“OFFICER DOWN.”
The words came to Shane Warner in a dream. At least it felt like a dream, its edges blurred and spreading like spilled wine. Flashing lights penetrated the fog in angry bursts, so bright that they seemed to have a sound all their own. The piercing squeals came from somewhere inside his head. The sounds built to a deafening pitch.
And something was dripping on his face.
“Hold on, buddy. They just got here.”
Shane blinked several times, trying to identify the vaguely familiar voice next to him. A voice that sounded too real to be a part of any dream. Hold on to what? Where was he, anyway? But the only words his mouth could form were “Who is—”
A rustle of cloth interrupted even that question as an umbrella unfurled over him. Of course. Rain. Not snow, though early December flurries had fluttered earlier in the day. His thoughts flicked to the windshield wipers that had been turned on in his patrol car. In a series of quick connections, he remembered. A domestic call. The angry shouts. The screams. The female victim crumpled inside the backyard gate.
Then the earsplitting blast.
As the stray dots of his memory scrambled back into a straight line, Shane jerked to lift his head.
And something set his back on fire.
Lying on his side, Shane tried to reach behind him to examine the pain’s source, but his hands refused to cooperate.
“Stay still, Trooper Warner,” a woman called out from somewhere nearby.
“Listen to her, Shane,” Sergeant Vincent Leonetti said, taking possession of that earlier voice.
He knelt in front of Shane, some towels in his hand. “You’ve been hit.”
“Shot?” Shane managed, his words coming slowly as if spoken through sludge. “But...my vest?”
As Shane shook his head to deny what was becoming obvious—that the vest had failed—the pain struck again, branding him with an unrelenting iron. Bile rose to the back of his throat. The tree-nestled bungalow swam before him in the murky sky.
“Sorry.” Vinnie pressed the towels to the back panels of Shane’s vest. “But everything’s going to be all right.”
“Wait.” He held back an overwhelming urge to retch. “The victim. She—”
“Not sure. They’re checking her now.”
He cleared his throat. “The suspect?”
“Dead.”
Vinnie looked away, toward what had to be a body on the east side of the yard, and then turned back to him. “But you’re going to be okay. Have to be okay.”
That was the last thing Vinnie added under his breath as he tucked a blanket over Shane, but the words still echoed in Shane’s ears. Just how bad was it? Wall-of-honor bad? Or just a forced retirement from a job that meant everything to him? He squeezed his eyes shut to block the misery of either option. Now the ground beneath him felt cold. So wet. Was it just the rain or was it...blood? A chill scrambled from the earth to his core, setting off a shiver he couldn’t still.
In what could only have been seconds, a crowd surrounded him, his fellow officers mumbling something and EMTs asking impossible questions and then shoving an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth. Could he move his hands? Could he feel his feet? He wasn’t sure. Yes, the pain had clutched him before, but now he felt eerily numb. Was it just swelling, or would he ever feel anything again?
“Now, Trooper, we’re going to have to get you on this board so we can transport you,” one of the EMTs told him.
But as they shifted his body, slipping the board beneath it, something shook him. Either pain or the anticipation of it. The lights around him crushed into some crazy kaleidoscope, and the voices splintered into hundreds of disjointed sounds. His world blinked in and out of focus until the darkness swallowed him completely.
DEAD WOMAN WALKING. Natalie Keaton cringed over the hyperbole of death-row-inmate proportions as she crossed through the activity room, but that didn’t loosen the ankle weights slowing her steps or lift the dread bearing down on her shoulders.
Sure, she’d had frustrating days at work before. Like when clients expected range-of-motion improvements without doing their exercises, or when she had to come in on Saturdays for appointments. But never before had she wanted to walk away from her job at Brentwood Rehabilitation Services rather than meet with a new client.
Now she was dreading the whole day.
From the activity room, where two other physical therapists guided clients through exercises and stretches, to the shoes and the examination-bed wheels that peeked out from beneath the curtains of consultation areas, everything seemed wrong inside the clinic. The piped-in music was too loud, its notes jagged scratches over her eardrums. Even the usually comforting antiseptic scents from foaming hand cleaner and antibacterial cleansers only made her queasy.
The row of windows outside the activity room displayed an obstinately gray March afternoon, the stratus-striped sky belching and spitting without having the decency to really snow. That didn’t keep Natalie from shivering until long after the windows were far behind her. As she passed her boss’s closed office door, she gripped the file folder she held tightly. The file she’d just tried—and failed—to hand off to another therapist.
You’re a professional. You can handle a challenge like this. Meg Story’s words of support, sprinkled with censure, burned like a blister ripped wide. A challenge? How could Meg see it that way? Why had she matched Natalie with this client in the first place? Didn’t her history matter? Natalie didn’t doubt that this seriously injured client deserved compassionate care. They all did. She just wasn’t the right PT to provide it for him.
She pulled at the sleeves of her sweater and brushed her free hand down her maroon scrub shirt as she neared the clinic side of the registration desk. If only she could swipe away her unease as easily. But she needed this job, so her only choice was to help this client get back on his feet as soon as possible. In and out faster than a playboy on a one-night stand, if she had her way.
Still, for a heartbeat too long, Natalie rested her hand on the door leading to the reception area instead of opening it.
Anne-Marie Long, the impossibly young receptionist with a perky ponytail to prove it, glanced over from her computer, a telephone handset tucked between her shoulder and ear.
“You okay?” Anne-Marie mouthed, her eyebrows escaping to behind her