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“Not much longer,” she told him softly.
Key in hand, she picked up her overnight bag and stepped carefully along the walkway, which was growing slippery, then up the exterior stairs to the second floor. Two-twelve was halfway down the balcony, and she let herself into a clean but cold room with a queen bed that, when she switched on the overhead, looked like it sagged a bit in the center.
She found the thermostat and turned up the heat, then, shivering, propped herself on the bed. Her brain was full of the events of the past few days. There were so many things to think about, she felt slightly ADD, her mind jumping from Catherine and the questions surrounding her sister’s death to Bancroft Bluff and the Donatella murders, and how they impacted Hale St. Cloud and his family, to the growing worry she felt about Kristina and the allegations that she’d been having an affair with someone named Charlie, to the fact that she, Savannah, was about to go into childbirth and give her sister and husband a child.
And come Monday, she would be relegated to desk duty, which, although it wasn’t a bad thing, made her feel cast aside and useless, and she supposed that was all just the baby-growing hormones at work, but she still felt it. Keenly.
She’d stuffed the pages of Bancroft Development’s financials that Ella Blessert had copied for her into her messenger bag, and now she pulled out the thick pile and laid it on the bed, starting from the furthest date back and going forward. She’d barely started reading, however, when her eyes began watering from weariness and she began to yawn.
A brief nap. That was all she needed.
Lying back on the bed, she thought she should take her shoes off, but she was too tired to care. She tried to focus instead on only one aspect of the investigation, but for reasons unclear to her, all she could think about was Kristina and her joy when she’d learned Savannah was pregnant.
Call me, she mentally ordered her sister as she drifted off.
As fast as he drove to the Carmichael house, the Seaside police and EMTs beat Hale to the site. Ian and Astrid were huddled on one side of the building as snow swirled around them and fluttered in the flashlight beams and squares of light from the windows. Hale slammed the TrailBlazer into park and leapt onto the ground, slipping a little in the dusting of snow. He rushed forward but was blocked by an officer, who told him they had a crime scene and he couldn’t enter, and at that moment a gurney with a body on it was carried through the front door.
One look and he knew. Kristina.
“Oh, God. My God.” His legs threatened to buckle.
“Sir?”
He swam back to the present with an effort. A young officer wearing a Seaside police uniform and a name tag that read MILLS was standing in front of him. Hale blinked. “Where are they taking her?”
“I don’t know, sir. You recognize the victim?”
“My wife. Kristina . . . St. Cloud.”
He brushed past the officer and asked the EMTs, “Where are you going?”
“Ocean Park Hospital.”
He turned to leave, but Officer Mills was in front of him again. “An officer will meet you at the hospital, Mr. St. Cloud.”
Hale barely heard him as he ran full bore and skidded to his vehicle. A thousand images swirled through his brain in an instant: meeting her at the coffee shop, sharing their first Christmas, a midnight kiss, making love to her . . . and then her sudden disinterest.
“Hale?”
It was Astrid Carmichael. Her voice a wavering plea in the cold night air. To both Astrid and Ian, he said tersely, “It’s Kristina. I’m going to the hospital.”
Ian Carmichael nodded once, and his wife buried her face in her husband’s chest.
The ambulance pulled out with full lights and siren, the wailing woo-woo-woo-woo screaming into the night, with Hale right on the emergency vehicle’s bumper. He drove somewhat carefully, because of the worsening weather, though he wanted to rip down the highway. Nevertheless, he was only minutes behind the ambulance as they reached Ocean Park Hospital.
Slamming his car into park, he half ran, half jogged through the carpet of snow to the ER, where sliding glass doors shifted backward as he burst through. Kristina’s gurney was just being pushed past double swinging doors controlled by a push button. Hale followed right after it, slipping inside before the automatic doors shut him out. Kristina’s eyes were closed, and her face was white.
“Kristina,” he said.
“Excuse me, sir. Are you a relative?” A woman was suddenly standing in front of him—a nurse—blocking his view.
“That’s my wife,” he said, holding on tightly to his control with everything he possessed. Dear Jesus, was she going to make it? What happened? What happened?
“If you could wait over here . . .” She gestured toward a chair in a curtained bay that was empty.
“Where’s she going?”
“They’re doing tests and prepping her for possible surgery.”
