold him on. His car really had been at the garage, getting a timing belt like he said. Nothing about it indicated it had been in a crash lately. He told us about that rat, but there’s no evidence that he put it in your trunk or killed Ray Lucci. He confessed to being in love with Rosalie Marino but swears she doesn’t know.”

Tim ran a hand through his hair and sighed.

The back of my bed was up, so I leaned against it, closing my eyes for a few seconds. I could see that body tossed up against the hood of the Pontiac like a rag doll. I opened my eyes again to get rid of the sight.

“Can we find out about Jeff?” I asked.

“He’s in surgery,” Tim said again. “We won’t know anything for a little while.” He paused. “We’ll need to talk to him when he wakes up.” He meant Flanigan. Of course Flanigan would have to talk to Jeff. Probably to make sure Jeff and I had the same story.

“He’s tough,” I said, mostly to myself. “He’ll be okay. He was in the Marines. He was in a war. And he came home okay.”

“Flanigan will probably need to ask you more questions, too.”

I nodded and sighed. I knew that, but I wasn’t in the mood to be interrogated again. Tim noticed and rubbed my shoulder. I winced as pain shot through my back. He jerked his hand back. “Maybe you’re not okay,” he said.

“We got into a crash. I might be sore for a couple days.”

He cocked his head at my face. “You might want to wear a veil or something.”

“It looks that bad?”

“It’ll look worse tomorrow.”

Great.

I wanted to close my eyes again, but I was afraid of what I’d see. The curtain moved, and Bixby stepped in. He looked at Tim.

“How is she?”

“
She
is fine,” I replied, before Tim could. “
She
would love to take a shower.” I didn’t add that I wanted to wash off Jeff’s blood, but I didn’t think I had to.

Tim’s phone started to ring, and Bixby frowned.

“I’ll be back,” Tim said, putting his phone to his ear and walking out.

“You really are fine?” Bixby asked.

“How is Jeff?”

“He’s in surgery.”

Same answer as Tim. Totally wasn’t what I wanted to hear.

“You’re the doctor here. Can’t you find out how it’s going?” I asked.

“You care a great deal for him, don’t you?” Bixby asked, his eyes probing my face.

I knew what he was looking for. “He’s my friend,” I said softly. “Nothing else.” Although as I said it, I remembered how Jeff had held my hand, how he’d called me by my first name, not Kavanaugh. “He’s a very good friend,” I added.

“Oh.” Bixby turned his face slightly, and I could see disappointment.

“We’re not a couple,” I said. “It’s not like that. It’s different.” I struggled with how to describe my relationship with Jeff Coleman. He was a royal pain in my butt, but he had helped me out on more than one occasion, and he created the koi tattoo on my arm, something that was permanent, that would never go away.

As I sat there and thought about him, I knew. I knew that if something happened to him, my life would be a little bit emptier.

I’d never admit that to him, though. He’d get some sort of stupid idea that it meant more than it did. Just as Bixby was having that stupid idea now. I could see it.

I crooked my finger at him and said, “Come here.”

He did, and I sat up so our faces were mere inches apart. And then I kissed him. Gently, because my face hurt more than getting a hundred tattoos at the same time.

It seemed to pacify him, because when he pulled away, Dr. Colin Bixby wore a lopsided grin.

“I’ll go check on Coleman’s status,” he said and went through the curtain, leaving me alone with my thoughts.

Sister Mary Eucharista wouldn’t have been happy with me. I’d kissed the man to make him stop asking me whether I had feelings for Jeff. Don’t get me wrong—I found the guy incredibly sexy. But kissing him to get him to stop asking questions wasn’t exactly right.

I looked at my shirt and the bloodstains and decided I couldn’t stay here like that. I swung my legs over the side of the bed, ignoring the shooting pain that moved through my body. My neck felt as though there were a vise on it. I moved toward the curtain, slowly, because now my muscles had decided to revolt. They’d been resting, they’d been happy, and now I was making them work after way too much trauma.

The curtain swung open just as I reached it. Tim frowned.

“What are you doing out of bed?” he demanded.

“I need a shower. Please tell Bixby to find me a shower.” Tears sprung into my eyes, and Tim put his arm around me.

“Okay, okay. We’ll find you a shower.” He twisted his head and called over to one of the nurses. “Can my sister get a shower somewhere?” To me, he said, “I can call Bitsy, see if she can bring a change of clothes.”

I’d forgotten about Bitsy. I’d told her she could go home early, and I’d said I’d open up tomorrow. How was I going to manage that now?

A nurse in baby blue scrubs and green Crocs came over to me and smiled kindly. “Do you want to come with me?”

I nodded and followed her down the hall and out a door. She led me to another door and pushed it open. It was a full bath, hospital style, with plain fixtures and handicap rails. The shower had no tub, but a small plastic seat and more rails, in case I couldn’t hold myself up. I might end up making use of them.

The nurse pointed to a soap dispenser.