Charlaine Harris - Dead Over Heels

“I thought maybe she had a thing for you,” I confessed.

“I was worried about that, too,” he admitted. “Though it didn’t have that feel… but all the secrecy. So, are you going to tell me?”

“I don’t know,” I said, dismay showing in my voice. “I don’t know if I can.” I couldn’t think of anything I’d ever withheld from Martin in our two years together, but I couldn’t dismiss Bettina’s plea for secrecy either.

“Can I think about it?” I asked Martin.

“Sure. I often feel I know more about my employees’ private lives than I want to know, anyway.” But I could tell by the set of his shoulders that he was piqued with me.

As we neared the exit (Martin good-byeing right and left to people who’d lingered to talk) we came face-to-face with Arthur Smith and his ponytailed date. Martin’s hand gripped mine more tightly. “Hello, Sue,” Martin said to the girl. “How are you?”

“Fine, Mr. Bartell,” she said self-consciously. “Have you met Arthur Smith?”

The silence held on too long for even young Sue to ignore. “So you guys have met,” she said nervously, finally aware there was something going on.

Martin and I gave Arthur identical stiff nods, and Martin said, “Night, Sue. See you in Ag Products tomorrow.” Martin held open one of the glass doors for me, and I stepped out into the cool evening air. Martin appeared beside me again, and took my hand. I heard the door swoosh shut, and then open again for young Sue and Arthur.

We stepped into a knot of people who had been tempted by the beautiful evening to linger to chat on the sidewalk; Perry and Jenny Tankersley, Paul and Deena Cotton, Marnie Sands (who seemed to be groping for something in her purse). Bill and Bettina Anderson had been waylaid by one of Martin’s division heads, a balding paunchy man named Jesse Prentiss, who was introducing his wife Verna.

Just at that moment all hell broke loose, all hell in the form of a swift and terrified gray cat which streaked across the circles of light and dark dappling the parking lot, a cat hotly pursued by a large and shaggy dog with a length of frayed rope flying from its collar.

There was a hoot of laughter here and there, an exclamation of alarm from those who couldn’t immediately see what was causing the hoopla, and a few halfhearted attempts to call the dog or grab the length of rope. The scene drew the stragglers in the parking lot together in a loose knot. After a moment the animals were gone, continuing their chase into the modest residential area on the next street. The yelping of the dog was still clear.

My eyes, like everyone else’s, had followed the cat, who’d bounded onto and then over a car parked in the shadows at the very far reaches of the community center lot. I listened with half my attention to the comments and jokes the incident had sparked in the little crowd, while trying to figure out if I had indeed seen a blond head in the car that the cat had cleared in her escape.

Sure enough, I caught a glimpse of blond again, and one of the sodium lights caught a gleam of glasses.

Well, well. To cap off a jarring evening, who did I spy lurking in the parking lot but Mr. Dryden. Agent Dry-den? Marshal Dryden? Even his protectee had only called him “Dryden.”

Was he waiting to see if anyone followed the Andersons? Or was he watching us?

I was so engrossed in my thoughts in the seconds following the animals’ exit from the parking lot that I was taken utterly by surprise by the sudden pressure on my back.

I heard a woman scream. My hand was ripped from its loose grip with Martin’s.

To my bewilderment I found myself being pressed down to the ground by a warm weight that I could not support, though my feet shuffled for balance and my knees braced to push back. I heard another shriek, and thought That wasn’t me, and a deep groan followed by a curse, all in the second that this inexorable, inexplicable weight drove me to the pavement. I threw my hands out in front of me to break my fall, but even my braced arms couldn’t stop my cheek from hitting the sidewalk.

In the long, long minute before the weight was lifted, as I lay prone under the terrifying burden, I felt something wet on my face and opened my eyes to see blood dripping to the gleaming new sidewalk a half-inch from my nose.

After a frantic little inventory of pains, I was pretty sure it wasn’t my blood.

Out of a cacophony of voices I discerned Paul Allison bellowing for calm, and I could hear one woman set up a steady howl for help-Bettina Anderson, I thought. “Ready on three,” I heard Martin say, and the shuffle of feet all around me. “One, two, three!” Martin said, and the weight on top of me was eased off. I had had the breath knocked out of me, and was frantically trying to take in air, with the usual result that I was foiling my own attempt.

I saw some knees hit the pavement beside me.

“Don’t move,” Martin said tensely. “Baby, is anything broken? Are you hurt?” Struggling for breath, I couldn’t answer.

“Call 911!” exclaimed a male voice, Jesse Prentiss’s, I thought. “You! Perry Allison! There’s a phone in the manager’s office to the left of those glass doors!” Running feet, light; Perry pounding obediently into the community center.

Running feet, heavy. “Who got hurt?” Dryden, breathing raggedly. So I’d been right; he’d been parked at the far reaches of the lot.

“Move back, people, police are on the way,” Paul Allison said loudly in his police official voice. “I’ve already radioed from my car. Step back, everyone, unless you’re an EMT.”

“I am,” Jenny Tankersley was saying as I felt Martin’s hands running over my body.

“Then get over here,” Martin snapped, and Paul Allison said in a shocked voice, “Has Roe been hurt?”

“She took a fall, she’s okay,” Dryden said-rather cavalierly, I thought. “But this man here is really bleeding.”

“There’s blood on Roe,” Paul pointed out tensely.

And then I could breathe. Nothing had felt as good in weeks as that deep intake of air.

“I’m okay,” I croaked. “Just help me up, Martin, I don’t think it’s my blood.”

I managed to push up with my arms to achieve a kneeling position, and then Martin lifted me up the rest of the way, frantically touching my head and neck to see where I’d been hurt.

We were a little apart from the activity now, which was centered on someone lying on the ground. The girl with the ponytail, Sue, was sobbing hysterically by one of the lampposts. “He just fell down,” she said over and over, “he just let go of my arm and fell down.”

“Not my blood,” I reassured Martin. This time he listened.

“Tell me how you’re feeling,” he said.

“I bumped my cheek on the pavement,” I gasped. I took another deep breath and started again. “I’m going to have sore hands and arms from trying to stop my fall, and my knees are scraped. Other than that, I’m fine. How’d I get knocked down?”

“Something happened to Arthur Smith,” Martin said slowly, his eyes never leaving my face. “He was right behind you. Without any warning, he began to fall, and fell on you and took you down with him.”

“Did he have a heart attack?” No, the blood. “Was he shot? How could he have been hurt?”

“Here comes the ambulance,” Martin said. “Maybe we’ll find out.”

Jenny Tankersley had been working on Arthur, ripping off his shirt to find the source of the bleeding, checking his pulse. The EMTs pelted out of the ambulance.

“He’s been hurt on his shoulder somehow,” she told them, moving aside. No one was talking to Arthur himself, though I could see his eyes were open and he was taking in what was going on around him. He looked as dazed as I felt. But when his eyes focused on the first man out of the ambulance, Arthur seemed to collect himself. He said clearly, “Murray, I was stabbed in the shoulder.”