by Anne Frasier
“Call 911,” David repeated.
Sweet jerked to attention and made the call, including a cautionary warning about the powder.
Elise let out a moan, and David’s heart jumped in his chest. This was what hope felt like.
Two minutes later they were outside in the blinding sunlight, temps over a hundred. He placed her in the shade of a pitiful excuse for a tree, noted that her skin was ice cold. Maybe due to the blood loss. Maybe the inhaled TTX. Maybe both.
“Lie still,” he said when she struggled to sit up. “You’ve been shot.” He could hear the ambulance getting closer.
“Not shot,” she said faintly, the fresh air seeming to bring her around. “He bit me.”
Holy hell. David moved the fabric of her shirt aside to get a better look at the wound. Reassured that she didn’t have a bullet in her, he wiped a finger across her bloody lips.
“And kissed me.”
Her words sent a chill through him.
“Is Tremain dead?” she asked.
Tremain? She was delirious.
The ambulance arrived, followed by coroner Hollis Blake and crime scene personnel, who began pulling on hazmat suits and respirators. The emergency medical tech said Elise’s veins were as flat as tapeworms. Finally, after too many pokes, she was hooked up to an IV and placed on a gurney. They were ready to take her away when she stopped them with a firm command, followed by an explanation. “I’m not leaving until I know he’s dead.”
To placate her, David called Hollis, who was now inside, and asked about the men.
“One person is still alive,” she said.
“Do you have an ID on him?”
“No, but he’s a skinny guy with meth sores. He was a little farther away from the powder. Strangest thing. There’s a man here with half his face gone. I can’t believe he lived with that kind of destruction. Looks like a gunshot injury to me.”
David tried to keep his voice level. “Recent?”
“Within the last year or two.”
“Run his prints as soon as possible.”
“I can do it right now with a fingerprint app.”
He heard footsteps; then she was back a minute later. “It pulled up a twenty-point match.” Her voice sounded strange. “And you’re not going to believe this.”
“Try me.”
“Atticus Tremain.”
Watching Elise, David told the coroner thanks and disconnected. “Twenty-point match.” And then the words she was waiting for. “Tremain. And he’s dead.”
She let out a relieved breath. He’d tell her about Remy later.
“I suppose this means things are going to be really awkward between us now,” he said as the EMTs loaded her and the gurney into the ambulance.
Elise closed her eyes and smiled. “Undoubtedly.”
CHAPTER 51
Jump on my back.”
“I’m not going to jump on your back. Complete it without me.”
“Come on.” David braced his hands on his knees. “We only have a half mile left.”
“I don’t think it counts if someone carries me.”
“I’m not going for a gold star here. I just want us to cross the finish line together.”
Elise and David stood in the middle of the street while Run for the Animals participants with numbers on their chests moved past them. Avery was long gone. Elise figured he’d finished at least thirty minutes ago. They’d jogged and walked over twelve ungodly miles, and David didn’t even seem tired.
“I don’t know why I agreed to this,” she said.
It had been only two weeks since Atticus Tremain had tried to make a meal of her. Certainly too soon for something so strenuous. The healing bite on her stomach burned, and her leg was screaming. And David was still bent at the waist, waiting.
She laughed and shook her head—then jumped on his back. It wasn’t really a jump. Kind of an awkward clamber. He grunted and hefted her higher, his hands braced under her legs while she linked her arms around his upper chest, her chin resting on his shoulder.
Before the race he’d told her he wasn’t taking the job in Ohio. And right now the team was back. Elise, David, Avery, and John. Evidence had been found at the bakery and Remy’s house, unequivocally proving his guilt. The weirdest thing? He’d won a posthumous award for his Johnny Mercer doughnuts. And knowing Savannah, the doughnuts wouldn’t die with Remy. Elise expected knockoffs to begin showing up at tourist establishments around the city.
“This is ridiculous,” Elise said.
“I’m here to entertain.”
The day after the warehouse incident went down, Elise had insisted upon going to the morgue to see Atticus Tremain. She’d touched his cold skin, stared at him, taken photos that she’d no doubt pull up whenever she experienced a sick sense of dread and need to reassure herself that he was really and truly dead. Her father had checked out Remy in a similar way, muttering something about the bastard being dead for a second time.
No one was quite sure how Remy and Tremain had met. The meth head, if he could be believed, thought it had been at a halfway house where Tremain had lived for a while after being medically treated as a John Doe.
So far Elise and David hadn’t talked about their night together, but they would. Sometime. Maybe when she got back from her visit to Seattle to see Audrey.
They crossed the finish line.
Sweet, Strata Luna, Avery, and John Casper were there, clapping and cheering. She and Sweet had somewhat reconciled. David had related her father’s reaction when they both thought she might be dead. Whatever their painful history, it was obvious she meant something to him. Maybe someday she’d even move him to her short list of people she cared about most.
David eased Elise off his back and turned around to steady her with both his hands. Then, before she saw it coming, he smiled and kissed her in front of the whole damn world.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2012 Sharyn Morrow
Anne Frasier is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than twenty novels that range from thrillers to memoirs. She is a RITA winner for her romantic suspense books and a recipient of the Daphne du Maurier Award for paranormal romance. Her thrillers have been featured by the Mystery Guild, the Literary Guild, and the Book of the Month Club. Her memoir The Orchard received a B+ review in Entertainment Weekly, was an O, the Oprah Magazine Fall Book Pick, was named an American Library Association “One Book, One Community” read, and was singled out as a Librarians’ Best Book of 2011. Her most recent novel, Truly Dead, is the highly anticipated fourth installment in the Elise Sandburg series.
Frasier currently divides her time between Saint Paul, Minnesota, and her writing studio in rural Wisconsin.