Amy Maxwell & the 7 Deadly Sins (The Amy Maxwell Series Book 2) (22 page)

“Stop it, Amy,” Jason orders in an annoyed voice. “You’re injured. Just stay still and do what you’re told and
definitely
don’t get involved. You know what happens when you get involved with police activity.” He eyes me sternly and I comply, but not without sticking my tongue out at him. “We’ve got this under control. Please trust me.”

“Oh, just like last time? When I was stuck in a cabin with a killer for two days?”

“The reason you were there is because you didn’t listen to begin with,” Jason points out. “Let us worry about your sister and your niece. It’s being taken care of.”

I ignore his snide comment again and ask, “What was that noise? Is everything okay?”

Jason grimaces and holds up his finger as he fiddles with a walkie talkie, indicating either that I need to be quiet or wait a minute. Or maybe both. But I can’t be quiet and I can’t wait a minute because my sister is in a car with two (maybe just one?) kidnappers and gunfire just erupted in her general location. Excuse me if I cannot seem to calm down. Stuff like this doesn’t happen to me on a regular basis, although it’s starting to shape up to be an annual thing. I might be able to start writing a Christmas newsletter.

Merry Christmas dear family and friends! This year saw a lot of changes for the Maxwells! Allie got straight A’s! Evan learned to go on the potty! Lexie earned another Girl Scout badge that Amy will forget to attach to her sash! Amy was held at gunpoint…again!

Jason is holding the walkie close to his ear and moving away from me with a troubled expression on his face. I can hear the garbled transmission but I can’t make out what anyone is saying. It sounds panicky. That does not calm me down.

“Can’t you do something, Jason?” I beg. “Can you go down there and get her out of the car?”

Jason shakes his head. “Like you said, it’s their jurisdiction.” My face flushes at the reminder.

“What was all that gun fire about?” River asks with concern. He is craning his neck to see down the slope of the hill, but without binoculars everything is hazy in the bright lights.

“Some idiot opened fire,” Jason murmured with disgust. “I don’t know what he thinks he’s gonna do other than kill everybody in sight.”

I gasp and clutch the sides of the gurney so I don’t fall back and hit my head. I feel queasy and lightheaded, so it is a distinct possibility. Beth is in the car. There is a very good chance that my sister is either dead or in the process of bleeding to death and
nobody
is doing anything.

I stare at Jason and River who are just nervously passing the binoculars back and forth. The other cops around me (I just noticed that there’s at least fifteen cop cars parked nearby and twice that number of officers wandering around at the top of the hill) are all acting like as if they have no clue what they should be doing. It is not instilling any confidence in me whatsoever. Neither is the shouting down below, the concerned expression that Jason is wearing, or the constant police chatter on the walkie talkie.

The only thing that gives me any hope at all is that my EMT friend is texting away on her iPhone, paying absolutely no attention to me. The other two EMTs appear poised with a backboard and a first aid kit but that’s beside the point. They look like anal retentive, nervous types that are ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice anyway. They probably sleep with their uniforms on.

I need to take advantage of the fact that nobody is paying any attention to me. My one leg is already hanging off the side of the gurney, so I carefully cradle my injured leg and silently pull it to the side to join its partner. It feels numb and heavy, but tingly at the same time; sort of like when you wake up in the middle of the night with that pins and needles feeling in your foot and you have to hop around for five minutes to wake your leg up. I wonder briefly if that’s bad that I really don’t feel anything, but I brush off that thought as I brace my palms against the gurney with the intention of lowering myself to the ground.

With one eye on Jason and River, I start to hop away from the gurney. Jason is muttering something into the walkie talkie and he also has his cell phone pressed against his ear. River now has the binoculars in one hand and is nervously chewing the fingernails of his other. I am inching away, hoping to creep along the back of the ambulance in order to get back down to the car. I have no plan past that. I guess I will just feel inspired and the answers will come to me once I get there.

Are you screaming at this book right now? Are you flinging it across the room in exasperation at my insistence on putting myself in danger? I bet.
Why can’t you just let the police do their job, Amy? Why can you just be happy that you are out of harm’s way?
Isn’t that what you’re shouting at me as you pull your hair out by the roots? Yeah I know…I have that effect on people.

Don’t worry…I don’t get very far before my cover is blown. In fact, I don’t even get two feet. I have forgotten that the EMT lady has hooked me up to an IV that may or may not include some sort of pain medication. Or maybe she has given me a shot of pain meds. I think I felt a jab in my arm…or maybe not. Either way, I am woozy and connected to tubing. It is not working out for me as I crash to the ground and pull the IV out of the crook of my arm in one fell swoop. I feel and
hear
the back of my head bang onto something metal and then, it all goes black.

~Sixteen~

As I swirl in and out of consciousness, I finally open my eyes to find that I am surrounded by those pesky bright lights again. But this time I am not confused into thinking that I am dead because I have at least three, if not four, concerned faces peering down at me.

The faces are blurry at first, swimming hazily, but I can tell that three of them are males and one looks a little too feminine to be a guy. Maybe it’s that EMT. No, wait, she could probably put any guy into a headlock…she is definitely
not
feminine.

“Move people! Get out of the way!” A woman’s face pops into my visual field just before she shines a flashlight in my eyes and blinds me even more. Her ginormous boobs squish into the side of my cheeks as she leans forward. I think she must be a nurse or something.

I squint and Big Boobs yells at me. “Don’t close your eyes! How am I supposed to check your pupils if you have your eyes closed?”

I blink again and she has backed up, crossing her arms over her enormous chest. I wonder if she has to buy special uniform tops so that she can button those puppies in. I know I can barely close button down shirts and I’m only a B cup. This gal is easily somewhere in the middle of the alphabet.

Ah, the inappropriate things your mind thinks, Amy.
Then I wonder if I may in fact have a concussion because of my inappropriate thoughts.
Isn’t that a symptom of being concussed?

I am about to ask when the faces around me come into focus. First I see Jason to my immediate right, edging B.B. (Big Boobs) out of the way. Jason looks exasperated and annoyed. He is probably wishing he did not answer his cousin’s phone call this evening. At least then he wouldn’t have to deal with me.

His cousin
. I still can’t believe that they are related…like, what are the odds of that?

River is standing next to Jason. I can hear him remarking that this is going to be a really cool story to tell in
Intro
. I really don’t know how he is so excited when we are in the middle of a police stand-off with a hostage situation. Ugh, he’s like those doctor and nurse freaks who love when gunshot wounds and stab wounds come rolling through the ER doors.
Adrenaline junkies
.

Well, you’re kind of like an adrenaline junkie, too, Amy. Weren’t you just trying to escape your gurney and IV so you could sneak down the hill?

I ignore my inner self admonishing me because my reasoning was not for a thrill. But I’m not going to justify that to myself. Really…who argues with
themselves
?

“Jesus, Amy! What happened to your face? And are you missing a tooth?” I recognize that voice. The next face peering down at me is a new one…one I haven’t seen in what feels like a million years. It’s Roger.

“Roger,” I gasp, my voice coming out raspy and weird, like I’ve been asleep for days or had a tube shoved down my throat. “What are you doing here?” I wonder if Big Boobs or the EMTs called Roger, although I have no idea where they would have gotten his number. My phone is still in the trunk of the car. I
think
. And that EMT didn’t seem like the warm and fuzzy type that would be concerned with notifying the next of kin so that you had someone to comfort you in this situation.

Unless…
The next thought that pops into my head literally makes me lean over the left side of the gurney and hurl.
What if Beth is dead and they identified
her
next of kin and then Derek called Roger and…

“Oh my God, could you watch the shoes?” I hear the screech of another very familiar voice as I splatter vomit all over a pair of expensive boots. The owner of the boots leaps out of the way as my head snaps up like my neck is an elastic band.

“
Beth
?” I ask incredulously. I blink several times, making sure that I am not seeing things. No, I’m not. It’s definitely Beth standing there with her disheveled hair and rumpled outfit and now puked on boots. I practically fly off the gurney to embrace her but I am met by a series of protests.

“Whoa, whoa, easy there,” the EMTs shout, practically in unison.

“Not again, Amy,” grumbles Jason as he wraps his arm around my chest and pulls me back down.

“Are you okay? Is Jillian okay? Did you find Jillian?” Suddenly, I am frantic and I’m struggling to break free of Jason’s clutches.

“Should you be doing that?” Roger questions at the same time. I glance at him and see he is glaring at Jason.

My face flushes as I realize this is the first time that I have ever been together with both Roger and Jason at the same time. They have never met before. It’s a little weird when your husband is standing within spitting distance of the man that has saved your life (twice). Not to mention the fact that I fantasize about him on a regular basis…
daydream…I just daydream! It’s not a fantasy if there’s no sex involved…right?
Still, it’s weird with your husband and your lover in the same room…
Stop that, Amy! He’s not your lover! Geez…he can hardly stand to be in the same room with you! Besides, Beth is standing here! Beth!

“Are you alright, Beth?” I ask while pushing the thoughts of Jason as my lover out of my mind.  Beth nods and I notice she has a long scratch down the side of her face. She looks about ten years older than she had when she came to my house that evening and a thousand times more harried. Her face is red and splotchy and there are tears glistening in her bright blue eyes as she stares down at the ground, now mumbling incomprehensibly. She looks like crap.

“What about Jillian? Is Jillian here?” I whip my head around, looking for my niece.

“Jillian is-” Beth starts to say, but she is interrupted by Big Boobs.

“Ma’am, we need you to take a seat over here so we can check you out,” booms B.B. I think that she is talking to me and I’m feeling confused like my brain is muddled up. She sweeps a curtain closed with her fleshy arm before my sister can finish and my sister disappears again.

I feel a slight fluttery panic building in my chest as I gaze around and realize we are no longer on the hill and we aren’t outside either. In fact, the bright fluorescent lights should have been the dead giveaway that we are actually in the hospital; the ER.

I shake my head as if to clear the cobwebs from my brain that are making this night impossible for me to comprehend anymore. It’s almost like I’ve been plopped down in the middle of my own special episode of
The Twilight Zone
and I’m the star.

I glance at Jason, the seemingly most trustworthy one of the group. “What the hell
happened
? Where is Jillian?” I am practically screeching now.

Another nurse pushes her way over just then. She is smaller and thinner than Nurse B.B., but she is just as vocal and forceful.

“I regret that I am going to have to ask you gentleman to leave now,” she states in a tone that leads me to believe that she regrets nothing of the sort. As a matter of fact, it sounds like she might enjoy bullying formidable and muscular men.

“No way,” I snap. “No one is going anywhere until I find out what the hell happened out there. How did I get here?” I circle my hand in the air to indicate the hospital room. “And how did
you
get here?” I pointed at Roger. He cringes as though I have slapped him. I do sound a little bitchy, but
helllllllooooo,
it’s been a rough night. “And how did you find me to begin with?” I ask Jason. I’m still a little hazy on
that
detail. I vaguely remember something about River being his
cousin
? “And Beth! How did she get out of the car? Where are Claudia and Kevin? What was all that gunfire? Is someone hurt?” I am firing questions at the men so fast they actually look dizzy. “And
Jillian
! Where is
Jillian
?” In this mess the original reason Beth and I got into this debacle has been swept aside. Somewhere out there is a frightened seven year old waiting for her aunt to pick her up from a playdate! “Nobody is going anywhere till I find out what happened,” I repeat firmly.

The nurse plants her hands on her hips and gives me an evil eye that I’m sure she reserves only for her misbehaved patients and maybe her own kids and husband. “Oh really,” she remarks while snapping her gum loudly. “So I should tell Ray, the
very busy
X-ray tech, to wait until you get your stories straight even though this will take exactly two minutes of your precious time?” She points to the burly man in maroon scrubs that are practically bursting at the seams. He’s standing next to a monstrous contraption that I am imagining is the X-ray machine. Ray looks like he wants to eat me for lunch if I tell him to wait.

“Um, I guess not,” I stammer sheepishly and Jason, Roger, and River all file out of the room.

“That’s what I thought,” Bitchy nurse remarks as she sweeps the curtain closed after Ray has lumbered into the small space with the clunky machine.

After a series of grunts and groans (alternately from Ray and me), the X-rays are taken, Ray has left, and my guests file back into the room.

“So what happened?” I ask again as Bitchy nurse shoves two round blue pills at me. “I don’t want those,” I tell her as I push her hand away.

“They’re pain pills…prescribed by the
doctor
,” she snips as if saying the word
doctor
will explain everything.

“I don’t care,” I respond. “They’ll make me groggy and I’m already out of it.” The nurse opens her mouth to protest again but I cut her off with, “And if I hit my head, isn’t there a chance I could have a concussion? Wouldn’t it be a bad idea to make me sleepy if I have a concussion?”

The nurse’s jaw snaps shut and she whirls around and storms out of the cubicle without a word.

“So what happened?” I ask for what seems to be the millionth time in the last fifteen minutes. I think that I may have developed Tourette’s from the smack to my head.

All three men are gazing down at me and I have an overwhelming feeling of affection for them all building in my chest. All three of them wear completely conflicting expressions.

Roger looks nervous, tugging at his remaining tufts of hair. His face is a beet red and he looks like he has been sweating profusely.

Jason looks quite the opposite…well, no…the opposite would be
relaxed
. He certainly doesn’t look relaxed. He looks annoyed. Edge of your seat,
I just might crush somebody’s skull in
annoyed. I can assume the annoyance is directed at me. My fault again for getting involved where I shouldn’t be.

River appears to be excited, animatedly bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet as if he is five years old and we are taking him to a carnival or something. But I guess to a criminal justice major, what has just transpired is a carnival of sorts.

You’re a criminal justice major. Amy…why did you consider it a carnival?
I guess it’s kind of hard to have fun when your life in danger, your sister is being held hostage at gunpoint, and your niece is missing.

Jason pulls up a chair next to the gurney and for a moment, I think he is going to take my hand. But of course that’s ridiculous. My husband is sitting right here. And believe it or not
, he
is the one that takes my hand in his and gives it an affectionate squeeze. I stare at him for a second. Could he be trying to get me to have sex with him in the ER? Because the only time Roger makes affectionate overtures is when he’s looking for sex.

I shake off the thought as Jason begins to explain what has transpired while I was taking my ill-timed nap.

“Well I explained to you that River is my cousin,” Jason started to say, but Roger interrupts him.

“And who exactly are
you
?” he asks in his principal voice. And then I recall, Jason and Roger have never met face to face. What Roger knows about Jason is what I’ve told him. Even when Jason lived across the street (briefly) Roger never seemed to run into him. It was only me who ran into him (sometimes on purpose but…don’t judge me).

“Agent Jason Collins,” Jason replies, stretching his arm across my body to offer Roger a hand. Roger accepts his hand and begins pumping it until Jason finishes his introduction. “I can’t believe we never formally met. We lived across the street from each other for several months-”

Roger drops Jason’s hand like it is on fire. “Oh yes. I’ve heard about you,” he remarks dryly while staring me down. His eyes say to me,
I’ve heard everything except for how good looking you are
. Yes, I may have left out that teensy detail while telling Roger about Jason Collins. In fact, I think I may have even painted a picture of an elderly hunchbacked grandfather rather than the more accurate one of a very physically fit and drop dead gorgeous Jason Collins.

“Uh, yeah. Sorry. I forgot you two never met,” I reply in a voice that I hope sounds casual. I don’t add
I had hoped you two
would
never meet.

“So anyway,” Jason is continuing while ignoring the death ray stares from Roger (he has practice in ignoring death ray stares…he has a teenager, too). “River called me when he got your frantic phone message-”