Sally Berneathy - Private Vows

“Hey, buddy,” Pete greeted him. “Can’t stay away from us, can you? What happened here?”

“This lady ran in front of my car and I hit her.”

Pete turned to his partner, a new guy Cole hadn’t met. “See if you’ve got any witnesses in the crowd and take their statements. I’ll deal with this shady character.” He grinned.

The team of paramedics rushed over, and for a few moments everything was chaos. The bride with no name clutched Cole’s arm convulsively as she shook her head to every request the paramedics made.

“Look, lady,” one finally exclaimed in frustration. “We’ve got certain procedures we have to follow for your benefit and ours. You were hit by a car, and you may have a concussion. Standard procedure is for you to lie on this stretcher, let us fasten this cervical collar on your neck and examine you. Trust me, this won’t hurt a bit. You’ll feel better and so will we.”

The bride’s grip on Cole’s arm tightened. “No.”

Cole patted her hand. “It’ll be all right. These men want to help you and I need to talk to the officer a minute.”

“Don’t leave me! You’re the only person I know here.” She looked around frantically. “The only person I know in the whole world.”

She sure had changed her tune, and it made him damn nervous. Cole had his spot in life. He caught embezzlers, con artists, insurance-scam criminals. What he didn’t do—what he hadn’t done even when he was on the police force—was successfully rescue damsels in distress.

“You don’t know me,” he protested.

“Yes,” she said, suddenly calmer as she stared directly into his eyes. “Yes, I do know you and I trust you.”

He wasn’t sure what she saw in his gaze; certainly not the truth or she wouldn’t trust him.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said with a sigh. “The cops won’t let me leave until they get their pound of flesh.”

Reluctantly she consented to lying on the stretcher for the examination, but adamantly refused to permit the paramedics to put on the collar or the backboard. As they checked her vital signs, her gaze remained fixed on him, clutching him as if he were a lifeline. He fought back a laugh…or a grimace…at the irony of that concept.

“Long time no see,” Pete said. “What’s going on? You so hard up for a woman you’ve taken to running them down?” Pete grimaced immediately, pulled off his cap and ran a hand through his bright red hair. “Aw, geez, I didn’t mean anything by that. I wasn’t thinking.”

Cole shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his blue jeans and made himself smile. “Forget it. Hell, I wasn’t thinking about Angela either until you started falling all over yourself apologizing.”

It was a lie, but only a half lie. Of course he’d been thinking about Angela, about her still body covered in blood, about her fragility, about his role in her death. Pete’s careless joke hadn’t affected that one way or the other.

“Listen, you might want to check the sidewalk and the grass for blood or some kind of weapon. She ran from between those buildings and got into a struggle with a sleazy guy who came up, probably harmless, begging, but he did grab her arm. She got away from him and ran into the street, right in front of my car. I don’t think she had time to injure the guy, but you never know.”

Pete nodded and went to check out the scene.

Cole could feel the woman’s needy eyes on him, pulling him as a magnet, and he returned his attention to her, moving closer to where she lay reluctantly on the stretcher. “She okay?” he asked.

“Seems to be,” one of the paramedics answered. “We still need to take her in, though. Just a precaution since she appears to have some memory loss.”

“No!” The bride pushed aside the paramedics and raised herself to a sitting position. Terror showed in her gaze, her trembling lips, the shaky, beseeching hand she lifted to him. “Don’t let them take me. Please don’t let him take me!”

He squatted beside her, gently easing her back onto the stretcher. “Shh. Just relax, okay?”

Him? Don’t let him take me? Why had she used the singular pronoun the second time when there were two paramedics? Was something else going on here besides a fear of being taken to the hospital by strangers?

“I’m all right now, really I am. I remember my name and where I live. It’s…Mary Jackson, and I live at…1492 Main Street.”

She was definitely lying now, making it up on the spot, her eyes begging him to believe her, to help her, looking at him as if he were a hero or Marshall Dillon. Well, he wasn’t. He was just a former cop who hadn’t even been able to protect his own family, so what did she want from him?

He rose abruptly, doing her the favor of breaking away from her.

“What day is it?” the paramedic asked, his voice gentle. He knew she was lying, too.

Tears flooded her eyes, but she bit her lip and blinked them back, then looked around her. The curious crowd chafed at the police tape as they tried to get a closer look, and a steady stream of cars inched along while drivers gawked at the scene.

“Saturday.” A good guess from the number of people out and about. “It’s Saturday night. I don’t know the date. Do you?” she challenged.

Cole shifted his stance from one foot to the other and released a long breath. The woman, in spite of being in a complete panic, not knowing who or where she was, had guts. He had to give her that. “I’ll go to the hospital with you,” he said, cursing himself even as the words slipped out of his mouth. “I’ll follow right behind the ambulance.”

She stood and wrapped her arms around herself, then, as if suddenly aware of the bloodstain she was touching, she dropped them to her sides with a shudder. “I can’t get in that ambulance. Please don’t make me.” Claustrophobia? A bad experience in an ambulance?

“All right, all right,” he grumbled. “You can ride with me. I’ll take you to the hospital and get you checked in. I guess I owe you that much since I’m the one who ran you down.”

But it wasn’t only his guilt that motivated him. He wasn’t solely responsible for this woman’s problems. Something had been wrong with her before she ran in front of his car. A bride in full regalia with blood on her wedding gown had some kind of story to tell, even if she couldn’t remember it.

No, it wasn’t just the guilt that made him want to take care of her. This woman had that same fragile, helpless, innocent air that Angela had had. And in spite of knowing that the kindest thing he could do was to walk away, he couldn’t stop himself from responding to her pleas.

What the hell was the matter with him? Did he have some misguided notion he could get it right this time?

A psychiatrist could probably have a field day with that one.

“Evening, ma’am.” Pete strolled up. Cole noted that another squad car had arrived and the officers had taken over the search of the sidewalk and the surrounding area.

Instead of being relieved to see a uniformed police officer, the woman tightened her hold on his arm, and her breathing accelerated.

“Can you tell me what happened?” Pete asked in his best official mode.

“I can’t remember,” she said, her words barely above a whisper.

“A temporary fugue state,” one of the paramedics contributed.

Pete looked at Cole and lifted one eyebrow. “This guy here says you ran out from between those two buildings, a man accosted you and you ran into the street in front of his car. Is that true?”

“I don’t know.”

“You come from a wedding reception somewhere around here?” Typical cop, assuming she was lying, trying to con her into admitting something. Standard operating procedure, but Cole wanted to tell him to ease up on her, that she was too fragile.