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“The shooter was Mackenzie Morales. She’s a fugitive. Wanted by the FBI. I shot her in self-defense.”
I was spelling out Cindy’s name and Mackie’s when incoming sirens drowned out my voice and the ambulance wailed to a stop. Paramedics swarmed around us and questioned Cindy as they lifted her onto a board.
I struggled to my feet, then stepped over to where Morales lay in her bloodied white drapery. No one was there anymore. No one home at all. Maybe Mackie was already checking in at the gates to Hell. “Room key, please. Mr. Randy Fish is expecting me.”
Joe called out to me.
“Julie is with Mrs. Rose,” he said of our neighbor across the hall.
I said, “Great. Joe. I’m going to the hospital with Cindy.”
He said, “Take this.”
He handed me my phone, then put his arms around me. I think I was shaking as I held him tight.
The EMTs were closing the doors to the bus, so I broke away from my husband and told him, “I’ll call you.”
I never made it into the ambulance because Jacobi was standing between me and the doors.
“Jacobi. You see what happened here? It’s Morales. She’s the one who shot Cindy. I have to go with her,” I said.
“You can’t leave, Boxer. We’ve got a fatality here. You know that.”
I had no fight left and it wouldn’t have helped if I had. I said, “I need a minute.”
I climbed up into the back of the bus and said to Cindy, “I’ll see you later. You’re my hero. And I love you. And Cindy? You’re going to be fine.”
I stepped back down to the street. I gave my gun to Jacobi and walked with him to his car.
CHAPTER 109
MY ARMS WERE full of flowers when I burst into Cindy’s room at UCSF Medical Center.
Cindy shouted out, “Thank God the flowers have arrived.”
I looked around. There were flowers everywhere, lining the wi
ndow sill and on the various dinky tables, with some potted things on the floor.
“Who died?” I asked.
Cindy laughed. “Not me.”
She was in the bed that was cranked up to sitting position, wearing a little pink robe. Right beside her in the bed, wearing oversize denims and a navy-blue SFDA sweatshirt, was Yuki Castellano Brady.
“Hey—hey,” I said.
And, yep, Claire Washburn, MD, was hovering over the two of my girls with a plastic cup of neon-green Jell-O and a spoon.
They all looked very merry.
“You think this is lime Jell-O, don’t you?” said Claire. “Well, you’d be wrong. This is my own brew. Made with Margarita mix.”
I laughed. “That explains everything.”
Since all the vases and vaselike objects were in use, I went to the bathroom, took the lid off the toilet tank and dropped the flowers in, stems down.
When I returned, Yuki said, “There’s a no-crying rule. Okay, Linds?”
