When Darkness Ends (Moments in Boston #3) - Marni Mann Page 0,92

way through the door. Each squeeze of his fingers told me he knew what this moment meant.

With her arm wrapped around my neck, the other on my chest, I brought us through the narrow doorway and into the hallway. She stayed silent, folded against me, as I began ascending. Looking up at the entrance from the halfway point of the stairs, I saw the gurney and two female paramedics next to it.

Protocol was to place her down on the bed, and they would roll her outside.

But I was the boss of this investigation, and Pearl Daniels wasn’t leaving my fucking arms.

“Move out of the way,” I told the paramedics before I reached the top. “I’m carrying her to the ambulance.”

As the wheels of the gurney began to back up, the metal legs squeaking, Pearl cowered against me. I grabbed the blanket that was at the end of the gurney, and while she rested her face on my chest, I covered her with it.

“You’re okay,” I whispered. “Close your eyes and think of something warm, beautiful … the top of Cadillac Mountain.”

The officers parted, and the paramedics did, too, the team following me as I made my way through the house, stopping at the front door.

“It’s going to be extremely intense out there. This covering will cut some of it out.” I lifted the blanket over her face, and she said nothing in response.

I opened the door, and it was even crazier outside than it had been before. Choppers were flying overhead. There were double the amount of camera crews. Neighbors had gathered on the nearest lawn to watch.

I paused in the entryway, speaking under the blanket, “Pearl, I need you to breathe for me. The noises are going to be much louder than you’re used to, but within three breaths, I’m going to have you in the ambulance.”

She crouched closer to my body.

“Take your first one”—I made it onto the first step—“right now.”

Questions were being shouted, and there was a hum from all the murmuring. I tried to block her from most of it with the blanket, hurrying down the rest of the steps and down the walkway and driveway to where the ambulance was parked in front. The moment I reached the back, the double doors were flung open, and I set her on the gurney inside.

“I’m right here,” I told her, holding her foot from the sidewalk while the paramedics climbed in, beginning their routine.

Wires were hooked onto her chest, an IV was inserted into her arm, a stethoscope was moving up and down her back.

“She’s stable,” a medic said. “Let’s roll out.”

Another paramedic climbed out next to me and said, “We’re taking her to Mass General.”

I placed my foot on the step, gripping the handle on the door. “You’re taking me too.”

She waited for me to get in before shutting the doors and pulling away from the curb.

While the other paramedic worked on her, I sat on the opposite side, taking Pearl’s fingers into my hand. “Are you doing all right?”

Her arm was resting across her eyes, most of her face hidden, her knees tucked into her chest. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “This is … so much.”

I ran my thumb across the back of her palm and over her knuckles. “We’ll be at the hospital soon, and they’ll give you something to calm you.”

Goddamn it.

I wanted to run the tests and review the results and determine what she needed.

I wanted to heal her.

But my medical background was a lifetime ago.

A few months shy of eleven years.

Now, all I could do was hold her hand and stay by her side and help her try to forget.

If she even wanted me to.

I glanced down at her fingers, skin that was dirty, nails that were broken. I was sure her hair hadn’t been cut since she’d been kidnapped. She certainly hadn’t been properly fed. I hoped there wasn’t anything too serious going on internally, but at her current weight, I feared her numbers were terrifying.

That was only half of it.

Inside her head, things were probably far worse.

I pulled her hand up to my face, breathing into it so she could feel my warmth, listening to her breaths as we rode in silence the rest of the way to the hospital.

A team of doctors and nurses rushed toward the doors the minute we were parked, lifting the gurney out of the back, ripping my hand from Pearl’s.

“I’m sorry,” one of the nurses said once we got in the hospital, her