Ellie McNeil was not having the best night of her life.

It was 3:49 AM, and she felt every second of the sleep she hadn’t gotten. Her eyes burned, her feet hurt, her head throbbed, and her muscles ached with weariness.

Remind me why I volunteered for the overnight shift, again? Ellie asked herself. Oh, right. Because I really, really need the money.

And also, she had to admit, because sometimes there was nothing more exciting than being the paramedic on call in the middle of the night.

This wasn’t one of those times.

Ellie and her partner, Catalina Mendez, had taken call after call since their shift had begun at midnight, speeding out in the ambulance with sirens screaming. And not a single call had been for an actual emergency. In between calls, Ellie and Catalina debated over which was more ridiculous, the drunken frat boy who thought his sleeping roommate was dead because he’d stopped snoring or the elderly man who thought he had a fever because he’d forgotten to turn off his electric blanket.

As the ambulance sped through increasingly sketchy neighborhoods, Ellie decided that it wouldn’t hurt to close her eyes. Just for a second…

Catalina brought the ambulance to a stop with a screech of brakes, nearly flinging Ellie into the dashboard.

“Wakey, wakey!” Catalina sang out, her voice bright with sadistic cheer. She was a night owl by nature, and volunteered for overnight shifts because she actually preferred them.

“I was not asleep,” Ellie retorted. “I was just… resting my eyes.”

“That’s what sleep is,” Catalina pointed out. “Up and at ’em, Ellie. Just two more hours till we can go home and cuddle up with... Uh, cuddle up.”

Ellie repressed a sigh as she grabbed her medical bag. At 6:00 AM, Catalina got to go home and cuddle up with her cats. Ellie had nothing to cuddle with but her pillow.

One year, eight months, and two weeks since I last had sex, Ellie thought glumly. Not that she was counting.

It could easily be another year— or two, or five, or ten— till she found a man willing to put up with a woman who spent half her nights saving lives away from home. Catalina made do with short-term flings, but Ellie didn’t want to settle for anything less than a committed relationship. Which meant that she’d settled on nothing at all.

When Ellie scrambled out of the ambulance, the icy night air chilled her lungs and face, shocking her to full awareness. She forgot about her weariness and lack of romantic prospects, and focused on her job.

“Review call,” she said automatically.

Equally automatically, Catalina recited, “Male, age eighteen, awoke disoriented and combative. Call placed by mother.”

“Bet you a pizza he snuck out and partied too hard,” Ellie suggested.

Catalina elbowed her in the ribs. “I’m not taking your sucker bets.”

The apartment building faced an alley too narrow for the ambulance to park in. They left the ambulance parked on the wider street that the alley intersected, and walked down the dark, garbage-strewn alley toward the apartment belonging to the disoriented, combative male and his mom.

Ellie’s smile vanished as they hurried up the stairs. She and Catalina might privately joke about their jobs— they had to have a sense of humor, or they’d lose their minds— but once they were in the presence of their patients, the paramedics were completely focused on doing the best they could for them. Even if the boy was just drunk or high, Ellie and Catalina would examine him, make sure he was all right, and reassure his worried mother.

The woman who opened the door was tiny and white-haired, ninety if she was a day. “Oh, thank God you’re here! My poor baby Ricky!”

Ellie frowned in confusion as she followed the woman, who seemed way too old to have an eighteen-year-old son. Maybe the 911 operator had misheard ‘grandmother’ as ‘mother.’

The woman pointed dramatically. “Here he is!”

Ellie bit down on her lower lip to stop herself from bursting out laughing.

Ricky was a fat, fluffy, contented-looking Angora cat. He blinked up and yawned at them from his perch on the back of the sofa.

“Ricky is a cat,” Catalina said, her voice quivering slightly.

“He’s my baby,” the woman corrected them. “I woke up and went to get a drink of water, and I reached out to pet him as I passed by. He always purrs when I pet him, but tonight he meowed and twitched his head like he was going to bite me. My poor baby!”

“I think you just startled him,” Ellie said soothingly.

The woman shot her a doubtful look. “I guess that could be it. He does look better now, don’t you, baby? But better safe than sorry! Aren’t you going to examine him, just to be sure?”

Fighting to keep a straight face, Ellie said, “Catalina, why don’t you do the exam? I’ll just go out and radio the hospital with our estimated time of return.”

As Ellie walked past her partner, Catalina whispered, “You owe me a pizza.”

“Come on, you love cats,” Ellie whispered back, and made her escape.

Once she was safely out the door, she gave in to laughter. Poor baby Ricky, the world’s most pampered cat!

Ellie was still smiling as she walked down the stairs. It was calls like these that reminded her of why she loved being a paramedic, despite the crazy hours and the lonely nights at home. Whatever else you could say about the job, it was never boring.

She entered the alley. Blinking down the dark strip of asphalt, lined with garbage cans and buildings with darkened windows, Ellie tried to remember which end of the alley led to the street where they’d left the ambulance. One dented trash can looked vaguely familiar. Yawning, she turned right.

The alley stretched on for longer than she remembered walking when they’d first come to the apartment. The only light was from distant street lights, and everything was dim and shadowy. The still air smelled strongly of mold, oil, and rotting garbage. There was no sound but the occasional rumble of a car driving by several streets away.

Uneasy, Ellie wondered if she’d gone the wrong way. Then she came to a dead end at a brick wall. It was a T-shaped intersection, with even darker and narrower alleys leading to the left and right.

Definitely the wrong way, she thought. She turned around to go back.

“Are you sure he’s dead?” The voice came from the alley to her left. The speaker was a man with a low voice.

Ellie froze in her tracks. Obviously, someone was in desperate need of medical help. Normally she’d have run forward to offer her assistance. But the speaker’s tone chilled her blood. She felt certain that he wanted someone to be dead.

“I’m pretty sure, Mr. Nagle,” said a different man, sounding slightly nervous. “I shot him three times.”

Ellie knew that the best thing for her to do was to walk away quietly and call the police. But she hadn’t become a paramedic because she liked to play it safe. She stepped behind a dumpster, careful to place her feet away from anything that might snap or squish or crunch. Her heart pounding, she cautiously peered out into the alley. Though the light was dim, her eyes had adjusted to it. She could see perfectly.

Two men stood in the alley, looking down at the limp body of a third man. One man was in his fifties, tall and gray-haired, dressed in a black suit that looked out of place in the filthy surroundings. The other was in his late twenties, a big bruiser in jeans and a blood-spattered T-shirt, holding a gun. But it was the sight of the man down on the ground that made Ellie stifle a gasp.

She wasn’t shocked because he was bleeding, or because he might be dead. Ellie had cared for lots of injured people, and seen her share of dead-on-arrival bodies. What shocked her was that she recognized the man.

She didn’t know him personally, but she was familiar with his face. She’d voted for him at the last election, barely three months ago. It was Bill Whitfield, the new district attorney of Santa Martina. He’d run on the promise to fight organized crime.

He was dead. She’d been a paramedic long enough to know that, even from a distance. There was nothing she could do for him.

“Shoot him again,” the tall man ordered. “In the head. Execution-style. Just to send a message.”

“Okay, Mr. Nagle,” the younger man— the hit man— replied.

He adjusted his aim, then shot the dead man in the head. The gun must have been silenced; it made a soft popping sound, not a loud bang.

Ellie flinched. Her heart was beating so hard, she felt like it would smash through her ribs. She had to get out of there and call the police, before these men saw her and killed her too. She took one last look, memorizing their faces, then turned to tip-toe away.

A rat emerged from beneath the dumpster and scurried over her foot. She jerked backward, barely managing to stop herself from letting out a yelp. But the rat was as surprised as she was. It bolted madly into a nearby heap of beer bottles and soda cans, producing a tremendous clatter.

“What’s that?” demanded Mr. Nagle.

“Someone’s there!” the hit man shouted.

Ellie flung herself forward, a second before she heard another soft pop. The bullet barely missed her head, hitting the brick wall beside her. Chips and dust exploded out, and a sharp pain stung her cheek.

She ran like she’d never run in her life. Sheer terror lent her speed. She heard the men shouting behind her, and heard another soft pop. Her lungs burned as she forced herself to go faster, expecting any second to feel the impact of a bullet in her back. Or to feel a brief explosion of pain in her head, and then nothing ever again.

She burst out of the alley, looked around wildly, and spotted the ambulance. Ellie yanked out her keys, dove for the rear door, wrenched it open, and scrambled into the rear compartment. She heard another soft pop as she slammed the heavy metal door. Ellie flinched, but she felt no pain. She hadn’t been hit.

Then she scrambled forward and slammed her hand into the button that turned on the lights and siren. Bright lights flashed, and the siren screamed.

She hoped that would be enough to scare the murderers away, but she had one more way to make sure. Ellie hit the button that projected her voice outside of the ambulance like a bullhorn. Usually she and Catalina used it to order careless drivers to get out of their way.

“GET AWAY FROM THE AMBULANCE.” Ellie’s voice boomed out, amplified and deepened. “I’VE HIT THE EMERGENCY ALERT. THE SWAT TEAM IS ON ITS WAY.”

There was no emergency alert, unfortunately. But she bet the murderers didn’t know that.

Black spots suddenly danced before her eyes, and she felt her knees give way. She sank down to the floor, dazedly thinking, So this is what it feels like to be so scared that you pass out.

Then she remembered that when she saw patients on the verge of collapsing from shock, she told them to put their head between their knees. Ellie put her head between her knees. Slowly, her vision cleared, though she still felt shaky. She fumbled for the radio button, and finally got it turned on.

“Ellie McNeil here,” she said. “Paramedic on duty at Ambulance Forty-Nine. I’ve just witnessed a murder.”

Ellie sucked down the dregs of her fifth cup of black coffee and glanced at her watch. 1:00 PM. If she’d had a normal night at work, she’d be at home now, fast asleep. If she was a normal person with a normal job, she’d be eating lunch.

Instead, she’d spent the last eight hours at a police station, telling and re-telling her story to multiple sets of detectives, and identifying photos of the men she’d seen. Whoever the murderers were, the police knew about them; the hit man had his photo in one of the books of mug shots, and Mr. Nagle had appeared in an envelope of photos a detective had shown her.

Ellie yawned again, wishing the police had allowed Catalina to stay and keep her company. Catalina had offered, but the police had sent her home. Now Ellie was exhausted and bored. The cops had given her coffee and sandwiches, but she’d been awake for twenty-four hours now, with no sign of being allowed to leave. And they’d been crappy sandwiches and worse coffee.

Worst of all, the last cop who’d spoken to her, Detective Kramer, had confiscated her purse to “take it into evidence.” Then she’d been left alone in the room without even her cell phone to distract her.

To her relief, Detective Kramer returned with her purse and handed it back to her. “Sorry about that. Just procedure.”

Ellie gratefully took it. “Thanks. Can I go home now? You’ve got my number— you can call me whenever you arrest those guys, and I can come in and ID them.”

Detective Kramer rolled his eyes. “Sure you will.”

Ellie stared at him, baffled. “Why wouldn’t I?”

The detective gave her a startled look, then slowly whistled. “I thought you were putting me on. But you really have no idea who Mr. Nagle is, do you?”

Frustrated, Ellie snapped, “No! Now will you please tell me what’s going on?”

Detective Kramer sat down across from her. “Have you ever seen a movie called The Godfather? Nah, you’re probably too young…”

“Of course I’ve seen it.”

“Nice to know people still watch the classics,” the detective remarked. “Well, Wallace Nagle is the Godfather. He’s the head of organized crime in Santa Martina. No one testifies against him, because—”

“They’d wake up with a horse head in their bed,” Ellie said. She’d thought the night couldn’t get any worse, but her stomach lurched at the thought.

Detective Kramer raised his eyebrows. “They wouldn’t wake up at all. As you saw. Now, I can offer you Witness Protection…”

Ellie had heard of that. “You mean, I change my name, leave Santa Martina, move to some tiny town no one’s ever heard of, get a different job, and never have any contact with any of my friends or family for the rest of my life?”

“That’s right.”

“No way,” Ellie said. Imagine never seeing her brother again! Or Catalina. “Absolutely not. Who’d do that?”

“No one.” With a sigh, the detective stood up. “Well, thank you for your time. I’m sure you’d testify if you could. You can go home now.”

He turned and headed for the door.

Ellie jumped up, raising her voice to halt him. “Wait a second. I never said I wouldn’t testify. I just won’t go into Witness Protection.”

Detective Kramer froze, then slowly turned to face her. “Let me make sure I heard you right. You’re not willing to do Witness Protection, but you are willing to testify against Wallace Nagle.”

“That’s right.”

“And you realize that he’s going to try to kill you. And that he can. Easily. I appreciate your courage, Ms. McNeil, but unless you go into Witness Protection, you won’t live to testify.”

The detective’s words made Ellie’s entire body tingle with anxiety. But she’d seen an innocent man ruthlessly murdered. How could she not testify, no matter how dangerous it was?

But she wasn’t willing to give up her entire life, either. How could she agree to abandon her family and friends, and never see or speak to any of them again? She didn’t want to give up her job— she loved being a paramedic in the big city. And on the off-chance that she found a man who loved her, job and all, how could she have a real relationship when she could never even tell him her real name?

On the other hand, she’d never have a relationship with anyone if she was shot by one of Mr. Nagle’s hit men.

Ellie bit her lip, trying to think of alternatives to ruining her life, ending her life, or letting a vicious murderer get away with it. Catalina wasn’t just her partner, she was Ellie’s best friend. But good as she was at emergency medicine and pedal-to-the-metal driving, she couldn’t fight off a hit man. Ellie’s brother Ethan was completely capable of protecting her, but he was on some secret Marine mission. He wouldn’t be able to leave it even if she had any way of contacting him, which she didn’t.

“Can’t the police protect me?” Ellie asked. “You want to put Nagle away, right? Then keep me alive so I can do it.”

“We don’t have a budget for round-the-clock protection,” Detective Kramer replied.

At that point, Ellie’s stress hit maximum. She wasn’t hot-tempered normally, but hearing that the cops couldn’t afford to save her life made anger burn through her body. “I bet your boss could find some money for getting rid of the Godfather! If you can’t help me, I want to talk to the watch commander.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Detective Kramer began.

“I want to talk to the watch commander,” Ellie repeated.

“He’s busy.”

She folded her arms across her chest. “Fine. He can see me when he’s ready. But I’m not leaving till I’ve talked to him.”

The detective seemed taken aback. “Hold on. I’ll see what I can do.”

He hurried out. The door shut behind him, leaving Ellie alone and feeling like she’d just made the worst mistake of her life. She couldn’t bring herself to deny what she’d seen, but the idea of being hunted like an animal made her heart start pounding again.

I’ll be safe. The watch commander will find the money, and then I’ll have a police officer to protect me, she told herself.

The thought didn’t make her feel much better. Detective Kramer might be good at solving crimes, but he looked like he spent more time eating donuts than chasing down criminals. And while the detectives she’d spoken to had been nice, several of the patrol officers had openly ogled her curves when she’d walked through the station.

With the luck Ellie was having that night, she’d probably get Officer Creeper, one step up from a mall cop. He’d stare at her generous breasts and big ass, get in her way as she tried to work, lurk creepily in his car outside her apartment at night, and shed a trail of donut crumbs wherever he went. He’d breathe heavily and stand way too close to her. And if anyone attacked her, he’d be so out of shape that she’d have to protect him.

Worst night of my life, Ellie thought.