More Bitter Than Death: An Emma Fielding Mystery - By Dana Cameron Page 0,100

window back and was shouting at me. I shinnied down the bed as quickly as I could without actually getting up, and caught her last words:

“—going on? What should I do?”

“Drive anywhere, fast,” I shouted. “Anywhere there’s people. Fast!”

I didn’t hear her response, but saw her nod and heard the window slide shut. I let my head sink down onto my uncomfortable nest once again, feeling the cold follow the warmth of the sweat congealing on my body. I was glad to think that the aches I knew were awaiting me were going to come, that I was going to live to clean out the cuts and to ice the strains and curse my bitten tongue. There are some times when pain is as welcome as a hug and a cup of tea.

Chapter 14

“WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?” MEG SAID AFTER she pulled over in the parking lot of the hotel. “What are you doing out here, with no jacket! And”—her eyes widened—“you’re bleeding!”

“It’s not bad,” I said automatically, though I was now trembling violently. She took off her coat immediately and put it around my shoulders. “You got a phone?” I said through chattering teeth. “I left mine down the road.”

“Yep.” She tossed it to me, and I dialed information for the hotel. I was lucky, and I got the manager right away. I told him to get the cops who were here down the road, there was a shoot-out, there was an FBI officer down.

Meg kept the rest of her questions to herself until I was done, and then handed me a water bottle from the cab of the truck. Even as I had finished the call, the aches and chills I was feeling were making themselves known. Then I was swarmed by uniformed officers. Okay, there were only two of them, but they were big enough, or seemed so to me, at any rate. I was still seeing with tunnel vision. I heard more sirens in the distance and hoped that Widmark was still alive.

I was still sweating and shaking more than a half hour later, sitting in the driver’s seat of the truck with the heat on high, as I repeated for what seemed like the millionth time the details of what I saw to Church. Church, with his red cheeks and turned-up nose, looked like he’d just come in from sledding. The smudges under his eyes told another story.

The racket from the radios eventually confirmed that the massive team that had descended upon the service road had found Widmark alive, and had gotten him into an ambulance and off to a hospital. So far, however, it seemed that they’d found nothing but footprints in the snow down the road, and empty cartridge casings. Whoever had been down there had found a way out and away.

There was a last batch of indecipherable crackling and jargon, and one of the officers looked at me. “The only look that Widmark got of the shooters—there were two of them—was when they rushed across the road, chasing after the crazy broad who dragged him to safety and then took off screaming through the woods.”

I was not screaming, I thought. I was far too busy breathing. And I guess that was about as much of a thank-you as I would get. A second later, I felt sick. I never dreamed they were behind me. Were coming after me. Had seen me. Who the hell were they? “I was lucky that Meg went by when she did.”

“Yes, you were. But the team followed their footprints off to the road. They had a car pointing away from the hotel, and they made themselves scarce pretty quick.” Then Church did a double take: Maybe I looked as ill as I felt. “Thing was, they veered off a ways from where you were,” he admitted. “They moved a lot farther south of where you were, so it seems they were more interested in getting to their car than they were in finding you.”

I nodded; it was about all I was able to do. I wasn’t actually freezing anymore, but every part of me was stiffening up and throbbing. Even places where I wasn’t scratched felt scraped raw from the cold.

We went over what I’d seen, or rather, what I hadn’t seen, up until the point that I’d taken off, and I realized that I was only paying about half attention to my answers. Maybe it was stress and denial, maybe it was cussed curiosity,