Annette Dashofy - Zoe Chambers 03 - Bridges Burned (26 page)

Twenty-six

The thermometer on the bank down the street from the ambulance garage read ninety-four degrees, and the humidity was so thick, Zoe thought she was breathing soup. Added to a need to work off her frustrations, circumstances were perfect for washing an already clean Medic Two.

“You were smart marrying a teacher,” she said to Earl as she balanced on a stepladder, scrubbing the roof of the ambulance’s cab.

He trained a stream of water from the garden hose on the already soaped up hood. “You mean because my wife has the summer off?”

Zoe shot him a look. “No. Because you don’t work together.” She went back to slopping suds, not caring the front of her overalls were getting soaked. “Never ever get involved with someone you work with.”

“Technically you don’t work with Pete. He’s a cop. You’re a paramedic.”

“Doesn’t matter.” She paused. “Although, since I have to move, I suppose I could look for a place outside of Vance Township.”

“Just don’t transfer out of Phillipsburg. I don’t wanna have to train a new partner.”

Zoe backed down the ladder. “Your level of empathy and compassion is astounding.” She plopped the sponge into the bucket of soapy water and hoisted a thumb toward the ambulance’s roof. “Hit it.”

Earl aimed the hose at the top of the cab.

The overspray misted Zoe and felt heavenly against the heat of early evening.

“I knew better than to get involved with Pete.” She leaned down to retrieve the sponge and wrung it out. “He was my best friend. Now we’re less than nothing.”

“Just give it a rest. Once he finds out who killed Farabee’s wife and your potato guy, things will settle down and you two can start over.”

Zoe let the sponge drip around her fingers. “I wonder who did kill them.”

Earl released the trigger on the sprayer. “Holt Farabee?”

She wound up to blast her partner with the sponge. He raised an arm to block the toss, but she stopped before releasing it. “I don’t know. I hope not. Do you know Ryan Mancinelli?”

“He installed new windows for my in-laws. Nice work. But personally? No.” Earl hit the ambulance’s passenger door with a quick blast. “Why?”

“He might be involved somehow.”

A horn blast jarred Zoe, and a white Ford Escort braked to a stop in front of the garage’s front window. Sylvia hoisted herself out of the car and stormed toward them, her massive handbag slung over her shoulder.

“What’s wrong?” Zoe asked her.

“You tell me.” Sylvia huffed. “What on God’s green earth has gotten into you and Pete?”

“Uh-oh,” Earl said under his breath. He set the hose on the sidewalk. “The word is out. I think I’ll go find some paperwork to do.”

“You stay put.” Sylvia shook a finger at him. “I won’t be here that long.” She swung back to Zoe and yanked an envelope from her purse. “I don’t know what happened between you two, but I want you to fix it.”

Zoe sighed. “I don’t think that’s possible.”

Sylvia waved the envelope in Zoe’s face. “Don’t tell me it’s impossible. You want to know what’s impossible? I’ll tell you, missy. Finding a new police chief with Pete’s credentials and heart.
That’s
impossible.”

“Finding a new—what?” Zoe snatched the envelope.

Sylvia stood in front of her, breathing as hard as if she’d jogged the two miles between the Vance Township Police Station in Dillard and the Monongahela County EMS garage in Phillipsburg.

Zoe removed the letter and unfolded it. Earl sidled up to her and read it over her shoulder. The words made no sense. She reread them, but they didn’t change. Pete? Resigning from the force? She met Sylvia’s eyes and knew it was true. “But—” Zoe stuttered. “Why?”

“Why do you think? No matter what he tries to tell me, he’s not leaving just because of a high paying job he’s been offered in Hawaii. He’s leaving because of
you
.”

Zoe felt the blood drain from her head and her heart on its way to her feet. Medic Two, the garage, Sylvia, and Earl all spun around her. For a moment she thought she was going to hit the pavement. Earl must have thought so, too, because he caught her, bracing her against him.

“Hawaii?” she squeaked.

Sylvia’s ferocity had softened. “You didn’t know?”

“No.”

Earl rubbed Zoe’s back, encouraging some of the earthbound blood to flow back into the brain. “Hey, look at it this way. If he moves to Hawaii, you don’t have to worry about leaving Vance Township.”

Zoe glared at him. “You aren’t funny.”

He gave her a cock-eyed grin and a shrug.

Sylvia reclaimed the letter, which Zoe had forgotten she was still clutching. “Pete Adams may be a hardheaded jackass from time to time, but he’s as good a man as they come. And he loves you.” Sylvia reached out and took Zoe’s hand. “And I know as sure as I’m standing here that you love him, too. Whatever’s come between you two isn’t worth losing each other over.” She released Zoe and turned, tottering back to her car.

Zoe eased away from her partner. “Hawaii.”

Earl’s grin faded. He crossed his arms and fixed her with a hard stare. “That’s a heck of a long way to go to escape. Pete must figure you have a pretty strong pull on him to have to run that far away.”

She let out a breath and sat down on the ambulance’s running boards. “It’s also a pretty strong statement.” She met Earl’s gaze. “Quitting his job? Moving to the end of the earth? If that isn’t the final farewell, I don’t know what is.”

“He’s not gone yet.”

Earl’s words hung in the sultry air around Zoe, echoing in her mind. Yet. Pete wasn’t gone yet. Before she could ponder a way back to the point before things had gone sideways, her cell phone rang from its perch inside the ambulance bay. She climbed to her feet and jogged inside to grab it.

The number wasn’t familiar.

“Hello?”

“Zoe? This is Kevin Piacenza.”

Pete’s officer. Her heart froze. Had something happened to Pete? “Is everything okay?”

“Uh, yeah. I’m…uh…on duty and working on the arson out at your barn.” He ended the sentence in an upbeat, as if it were a question.

Immediately Zoe knew what was really going on. Pete had a question but was sending his officer to ask it. “And?”

“One of the kids…a, uh…” Zoe could almost hear him reading his notes. Or Pete’s notes. “Brianna Vallina…said she talked to a man in the barn on Saturday who claimed to be looking to possibly board his horses there. She didn’t recognize him and couldn’t give much of a description. Have you had any inquiries from potential new boarders lately?”

“No.” And there wouldn’t be any new boarders either, but she didn’t think Kevin cared to hear her problems. “Sorry. I can’t help you. Do you think he might be the one who set the hay on fire?”

“I really don’t know. Just covering all bases.” Kevin’s nervous laugh filtered through the phone. He thanked her and hung up.

“What’s going on?” Earl asked.

“Someone was asking about boarding at the farm Saturday. Which reminds me. I need to start telling everyone they’ll need to move their horses out.” Zoe’s eyes grew hot, and she considered sitting down on the pavement next to the ambulance and having a good cry. “I don’t know where they’re all gonna go. I don’t know what I’m gonna do with Windstar.” She flung up her arms. “And I sure don’t know where I’m gonna go.”

Earl, ever the big, brotherly partner, put an arm around her squeezing a little too hard. “You can sleep on my couch. My wife won’t mind. And the kids will love having their Auntie Zoe around.”

She grunted. “And what about the cats and my horse?”

Earl waved away her concerns. “The cats will get along fine with our dog. And Lilly’s been bugging us for a pony for at least a year. Your horse can sleep in her bedroom. She’ll be thrilled.”

Zoe laughed in spite of herself. “I can see it now.” She gave him a playful shove. “We’d better finish washing the ambulance.” She opened the unit’s door to toss her phone inside when it rang again. “Now what?”

The number on the display was a Brunswick exchange.

She tapped the screen to answer. “Hello?”

Silence greeted her, followed by a groan.

“Who is this?”

A sharp intake of breath came through the line. “Zoe?”

“Holt?”

His voice was little more than a hoarse whisper. “I need help.”

Zoe grabbed a clipboard from the center console of the medic unit and flipped to a blank call sheet. “Where are you? Are you hurt?”

Another gasping breath. “I’ve been shot.” A pause. “Sleep EZ—room fourteen.”

The same dump where he’d been staying with Maddie before Zoe had invited them to live at the farm. “I’ll get an ambulance there right away.”

The only response was a thunk.

“Holt?
Holt
?”

Nothing. Zoe grabbed the bucket and heaved it out of the way while holding her phone to her ear in case he replied.

Earl was already reaching for the driver’s door. “What’s going on?”

“We’re going to Brunswick. Gunshot wound.” Zoe stuck her head into the empty office. “Tony!”

Footsteps thudded from the crew quarters, and Crew Chief Tony DeLuca appeared in the doorway, munching chips from a bag in his hand.

“Radio Control for a police and medic response to the Brunswick Sleep EZ Motel, room fourteen. Gunshot wound. Earl and I are headed there, too.”

“What?” Tony chewed and swallowed. “Why? We’re a half hour away. They’ll respond a unit from the downtown garage.”

“Because the victim is a friend.”

Tony appeared on the verge of arguing, but instead waved at her. “Go. I’ll call it in.”

With Earl behind the wheel, lights and sirens the entire way, they made the thirty-minute trip to Brunswick in twenty—still not fast enough to suit Zoe. Where was Maddie? Was Holt all right?

Police vehicles and news trucks choked the motel’s parking lot. A police officer waved Medic Two through the line they’d established to keep onlookers at bay.

Another Monongahela County EMS unit was backed up to room fourteen, its back doors standing wide open. Earl wheeled their ambulance alongside. Zoe leapt out before they’d come to a complete stop. He yelled after her, but she didn’t catch his words and didn’t go back to ask him to repeat them. She sprinted to the motel room’s doorway. And froze.

Police officers in uniforms from an assortment of jurisdictions—City of Brunswick, Monongahela County, Pennsylvania State Police—gathered around the periphery. At the center of the room, two paramedics from the downtown station knelt over their patient, blocking her view of him. Dark red pools and streaks marred the already stained carpeting. The phone from the nightstand sprawled on the floor, the corded handset lying next to it.

Zoe scanned faces. Across the room, Wayne Baronick watched her, his expression grim. A few other officers looked vaguely familiar.

No Maddie.

Zoe stepped inside, careful to avoid the blood on the floor. Wayne skirted the rescue effort in the center of the room and caught her before she could reach the paramedics.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

She craned her neck, trying to see the patient. “Holt called me. He said he’d been shot.”

The detective grabbed her arm. “What else did he say?”

“He told me where he was, but that’s it.” She tried to pull free. “Let go.”

“No. You need to stand down, Zoe.”

The paramedics shifted. “Let’s do it,” one of them said. The other one moved their gurney closer. They moved around the patient, one to the head of the backboard to which he was strapped, one to his feet.

It was Holt all right, pale, his clothes bloodied. IV lines, oxygen tubing, and EKG cables trailed from his motionless body. The heart monitor showed a rhythm, and his chest rose and fell with each breath.

Zoe shoved away from Wayne to move to Holt’s side. She and another police officer bent down to grasp the edge of the backboard.

“On three,” one of the paramedics said. He counted, and they hoisted the backboard and Holt up and onto the gurney.

As the other paramedics strapped him down, Zoe leaned closer. “Holt?”

His eyes fluttered open. “Zoe?” His voice rasped with the effort.

She touched his arm. “I’m here. Where’s Maddie?”

He squeezed his eyes closed in a pained grimace. “You have to find her. He’s going after her.”

“Who? Ryan Mancinelli?”

“Let’s go,” one of the medics shouted.

“Wait,” Zoe called as they started to wheel the gurney away.

“There’s no time,” the medic said.

And looking at Holt, she knew there was no use either. His eyelids had drifted open as his eyes rolled back in his head. He wasn’t going to answer any more questions right now. She only hoped he’d be alive to answer them later.

Zoe trotted along behind as they rushed him out of the room and into the waiting ambulance. A very big part of her longed to climb into the patient compartment with the other crew and stay at Holt’s side. Biting her lip, she resisted, watching as they closed the doors. Holt was getting the best care. His little girl, on the other hand…

“We have to find Maddie.”

Wayne held up a wait-a-minute finger at Zoe as he phoned in the latest development. Maddie Farabee was missing. Someone—a man—was going after her.

Why?

None of this made sense. If only Holt had stayed conscious long enough to tell her
who
was going after his little girl.

While Wayne continued his conversation, Zoe took another look around. The same crime scene unit guys who had crawled all over her basement yesterday morning were now photographing the motel room. A gun lay on the floor near where the ambulance crew had worked on Holt. She hadn’t noticed it before, probably because it had been hidden from her view by the medics. And once they’d moved, the only thing Zoe had focused on was Holt.

“Zoe.” Wayne interrupted her thoughts.

“Huh?”

“Don’t suppose you have a picture of the girl, do you?”

“No. Check Holt’s phone. I’m sure he has some on it.”

Wayne shook his head. “His phone isn’t here. It wasn’t on him either.”

Zoe glanced at the room’s phone on the floor next to the bedside table. The unfamiliar number on her caller ID. “Whoever shot him must have taken it.”

“That’s what I figured, too. But I need a photo of the girl to put out to law enforcement and the media.”

Why hadn’t she taken any pictures of Maddie when she’d been at the farm? Maybe some of the other kids had caught her in one. But it would take time they didn’t have to call every boarder and ask around. “Wait. The day of the explosion, Holt had left Maddie at a friend’s house.”

“A friend of Holt’s?”

“No, Maddie’s friend. I bet they’d have pictures.”

“Give me a name.”

“I don’t know. Pete would. Or Seth Metzger. He drove Holt from the fire to go pick up Maddie.”

Wayne gave her a thumbs-up. “Great. Do me a favor and call Pete. Tell him what’s happened and ask him to get a photo and send it to me ASAP.” The detective turned his back on her before she could explain that Pete Adams would probably not pick up the phone if he saw her name on the caller ID. An officer was dusting the room’s phone for prints. She could go outside, find Earl, and borrow his.

Stop it. Maddie’s life was at stake.

Zoe took a deep breath and keyed in Pete’s number.