Amy Maxwell & the 7 Deadly Sins (The Amy Maxwell Series Book 2)

by Heather Balog

  River? What the heck is he doing here?

  He slaps Jason on the back as Jason lowers my body on the gurney that the waiting ambulance has set up.

  “Ouch!” I yelp because River’s tap to Jason’s shoulder has jostled him, causing Jason to momentarily smack my foot on the side of the gurney. And momentarily is enough for me to see stars.

  Man, that really, really hurts! I suck in my breath as I contemplate whether this is more or less painful than childbirth, which is pretty much my barometer for any kind of pain I, or anyone in my household, should be experiencing. For example, I would only allow Roger to take one Percocet every four hours when he pulled a back muscle because it was “less painful than childbirth”, but when he passed a kidney stone, I gave him two and even snuck it in under the four hour mark because it was “almost as painful as childbirth” and I felt sorry for him (slightly). I would rate this pain as a three Percocet every two hours kind of pain (which is still not childbirth pain, but it’s pretty darn close).

  “Sorry,” Jason apologizes while grimacing. He now proceeds to lower me to the gurney with care.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask River, clenching my teeth. A rather full figured female EMT wanders over to the gurney halfheartedly. I guess watching the standoff was exciting for her and she is now unenthused about having to actually provide medical care for someone. She tugs off my shoe without unlacing it and the stars I saw a moment ago are nothing compared to these fireworks. This is a “please give me an epidural NOW” type of pain, and I bite my lip to prevent myself from uttering a blood curdling scream directly into her eardrum. I think I’ve seen professional wrestlers handle each other more gently than she’s handling my injured foot right now.

  “I got your message so I called my cousin Jason right away,” River is telling me as I white-knuckle the sides of the gurney.

  This statement actually distracts me from the pain.

  “Your cousin Jason?” I squawk, whipping my head around to stare at both Jason and River. They are standing shoulder to shoulder next to the gurney and despite the obviously dissimilar skin tones (I have a feeling River hasn’t seen the sun since he was a toddler), I can see the similarities in their faces. They have the same eyes and nose and oh my God, they have the same shape of their lips.

  I shudder as I recall how many times I fantasized about kissing those lips (and the one time I actually did). I am now thoroughly disgusted with myself.

  “Yeah, our mothers are sisters. Well, were sisters until Aunt Mary was killed last year. Remember I told you my cousin was a cop? Well, he’s actually a DEA agent but…” River is trying to explain.

  “I know what he is,” I manage to snap, nearly back to my old self, ignoring the fact that my foot may possibly be broken. The pain is still stinging, but starting to become numb since the EMT dropped an ice pack on my foot.

  “He asked me to keep an eye on you when he found out we were going to the same college-”

  “What?” I am now in a fully erect position, staring down Jason. “Why would he do that?” I glower at Jason and expect him to shrink back from my glare. He doesn’t he must be immune to my stare just like Roger is. “You had an undercover cop following me?”

  “Oh, I wasn’t undercover or anything, Amy. And I’m not a cop yet,” River is telling me. “I just took all the same classes as you…”

  “And befriended me. So that’s why you followed me and sat next to me and offered to help me with the group project. I was your assignment,” I mutter. I should have known that River wouldn’t have sought me out if he didn’t have an ulterior motive. Did you really think you were the type of person River would hang out with voluntarily, Amy?

  River shrugged. “But it was fun. You’re cool,” he assured me with a smile. “Trust me, I would have just done the bare minimum if I didn’t enjoy your company.”

  I try to be buoyed by that comment, but I am too busy being annoyed by Jason’s distrust of me. “Why did you think I couldn’t handle going back to school, Jason?”

  “It’s not that I didn’t think you could handle school. I did it for exactly this reason,” Jason mutters while raising his eyebrows. “Trouble seems to find you Amy Maxwell.”

  “Once!” I argue while poking my finger in the air. “Once! There was no need to sic your nephew on me!” I am not sure whether I am annoyed that Jason would think I need babysitting at college or flattered that he was thinking of me to begin with. I am considering playing up the annoyed angle while secretly being flattered.

  “He’s my cousin,” Jason corrects with a coy smile.

  “Whatever!” I reply with annoyance.

  “Aren’t you glad I had you followed then?” Jason asks with a grin. I look away, ignoring those sparkling eyes and those kissable lips…

  “I still want to know what you’re doing here? Why didn’t you just call the cops, Jason? Isn’t this a little out of your jurisdiction?” I remark with sarcasm, enjoying the little dig.

  I have to assume I am being mean to Jason because I am in pain. There is no other logical explanation. Other than the fact that I am mortified that he had to come along and rescue me again and that irritates me. I am a strong independent woman. I am not one of those sissy women who need a man to save them. I am not a damsel in distress. I do not need to be rescued by a knight in shining armor…except, apparently I am and I do.

  My thoughts are interrupted by the sound of gunfire. Not a shot. Gunfire. Rapid.

  I bolt up on the gurney and scream, “What was that?”

  “Lie back down,” the EMT instructs, while pushing my body to the gurney. She is craning her own neck to view over the crest of the hill as she repeatedly blindly jabs me in the arm with a needle. I normally would be screaming at her ineptitude, but the pain from my foot was masking any pain from being frequently poked in the vein. And the gun fire. That’s a hell of a distraction.

  “I don’t want to lie back down!” I shout as I try to swing my good leg over the side. “I need to help my sister! And my niece!” I yelp, suddenly remembering the reason we’re in this predicament to begin with. “My niece has been kidnapped! I’ve got to find her!” I glare at him. “The police have to find Jillian! I have to talk to the police!” I realize I now sound like a hysterical female but I can’t help it.

  “Stop it, Amy,” Jason orders in an annoyed voice. “You’re injured. Just stay still and do what you’re told and definitely don’t get involved. You know what happens when you get involved with police activity.” He eyes me sternly and I comply, but not without sticking my tongue out at him. “We’ve got this under control. Please trust me.”

  “Oh, just like last time? When I was stuck in a cabin with a killer for two days?”

  “The reason you were there is because you didn’t listen to begin with,” Jason points out. “Let us worry about your sister and your niece. It’s being taken care of.”

  I ignore his snide comment again and ask, “What was that noise? Is everything okay?”

  Jason grimaces and holds up his finger as he fiddles with a walkie talkie, indicating either that I need to be quiet or wait a minute. Or maybe both. But I can’t be quiet and I can’t wait a minute because my sister is in a car with two (maybe just one?) kidnappers and gunfire just erupted in her general location. Excuse me if I cannot seem to calm down. Stuff like this doesn’t happen to me on a regular basis, although it’s starting to shape up to be an annual thing. I might be able to start writing a Christmas newsletter.

  Merry Christmas dear family and friends! This year saw a lot of changes for the Maxwells! Allie got straight A’s! Evan learned to go on the potty! Lexie earned another Girl Scout badge that Amy will forget to attach to her sash! Amy was held at gunpoint…again!

  Jason is holding the walkie close to his ear and moving away from me with a troubled expression on his face. I can hear the garbled transmission but I can’t make out what anyone is saying. It sounds panicky. That does not calm me down.

  “Can’t
you do something, Jason?” I beg. “Can you go down there and get her out of the car?”

  Jason shakes his head. “Like you said, it’s their jurisdiction.” My face flushes at the reminder.

  “What was all that gun fire about?” River asks with concern. He is craning his neck to see down the slope of the hill, but without binoculars everything is hazy in the bright lights.

  “Some idiot opened fire,” Jason murmured with disgust. “I don’t know what he thinks he’s gonna do other than kill everybody in sight.”

  I gasp and clutch the sides of the gurney so I don’t fall back and hit my head. I feel queasy and lightheaded, so it is a distinct possibility. Beth is in the car. There is a very good chance that my sister is either dead or in the process of bleeding to death and nobody is doing anything.

  I stare at Jason and River who are just nervously passing the binoculars back and forth. The other cops around me (I just noticed that there’s at least fifteen cop cars parked nearby and twice that number of officers wandering around at the top of the hill) are all acting like as if they have no clue what they should be doing. It is not instilling any confidence in me whatsoever. Neither is the shouting down below, the concerned expression that Jason is wearing, or the constant police chatter on the walkie talkie.

  The only thing that gives me any hope at all is that my EMT friend is texting away on her iPhone, paying absolutely no attention to me. The other two EMTs appear poised with a backboard and a first aid kit but that’s beside the point. They look like anal retentive, nervous types that are ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice anyway. They probably sleep with their uniforms on.

  I need to take advantage of the fact that nobody is paying any attention to me. My one leg is already hanging off the side of the gurney, so I carefully cradle my injured leg and silently pull it to the side to join its partner. It feels numb and heavy, but tingly at the same time; sort of like when you wake up in the middle of the night with that pins and needles feeling in your foot and you have to hop around for five minutes to wake your leg up. I wonder briefly if that’s bad that I really don’t feel anything, but I brush off that thought as I brace my palms against the gurney with the intention of lowering myself to the ground.

  With one eye on Jason and River, I start to hop away from the gurney. Jason is muttering something into the walkie talkie and he also has his cell phone pressed against his ear. River now has the binoculars in one hand and is nervously chewing the fingernails of his other. I am inching away, hoping to creep along the back of the ambulance in order to get back down to the car. I have no plan past that. I guess I will just feel inspired and the answers will come to me once I get there.

  Are you screaming at this book right now? Are you flinging it across the room in exasperation at my insistence on putting myself in danger? I bet. Why can’t you just let the police do their job, Amy? Why can you just be happy that you are out of harm’s way? Isn’t that what you’re shouting at me as you pull your hair out by the roots? Yeah I know…I have that effect on people.

  Don’t worry…I don’t get very far before my cover is blown. In fact, I don’t even get two feet. I have forgotten that the EMT lady has hooked me up to an IV that may or may not include some sort of pain medication. Or maybe she has given me a shot of pain meds. I think I felt a jab in my arm…or maybe not. Either way, I am woozy and connected to tubing. It is not working out for me as I crash to the ground and pull the IV out of the crook of my arm in one fell swoop. I feel and hear the back of my head bang onto something metal and then, it all goes black.

  ~Sixteen~

  As I swirl in and out of consciousness, I finally open my eyes to find that I am surrounded by those pesky bright lights again. But this time I am not confused into thinking that I am dead because I have at least three, if not four, concerned faces peering down at me.

  The faces are blurry at first, swimming hazily, but I can tell that three of them are males and one looks a little too feminine to be a guy. Maybe it’s that EMT. No, wait, she could probably put any guy into a headlock…she is definitely not feminine.

  “Move people! Get out of the way!” A woman’s face pops into my visual field just before she shines a flashlight in my eyes and blinds me even more. Her ginormous boobs squish into the side of my cheeks as she leans forward. I think she must be a nurse or something.

  I squint and Big Boobs yells at me. “Don’t close your eyes! How am I supposed to check your pupils if you have your eyes closed?”

  I blink again and she has backed up, crossing her arms over her enormous chest. I wonder if she has to buy special uniform tops so that she can button those puppies in. I know I can barely close button down shirts and I’m only a B cup. This gal is easily somewhere in the middle of the alphabet.

  Ah, the inappropriate things your mind thinks, Amy. Then I wonder if I may in fact have a concussion because of my inappropriate thoughts. Isn’t that a symptom of being concussed?

  I am about to ask when the faces around me come into focus. First I see Jason to my immediate right, edging B.B. (Big Boobs) out of the way. Jason looks exasperated and annoyed. He is probably wishing he did not answer his cousin’s phone call this evening. At least then he wouldn’t have to deal with me.

  His cousin. I still can’t believe that they are related…like, what are the odds of that?

  River is standing next to Jason. I can hear him remarking that this is going to be a really cool story to tell in Intro. I really don’t know how he is so excited when we are in the middle of a police stand-off with a hostage situation. Ugh, he’s like those doctor and nurse freaks who love when gunshot wounds and stab wounds come rolling through the ER doors. Adrenaline junkies.

  Well, you’re kind of like an adrenaline junkie, too, Amy. Weren’t you just trying to escape your gurney and IV so you could sneak down the hill?

  I ignore my inner self admonishing me because my reasoning was not for a thrill. But I’m not going to justify that to myself. Really…who argues with themselves?

  “Jesus, Amy! What happened to your face? And are you missing a tooth?” I recognize that voice. The next face peering down at me is a new one…one I haven’t seen in what feels like a million years. It’s Roger.

  “Roger,” I gasp, my voice coming out raspy and weird, like I’ve been asleep for days or had a tube shoved down my throat. “What are you doing here?” I wonder if Big Boobs or the EMTs called Roger, although I have no idea where they would have gotten his number. My phone is still in the trunk of the car. I think. And that EMT didn’t seem like the warm and fuzzy type that would be concerned with notifying the next of kin so that you had someone to comfort you in this situation.

  Unless… The next thought that pops into my head literally makes me lean over the left side of the gurney and hurl. What if Beth is dead and they identified her next of kin and then Derek called Roger and…

  “Oh my God, could you watch the shoes?” I hear the screech of another very familiar voice as I splatter vomit all over a pair of expensive boots. The owner of the boots leaps out of the way as my head snaps up like my neck is an elastic band.

  “Beth?” I ask incredulously. I blink several times, making sure that I am not seeing things. No, I’m not. It’s definitely Beth standing there with her disheveled hair and rumpled outfit and now puked on boots. I practically fly off the gurney to embrace her but I am met by a series of protests.

  “Whoa, whoa, easy there,” the EMTs shout, practically in unison.

  “Not again, Amy,” grumbles Jason as he wraps his arm around my chest and pulls me back down.

  “Are you okay? Is Jillian okay? Did you find Jillian?” Suddenly, I am frantic and I’m struggling to break free of Jason’s clutches.

  “Should you be doing that?” Roger questions at the same time. I glance at him and see he is glaring at Jason.

  My face flushes as I realize this is the first time that I have ever been together with both Roger and Jason at the same time. They have never met
before. It’s a little weird when your husband is standing within spitting distance of the man that has saved your life (twice). Not to mention the fact that I fantasize about him on a regular basis…daydream…I just daydream! It’s not a fantasy if there’s no sex involved…right? Still, it’s weird with your husband and your lover in the same room…Stop that, Amy! He’s not your lover! Geez…he can hardly stand to be in the same room with you! Besides, Beth is standing here! Beth!

  “Are you alright, Beth?” I ask while pushing the thoughts of Jason as my lover out of my mind. Beth nods and I notice she has a long scratch down the side of her face. She looks about ten years older than she had when she came to my house that evening and a thousand times more harried. Her face is red and splotchy and there are tears glistening in her bright blue eyes as she stares down at the ground, now mumbling incomprehensibly. She looks like crap.

  “What about Jillian? Is Jillian here?” I whip my head around, looking for my niece.

  “Jillian is-” Beth starts to say, but she is interrupted by Big Boobs.

  “Ma’am, we need you to take a seat over here so we can check you out,” booms B.B. I think that she is talking to me and I’m feeling confused like my brain is muddled up. She sweeps a curtain closed with her fleshy arm before my sister can finish and my sister disappears again.

  I feel a slight fluttery panic building in my chest as I gaze around and realize we are no longer on the hill and we aren’t outside either. In fact, the bright fluorescent lights should have been the dead giveaway that we are actually in the hospital; the ER.

  I shake my head as if to clear the cobwebs from my brain that are making this night impossible for me to comprehend anymore. It’s almost like I’ve been plopped down in the middle of my own special episode of The Twilight Zone and I’m the star.