by Hornsby, Kim
Slam. Slam.
The ambulance pulled away into the mess of people blocking the way to the hospital.
“Get out of the way. Let the ambulance through.” Pete yelled, flapping his arms. Timing was essential in a gunshot wound. They’d get an IV started in the ambulance and try to stabilize her for the arrival at the ER. Pete stood rooted to the sidewalk, only feet from where Nikki lay fighting for her life. He remembered something. The baby!
They didn’t know she was pregnant.
The ambulance was in the street now, the siren engaged, lights flashing in the gloom of the dismal Seattle November afternoon. A second ambulance hadn’t left yet. He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Hey, paramedic!”
A police officer tried to push him back. “Move on, now, show’s over. Everybody keep moving. She’s gone.” People stood dumbfounded, unable to comprehend that Goldy, the famous rock star, had been shot on the sidewalk in front of them. “Break it up. Move on.”
Pete needed to get closer to that ambulance. “U.S. Marshal.” He flashed his badge and lunged toward the person opening the driver’s side door of the ambulance.
“Hey,” Pete yelled. “Paramedic!” He ducked under the yellow tape.
“Sorry, pal.” Pete’s ID card meant nothing to this law officer. The driver scanned the crowd.
“Hey!” Pete tried again. “Paramedic!” He waved to the man in the uniform.
Pete caught his eye. “She’s pregnant!” he yelled.
The guy squinted and turned toward Pete. “What?”
“Goldy is four months pregnant.” He tried to look credible by holding up his ID badge. “Trust me, she’s pregnant. Let them know.” He pointed in the direction of the ambulance.
The attendant walked closer, as close as he could get with the moving sea of people. “You sure?”
This time Pete didn’t have to shout. “Yeah,” he nodded. “The woman they just took in the ambulance, Goldy, is four months pregnant.”
“Okay. Thanks.” He ran back to the vehicle and Pete saw him grab the CB microphone.
“What hospital will she go to?” Pete asked the policeman who was trying to disperse the crowd.
“Can’t say.”
Pete held up his ID card. “I’m a U.S. Marshal. I was protecting her.” The words escaped before he thought.
“Well.” The policeman looked him dead in the eyes. “You did a lousy job, buddy. She just got shot.” The police moved on to yell at the press. “Keep moving. Goldy’s gone.”
Pete stood on the sidewalk, numb. He’d done a lousy job. Yes, he had. Although his job was to protect Connie, hadn’t he taken on Nikki’s welfare too when they escaped from Louisa Lake together? He was morally obligated to protect her and look what had happened.
She’d jumped out of the van and gotten shot. How did he know someone would shoot the beloved Goldy? Was it meant for Connie? He had to find out.
As Pete looked up to the buildings that surrounded the courthouse, he noticed people standing in all the windows of the skyscrapers. They’d been watching it all unfold. What they didn’t know was that it was his fault.
Sure, Connie was safe, but Nikki had gotten shot and might be dying right now. She’d jumped from the van knowing she didn’t look like a rock star, in a selfless act to help Connie.
The thought made Pete bite down hard on the inside of his lip, instead of swearing out loud. He had to find out what hospital they took her to and get a progress report. And Elvis. Did he go in the ambulance? He’d jumped out of the van with Nikki.
“Where’d they take Goldy?” He flashed his badge to a police officer. The man shook his head.
“Where’d they take her?” He held up his badge to another policewoman standing by her squad car with a radio in hand.
The officer shrugged.
For the first time, Pete thought of the scum who shot her.
“The shooter?” he asked a policewoman.
“Got him.” The police was distracted. “Probably thought it was Cathy Vanelli.”
Pete felt like spitting. The shooter had seen a woman jump from the van with the blond ponytail and assumed it was Connie. After all, Nikki didn’t exactly look classic Goldy in her sweat suit and no makeup.
Pete ran into the courthouse, through the scanner and down the halls to the secured area where Cathy Vanelli was waiting to take the stand. He had a job to finish, but his heart felt like a truck ran over it.
Tony had sunk to the floor in a ball, with his hands over his head. Hitchens looked at Pete sympathetically. “I called a counselor.”
Pete nodded and slid down the wall, to sit beside Tony. “Looks like Nikki will be fine, Tony.” He didn’t see any reason to make the kid feel worse.
“She’s okay?” Tony looked up with tear marks staining his cheeks.
Pete nodded. “She will be. They had to take her to the hospital, but it didn’t look bad at all.” He thought about telling a little white lie and dove in. “She said to tell you that she only hurt as bad as your last defeat in Stratego.”
Tony let a little smile slip from the corners of his mouth.
Pete stood and, closing in on Hitchens, whispered, “Can you get a status for me?” Pete nodded in Tony’s direction to let the officer know it wasn’t to be discussed around the kid.
“I’ll see what I can find out.” He took off down the hall, a phone to his ear.
Pete motioned to the window in the small room, where Connie was seated at a table, dabbing at her eyes. “Did she get called yet?” he asked the partner.
“Not yet.” He looked at Pete. “Why was Goldy with you guys?” Pete saw a strange look in the man’s eyes. A mix between envy and curiosity.
“Long story, but she was our neighbor at the last location.” Pete shrugged like it was no big deal and bent to Tony, who was staring off into space. “Hey, sport, do you want anything to eat or drink? Chips? You love chips.”
Tony shook his head.
“Want a chair?” Pete touched the boy’s shoulder.
Tony shook his head.
“Your Nintendo?” The bags from the truck, along with Hammie’s cage had been piled on a table down the hall.
Tony just shook his head, staring at the wall across from him. Pete squeezed his shoulder. “This’ll all be over soon.”
“Will Goldy stay the night in the hospital?” Tony used her stage name.
“Pretty sure they’ll keep her overnight, even just to have her sing.” Pete smiled at Tony and pointed to the policeman who was guarding that section of the hall. “He’ll let us know how she is.” Even if she died, Tony need never know, seeing he was disappearing into obscurity later tonight.
Tony and the child psychologist ducked into Connie’s vacated room for a chat.
Pete waited to hear something from the hospital, from Hitchens, from anyone. A raging storm whirled inside his head as he struggled to keep his emotions under control. Nikki was shot in the chest, and they were working on her at Seattle Medical Center. He didn’t know much about this sort of thing but assumed that meant she’d lost the baby. A profound sadness swept over Pete. If she lived, she’d be devastated.
Pete phoned all his contacts to get any bit of information, but nothing was known about the famous rock star and the bullet she’d taken, already hours ago. The talk around the courthouse was all about the basics. Goldy was shot. What was Goldy doing at the courthouse? It felt intrusive to hear others claim a piece of her.
“I have all her CD’s,” someone said.
“I saw her in concert when she was here in the summer, man. She was such a hottie.”
“I heard she looked pretty rough lying there on the sidewalk.”
“I loved her music.”
They talked like she was already dead and Pete had to bite his lips closed to prevent saying something he’d regret. What they didn’t know was that the woman who got shot was Nikki Crossland, not Goldy. And he knew Nikki well. He knew stuff about her that no one else in the world knew. Now l
ook at him. He couldn’t even get through to find out if she was dead. It seemed like once he’d left Nikki’s circle, others rushed in, taken over, and now he couldn’t get in again.
He’d drive over to Seattle Medical and find out how she was, as soon as he could. For now though, he was still on the Vanelli case, and his first obligation was to see this through. His work as a U.S. Marshal was now measured in hours, possibly minutes. Cathy had been visibly nervous, going into the courtroom, even though every precaution had been taken to protect her before and after her testimony. She’d be fine. The courtroom was closed for her moment on the stand.
From what he could put together, the scum who shot Nikki had been standing right in front of the rock star and was nailed by the press before he’d fired another bullet. Some photographer looked sideways, saw the gun and busted his camera over the guy’s head. The shooter tried to run, but he was an older guy and there hadn’t even been a chase. Probably some chump who owed Cassius a favor. And, when the shooter heard he’d shot Goldy the rock star, not Cathy Vanelli, he broke out in tears and asked the police to shoot him right then and there. Supposedly his life was as good as over, having missed his target.
See how it feels to have your life over.
The shooter agreed to trade information for a lighter sentence, and Pete guessed how it would go down. They’d get incriminating evidence on Cassius or at least someone high up in exchange for the shooter getting seven years, one of it on probation. He’d be killed as soon as he got out.
If Nikki didn’t make it, Pete would be begging someone to shoot him. The guilt would eat him alive, along with the knowledge that he hadn’t told her how he felt. Hell, he didn’t even know how much he felt for her until that morning.
“Heard anything about Goldy?” he asked Hitchens when he saw him at the coffee machine later.
“Just that she took one bullet to the shoulder.”
As much as Pete didn’t want her to be shot anywhere, the shoulder wasn’t nearly as bad as the gut. He should know. Eight years earlier a bullet had pierced his back, narrowly missing his kidneys. It had taken almost a year to get the strength back from his gunshot wound. The effects of that accident slowed him down even now.
****
Pete was outside the closed courtroom when word came down from HQ that he’d be needed another twenty-four hours. Connie’s testimony would continue tomorrow. Pete was to take her to a safe house for the night.
Dammit.
Going to the hospital was out. He’d have to get information about Nikki by phone. Feeling helpless, he pulled Officer Hitchens aside on his way out of the courthouse and pleaded his case. “Can you find out how Goldy is doing? How bad it is, and if I can talk to her?”
Hitchens nodded and said he’d see what he could do. By now, everyone suspected Pete’s investment in the case.
When Pete got to the safe house, he phoned workers who’d been on shift at the Trauma Center when Goldy had been admitted to the ER. No one was talking. Where were all the nurses and hospital workers who wanted to be on TV? Surely there would be someone who’d seen her get wheeled in, knew something, and wanted air time.
Connie and Tony sat down to pizza at the dining room table of the hotel suite. Pete turned on the TV to see if there was any news about Goldy. News stations often had information before anyone. Even if they were telling people to stand by, it would be better than hearing nothing.
The newspaper’s headline that day had said “Goldy Shot Downtown” and stated that she was involved in the Cathy Vanelli case. They also reported that Goldy was four months pregnant as stated by a man who’d called the information to an ambulance attendant several times.
Lowering himself tentatively to sit on the edge of the couch, he scanned the stations in search of a Goldy photo.
Connie drifted over to sit down with him. “I feel terrible for Nikki. I hope Elvis is with her.”
He couldn’t believe with all Connie had on her mind, she included Nikki and Elvis in her thoughts.
“I’m sure he is.” He patted Connie’s arm absently, then noticed the police at the table watching him. Watching them. “How you doing after that ordeal in court?”
“I’m fine,” she said.
A photograph of Goldy filled the TV screen and Pete turned up the volume.
“And topping the headlines tonight is the shooting of beloved rock star Goldy Burnside, in front of the King County Courthouse in Seattle, where the Tony Vanelli murder trial is taking place.” The anchor woman’s face was appropriately grave as she recounted the details of the shooting. The split screen showed the photo of Pete on the dock at Louisa Lake next to a Goldy publicity shot.
“Oh crap, haven’t we seen that enough?” Pete groaned.
The anchor continued, “Although it isn’t clear what she was doing at the courthouse, speculation is that she jumped from a van being driven by the unidentified man who was at the rock star’s property only a few weeks ago. At that time, it was reported that he was a friend to the rock icon. Although we have not identified the man, we have confirmation that he is a neighbor at her summer home and, at the time the photograph was taken, he reported that Goldy was not on site. However, the allegedly married neighbor was photographed at the crime scene only minutes after the shooting, trying to get through the crowd to Goldy.”
Next, they showed video footage of Pete yelling that Goldy was pregnant. The look of desperation on his face scared Pete more than the speculation he was a married neighbor. This was a side he’d never seen in himself, and he closed his eyes.
“The unidentified man is seen here, telling the paramedics that Goldy is four months pregnant. According to bystanders, he yelled it several times, trying to get the attention of the paramedic, as well as yelling to Goldy that he loved her, calling her Nikki, which is Goldy Burnside’s given name.”
The next tidbit turned out to be the grand finale, the piece de resistance. Someone had taken a video of Pete yelling, near the back of the ambulance. The camera zoomed in to capture him yelling. The sound was compromised but intelligible, and they’d subtitled the shouter’s message.
“Nikki, hang in there! It’s Pete, Nikki. I love you! Be strong!”
Chapter 22
Pete wiped his unshaven face and groaned.
Connie reached over and grabbed his hand.
“Yeah, but how is she?” he asked the television. If they hadn’t reported her dead, she was probably still alive.
He switched to another channel.
“...otherwise known to the world as Goldy, the infamous rock star, was shot and injured.”
Injured was good.
“It was thought the bullet was meant for Cathy Vanelli, high profile witness to the Tony Vanelli murder in Seattle, last July.”
They showed a split screen of the two women in question. Anyone could see that Goldy and Cathy didn’t look alike. Only the hair was similar, and the announcer said as much, going on about the shooter’s identity and his association with Cassius Zetti.
“Goldy was rushed to Seattle Trauma Center where Doctor Drummond Vogan, removed a bullet from her shoulder.”
When they said the word “shoulder,” Pete jumped up. “Yes!” He punched the air. “Shoulder! Yes!” She hadn’t been hit in the chest after all. “Whew! The shoulder is good.” He turned to Connie and nodded.
“Yes, the shoulder is very good.” Connie turned back to the TV.
The reporter continued. “No information is available about Goldy Burnside’s condition, but we are expecting an interview with Dr. Vogan within the hour. We have no current information about the alleged pregnancy or the identity of the man in the video, last seen with Goldy Burnside at Louisa Lake in eastern Washington, where Goldy has a house. This photo was taken only weeks ago on the retired rock star’s dock. At that time, Goldy issued a statement saying the man was her married neighbor. Seattle Trauma Center has taken security measures, and Goldy is under protective custody, as is usually the case in a situation li
ke this.”
The anchor went on to talk about Goldy’s daughter Quinn, who attended the University of Washington, and Goldy’s ex-husband Burn Burnside, who they interviewed only minutes before the broadcast. Both photos flashed on the screen. Reporters had caught Burn just outside LAX, running to catch a flight to Seattle. He stopped briefly to say that he was concerned for Goldy, but knew she was tough and would pull through. They asked him what her condition was and Burn said simply, “I’ll know when I get there. Pray for her.”
The newscast described Goldy’s twenty-year career, Burn’s career, and then reported that although no one knew what Goldy’s connection was to Cathy Vanelli, it was speculated that they were friends. There was no other reason why Goldy would’ve jumped into the group of reporters.
Cathy rubbed her temples and turned to Pete. “I didn’t figure that out until now.” She sounded so weary that he put his hand on her shoulder and gave it a little squeeze. He and Cathy had come a long way and it would soon be over.
“The shoulder is fixable, Tony.”
Pete tried to call the hospital again, but couldn’t get through on his name or credentials. Nikki would be in recovery, doped up, unable to take his call, anyways.
He’d asked his boss and Officer Hitchens to find out something for him, but hadn’t heard back from either. For a U.S. Marshal who was a master at surveillance, he felt useless.
Cathy looked at Pete. “Now you know what I’ve known.”
Pete sat down beside her on the leather couch. “What’s that?” He dropped his head to his hands.
“That you are in love with Nikki.”
“Well…” What could he say? “What I said…it was…more or less said in the heat of the moment…” He snuck a look at Cathy, who was giving him a dirty look.
“Why are men so thick sometimes?” She sighed.
“Okay, I’m in love with Nikki.” Pete smirked at her, then looked at Tony. “Who wouldn’t love Nikki?” If he hadn’t been so concerned about her life, he might have felt proud of his declaration.
“When you see her again, please tell her that I’m sorry she was shot,” Cathy said.