Winds of Fortune (8 page)

Allie turned sideways in her seat. “About last night?”

“Yeah.”

“We’ve got some kind of heavy-duty chemistry thing going on, because I can’t even look at you without getting wet.” Allie smiled with satisfaction when Deo tensed. She liked turning her on. “So I wouldn’t mind a repeat. But if it doesn’t happen, I’m okay with it.”

Deo looked over at her. “I’m working twelve, fourteen hours a day. Most of the time I have a beer or two after work and fall into bed.”

“I’ve been working a lot of doubles myself. If you’re awake some night and want company, call me.”

“Same here.” Deo swung into the parking lot next to the rambling, one story white building that looked like a cross between a Cape Cod cottage and a ranch house. Two cruisers and a van marked Provincetown Sheriff’s Department were parked in the lot, along with a few civilian cars and a Harley.

Allie released her seatbelt and slid across the seat toward Deo. She skimmed her hand under Deo’s shirt and caressed her stomach while nuzzling her ear. “All those nights I’m sleeping alone, I’m going to be making myself come thinking about you inside me.”

Deo kissed her hard. “You’re such a fucking tease.”

Laughing, Allie pulled away and jumped out of the truck. Leaning on the door, she said, “Are you complaining?”

“Do I look crazy?” Deo tilted her chin toward the building. “Better go to work. Take it easy, sexy.”

“I’ll see you around, hot stuff.”

Allie slammed the door and stepped back so Deo could back out. Waving, she sprinted up the steps to the side entrance to the station. With luck she wouldn’t run into anyone in the short hall that connected the squad room in the front with the small locker room in the rear. She banged through the door into the unisex locker room and nearly flattened Bri.

“Sorry,” Allie said breathlessly, sidling around Bri. She grabbed the combination lock on her locker and hastily dialed in the numbers. It didn’t open. She muttered a curse and started over again. So much for her luck holding.

“Reese is waiting to start shift change,” Bri said. “I just came back to look for you.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I get dressed.”

“It looks bad when you show up like this, Al.”

Allie shot Bri a look. Like she didn’t feel stupid enough already for forgetting to tell Deo to set an alarm. “Well thank you so much. What are you, my babysitter now?”

“I don’t know,” Bri snapped. “Seems like you need one.”

“Oh, fuck you, Parker.” Allie whipped her top off, then remembered that she hadn’t put her bra on. Well, it wasn’t as if Bri had never seen her tits before. She could just close her eyes if it bothered her. She toed off her shoes, pushed down her jeans, and kicked everything into the bottom of her locker. Then she yanked her uniform shirt off the hanger. “Just because
you
think being married is the answer to everything doesn’t make it so.”

“This isn’t about me. This is about you not thinking about what—or who—you’re doing half the time.”

Allie jerked her pants up, jammed the tail of her shirt in, and zipped up. Then she grabbed her equipment belt and realized her weapon was locked in the trunk of her car in the parking lot where she’d left it last night when she’d hitched a ride with Bri to the party. “Crap.”

“Give me your keys. I’ll go get it.”

“Forget it.” Allie dug her keys out of the pocket of her jeans and shouldered past Bri. “Don’t do me any favors.”

Bri caught up to her in the hall and yanked on her arm. “Don’t be stupid. Finish dressing. It will only take me—”

“Would you two officers care to attend the morning briefing?” Reese said from the far end of the hall. She stood with her hands behind her back, her legs slightly spread, her gaze unflinching. “The chief is waiting.”

“Yes ma’am.” Bri snapped to attention. “We’ll be right there.”

“Now,” Reese said quietly.

“Go ahead,” Allie murmured, slinging her belt around her hips. “Go.”

“Both of you.”

Silently, Allie finished buckling up and walked beside Bri into the squad room. Tony Smith and Jim Winters from the graveyard shift sprawled in chairs around a conference table in the corner of the room opposite the small communications center, waiting to make their reports and go home. Chief Nelson Parker leaned against the counter next to the table, munching on what Allie figured was a Tums. He seemed to eat them like candy lately, and at the moment his expression suggested he had indigestion. When he saw her, his scowl deepened. “Your uniform needs some work, Officer Tremont.”

When Tony and Jimmy smirked, Allie checked her shirt and realized she’d missed a button. It was a good thing her tits weren’t any bigger, because they would have been sticking out. Hastily, she turned her back and straightened her shirt. “Sorry, Chief.”

“Since you and Officer Parker don’t seem to be in any hurry to start your shift, you can both take the desks this morning.”

Desk duty was the worst. Filling out forms, answering phones, dying of boredom. Allie was pissed at Bri for being such a tightass all of a sudden, but she couldn’t let Bri take the blame for her screw up.

“It’s my fault Bri…that Officer Parker is late, sir—”

“No it isn’t,” Bri said firmly.

“Shut up, Bri,” Allie muttered.

“I don’t really care whose fault it is,” Nelson grumbled. “It’s 0740 and neither one of you…” He winced and rubbed his stomach. “Who the hell made the coffee this…” He caught his breath and his face lost all color. “Christ.”

“Chief?” Reese just managed to catch him as Nelson slumped to the floor.

“Dad?” Bri blurted. “Dad!”

“Call fire rescue,” Reese ordered, feeling Nelson’s neck for a pulse. She couldn’t find one. “Tell them to get here code four.”

Then she started CPR.

Bri’s hands were shaking so badly she couldn’t push the right numbers on the phone pad. The last time she’d been this scared was when she saw Reese take a round in the chest when they had been trying to apprehend an arsonist. When she’d thought Reese was dying, she’d felt just like she did now—like she was crumbling inside, collapsing in on herself, the way the towers had in New York City when the steel had superheated and simply disintegrated. She fumbled with the phone. “I can’t…Jesus, I can’t—”

“Here, I’ve got it,” Allie said in a calm, unruffled voice, plucking the receiver from Bri’s nerveless fingers. She kicked the desk chair out with her foot as she punched in the number to fire rescue. “Sit down here.”

“No, I’ve got to—”

“
Sit.
Reese will handle things.” Allie dropped her hand to Bri’s shoulder and guided her into the chair. She kept her hand there, softly stroking, as she spoke. “Geri? This is Allie Tremont at the station—we need a unit over here code four. Yeah…at the station. I don’t know, a heart attack I think.”

Allie disconnected and shouted to the room in general. “Everyone’s out on calls. Ten minutes, they said. Should I call Tory or someone?”

“Take too long,” Reese grunted as she knelt astride the Chief’s body. She compressed his chest with the steady rhythm of a metronome and intermittently directed Tony to administer a breath.

Allie hesitated, then made another call and spoke softly into the phone.

Bri stared past Allie to where Reese worked. She couldn’t see her dad’s face, but he wasn’t moving at all. When she’d only had twenty-four hours’ notice that Reese was leaving for Iraq, she hadn’t slept at all. Instead, she’d lain awake trying to think of how to thank Reese for everything she had done, starting with the day Reese had picked her up by the side of the road after she had screwed up her knee. For training her in the martial arts—teaching her to be strong, not just tough. For telling her it was okay to be with Carre and for making her see what a big deal it was to love someone. She hadn’t been able to figure out a way to thank Reese for all that. And to tell her that she loved her.

Now twenty-four hours seemed like a lifetime. She hadn’t even had one minute to thank her father for always being there, even when he was pissed at her. To tell him she tried to make him proud. To tell him that she loved him. Lurching to her feet, she catapulted herself to Reese’s side and dropped to her knees.

“Don’t let him die.” She grabbed Reese’s arm. “Reese. Please—”

“Allie,” Reese said sharply without looking up. Sweat dripped from her forehead onto Nelson’s face. “Take her outside.”

“Come on, honey,” Allie said gently, grasping Bri’s shoulder. “You gotta give Reese some room.”

“I won’t get in the way,” Bri said desperately, releasing Reese’s arm. “I won’t.”

Allie squatted down next to Bri, curved her arm around her shoulders, and put her mouth close to Bri’s ear. “Come outside and call Carre. You don’t want her to hear about this from anybody except you, do you?”

Bri glanced from her father’s gray face to Allie and nodded. “Just for a minute.”

“You can come back in when fire rescue gets him squared away. They’ll be here in a second.”

Mutely, Bri rose and followed Allie as far as the front door, but she could not make herself go outside. Instead, she leaned in the open doorway with the bright sunlight illuminating half of her face while the other half remained in the otherworldly shadow of the squad room. Maybe it wasn’t happening at all. Maybe it was just a bad dream. She fumbled her phone from her belt and couldn’t remember her own number.

“I’ll do it.” Allie took the phone from Bri. “She’s still at home, right?”

“I think so. What time is it?” Bri felt like she’d been clobbered with a pipe.

“Never mind, honey,” Allie murmured, brushing her fingers through Bri’s hair. “I’ll find her.” She continued to stroke Bri’s arm while she watched what was going on inside the station. “Caroline? It’s Allie. No…she’s fine. She’s right here, but Chief Parker…he’s had a heart attack or something.” Allie turned her back slightly and lowered her voice. “At the station. Not so good. Could you get over here like right now? I think I hear sirens…that must be fire rescue. Hurry, okay?”

*

Tory parked her Jeep on the side of the road where she wouldn’t block the Sheriff’s Department parking lot. An emergency vehicle idled with its doors open near the front entrance. As quickly as her damaged ankle would allow, she hurried up the sidewalk. A small group of people congregated just inside the reception area—Gladys Martin, the middle-aged dispatcher who’d been with the department longer than Tory had lived in Provincetown, and several uniformed officers, one of whom was Allie Tremont.

“Excuse me. Excuse me, let me through please. It’s Dr. King.”

Miraculously, the crowd parted, and she pushed through the waist-high gate into the main section of the station house. Bri, her face bloodless, rocked on her heels a few feet from the epicenter of activity. Caroline pressed close against her side with one arm encircling Bri’s waist. Closer now, Tory could make out Nelson on the floor between the conference table and a desk, being administered to by two paramedics. Reese squatted nearby amidst torn IV tubing packages, discarded syringe caps, and empty IV bags. Her face was still and hard as stone, but her eyes blazed with what looked like fury. Tory wanted to go to her, but she couldn’t. Not yet.

“Hi Luther,” Tory said, bending down close to the paramedic’s shoulder. She knew all of the medical personnel for fifty miles. Hers was the only major clinic between Provincetown and the hospital at Hyannis. All the units brought their non-life-threatening, and sometimes even their dire, emergencies to her. “It’s Tory King. What do you have?”

“Hey Doc,” the gruff, ex-army medic said without looking up. “MI—his anterior ST segments are flipped. He was friggin’ flatlined when we got here but we jumpstarted him with intracardiac epi. His blood pressure’s for shit still. Amy is talking to the ER at Hyannis.”

Tory nodded briefly to the small redhead who sorted drugs from the emergency box as she talked on the phone, presumably getting instructions from someone at the hospital. “Amy, tell them I’ll take over until we get him there.”

With a grateful look, the redhead relayed the message and disconnected. “Sure rather have you running the show, Tor.”

“Thanks. How’s his rhythm?”

“Jumping around—a lot of PVCs,” Luther said.

“Lidocaine drip going?”

“Just started it,” Amy replied.

Tory nodded with satisfaction. “Okay then, then let’s run MI protocol and get him ready to transport. Morphine, O2, Nitro.”

“You want us to start tPA?”

“How much time are we down?” Tory asked, faced with a critical decision and not nearly enough information. The ideal treatment for someone with a heart attack was to open the blocked vessels as quickly as possible and insert thin plastic stents to keep the arteries open. However, irreversible cardiac damage would occur quickly if this treatment was delayed for even an hour or two. If they lost too much more time on the trip to Hyannis, Nelson might have a better chance if she started intravenous drugs that would dissolve any clots blocking his coronary arteries and hopefully allow more blood to flow to his heart. But tPA, as it was called, was a less reliable treatment than stenting and could have significant side effects.

Everyone looked at Reese.