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“Check for ID?”
“No time, but there’s a phone,” I answered, pointing to it.
“Can I get some light and a stretcher over here?” I heard the paramedic yell at the same time Mac told one of the deputies to get the phone and put it in an evidence bag.
I saw the blood as soon as the EMTs lifted the woman to put her on the stretcher. The grass below her body was covered in it.
“Gunshot wound is my guess,” Mac muttered.
If Mac was right, I had accelerated the woman’s death. “Jesus Christ, I was doing chest compressions.”
Mac put his hand on my shoulder. “You did what you thought needed to be done. Based on what I see, you couldn’t have saved her anyway.”
I scrubbed my face with my hand. Didn’t matter what Mac said, what I’d done was stupid.
“You headed back to the ranch?” Mac asked as we watched the ambulance pull away.
“Nah. I’ll follow ’em.”
Mac scrunched his eyes. “Decker…this ain’t in your jurisdiction.”
I shook my head. “I don’t have a jurisdiction, Sheriff.”
Mac looked over to where his deputies were surveying the scene. “Let’s be on our way. Find out the official time of death, and see if we can figure out who this girl was.” Before I walked back to my truck, Mac opened the door of the patrol car and grabbed the bag containing the cell and another pair of gloves. “See if you can crack this thing open.”
2
Mila
There was an elevator in my building, but I always took the stairs. I liked the exercise, although four flights didn’t exactly get my heart rate up.
Tonight, like every other night, I couldn’t wait to cross the threshold from the hallway into my studio apartment where I could leave the chaos of the city behind and enter my very own Greek Island oasis.
My walls were painted an aqua blue, and I’d covered my sofa and bed with brightly colored patterns and prints. There were red geraniums in my kitchen, and on my tiny patio, two pots of bougainvilleas. They died every winter, but in the spring, I just planted more.
I tossed my satchel on the end of the bed, kicked off my shoes, removed my hot pink, raw silk blouse, tossed it on the bed too, and then padded into a kitchen that wasn’t big enough to fit two people at a time. I opened the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of rosé.
It was a hot and humid eighty-four degrees outside, even at six in the evening, but inside my apartment, it was a cool seventy-two. One benefit of living in a four-hundred-square-foot space was it didn’t take much to cool it in the summer or heat it in the winter. And even as hot as it was, it still was nowhere near the blazing temps of Texas in July.
I unzipped my skirt and tossed it on the pile at the end of my bed, tempted to sit in front of the air conditioner in nothing but my bra and panties. But I couldn’t do that. Any minute, my friend and neighbor, Adler, would knock on my door mere seconds before he used the key he kept for emergencies to let himself in.
I had enough trouble trying to convince Ad that I wouldn’t date him now or ever—no matter how many times he asked. If he walked in on me scantily attired, he’d assume he’d worn me down enough to change my mind.
It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy Adler’s company, and he was certainly attractive enough, with his sandy blond hair and hazel eyes. He loved to go to the theater and galleries and roam the streets of Boston, just like I did. He was well-read and a great conversationalist, but when it came to chemistry, there wasn’t any. He might as well be my brother, not that I had one.
Then again, maybe it wasn’t Adler at all—I was the one with the problem.
I heard Adler’s anticipated knock and ducked into the bathroom with my shorts and top in hand.
“Hey,” I said, coming out while still fastening the bottom button on my blouse.
“No need to get dressed on my behalf,” he said, eyeing the pile of clothes at the end of my bed and then looking me up and down.
“How are you, Ad?”
“Hot,” he said, plopping down in the chair I’d been sitting in.
“Glass of wine?” I asked, escaping into the kitchen.
