Emergency Reunion. Sandra Orchard
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“Is that true?”
She shook her head repeatedly this time.
“Someone’s doing it,” her partner hissed.
“Whoa, whoa. Back up a second.” Cole pulled out his notebook again. “These incidents, were they reported?”
“No, they’ve been little things. The kind of things that could happen to any paramedic. Crank calls. Getting sideswiped.” He motioned toward Sherri’s black eye. “Assaults.”
“So what makes you think that Eddie’s behind them? They all sound pretty random.”
“’Cause they only happen to her!”
The color drained from Sherri’s face, her white cheeks a sickeningly stark contrast to the bruises around her eyes and throat. “Dan, leave it alone,” she whispered.
Cole’s heart lurched. She was afraid. Anyone with two eyes could see it. So why didn’t she want the incidents investigated? Did she know who was behind the other attacks?
Dan shot a scowl toward the rear window of the cruiser. “A kid like that doesn’t hang around a neighborhood like this. No way did he just happen upon our ambulance. Not unless he’s breaking into old folks’ houses to grab their prescription meds.” His lips curled menacingly. “Either way, he needs to be locked up.”
“No argument here,” Zeke agreed, his rear resting on the cruiser’s hood, his legs stretched casually in front of him, his arms crossed.
Cole ignored him, focusing instead on Sherri as he clasped her elbow. “When I come by I’ll want details on every suspicious incident.” Her trembling reverberated through him, sending way too many unwelcome scenarios bouncing around his brain.
Her lips flattened into a silent line, and she stepped backward toward her truck.
“Okay?” he pressed. “I want to help you get to the bottom of what’s going on.”
Zeke snorted. “Why don’t you start by barking up your own family tree?”
Sherri wrapped her arms tightly around her middle and shook her head. “It’s not your problem, Cole.”
“I’m making it my problem.”
“What am I going to do with you?” Sherri’s boss rested his hip on the corner of his cluttered desk. “Every time I turn around you’re getting into trouble.”
The rain that had started soon after Eddie’s attack now pelted the office window as fast and furiously as her heart pinging her ribs. The ambulance base was a three-strike operation. Not that any of the incidents that had happened to her lately could really be called strikes, no matter how much her boss liked to intimate as much. Yes, she’d left the ambulance unlocked, but not one of their paramedics would have thought twice about leaving it unlocked in that neighborhood. “I’m sorry, sir,” she said.
“I’d like you to take a few days off.”
“That’s not necessary.” The last thing she wanted was free time. The busier she kept, the less time she had to think. To relive her dead partner’s shooting. She swallowed and caught herself wincing at the pain still plaguing her throat courtesy of Eddie’s stranglehold. “I’m fine. Really.” Or she would be if she could shut out the memory of Cole’s concerned gaze searching hers and his husky declaration that he was making her problem his problem.
“You may be fine,” her boss scolded, “but the station’s morale has hit rock bottom. One more incident like this and no one’s going to want to work with you. You know what they call you?”
“Yes, sir.” She lifted her chin. Princess Dark Cloud was actually a step up from what they used to call her—Ice Queen.
He studied her in silence for an unnervingly long moment. “Your partner Dan has convinced one of the sheriff’s deputies that the incidents haven’t been merely unlucky coincidences. Is that what you think?”
Sherri pressed her sweaty palms against her navy blue slacks, debating her response. Her boss wouldn’t want to hear what she really thought. But she heard the way her fellow officers still whispered about the shooting when they thought she wasn’t around. They blamed her for letting Luke die. They didn’t want her here and would do just about anything to drive her to quit. She was sure of it. But she was just as sure that God had let her survive for a reason.
She curled her fingers into fists. “I don’t know what to think, sir. But I assure you I can handle whatever curveballs are thrown at me.” Because there was no way she’d let Luke down a second time.
“Unfortunately, some of those curveballs are turning into boomerangs that are beating us upside the head.”
Tension hummed along her nerves. “Pardon me?”
“Reinhart, the widower whose wife died of a heart attack last month, is demanding an inquest. Claims your refusal to come up to his apartment without a police escort cost too many minutes. Minutes that could’ve saved his wife.”
“Sir, I’m deeply sorry for his loss, but the building was flagged for multiple drug-related incidents. I followed protocol.”
“Yes,” he said, but didn’t sound pleased about it. No doubt thinking if it hadn’t been her in that ambulance, he wouldn’t be facing an inquest.
“Any paramedic would have done the same. Did Dan say otherwise?” The men liked to be cowboys, but she’d thought they’d learned their lesson after what had happened to Luke. If she and Luke had followed protocol that morning, he might still be alive. Her chest tightened at thoughts of other choices that might have kept him alive.
Her boss shrugged. “Not in so many words.”
A rap on the door made her jump, but not nearly as fitfully as her insides trampolined when Cole stepped into view.
His gaze narrowed in on her cheek and his eyes darkened.
She finger-combed her hair over the butterfly bandage binding the cut his brother had given her.
“You must be Donovan.” Her boss beckoned Cole in. “You can use my office to question Sherri. Her shift is covered, so take as long as you need.”
Sherri nodded, straining to appear cooperative when everything inside her wanted to bolt.
He stepped through the door, and the room seemed to shrink, much like the crisply ironed shirt straining at his muscular shoulders.
She looked away, not wanting to notice how good he looked in a uniform. Not wanting to imagine that concern for her had etched those creases into his brow.
He might say her welfare came first, but she’d stopped believing in fairy tales long ago. Never mind how princelike he’d seemed today. He’d do the same for any innocent person. He was here to question her about the incidents, not to get reacquainted.
The sooner she told him what he wanted to know, the sooner he’d be on his way.
As her boss stepped out of the room, she sank into a chair and grasped for a light tone. “You’re his dream come true. If everything that’s happened goes on the record, he’ll claim I should be put on administrative leave for my own safety until you can figure out who’s behind everything.”
“Sounds like a smart move to me.”
“No,” she said firmly. “It’s not.”
His eyebrow arched curiously. “Why’s that?”
She tapped her fingers to her lips, fighting to rein in her galloping pulse. She couldn’t tell him that her days off were worse. That she’d rather fight off a drug-crazed kid than— She cut off the thought and casually slid her fingers from her mouth to tame an invisible