Кей Хупер - Blood Ties

“Diana! Listen to me — hold on to me. Do you hear? Diana, don’t let go of me. Goddammit, do not let go of me!”

Quentin’s voice was a hoarse shout, his bloody hands holding one of hers tightly, so tightly, while others on the team worked over her still body.

She wished she could see his face, but the angle was wrong.

The bright daylight flickered, dimmed, flickered—and she was back in the gray time, facing Brooke.

“I’m sorry, Diana.”

The cold that swept over Diana then was horribly familiar, a chill terror from her childhood, from seeing a beloved mother lying still and silent in a hospital bed and knowing there was no soul inside.

“Oh, shit,” she whispered.

SHERIFF DUNCAN PAUSED in the doorway of the waiting room and then entered hesitantly. “Any word?”

From her position gazing out one of the big windows that boasted a panoramic view of the mountains in daylight but offered a nighttime view only of the lights of the city below, Miranda said, “She’s still in surgery. They haven’t told us anything yet, good or bad.”

Duncan wanted to say something about no news being good news, but a check of his watch told him that Diana Brisco had been in surgery way too long for there to be any hope of good news. Nearly twelve hours now; it was well after midnight. She had been airlifted directly from the scene to this major medical center more than fifty miles from Serenade, where one of the best trauma units in the Southeast was, in all probability, her only chance for survival.

If she had any chance at all, which the EMTs called first to the scene had very clearly doubted.

He looked at the other two people in the room, noting that Hollis had at least washed the blood off her hands—though a fair amount remained to stain her light-colored sweater—and that DeMarco watched her with an almost imperceptible frown between his brows.

Realizing who was missing, the sheriff asked, “Where’s Quentin?”

Hollis replied, “With Diana.”

“In surgery?”

She nodded, staring into space rather than meeting his gaze.

Again, Duncan found himself groping for words. “I’ve never heard of any hospital or surgeon allowing something like that. Surgeons, especially, are pretty much God in an operating room.”

DeMarco said, “You didn’t see his face. Even God would have thought twice before trying to separate him from Diana.”

Miranda turned from the window to say, “Nobody in there is happy about it, but they did the best they could, wrapping Quentin in sterile sheets and dousing whatever they couldn’t cover with antiseptic. There was no time to lose and no sense wasting any of it arguing with him. Especially when it was obvious to everyone what the outcome would be.”

“I’m surprised they didn’t try to knock him out,” Duncan murmured.

“You didn’t see his face,” DeMarco repeated.

Duncan really wished he had. “I hope somebody disarmed him” was all he could think of to say.

“I did.” DeMarco didn’t offer details.

“How’s the situation in Serenade?” Miranda asked, clearly not all business but making a good show of it.

“Hell,” the sheriff replied frankly. “Though a bit quieter now than it was all afternoon and most of the evening. Thank God more of your people showed up to lend a hand. We have multiple injuries, damaged buildings with glass and other material still falling into the street if the breeze picks up, state cops and feds and firefighters crawling all over the place, the media crawling all over the place—and a whole lot of terrified people. But of the townsfolk, only the one fatality, so far.”

“I’m sorry about Dale,” she said.

“So am I. He was just a kid marking time in a uniform, with nothing special planned for his future. But he should have had more time to find something special for himself.”

“Yes.” She drew a breath and let it out slowly. “I’m sorry we brought such tragedy to your town, Des.”

“You didn’t bring it.” He kept his voice stoic. “That maniac you’ve been tracking brought it. I just hope you get the son of a bitch.”

“We will.”

Though her voice wasn’t especially emphatic, somehow he believed her. Maybe because her voice wasn’t especially emphatic.

Miranda said, “Dr. Edwards is in Serenade?”

“Yeah, she arrived with the first group of your people. In one of the choppers. I hope you don’t mind that I hitched a ride on one heading back up this way. The pilot said his orders were to fly up here and stand by to ferry some of you back to Serenade.”

“It’s a lot quicker than driving,” Miranda said. “And you’re welcome to the ride. As soon as we get some word about Diana…”

Duncan assumed that Miranda, at least, would need to get back to Serenade fairly soon; another SCU agent had arrived with the first group of them and had stepped in to fill her role as lead investigator, something the sheriff gathered was very much a temporary thing. But from the sound of it, Quentin was here for the duration, whatever that might be. Duncan wasn’t sure about the other two.

Before the silence could stretch too far, he said, “Your doctor seems to believe our clinic has enough of the basics for her and her assistant to work with, and the rest she brought with her.” He paused. “Never seen a doctor travel with so many boxes of equipment.”

“She’s a top-notch forensic pathologist,” Miranda said. “I should have called her in yesterday—or, rather, Tuesday—instead of sending the two murder victims to the state M.E.”

“From what I saw, calling in her and her mobile lab is a major production, so not something to order up if you aren’t even sure how long you’ll be staying. The first chopper couldn’t even hold her assistant, just her and the equipment.” He paused, then added, “Anyway, she’s going to do the autopsy on Dale. And she’s been working on the guy your people found on the roof of the old theater. Said right off the bat he’d been dead at least twelve hours when he was found.”

Slowly, DeMarco said, “So, not yesterday’s sniper but at least possibly Tuesday’s.”

Hollis said, “That doesn’t make sense. Two snipers? What, has somebody sicced an army on us?”

“If so, it’s not a very efficient one,” DeMarco said without emotion. “Two misses on Tuesday, and only one shot fired yesterday. I have to believe he didn’t just get… lucky… yesterday. If the deputy wasn’t the target—and I think we all believe he wasn’t—then either it was sheer bad luck that he stepped in front of the bullet aimed at Diana, or else the sniper was showing off and meant to get both of them with a single shot.”

“Why Diana?” Hollis was staring down at her clasped hands. “That doesn’t make sense either. She’s not even a full agent yet; she hasn’t had time to make any enemies.”

“The way we were running around out there this morning, it could have been any of us,” DeMarco pointed out. “He probably marked all of us as agents on Tuesday, while he was watching from that deer blind. We have no way of being sure Diana was the specific target yesterday. He could have intended to just get an SCU agent, period.”

“Especially since the shots on Tuesday were fired at you and Reese,” Miranda reminded Hollis.

“Okay, but two snipers?”

Miranda said, “I have a hunch we’ll find that the man killed on the roof of the old theater was… pure theater. Staged, posed, for us to find. Another victim.”

DeMarco nodded. “It makes more sense that way. If nothing else, it had our people focused on the wrong building, the wrong place, which gave the real sniper more time to do what he intended to do and get safely away. Plus, finding a body arranged that way is bound to be a distraction for us, another… red herring.”