Fall Into Me (24 page)

“Mama.” Tears in her voice, Brittany appeared in the doorway. Instead of folded towels, she carried her cell phone. Her hands shook wildly. “Lyssa just called me. She said Paul and Kaydee and them were in a wreck, and they’re all dead. Mama, that’s not true, is it? It can’t be true, can it?”

Hope hurried to enfold her trembling daughter. “There’s been an accident, yes, but we don’t know if they’re dead.” With Brittany pressed to her heart, she looked across the room to hold Angel’s gaze. “We don’t.”

“I just talked to Kaydee this morning, right after I talked to Paul.” A horrified moan erupted from Brittany’s mouth and she covered it. Tears flowed down her cheeks and her shoulders heaved with silent sobs. “Mommy, Kaydee was texting Lyssa from the truck. A Whitman deputy tried to pull them over and Paul wouldn’t stop. She was scared and he wouldn’t…and when Lyssa tried to text her back, Kaydee didn’t answer. She’d answer if she could, right?”

She dissolved into tears and Darryl joined them, wrapping strong arms about his wife and daughter both. Angel clutched the phone to her chest. Dear Lord in heaven.

“That’s Sara Davis’s daughter.” Mama sank onto her chair, her face gray. She glanced at Brittany. “Baby, who else was with them, do you know?”

Brittany lifted her wet face from Darryl’s chest. “Devonte Richardson was coming. Probably Kari and maybe Santana. Lyssa wanted to, but she’s failing math and Mr. Del won’t let her go anywhere. I don’t know…I don’t know if there was anybody else. Lyssa had to go because her mama’s all upset. They heard from somebody that a guy from the sheriff’s department was killed and they don’t know if it’s Lyssa’s uncle or not.”

Eyes closed, Hope held on to her, whispering quiet prayers into her glossy hair. Angel glanced from her mama’s pale face to her daddy’s. Her heart turned in on itself, but she made herself sit down calmly. She flipped her cell open and scrolled through to Troy Lee’s contact info. “I’m just going to call him and see what I can find out.”

The phone rang and rang and rang again. On the sixth ring, Troy Lee’s voice filled her ear, strong and resonant.

“Hey, this is Troy Lee. I can’t take your call, but if you leave your name and number, I’ll call you back as soon as I can…”

“Other than sometime next year? No.” Tori accepted the can of soda Layla extended and grimaced. “Mama wants a big wedding.”

“Mama wants?” Layla nudged her in the side as they entered the hall leading to the ER. “What about what Tori and Cookie want?”

“We just want to get married.” Tori dodged a gurney next to the wall. “Although I wouldn’t mind doing so in a really great dress.”

“And in front of a hundred guests, with six bridesmaids in purple tulle and Cookie in a tux,” Layla teased.

“That too. Except the purple tulle.” Tori made a moue, then completely ruined it by laughing. “I was thinking eggplant satin instead—”

“Layla, I need you.” Jay Mackey appeared at the end of the hallway and waved them forward. Urgency tightened his face. “Tori, glad you’re here.”

Her stomach knotted before the cool ease of experience slid into place. “What’s going on?”

“Multiple-injury accident, possible fatalities. Ambulances en route, ETA three minutes.” He talked rapidly, holding one push-through door open for them. “Nancy is over in Valdosta at a seminar. Tori, think you could do family counseling for us?”

“Of course.” Nancy was the new grief counselor, and before she’d arrived to replace her predecessor, Tori had performed double duty by stepping into that role.

“Great. As soon as we have positive victim identification and patient status, Lorraine will help you get started.” He pulled a thin disposable robe over his scrubs. Layla shoved her arms into a similar garment. While he tugged on gloves, she lifted the receiver on the wall phone, paging doctors. Jay swung open the ambulance bay doors and stepped onto the dock, arms over his chest. Sirens wailed closer and closer.

The first ambulance turned onto the side street and into the bay. Clark Dempsey jumped from the cab and rushed to open the back doors and assist his partner in unloading the patient. They pushed the gurney inside, Jim Tyre rattling patient information as Jay directed them to a room. “Seventeen-year-old male involved in collision, pulse is eighty-five, BP is one-ten over eighty, respiratory twenty, severe head trauma, fracture to the right arm…”

Layla appeared and the four of them shifted the moaning boy to the exam table. Layla looked up from checking his airway. “What’s on the way?”

“Three teens. Critical with prolonged extrication,” Clark replied. “And a deputy. They were pulling him out as we left.”

Deputy? Unnerved, Tori glanced at him, but before she could ask, a second ambulance thundered into the bay. Jay pulled his gloves and grabbed a fresh pair. “Layla, you know what to do. I’ve got this one.”

“Do you have his personal effects?” Layla palpated the boy’s chest, her hands moving with gentle efficiency. Jim produced a manila envelope and Layla tilted her head in Tori’s direction. “She needs those.”

Ambulance doors clanged open, followed by the metallic ring of a stretcher being unfolded. More male voices wafted into the hall as rubber wheels whispered on waxed tile. “Sixteen-year-old female involved in collision, no pulse, no respiration, BP is not measurable. Massive thoracic and skull trauma involved. Intubated at the scene, defibrillation attempts unsuccessful.”

The plaid curtain separating the two cubicles fluttered. Tori caught a glimpse of Jay checking the girl’s pupils. Tick was there, bagging the teenager, while an EMT performed chest compressions. Blood matted long blonde hair, soaked a Chandler-Haynes High cheerleading hoodie. Shaken, Tori averted her gaze and opened the envelope to extract a wallet. She flipped it open.

James Paul Bostick. Oh Lord, Bubba Bostick’s son?

“Tori.” Lorraine touched her shoulder and indicated the hall with a tilt of her head. “I’ve got the girl’s ID. Come on and you can use the phone in the staff lounge.”

“Thank you.” She glanced at the driver’s license in her hand. Kaydee Sierra Davis. She spun to glance back at the girl lying so still while they tried hard to bring her back. That was Kaydee?

“Tori, are you all right?” Concern creased Lorraine’s broad face.

“I know her.” Covering her mouth, Tori blinked hard. “I used to babysit her. Her mother is my first cousin.”

“I’m sorry, hon.” Lorraine patted her shoulder.

“I need to…” Tori drew herself up, gathering reserves. “I need to start making these calls.”

More medical personnel rushed down the hall to meet yet another ambulance. Lord, when would it stop? Chris Parker accompanied this gurney, bearing a frighteningly still teenage boy. The paramedic bagging him talked rapidly. “Seventeen-year-old male, no pulse, no BP, no respiration. Massive skull trauma, suspected spinal cord injury…”

Chris went as far as the exam room, then backtracked with another manila envelope in hand. His eyes wilder than Tori had ever seen them, he jerked his chin at her in greeting and extended the packet. “His effects plus the cell phones we found in the vehicle. They’re ringing and buzzing constantly.”

“Word’s out in the county then,” Lorraine said. “Worried parents will be calling here next.”

“Chris.” Tori caught his arm and he flinched. She released him immediately. “One of the paramedics said there was a deputy involved?”

“Yeah—”

A new gurney shoved through the doors, Nikki Pantone reciting patient information to a young doctor. “Twenty-six-year-old male involved in collision. Pulse is fifty-seven, BP ninety over sixty, respiration fifteen, no breath sounds on the right side. Nasal fracture, oropharyngeal airway in place with intubation, severe thoracic trauma, suspected haemothorax…”

As they passed, Nikki still talking, Tori glimpsed dark brown hair and a familiar tan uniform spattered with blood. Swelling and the bag valve mask obscured his face. “Is that Troy Lee?”

Chris nodded. Mark strode through the bay doors, rifling through another manila packet. He pulled out a cell phone and lifted his head, shuttered gaze tangling with hers for a split second before tracking to the identification she held. “Are you notifying families?”

She nodded and he pressed the slim silver rectangle into her palm. “This is Troy Lee’s. He’ll have his next of kin programmed in as an emergency contact—”

“His stepmother,” Chris said. “Her name is Christine.”

Mark’s fingers curled around hers for a moment, warm and real in the surreal chaos of the afternoon. “Will you call her?”

“Of course.”

He pulled his gaze from hers and tagged Chris on the chest. “I need you to come with me. We’ve got to find Angel.”

“Yes, ma’am, I understand you can’t tell me where he is.” Desperate fear bit into Angel. She clutched the phone so hard her hand hurt and concentrated on keeping her voice steady. “I just want to know if he was involved in an accident.”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Henderson.” A mask of cool professionalism cloaked the dispatcher’s voice. “But I have to follow procedure and it’s against department policy to release any information about an officer to unauthorized persons.”

Angel killed the call and pressed the cool metal to her forehead. She wasn’t an unauthorized person. She was the woman he loved, the woman who loved him, and damn it, no one would tell her anything. She’d gotten the same song and dance from the hospital, when she’d finally been able to get through to the jammed switchboard. No, they couldn’t tell her if a Troy Lee Farr was in the emergency room. No, they couldn’t tell her if he had been admitted. No, no, no…

“They won’t tell me anything.” She dropped her hand and looked at her family. “He’s not answering. He’s not calling me back. No one will tell me
anything
.” Her voice rose, a note of hysteria audible even to her, and she clasped a palm over her mouth. “What do I do now?”

No one replied, but Hope straightened, her gaze riveted on the window. Unsettled by her sister’s expression, Angel spun. An unmarked silver unit purred up the driveway. The bottom of the world fell away, and she waited for the abyss to swallow her up.

The car stopped next to Darryl’s truck, and Cookie and Chris Parker climbed out. Cookie jogged up the walkway toward the front door. Freed from her painful paralysis, Angel burst out the salon door. “Cookie?”

He turned in her direction, his face haggard and strained. Her gaze locked onto the front of his shirt, stained with dirt and dried blood. Her knees gave and she sagged to the top step. Lord help her. It was true. It was him, and it didn’t matter how many messages she left.

“He’s dead.” The whisper slipped past her lips, the words unreal, nasty in their wrongness. She lifted her gaze to Cookie’s as he reached the steps. “He’s dead. Isn’t he?”

“No.” He shook his head and bent to kneel below her so they were eye to eye. “No, he’s not.”

The tears came, silent sobs tearing her throat. Cookie wrapped her close, tucking her face into the warmth of his neck. His familiar spicy scent enveloped her, and he held her, not the right man, but still her friend after all.

“He’s alive, Angel, but he’s hurt, pretty badly,” he murmured near her ear. “We need to go.”

She nodded, scrubbing the dampness from her cheeks. “And you’ll tell me what happened on the way?”

“I’ll tell you anything you need to know.” With gentle hands, he pulled her to her feet. “I promise.”

“I need to get…” She turned toward the house, but Hope was already there, pressing her purse into her hands.

“Go on.” Hope kissed her cheek and hugged her tight.

In the car, Cookie gave her a brief rundown of the accident. She twined her bag’s strap around and around her hand. Troy Lee had left the road at approximately sixty miles per hour, struck a culvert, flipped end over end, then sideways over and over. Horrific images enhanced by every adventure movie she’d ever seen played in her head.

“He was unconscious when we pulled him from the car.” Cookie darted a glance at her in the passenger seat. Chris Parker had ducked into the backseat and remained a silent presence behind her. With capable hands, Cookie drove quickly, the unit eating the miles. “But he’s responding to pain and he was making sounds before we intubated him, and that’s good. The front of the car crushed inward on impact, and the steering column…he has chest and abdominal trauma from that. The EMTs think he has facial fractures. Chris and I left the ER as they were taking him back, so I don’t know much more than that.”

Nodding, Angel closed her eyes. With fear holding her by the throat, she couldn’t have spoken if her life had depended on it. Imaginings invoked by Cookie’s description of Troy Lee’s injuries flickered on her eyelids. Memories overlaid them, seconds and seconds of belief, strung together in a montage of hope and love—a chilly night in a parking lot and his mouth descending for that first kiss, her porch light glinting off his hair as he grinned at her and held a fortune cookie aloft, strong arms around her as she revealed her pregnancy, blazing awe in his eyes when she told him she loved him, the feathery touch of his lips on the skin above her unborn child.

She held on to those moments, falling into them.

Vehicles spilled out of the small parking lot adjacent to the emergency room. People, many of them teenagers, milled on the steps outside. City officers directed the flow of traffic and performed crowd control.

“Jesus,” Chris breathed.

“Yeah,” Cookie responded, his voice tight. A Coney police officer waved him into the area behind the hospital, reserved for authorized personnel. Patrol cars—county, city and Georgia State Patrol—lined the back fence. Somehow, Cookie managed to jockey his unit into that row as well. Groups of uniformed officers dotted the area outside the ER, including the long, wide concrete ambulance dock.

Angel tucked her hair behind her ears and looked up at Cookie as he opened her door. “What are they all doing here? I thought there were only two vehicles involved.”

Cookie nodded. She stepped from the car and he took her elbow. “They’re here for Troy Lee.”

The show of brotherhood and respect left her breathless. As the wide doors drew closer and the reality beyond it bigger, gratitude grew for Cookie’s steady hand beneath her arm. Her whole body seemed weak and shaky, ready to collapse.

“Are you all right?” he murmured above her ear, fingers tightening.

She met concerned gray eyes. “No.”

Several officers spoke to him and Chris along the way. He nodded and made brief responses, but didn’t stop. Dodging the big doors, he guided her to a smaller side entrance and hit a buzzer there. Moments later, the lock clanged, and he tugged the door open and ushered her inside.

The chaos outside had only been a precursor. The ER interior bustled with urgent movement and imperative voices. A nurse ran down the hall to a cubicle, her arms laden with supplies. Outside that doorway, a small group of Chandler County officers, in uniform and out, hovered.

Cookie locked gazes with Tick Calvert as they reached the gathering. “What do we know?”

“They’re still working on him. His breathing is abnormal and his blood pressure is falling.” Tick jerked his chin toward the doorway. A pastel plaid curtain blocked their view. “They’re doing a sonogram, looking for internal bleeding. Tori called his stepmother. She and the sisters are on their way.”

His weary gaze flicked to Angel then back to Cookie’s, leaving the impression he’d say more if she hadn’t been there. Cookie squeezed her elbow. “It may be a while. Let’s get you out of the hallway.”