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“Yes, we’re doing just fine.” He tugged on the chain she wore around her neck, slid the diamond pendant he’d once given her out from under her shirt where she most often wore it. “You were angry with me when I gave you this. Yet you wear it more often than anything I’ve ever given you but your wedding ring.”
“You told me you loved me when you gave it to me. It pissed me off. And it scared me. I guess maybe I wear it because it doesn’t piss me off anymore. But it still scares me sometimes.”
Though his cheek rested on the top of her head, he traced a finger unerringly along the mark the knife had left on her throat. “Love’s a scary business.”
She turned into him. “Why don’t we terrify each other?”
Her lips were a breath from his when the ’link beeped.
“Ah, damn it, damn it.” She crawled over the bed to answer it.
Eve burst out of the elevator into ICU, strode down the deathly quiet corridor. She hated hospitals more than morgues. She slapped her badge on the counter at the nurses’ station. “I need to see whoever’s in charge. I need to see Moniqua Cline.”
“Dr. Michaels is in with her now. If you’d just wait—”
“In there?” Eve jabbed a finger toward a set of thick glass doors. She was through them before the nurse could do more than let out a piping sound of protest.
She knew who she was looking for. She’d gotten a solid description from the med-tech who’d helped transport the victim into the ER.
She passed a glass-walled room, scanned the bed inside. The woman lying on it looked a hundred and fifty and was tethered to so many machines she no longer looked human.
Give me a full blast, right in the heart, Eve thought, and end my time clean.
In the next room the man was much younger, and cocooned in a thin transparent tent.
She found Moniqua one door down, with the doctor scanning the readout on a monitor while his patient lay white as death and still as stone.
He glanced over with annoyance, and a frown marred the face set off by a natty beard and mustache the color of paprika.
“You’re not allowed in here.”
“Lieutenant Dallas, NYPSD.” She offered her badge. “She’s mine.”
“On the contrary, Lieutenant. She’s mine.”
“Is she going to make it?”
“I can’t say. We’re doing all that can be done.”
“Look, I don’t want the company line. Two other women haven’t made it to the hospital. They went straight to the morgue. MT told me she had a cardiac incident, a bp that hit the cellar, and complications from the OD. I need to know if she’s going to come out of it enough to tell me who put her here.”
“And I can’t tell you. Her heart was damaged. We’re unable to determine as yet if there was brain damage as well. Her vitals are low and weak. She’s in a coma. Her system’s been so compromised by the drugs it’s a minor miracle she was aware enough to call nine-eleven.”
“But she did, and I say that makes her tough.” She looked down at Moniqua, willed her to consciousness. “The drugs were administered without her knowledge. Are you aware of that?”
“That hasn’t been confirmed, but I’ve heard the media reports on the two murders.”
“He doused her with the two illegals, then he raped her. I need someone in here with a rape kit.”
“I’ll have one of the
physician’s assistants take care of it.”
“I need a police rep, too, to collect whatever evidence she’s got in her.”
“I know the drill,” Michaels said with a snap of impatience in his voice. “Get your rep, get your evidence. That’s not my concern. Keeping her alive is.”
“And mine is pinning the son of a bitch who put her here. That doesn’t make her less to me. You’ve examined her? Personally?”
