Chapter Twenty-Six
Lance pulled the ER curtain aside. Once he saw Sharp sitting up on the gurney, Lance breathed easier. A nurse was wrapping a bandage around Sharp’s bicep.
“What’s the damage?” Lance set the clean shirt he’d brought on the gurney.
“Fifteen stitches.” The nurse taped the gauze down and stepped away to strip off her blue gloves. “I’ll be back with your discharge paperwork.”
Wincing, Sharp reached for his shirt. Lance reached over and pulled the shirt over his arm and shoulder. Then he helped him into his black fleece jacket.
“Thanks.” Sharp picked at the hole in his jacket sleeve.
“That could have been your head,” Lance said.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Now what happened?” Lance asked.
Sharp told him about finding P. J. and his wife dead, chasing the killer, and getting shot. By the time he’d finished the story, the nurse had returned.
“The stitches should come out in seven to ten days.” She handed Sharp a pile of papers. “There’s a prescription for pain medication in there.”
Tucking the folded paper into his pocket, Sharp slid off the gurney. His movements were slow and stiff, not at all like his usual bouncy, energetic gait. He obviously hurt more than he would admit.
He could have been killed. If the bullet had struck him a few inches to the side, he’d have a sucking chest wound instead of a minor graze. Lance rubbed a knot just below his breastbone. Sharp had never been shot. He was freakishly healthy. He’d never even been in a fender bender. To Lance, he’d always seemed invincible. But even Sharp’s impressive physical condition couldn’t hide the fact that he wasn’t Superman. Bullets were everyone’s Kryptonite.
They walked out to the Jeep.
“I need to go get my car,” Sharp said.
Lance shook his head. “Tomorrow. You shouldn’t drive tonight.”
He felt rather than saw Sharp roll his eyes. “I’m OK, Lance.”
“I know.” Lance drove toward the office.
Sharp shook his head. “Let’s drive out to the Roadside Motel.” Sharp leaned on the headrest and closed his eyes.
Lance kept the car on course. “We’re stopping at the office so you can pick up your gun. I know you don’t like guns, but if someone shoots at you, you should be able to shoot back.”
“You’re right.” Sharp sighed.
Lance pulled up in front of the office. Sharp’s Prius was parked in the driveway.
“How did my car get here?” Sharp asked.
“The sheriff must have had someone drop it off.”
“Damn it.” Sharp smacked the armrest. “Just when I want to foster a deep hatred for that man, he does something decent.”
Lance pulled up to the curb. Sharp got out of the vehicle, stopped at the Prius to collect the key, and went up the exterior staircase to his apartment. He came back a few minutes later wearing his sidearm and a jacket without a bullet hole.
“Are you sure you want to come along to the Roadside Motel?” Lance asked as Sharp climbed into the passenger seat. “You’re not moving with your usual grace.”
“I’m fine.” Sharp grunted and checked his watch. “Let’s get to it.”
Before Lance could pull away from the curb, his phone vibrated. He didn’t recognize the number of the caller. He pressed “Answer.” “Kruger.”
“Lance?” a male voice asked.
“Yes.” Lance put the Jeep into drive.
“This is Kevin Munro, your mom’s . . . friend.”
Kevin?
Alarmed, Lance shifted back to park. “What’s going on?”
“I’m worried about Jenny.” Kevin’s voice rose in pitch. “We talk every evening. I’ve messaged her three times and called her twice. She hasn’t answered. She always returns my messages within twenty minutes or so.”
“Maybe she’s working.” But even as Lance said it, he knew the argument didn’t hold water. His mom spent most of her day online. She worked online. If she received three messages from Kevin, she would have messaged him back.
“I don’t know,” Kevin said. He sounded anxious.
“I’ll go check on her right now.” Lance turned the Jeep around.
“You’ll let me know?” Kevin asked.
“Of course.” Lance stepped on the accelerator. He ended the call.
Sharp was already on his phone. He shook his head. “She isn’t answering.”
Lance pressed his foot down harder. His mother always answered Sharp’s calls.
“She could be meditating or doing yoga.” Sharp grabbed the armrest as Lance made a quick turn.
“Maybe.”
But neither one of them believed it. His mom was too predictable. Too routine oriented.
He cut three minutes off the drive, his heart racing faster than the Jeep’s engine. Sharp dialed her number twice more, but no one picked up either call.
Lance roared into the driveway. He had the vehicle door open before the Jeep was in park. They raced to the front door. Lance turned his key in the lock and shoved open the door. From the foyer, he could see into the empty, dark living room. His mother’s home was quiet. Not unusual. She spent most of her waking hours in her office at the back of the house. But beneath the absence of sound lay a disturbing stillness that stirred the hairs on the back of his neck.
Something was wrong. Very wrong.
He started down the hallway, dread balling up in his gut. “Mom?”
Silence ticked by, punctuated by the hum of the refrigerator and the echo of his heartbeat in his ears.
Sharp was right behind him, calling for his mom, his steps quickening as if he felt it too. “Jenny?”
With panic tightening his lungs, Lance entered the kitchen. The tidy room was empty, but one chair was pushed away from the table.
“Mom?” Lance’s voice rose with his apprehension as he continued into the short corridor that led to the bedrooms. His mother’s office had once been the third bedroom. The desk light was on, but the computer monitors were dark.
Lance emerged from the office and turned toward his mother’s bedroom. The door was closed, a thin strip of light showing at its base. He knocked. Maybe she’d been in the shower.
But even as the thought passed through his mind, he rejected it. His mother showered in the morning. Jennifer Kruger didn’t just decide to alter her personal routine on a whim.
He knocked on the door. “Mom, it’s Lance. Open the door.”
He curled his knuckles and banged again, harder. Nothing.
“I’m coming in!” he shouted. Sweat dampened the back of his shirt.
The door was locked. He ran his hand along the top of the doorframe, where the simple, cylindrical interior door keys had been kept since he was a boy. He found the key and used it to pop the push-button lock. The door opened.
The bedroom was empty.
With Sharp close on his heels, Lance moved quickly across the carpet to the closed door of the master bathroom. He banged just once, then tried the door. The knob didn’t give. He unlocked the door and pushed. The door cracked a few inches and stopped, something was blocking it.
“Mom!” Lance pushed against the door enough to get his head inside.
Not something. His mother.
She lay on the floor, curled in a fetal position, her legs on the bathmat, her torso and face on the tile. Her face was turned away from him, but her body was still and her skin matched the bone-colored tiles.
He froze for half of a second, his heart stuttering, his gaze on her ribcage watching for respirations, but he saw none.
She couldn’t be dead. She couldn’t.
Sharp called 911 while Lance muscled the door open enough to squeeze through sideways. Dropping to one knee, he rested two shaking fingers on his mother’s neck. Her pulse beat in a weak rhythm against his fingertips, and he caught the faint movement of her ribs as she took a shallow breath.
Relief rushed through him like a fighter jet. “She’s alive.”
Sharp gave the dispatcher the address and requested paramedics and an ambulance, then he climbed over her and crouched on the other side of her body in the small bathroom. Lance took her pulse and counted her respirations before moving her legs and opening the door all the way. Grabbing the blanket from her bed, he draped it over her.
“Maybe she fell and hit her head.” Sharp ran a gentle hand over her scalp. “I don’t feel any bumps or blood, but that doesn’t mean much.”
Lance stood and scanned the bathroom. When he’d first rushed in, he’d only seen her body. Now his gaze locked on to the sink and the two orange prescription bottles in the white bowl.
Both open. Both empty.
No!
She wouldn’t.
His gaze tracked back to his mother’s face.
Sharp had followed Lance’s gaze. He was tough, but his face paled as he took in the empty bottles.
Lance dropped to his knees. “Oh, Mom.” He bowed his head and put a hand on her forehead, then brushed a lock of hair away from her face. She didn’t react. Her eyelids didn’t even flutter. “I didn’t see this coming.”
Sharp grabbed his arm. “This is not. Your. Fault.”
“I know.” Lance took her hand in one of his. Her fingers were cold. He tugged the blanket over her shoulders, then checked her pulse and respirations again. “She seemed all right when I left her earlier. How could I have completely missed the signs? I was just here a few hours ago.”
“She’s breathing,” Sharp said. “Don’t count her out.”
Her heart rate was the same, but her respirations had slowed. He counted her breaths and kept his fingers on her pulse point, ready to start CPR the instant her breathing ceased or her heart stopped beating.
Time seemed to tick by in slow motion.
Even with his mother’s long and troubled history, he still couldn’t believe she’d try to kill herself.
Ten minutes later, sirens approached. Lance went to the door and let the paramedics in. They rushed the gurney into the bedroom and left it just outside the bathroom while they assessed his mother. Lance stood outside the door, hands curled into frustrated fists at his sides.
Sharp put his hand on Lance’s shoulder, pulling him backward. “Give them some room.”
The medics took her vital signs and started an IV, their rapid efficiency projecting the severity of the situation. One injected something into the IV line.
Sharp scrubbed a hand across the top of his head. Disbelief creased his face. “This doesn’t seem like your mom. Even when she’s been self-destructive, she’s never been suicidal. In fact, when her anxiety takes over, she isn’t thinking clearly enough to do anything except crawl into a dark place.”
“I don’t know what to think,” Lance said.
“Exactly what did she take?” one of the paramedics asked.
“The bottles are in the sink,” Lance said. “One’s for depression. She takes the other for anxiety and panic attacks. I had just refilled them last week so the bottles were nearly full. The anxiety medication is relatively new.”
Once, she took several more medications, but the new drug seemed to take the place of several of her old ones. Lance dropped his head and hooked a hand around the back of his neck.
Sharp frowned. “Are you OK?”
“Yeah.” But Lance didn’t know how he felt. His body was numb. But there was also pain. Pain buried so deep in his heart, it was going to take a scalpel to carve it out.
“Respiratory depression.” A paramedic called out. “We’re going to intubate her.”
Lance closed his eyes, his mother’s words replaying in his head.
I don’t want to be a burden on you.
Had she been afraid another breakdown would be hard on him?
The paramedics loaded his mother onto the gurney and wheeled her out.
Anger, at himself, at the situation, at the fucking world, overcame him for a minute. He turned to the wall and let it out. His fist went through the sheetrock. Pain shot through his knuckles, dissipating his rage.
Sharp grabbed his hand and examined it. “Good thing you didn’t hit a stud.”
His knuckles were scraped, but the damage was minor.
Sharp lifted Lance’s keys from his hand. “I’m driving.”
Lance didn’t argue. They went outside. He climbed into the passenger seat and stared at the swirling red ambulance lights all the way to the hospital.
The ambulance pulled into the ER bay.
“You should call Morgan.” Sharp parked the car in the emergency lot.
Lance shook his head. “Not yet. May as well wait until we find out how she is.”
“Morgan would want to know. She’d want to be here.”
Lance checked the time. Seven o’clock. He pictured Morgan sitting on the closed lid of the toilet, supervising bath time, then curling up with her kids to read bedtime stories. “There’s nothing she can do right now. I’ll call her as soon as I know something.”
The only thing to do was wait.