Emmy straightened Lara’s elbow, and Nick took her arm as Emmy applied a QuikClot trauma pad over the oozing wound and bandaged it on.
“No arterial damage, I don’t think,” Emmy muttered.
Jana’s face swam into view. Not her beautiful, smiling face. No, the one with blood running from the strangely neat bullet hole in her cheek. But that wasn’t what killed her. She’d bled out from her brachial artery seconds after she told Nick she loved him one last time. And he’d told her he loved her right back. Did she hear him? He had to believe she did.
But he’d never told Lara, had he? Not properly. He leaned over and whispered close against her ear.
“I love you, baby. You hear that? I love you.”
“Nicky, stop thinking that way.”
“I can’t help it.” A tear trickled down his cheek and splashed onto Lara’s. “She’s everything.”
It seemed like forever before the faint sounds of a siren reached his ears.
“Thank goodness,” he barely got the words out.
“She’ll be okay, Nicky. She’s still breathing, and that wound’s clotting nicely.”
He clung to Lara’s hand as the medics leapt out of the ambulance and took over, and when they asked him to let go of her, Emmy had to peel his fingers away. Numbness spread through him as a second ambulance arrived, and the teams strapped Lara onto a spinal board and then lifted her onto a stretcher. A Rorschach of her blood stained the dirt at the side of the road. When Nick squinted at it, it turned into an eagle. A fucking eagle. Jana’s fucking eagle.
“Nicky...” Emmy’s voice held a warning.
“What?”
“Pack it the fuck in. She’s still alive. Are you coming with me or in the ambulance?”
“Ambulance.”
The cops had joined the party, and one of them tried to stop Nick as he left the scene. “Sir? We have some questions.”
“They can wait.”
“Uh...”
Emmy took pity on the guy. “Ride with me. We’ll answer them at the hospital.”
CHAPTER 44
THE COP LOOKED remarkably unruffled as he trailed Emmy into the waiting room.
“Most boring drive of my life,” she muttered as she dropped into the seat next to Nick. “Anything?”
“They’ve taken her for tests.”
“Still unconscious?”
“Yeah.” Nick rubbed his hands over his eyes as he remembered his trip to the hospital with Jana all those years ago. Back then, the thin thread of hope had snapped twenty minutes after they arrived, but Lara was still hanging on.
The cop cleared his throat. “Did either of you witness what happened?”
Nick let Emmy take the lead. He didn’t trust the Richmond police, and he didn’t want them poking their noses into Blackwood’s business either. But tonight he was too tired to lie. Luckily, Emmy was the master.
“Yeah. We were driving back to my place in convoy. Lara was ahead, and something ran out in front of her. A fox, I think. Or maybe a small deer.”
“And she swerved?”
“Right into the trees.”
“What speed was she going?”
“Something sedate.”
“In a Ferrari?”
“Not everyone drives like they’re in a race.”
Nick choked back a laugh. Emmy treated the whole of life as a race, and she always had to be in pole position.
The cop raised an eyebrow and scribbled in his notepad. “So, an accident then?”
“Sure looked that way. You want a coffee?”
The cop nodded.
“Nick?”
He didn’t even bother to answer.
Emmy brought him a cup anyway, shitty stuff from the vending machine, and he ignored it as the cop asked more questions about Lara and the car. Once he’d established she was insured, he went back to his donuts at the station.
Emmy, who’d been pacing in her customary habit, paused in front of Nick.
“So, something was off about that dude…”
“The cop?”
“No, idiot. The guy carrying Lara.”
Nick had blocked everything except Lara’s broken body from his mind, but now he thought back to the scene.
“Yeah, it was.”
“I mean, what kind of arsehole drags an injured woman out of a vehicle like that? He said the car was at risk of exploding, but that sort of thing only happens in the movies. I should know. I’ve tried it enough times.”
“Too many people believe what they see on TV.”
“He also claimed to be a cop. If he really was, he should have known better. And if he wasn’t, he lied. Why would he lie?”
“I don’t know.” Only with a sickening feeling, Nick did. “Or I might. That guy Lara thought was bothering her in Baysville, she reckons he’s followed her to Richmond.”