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The girl shook her head just like she had earlier with Amanda.
“I can’t tell you.”
“Mona, whoever it is you’re afraid of can’t get to you anymore,” Miss Walker said. “We’ll make sure of that. You have many people who care about your safety. Take Miss Garner here. She’s been standing guard outside the curtain. She almost didn’t let me in.”
“That’s right. Dr. Rowland and I won’t let anybody hurt you,” Amanda agreed. “Now, we also have Miss Walker. Our good friend, Detective Alden, will protect you, too. You just have to tell us who we need to protect you from.”
Mona took her time staring at Amanda, then Miss Walker, before she finally spoke again.
“It’s not Beau and I that you need to save.”
Gene paced the entrance of the emergency room, waiting for Patrick to arrive. His friend finally texted him back with a cryptic one liner.
Patrick: On my way to the hospital.
It eased his mind after wondering what was going on all day. Not.
The urgent blaring of an ambulance stopped him short and triggered his honed instinct to get ready for an incoming trauma. But as a nurse and an orderly ran out to meet the ambulance, he remembered his place. He wasn’t a part of the team there and had to ease back.
Is it Patrick?
His heart pounding, Gene moved to see who they were pulling out of the ambulance without being in the way. They pulled a man in his mid-forties out of the ambulance. He was half-awake, blood stained the shoulder of his ripped polo-shirt, the wound compressed with gauze to staunch the bleeding, and he had an IV attached to his arm.
“A through-and-through gunshot wound to the shoulder,” the paramedic relayed the information Gene knew had been radioed en route as well. The paramedic continued spewing out the latest vital readings as they wheeled the man into a trauma room and Dr. Greene, whom he’d met earlier, ran in.
A blonde woman with a tear-streaked face who had jumped down from the ambulance ahead of the patient moved to follow, but her legs buckled under her. Gene was just in time to catch her.
“I need a wheelchair!” he shouted to a nearby orderly as he helped the woman.
From the look of her—pale complexion with blood on her clothes and hands—she must’ve been involved in the shooting.
“Are you hurt, ma’am?” Gene asked as he lowered her to the wheelchair.
“No. My husband…” she said, pointing to the patient.
“I got her,” the orderly assured Gene. “I’ll take her in.”
“Make sure someone looks her over, too,” Gene said, unable to help himself.
The orderly nodded as he pushed the chair.
Shit. He’d think the ER out here would get less action, but apparently not.
“Gene!”
Patrick got out of a patrol car and hurried to where Gene stood. His wrinkled dress shirt was untucked, and there was a bloody tear on his sleeve.
“What the hell happened to you?” Gene quickly checked on the arm where taped gauze covered a wound.
“A bullet graze,” Patrick answered, his face hard. “It’s fine.”
Gene peeled the gauze half-way back and examined the wound as he matched Patrick’s steps into the emergency room.
“It’s not just a graze. You’ll need a few stitches.”
“Not important right now. Did you see the victims come in? Man, gunshot wound? His wife with him?”
“Yeah. Looks like they’re taking him up to the operating room now.”
