“ANNIE?” EVE LATCHED ONTO MY ARM SO TIGHT, I knew I’d have bruises by morning. Her breathing was fast and shallow, her eyes wide. “Is that what I think it is? Is it who I think it is? Is he-”
I swallowed hard and reminded myself not to go bonkers. That wouldn’t help anybody. Besides, it looked like Eve was on the edge of bonkers herself. And that was plenty for both of us.
I skimmed the light over the body on the pavement. “It’s what you think it is,” I told Eve. “It’s who you think it is. I don’t know if he’s-”
Once upon a very long time ago, I had thought about being a nurse, and I’d done some volunteer work at a hospital. It was the summer between my junior and senior years of high school. Like I said, a long time ago. But some things you learn you never forget.
I bent and felt for a pulse the way I’d seen the nurses on the floor do it. “It’s weak, but it’s there,” I told Eve. I looked over my shoulder at her, my own panic forgotten in light of the fact that now I knew that we had to act, and fast. “Call 911.”
“Call?” In the gloom, I saw the whites of Eve’s eyes. She blinked, stunned and afraid. “Maybe we should just get out of here, huh? Beyla said she was going to kill him, Annie. And it sure looks like she tried.” She darted a look around the dark back lot. “What if she comes after us?”
It would have been easy to buy into the argument and the panic. Except that we didn’t have time for theories, especially ones as goofy as that one.
I made sure to keep my voice level and my words neutral. What Eve needed right now was reassurance. Like it or not, the only place she was going to get it was from me.
“Nobody’s coming after anybody,” I told her. “No matter what she said, Beyla didn’t do this.” I glanced over to where Drago lay. “I’m no expert, but I’d say that it looks like he’s having a heart attack. And she couldn’t have caused a heart attack, could she? We can’t run off and leave him, Eve. We need to help him. Give me your phone.”
My words didn’t penetrate, and I cursed Eve for being hypersensitive and myself for leaving my own cell phone at home. Except for my mom and dad down in Florida and my brother, Larry, out in Colorado, no one ever called. The way I’d figured it, there was no way I’d need my phone at cooking class.
I’d figured wrong.
“Phone,” I said again, slower this time so she’d get the message. “He’s still alive, Eve. But he’s not going to be if we don’t do something and do it fast. We’ve got to call an ambulance. He needs help. Now.”
“Help. Right. Gotcha!” Eve shook herself out of her daze. Her hands trembling, she patted down the side pockets of her khaki skirt. “Not here,” she said. “Left my phone in the car.”
“Then maybe you should go get it?”
“Get it? Yeah.”
But Eve was rooted to the spot.
“Eve!” I didn’t want to do it, but I didn’t have a lot of choice. I raised my voice. “Eve, go to your car. Get your phone. Call 911.”
“Call. Yeah.” She nodded. But she didn’t move.
“All right. Give me the keys.” I held out my hand. “I’ll get the phone and make the call. You stay with the dying guy.”
“Dying?” When she turned them on me, Eve’s eyes were filled with tears, and her face was as ashen as Drago’s. “You mean, you think he’s gonna…” She swallowed hard. “I couldn’t stay here. I mean… I would but… but what if you’re not back and… what if he… I mean… I couldn’t. I-”
“Right.” I grabbed her shoulders and turned her to face the street where we’d parked. “Then go get your phone.”
“Phone. Yeah. Right.” She took off toward the car.
With that taken care of, I concentrated on Drago. And Drago… well, he wasn’t doing well.
“Drago?” I knelt on the pavement, afraid to get too close to a stranger, but reluctant not to offer what comfort I could to a fellow human being in need. With one finger, I gave him a little nudge. He groaned, and I figured it was a good sign.
“Drago, my name is Annie. My friend Eve went for her phone. We’re going to get somebody here to help you.”
His eyes flickered open. His gaze wandered aimlessly, to the building where Très Bonne Cuisine was housed, to the stars that twinkled in the navy blue sky above our heads, and finally to a tree just over my left shoulder, near where Eve and I had taken cover so that Beyla and Drago wouldn’t see us as we watched them argue.
Just thinking back to everything we heard and saw made a chill race up my spine.
It turned to ice when Drago’s gaze fastened on me.
He groped for my hand, and when he found it, he hung on like there was no tomorrow. For all I knew, for Drago, there wouldn’t be.
“Al… bas… tru.” His voice was no more than a breath, and it was even more heavily accented than Beyla’s.
“Alabaster?” I wondered if it was the name of his favorite dog. Or his wife. Or if he had some weird lapidary thing going on. “Is that what you said? Alabaster?”
“Alba… stru.” He didn’t so much speak the words as they leaked out of him on the end of a sigh. He reached up and touched my cheek.
His hands were icy. I jerked back, startled.
Just as quickly, I felt as guilty as hell.
Human being in need, remember?
I told myself to get a grip and pressed Drago’s clammy hand between both of mine. “Alba Stru? Is it someone’s name? I don’t know any Alba Stru, but I’ll tell you one thing, Drago, I’ll find her if that’s what you want. When you’re better. Right now, though, you don’t need to worry about that. We’re getting help. You just hang on-you’re going to be all right.”
Drago gasped from the pain. His breaths came quicker, each one a little more shallow than the last.
Where he found the strength, I don’t know, but he pulled his hand from mine. He groped for the breast pocket of his coat, and when he brought his hand out again, he had a piece of paper clutched in his fingers.
“This… important. You will see.” He pressed the paper into my hand, and I glanced at it. It was a receipt from a restaurant calledBucharest. Important? It didn’t seem likely, not unless Drago was counting calories and wanted to prove he had a sensible diet.
I turned the receipt over. Scrawled on the back side was what looked to be an address. But what did it mean?
I was just about to ask when Drago moaned. His body convulsed. I shoved the paper into my jacket pocket so that I could hold his hand again. I squeezed his fingers, and he took a sharp breath, holding it in a long time. Then, with a sound that reminded me of the murmur of wind through the trees, he slowly let it out.
It disappeared into the night air, and on the end of it, Drago went still.
“Drago?” I rubbed his hand between mine.
No response.
“Drago, can you hear me?”
I was talking pretty loud, but he didn’t respond.
“Drago, you’ve got to hang on for just a couple more minutes.”
I looked into the eyes that were open and staring right through me, but there was nothing happening behind them.
“Drago?”
I don’t know how long I knelt there beside his body. I don’t even know if I cried. I do know that I felt helpless.
It wasn’t until I heard Eve come huffing and puffing into the lot that I leaned back on my heels.
“Too late,” I said, glancing up at her.
Eve’s expression fell. “What do you mean, too late? I called 911. They’re on their way.”
As if on cue, we heard the distant sounds of sirens. They got closer, and before we knew it, the area behind Très Bonne Cuisine was awash in pulsing red light.
The paramedics were gems. They moved in and moved us back so they could get to work administering CPR. When that didn’t work, they shocked Drago with one of those portable defibrillators. But the whole thing went on too long. Five minutes. Ten. Fifteen. I knew it wasn’t a good sign, even before I heard one of them say something about “no use.”
At some point, I realized Eve was crying. I put an arm around her shoulders and together, we watched the flurry of activity and the expressions of the paramedics that started out with so much intensity melt into despair and then resignation. Through it all, I felt drained and strangely ghoulish.
Was it right for us to stand there and watch?
Should we have minded our own business and gotten on with our lives and left these men to their work?
Was there anything we could have done? Anything that would have changed the outcome? Anything that could have kept poor Drago from…
“I’m calling it.” Wiping one hand across his forehead, the paramedic in charge backed away from the body.
I gave Eve’s shoulders a squeeze. “You’re shivering.”
She sniffed and scrubbed a finger under her nose. “I’ve never seen anybody die before.”
“No. Me, neither.” Technically, of course, Eve hadn’t seen Drago die, but I wasn’t about to argue. In this case, close definitely counted. “It’s so sad. Dying in a parking lot with nobody around but strangers.”
“Beyla probably planned it that way,” Eve murmured.
I rolled my eyes, but I couldn’t be too hard on Eve. Though she tried for a tough-girl exterior, I knew that right below the surface, Eve was as soft as a marshmallow. Wild theories or no wild theories, just being this close to death-even the death of a man we knew only in passing-was bound to throw her for a loop.
“Beyla had nothing to do with this,” I reminded her. As they laid a white sheet over Drago’s face, I remembered his last, labored words.
A couple of the paramedics went back to the ambulance to get a stretcher and I hurried over to the head paramedic, whose nametag identified him as Sean. He was a muscular guy with a serious face and buzz cut. He had a clipboard in his hand, and was filling out a report.
I stepped around the white sheet and the shape beneath it. “He was asking for someone,” I said. “A woman, I think. Are you going to be able to find out-”
He put a hand on my arm. “You were here, right? You’re the one who called us?”
“That was me.” Eve moved up behind me. “I did do the right thing, didn’t I?”
Sean stepped back and looked Eve up and down. “Oh, yeah. You did great. It takes one amazing woman to keep her head when something like this is happening.”
“It was nothing.” Eve sighed. “I just couldn’t stand by and watch another human being suffer and not take action. You understand. I’m sure you do. I know that’s exactly why you chose your noble profession.”
I figured I had to put an end to things before the flirtation got out of hand.
“Let’s not forget Alba,” I exclaimed. They both looked at me like I was nuts. “Alba. The woman Drago mentioned right before he died.”
Sean checked his clipboard. “Drago. Yeah, Drago Kravic. That’s the name on the driver’s license in the guy’s wallet. I’m a little mixed up. You knew the deceased?”
“We don’t.” Eve piped up before I could explain about the cooking school or how we’d heard Beyla and Drago argue. “He told us his name. Right before he breathed his last,” she murmured, heaving another sigh. I turned to her in disbelief, ready to protest, but she gave me her bestkeep your mouth shut-or else! look, and plowed ahead. Luckily, Sean was still looking at his clipboard. “We didn’t know him at all. We were just walking through the parking lot and there he was. It was…” She blinked rapidly. “Well, I don’t know if I’ll be able to sleep tonight.”
“Maybe Alba won’t either, when she learns the news,” I suggested. I turned to Sean. “Alba Stru. I think that’s the name he mentioned. Will you be able to find her?”
He consulted the clipboard again. “We found his wallet. That means we’ve got all his vitals. Name. Address. Phone. If this Alba is next of kin, you can be sure we’ll find her. In the meantime…” He signaled to his crew, and they lifted Drago’s body onto the stretcher and slid it into the ambulance. Sean gave a wave as if to say that he’d be right there.
“There’s going to be a police officer here in a couple minutes,” he said. “Just routine. They always send out a patrol car when something like this happens. Actually, they should have been here by now-there must have been some delay. If you could just stick around and give the officer your names and addresses…” He looked at Eve when he said it, and I thought he was going to ask for her phone number, too, except one of his buddies called to him, and he turned toward the ambulance.
“There’s the officer now,” Sean said, as he hopped in. He pointed toward the green-and-white patrol car just pulling into the lot. “Thanks for your help, ladies.”
“Oh, no. Thankyou!” Eve put a hand up to wave.
I slapped it down. “This isn’t a speed dating event,” I told her from between clenched teeth. I figured we didn’t need one of Arlington’s finest to find us fighting. “And why did you make up that story about how Drago told us his name as he breathed his last? Why didn’t you just tell him the truth about Beyla and the argument-”
“Now, hold on.” Eve straightened her shoulder, posing, no doubt, in preparation for meeting the police officer who had stopped the patrol car. “You’re the one who insists that Beyla didn’t have anything to do with Drago’s death. So why mention it? Besides, it made for a better story, don’t you think? The dying guy breathing his last words to the women who came to his aid.”
“Woman,” I reminded her, preparing to launch into a speech about the consequences of lying to a paramedic. But then I realized Eve wasn’t listening. Which wouldn’t have worried me so much if I hadn’t caught a glimpse of the expression on her face.
Eve’s gaze was fastened to the patrol car that had just pulled into the lot. The door swung open. Eve’s jaw dropped. For a moment, I couldn’t tell if she was surprised or angry or-
She grabbed my arm. Tighter than she had when we first found Drago.
More bruises. Just what I didn’t need.
I glanced from my friend to the officer just getting out of the car. It was a woman, and though she was wearing a standard uniform hat, I could tell she was a redhead. She also just happened to be gorgeous. The officer was a few years younger than Eve and me. She had a thin nose, high cheekbones, porcelain skin, and a body that didn’t have an extra ounce of fat anywhere on it.
“Eve? What’s wrong?”
Eve’s muscles clenched. She raised her chin and pasted a smile on her face that reminded me of the one I’d seen her use in every beauty pageant she’d ever been in over the years.
The officer closed in on us. Eve spoke, adding a dollop of Southern accent to her voice until her words were as thick as hominy.
“Why, if it isn’t Kaitlin,” she said. “Officer Kaitlin Sands.”
And the pieces fell into place.
I SHOULD EXPLAIN RIGHT HERE THAT EVE HAS HAD what might be called a checkered love life. Or maybeinteresting is a better word.
Remember Clint? And Joe? Michael? And Scott? Well, that’s nothing new.
The thing is that guys love Eve, and Eve loves them back.
She also loves being engaged. She currently was what I charitably calledbetween engagements, but I had no doubt there would be another big announcement sometime soon. As always, it would be followed by a flurry of wedding plans that included me getting fitted for a matron of honor dress that was cut too skintight/was too clingy/showed way too much décolletage for my round figure. But I never worried.
I knew I’d never have to march down the aisle in any one of those dresses.
Why?
Because I knew the engagement would be called off. Or more specifically, that Eve would call off the engagement.
Just like she’d done five times before.
But here’s the kicker… If my memory serves me correctly (and it always does), Eve’s been engaged six times.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to do the math. Or to figure out that it was the One Who Got Away who had gotten under her skin and was still causing her to itch.
His name was Tyler Cooper, and at the time of their engagement, he was an Arlington patrol officer. Tyler was smart and cocky. He was dedicated to his career, a real up-and-comer within the department. In fact, I’d heard through the grapevine that since their break up, Tyler had been promoted to detective and was working homicide.
I’d also heard that he was newly engaged to another cop.
A woman by the name of Kaitlin Sands.