I headed home and canceled my class because my heart wasn’t in it after the day I’d had. I checked my phone every few minutes to see if I had any texts from Eve, but there was nothing.
I made myself eat something and then, before I could change my mind, drove over to Eve’s duplex. The lights were off, and the driveway was empty. She’d loaned Derrick and Gabriela her car for their trip to Pennsylvania, and the cruiser she was using while they were gone wasn’t there.
Damn it.
I called her. It rang several times, and I was sure she would let it go to voicemail but then she picked up.
“Eve? Where are you? I’m at your house. I wanted to talk about today.”
“Hey,” she said, sounding tired and distant and not her usual self. “I’m not there. One of the guys who does PAL stuff had a conflict and asked me to cover for him. I’m at the community center for another few hours.”
That explained all the noise in the background.
There was a loud crash and then a shriek, and Eve swore under her breath. “I’ve gotta go break up a fight. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
My stomach rolled over. “Babe, we need to talk about this.”
She blew out a tight gust of air. “I . . . Not tonight, Talia.”
And then she was gone. I took a few breaths, tried to think. I could push the issue, stay here and wait for her to get home, or I could give her the space she wanted. I knew the right thing to do—give her room—but anxiety roiled in my gut. I sat there for a good fifteen minutes arguing with myself before exhaustion rolled over me, and my decision was made. Though my heart was heavy, I started my car, then drove home.
I slept badly. I missed Eve in my bed, and hated that we were at odds, especially over something so stupid. It had taken several hours of insomnia for my anger to bleed off, to realize that, once again, I was mad at her for a dumb reason. She cared enough about me to step away from a job she loved, and I’d done nothing but give her grief. She shouldn’t have made that sacrifice, and definitely not without telling me what she’d planned first, but I sure as hell shouldn’t have been fighting with her because she’d offered to. Especially after the chief had turned her down flat.
Bleary-eyed though I was, I rolled out of bed when the alarm went off, showered, and got dressed for work. I wanted to see Eve, to apologize for the way I’d handled things, but I had a stop I needed to make first.
I’d found Lila’s inhaler in Rissa’s room last night as I’d wandered the house like a zombie. She had another but liked to have two, in case one didn’t work. As her mom and someone who’d sat through far too many ER visits, shaking with fear for my baby, I liked her to have two also. I went to her apartment to drop it off, but she wasn’t home, so I went to Noah’s office and he sent me to her job site. Once there, I handed it over and, to her utter dismay, gave her a kiss on the forehead in front of her coworker—who happened to be her cousin. She cocked her head at me, frowned.
“You okay, Mom? You seem worried.”
“I’m fine, sweetie. Better now that I know you have this.”
She looked skeptical, my sensitive child, but nodded and tucked the inhaler in her back pocket. “I’ll call you tonight?”
“Sounds good, honey.”
Back at work, I pulled into the parking lot and my cell phone went off. I recognized it as the police station’s main number, and I frowned. Had Eve forgotten her phone?
I answered as I got out of the car. “I know I’m late, sorry. I’m just on my way in the door.”
“Talia, it’s Chief Robinson. I need to have a word with you.”
My heart flipped over. Had someone heard our argument yesterday and ratted on us? Already? “Sir, I promise you, we haven’t—”
“Not about that. I need you to come directly to your office, please.”
Something in his tone was off, and even as I wondered about his odd request, the employee door opened and Delia strode out, her face tight as she walked toward me. I recognized that serious, solemn look, had seen it only once before in my life on the day police officers had informed me my husband was dead.
“Eve,” I breathed, and a buzzing noise started in my head as my heart revved into overdrive. “No. No.”
“She’s alive,” Delia said immediately, taking me by the arm and quickly ushering me inside, around a handful of people standing near our office door, talking in hushed tones. They went silent as I passed by.
Chief Robinson was on the phone, leaning against Eve’s desk, his pose rigid rather than relaxed. “Whoever you need. Just find the son of a bitch,” he barked, and shoved the phone in his pocket. He looked at me and swore under his breath. “Sit down before you fall down.”
“No. Tell me,” I demanded, trying to breathe, trying to hold on to the fact that she was alive. Not dead, like Seth. Alive. I was shaking, and sitting was probably a good idea, but if Eve was alive, I needed to see her and I needed to see her now. “What happened?”
He exhaled sharply. “As far as we can tell, she was shot three times. Once in her arm, twice in her chest, all at close range. She’s been flown to Shock Trauma for surgery.”
My head spun and then next thing I knew I was in a chair. My mind filled with images of caskets and funerals, a mixture of Seth and Eve, and then I couldn’t breathe at all. I can’t do this again. I can’t. Please, God, don’t take her away from me. A hand pushed at my back until I was folded in half with my head hanging between my knees.
“Breathe, Talia. Slow, deep breaths.”
Delia kept talking to me and rubbing my back. I didn’t know for how long, but finally my lungs eased open and though I wanted to be sick, I fought it back. “Derrick. I need to tell Eve’s son.”
Chief Robinson nodded. “We’re covering that, but if I recall, he’s serving overseas so it may take a while.”
I shook my head. “He’s here on leave for Thanksgiving. In Pennsylvania until tomorrow, meeting his future in-laws. And Eve’s parents and sisters and brother need to know before they find out from someone else.” My hands shook as I tried to use my phone. “I have to call Derrick.” He’d given me his number on Thanksgiving, since you’re a big part of Mama’s life. “I need to—”
Delia gently took the phone from me and dialed, then handed it back.
Derrick answered immediately. “Yo, Talia. I’m glad you called. I tried to get Mama but she’s not answering so I guess she’s busy. We’re going to stay here another day.”
My throat choked with tears. “You need to come home right now. She’s in surgery. She . . . she was shot this morning.”
Shocked silence, then an expletive. “Details,” he demanded, his voice sharpening to that of a trained Marine.
I tried getting them out, but didn’t do such a great job of it. Someone took my phone again, and I heard Chief Robinson explaining the situation to Derrick. I sat there, my mind whirling with awful, horrible possibilities, and then he handed the phone back to me. As he did, I heard Derrick yelling for Gabriela. “We’ll drive straight through to Baltimore and meet you at the hospital,” he told me. “We should be there in about two and a half hours. Gabriela’s going to drive while I call my grandparents and my aunts and uncles and fill them in.”
Two and a half hours seemed awfully fast. “Be careful, honey.”
He agreed, then disconnected. Dear God, I needed to call my own girls so they knew before it hit the news. I needed to get to the hospital too, and how was I going to—
“You’ll ride with me,” Chief Robinson said, as though he’d read my mind. Or maybe I’d said it out loud, I didn’t know. “I’m headed there now. You can call your daughters while we’re on the way.” He put a hand on my shoulder, handed me some tissues. “Let’s go.”
Once we were on the road, I called Lila and explained the situation to her. I was crying and she was crying and I told her to tell Noah she needed to be taken off jobs today. Working with electricity required concentration, and I didn’t need to worry about her too. T
hen I called Rissa, who said she’d be okay and did I want her to come home. Her voice was small and worried and I wished I could hug her, hug both my girls, but I said no and told her to be with her friends today, to call me if she needed me.
Chief Robinson stayed quiet as I finished up my calls, but I could see his cold fury in the stony set of his jaw. A muscle pulsed in his cheek as he got continuous updates on the police radio in the car and translated them into plain English for me. I learned the whole sequence of the morning’s horrible events as we drove the almost-hour to Baltimore, and they made me want to vomit.
Early in the morning, a man had walked up to a female sheriff’s deputy who’d been sitting in her cruiser outside a convenience store in the neighboring county, and shot her in the head. He’d fled, and a BOLO had been put out for him, along with a description of his car.
Dispatch stated that Eve had spotted the car crossing the intersection where she’d been stopped for a red light and called it in, requesting backup but stating that she was following.
A few minutes after that, someone had called 911 after seeing a car fleeing the scene and an officer lying in the street, bleeding. The witness had been able to provide more information about the car and the direction it was traveling, and a roadblock had been set up.
The suspect had driven directly into one of two Maryland State Police cruisers that were blocking the road. He’d passed the car with the male driver and rammed into the one with the female Trooper so hard he’d pushed it into a tree. She’d been pinned in her cruiser and was also in surgery at the same hospital as Eve.
He’d kept driving, and there was a manhunt underway for him now.
About forty-five minutes later, we pulled into a small parking lot near the back of the hospital, alongside quite a few different law enforcement cars. The sun was bright and it was a clear, beautiful day . . . much like the day I’d lost Seth.
Tears threatened again but I forced them back. There was no time for me to fall apart, not when Eve needed me.
We were met at the door and ushered through to a small surgical waiting area that was empty but for two cops with grim faces. Chief Robinson gave them a curt nod but didn’t say anything else as he nudged me none-too-gently into a chair.
“Stay here while I get an update.”
I waited, my arms curled around my waist as he went back out into the hall, and prayed like I’d never prayed before.
I got a few curious looks from the cops, but their attention was diverted when a distraught young man carrying a little boy raced into the room, followed by a dark-haired man in a Maryland State Trooper’s uniform with his hat tucked under his arm. The boy’s brown eyes were wide as saucers, and he clung to his father like a burr. It only took a few minutes for me to realize this man must be related to the Trooper who’d been pinned in her car by the same man who’d shot Eve. I sent up another prayer for the young woman also in surgery.
Chief Robinson came back in the room, his face granite, and my stomach turned over. “Tell me,” I demanded.
“The bullet in her arm nicked an artery and she lost a lot of blood. They were able to staunch it and gave her a transfusion on the flight, but she coded once on the way here. One of the bullets to her chest did a lot of internal damage, and they are doing what they can. She likely also has a concussion, since she hit her head as she fell. That’s all they could tell me.”
I started trembling and could not stop. Someone sat beside me and placed a warm blanket around my shoulders. I blinked, looked over at him. He seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place him. “T-thank you.”
When Delia came in carrying a vending cup, it clicked. This was her husband. She took the seat on the other side of me and held out the cup. “Coffee, if you’d like.” I shook my head no and she set it down, then took my hand and squeezed. “Since I’m still on limited duty, I volunteered to sit with you while you wait, and Colin is off duty today.”
I squeezed her hand back, cleared my throat “Thanks.”
Colin stood and went over to Chief Robinson, who stood with the Troopers. He shook hands with the dark-haired man who looked as furious as the chief had earlier.
“That’s Lieutenant Alex Meyers. He’s the Maryland State Police barracks commander for our area, and the Trooper who was injured is under his command,” Delia said. “Nice guy, great cop. He and his wife, Jess, are friends of ours.”
I knew she was trying to keep me occupied with random conversation, but my mind would not stop spinning. “I . . . I can’t stop thinking the worst.”
Her smile was gentle as she squeezed my hand again. “Understandable, but Eve’s in good hands, and she’s exactly where she needs to be.”
I knew that, and I was trying to think positively, but I also knew about regrets. After my last fight with Seth, I’d slept with my back to him all night. I’d still been in a funk the next morning and had pulled out of his arms, because why not? We’d fought before, and we’d worked it out each time. But then he was gone, forever gone, and I couldn’t ever fix it. It was one of my deepest regrets.
Here I was again, and history was repeating itself. My eyes burned. If Eve died—
A surgeon came out of the double doors, and everyone turned. “Trooper Ruiz’s family?”
I sagged as the young man came forward, wearing the same fear on his face that had to be on mine. “I—I’m Isabella’s husband, Antonio.” The surgeon tried to lead him to a private room, but he squared his shoulders and shook his head, gesturing to the cops, one of whom was holding the little boy. “No. Tell me here. They’re her family too.”
“The crash broke both her legs and she suffered several broken ribs. One of them ruptured her spleen, which I removed. The orthopedic surgeon is still setting her fractures. That will take a while, but she’s stable. She’s a very lucky young woman, considering what happened. She’s going to have a long recovery ahead of her, but she’s strong.”
The relief on her husband’s face was profound. “Thank you. Thank you.”
Not long after that, Trooper Ruiz’s family went up to ICU, leaving us the only ones in the waiting room.
A cell phone buzzed. Lieutenant Meyers, who was still standing with Chief Robinson, answered it. After the conversation, his face was grimly satisfied. “Got him. He ditched the car and fled on foot, so we sent up the helo to search. They cornered him in a strip mall. He’s in custody now. I’m going upstairs to give Ruiz the news.”
He and the chief stepped into the hall, but even though his voice was low, I heard the rest. “He hasn’t stopped bragging about how he taught those bitch cops a lesson just like he’d said he was going to.”
I flinched at the vicious words, but my heart jolted and I caught Delia’s eyes as they went wide.
She swore out loud. “Christ. The guy the emails warned us about, the one who tagged those cruisers? I need to get our case notes to the MSP, and I want to be in on that interview.” She followed after them even as she was dialing her phone.
Conversation ebbed and flowed around me, and I lost track of time, staring at those double doors. I wasn’t sure how long I sat there, waiting, but it had to have been quite a while because suddenly Derrick was in front of me, pulling me to my feet and squeezing me in a giant bear hug.
He looked haggard. “Any word on my mother?”
Chief Robinson came over, shook Derrick’s hand. “No, but I’d think soon. And so you know, the bastard who did this to her is in custody.”
“Good. But why wasn’t she in a vest?” Derrick asked. “She always wears her body armor when she’s working.”
I hadn’t thought about that, and he was right, but I knew her daily routine. “She comes to work, then runs, showers, and dresses for the day. She was on her way in when it happened.”
Since I was up, I started pacing. Delia was back in the room and leaning against Colin, who had his hand cupped over her slightly rounded stomach. The chief was talking to them. Derrick was pacing too, like a caged panther. Gabriela watc
hed him with worried eyes that were red from crying. Every time I passed Derrick on my lap around the room, I rubbed my hand against his back.
The double doors pushed open and a surgeon came out, rolling his shoulders and neck as if to work out the kinks in them. We all froze where we were. “Lieutenant Poe’s family?”
Derrick grabbed my hand and pulled me forward. “How’s my mother?”
“In critical condition.” He scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “She was lucky the medevac carries blood products. Without that on-board transfusion, she might not have made it. She coded once on the flight but they were able to get her heart going again. We repaired the damage to her artery, and it should be fine. One of the bullets to her chest broke a rib, which punctured her lung and lodged in the chest cavity. The other one ricocheted off another rib and traveled through her stomach and large intestine. We’ve repaired everything we could see, but there could be more that we missed. She’s being moved to ICU now.” The phone clipped to his scrubs buzzed, and he nodded sharply, then headed back through the double doors.
I felt faint. How could one person survive that much damage? Derrick put his arm around me, and I sagged against him, holding him tightly. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry. We had a fight after our meeting with the chief yesterday, and she went home. If she’d been at my house, maybe . . .”
He hugged me closer. “Don’t do this to yourself. If I’ve learned anything in the Marines, what-ifs after the fact will make you crazy. Mama would tell you that herself.” He frowned down at me, then looked over at the chief. “What meeting?”
“About our relationship, and the fact that Eve’s my boss.”
Twice in a Lifetime Page 15