CELEBRITY STATUS (The Kate Huntington mystery series #4) (33 page)

            Rob followed the paramedic as he raced out of the house, talking into his radio. “Second ambulance is on its way, sir,” he said. In response to Rob’s confused look, he added, “To transport the other victim.”

            The muscular young man was no doubt quite capable of managing the collapsed gurney by himself, but Rob, desperate for something to do, helped him carry it up the porch steps.

            The paramedics gently lifted Kate’s unconscious body, stomach down, onto the gurney, then strapped her down. Rob followed close behind as they rolled her out of the house. “Police’ll want to talk to you, sir,” the young woman said over her shoulder.

            “I’m going with... my wife,” Rob said. He wasn’t taking any chances. There was probably some damn rule these days about only relatives in the ambulance. He was going to the hospital with Kate if he had to stand on the back bumper, hanging onto the door handles.

            The paramedic shrugged as they race-walked the gurney toward the ambulance. She’d suspected that was the answer she would get. And the hospital preferred to have a relative available to give a medical history, and provide the all-important insurance information.

            With the patient, her husband and her partner loaded in the back, the young woman was closing the ambulance’s doors when a police cruiser came around the corner, siren blaring. She keyed her radio as she climbed into the driver’s seat, to tell the officers that the person who had found the victims would be at Greater Baltimore Medical Center.

            In the back of the ambulance, the other paramedic was hooking the bag of clear fluid attached to Kate’s IV tube onto a hook above her head. Rob took the limp right hand dangling off the side of the gurney.

            He whispered over and over, “Hang on, Kate. Don’t leave us.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

            Skip laid on his horn and made a U-turn in the middle of Towsontown Boulevard when Rob called and told him his wife was in the emergency room at GBMC, the victim of a stabbing.

            Fortunately no one was coming the other way. His luck held at the light at Charles Street. It was just turning yellow when he got there. He took the turn fast, his tires squealing in protest as he accelerated up the hill.

            At the front entrance of the hospital he abandoned his truck with the motor still running. Let the asshole who was yelling, “Hey, you can’t leave your vehicle there,” move it. He raced into the building and desperately charged down corridors, searching for the ER.

            Rob was walking toward a bank of elevators when he spotted Skip. He grabbed the big man’s arms to stop his momentum. “We’re going upstairs. They just took her to prep her for surgery.” He turned Skip around and, despite the fact that the other man was three inches taller, Rob managed to get his arm around his broad shoulders.

            Steering him toward the elevators, he told Skip what the paramedic had said in the ambulance. “He told me he wasn’t supposed to say anything about her condition, but he thought the knife had missed her heart. She’s going to be alright,” he tried to convince himself and the man next to him, as the elevator started taking them to the third floor. Tears were streaming down Skip’s face. Rob handed him his own clean handkerchief. He hadn’t bothered with it himself. He’d just kept wiping his own face with his sleeve, probably ruining his expensive suit jacket in the process, not that he gave a damn about that at the moment.

            “Where was Ben? How did he let this happen?”

            Rob hesitated. There was no good way to say it. “He’s dead, Skip.”

            Skip’s angry face went blank, then twisted into anguish. He turned away and banged his fists against the side of the elevator. “Noooo!” he screamed, just as the elevator doors slid open. Two people waiting to get on took several steps backward when they saw a man the size of a small mountain banging on the elevator wall and yelling.

            Rob grabbed his friend and dragged him into the hallway. By the time they had found the surgical unit’s waiting room, Skip was somewhat under control. Rob led him to two chairs as far away from the others waiting for news of their loved ones as he could get.

            Skip sat down, put his elbows on his thighs and leaned forward, staring at the floor. Rob put his hand on the man’s back. “I called Rose,” he said quietly. “Mac’s taken Maria and the kids to their apartment, and Rose was headed for your house, to fill the cops in on what’s been going on.” Skip nodded without raising his head.

            After several minutes had passed, Rob said, “By the way, we’re going to have some explaining to do at some point. I told them I was her husband so they’d let me ride in the ambulance and authorize her surgery.”

            Skip sat up. He looked around for Rob’s handkerchief, but it had gotten lost somewhere along the way. Fishing out his own, he wiped his wet face, then turned to Rob. “Yeah, that could definitely take some explaining,” he finally managed to say.

            “It was someone they knew and trusted, Skip. Ben was sitting in an armchair in the living room and Kate was stabbed in the back. No sign of forced entry or a struggle.”

            Skip digested all that, then nodded. He looked off into space, his eyes glazing over, thinking. And praying.

* * *

            An agonizing hour and a half later, a doctor, with an inscrutable expression on his face, finally came into the waiting area. “Mr. Franklin?” he called out, looking around the room. He spotted his patient’s husband just as Rob and Skip both jumped up, fear and hope on their faces.

            The doctor closed the gap between them and motioned them back into their seats. “And you are?” he said to Skip. Legally, he wasn’t allowed to give out information except to next of kin.

            “I’m her husband,” Skip said. The doctor did a double-take.

            “I’ll explain in a minute, but right now I think you’d better tell us how she is,” Rob growled.

            “She’s in guarded condition.” The doctor hesitated, weighing the immediate threat of physical harm at the hands of these big, scowling men against the risk of a lawsuit over privacy issues. He kept it simple. “She’s lost a lot of blood, but I’m fairly confident she’ll be okay. Knife didn’t hit anything other than muscle.” He opted not to tell them just how close it had come to the all-important heart muscle.

            “Whichever one of you actually is her husband can go in to recovery to see her.” The doctor hadn’t even finished talking before Skip was on his feet.

            “Where’s recovery?”

            The doctor pointed to a door. “Nurses will get you gowned and gloved. Gotta be careful about post-op infections.” He added the latter to make sure the man would stop long enough for the nurses to do their thing.

            As Skip loped across the room, Rob opened his mouth to explain about the husband issue. The doctor held up his hand. “Quite frankly, it’s the end of a very long shift and I’m too damned tired to care. You’ll need to get it straightened out on her records though.” After a beat, he added in a quieter, gentler voice, “I can understand your motivation, but in emergencies, we can operate without next-of-kin authorization.”

            “Yeah, but I didn’t know if they’d let me ride in the ambulance with her, and hold her hand.” Rob’s voice broke. He swallowed, then whispered, “And keep telling her to hang on.”

            The doctor stood and put a comforting hand on Rob’s shoulder. Keeping his voice low, he said, “It was good you were there. She could’ve slipped away from us.”

            Rob nodded and the doctor trudged toward the door. Rob got out his cell phone to call the others and let them know that Kate was still with them.

* * *

            When the recovery room nurses felt Kate was sufficiently stabilized, she was transferred to a room. Rob was finally allowed to go in to see her.

            As he stepped into the doorway, his breath caught in his throat. Kate was so pale and still, he thought for a moment she was dead. Then he realized Skip would not be sitting next to the bed, calmly stroking her forehead, if she had stopped breathing. Skip’s other hand was awkwardly holding the limp fingers hanging out of a sling-like contraption, that was no doubt designed to keep her injured shoulder immobilized. The big man still wore a paper gown over his clothes, but he had removed the rubber gloves required in recovery.

            Rob dragged a chair over to the other side of the bed and sat down. He put his hand on Kate’s other arm, just above the IV tube taped to the back of her hand. “Has she opened her eyes at all?”

            Skip nodded without taking his eyes off his wife’s face. “Briefly, in the recovery room.”

            After another moment, Skip’s face contorted and Rob realized he was struggling not to cry. “Thank you,” he whispered. “If you hadn’t gotten there when you did... I couldn’t live without her.”

            A week ago, Rob would have denied the truth of that statement, believing Skip would go on, for the sake of his children. Now, he wasn’t so sure. This strong man’s only weakness was the woman laying so deathly still on the bed between them.

            Finally Rob stated the simple truth. “You don’t have to, Skip. We didn’t lose her.”

            They sat for a long time, Skip’s big hand now resting along Kate’s cheek, Rob gently stroking her right arm. Skip started massaging the cold, limp fingers of her left hand, trying to rub some warmth into them.

            Rob finally broke the silence. “I have her diamonds, including your mother’s ring.”

            Skip nodded again, although even the diamond that had adorned the left hands of three generations of Canfield women was of little importance to him at the moment. He brushed his thumb over his wife’s pale cheek and willed her to open her eyes.

            “Does this make any sense to you, Skip?” Rob asked in a quiet voice. “This can’t be a coincidence, but why would Cherise’s stalker go after Kate?”

            “I don’t know,” Skip replied, shaking his head slightly. That was the question he had been trying to sort out in his own mind, but anxiety kept derailing his thought process.

            “Two notes ago, the message was that the stalker was going to get rid of, quote, ‘those people who are keeping us apart.’ Rose and I assumed that meant us and her bodyguards. Rob, I almost pulled...” Skip stopped and stared at the ceiling. He swallowed hard. “I almost pulled Ben off of Kate yesterday.” He shook his head slightly, not sure what difference that would have made in the outcome.

            After a moment, he added, “It doesn’t make any sense. Our strongest suspect at this point is Cherise’s personal assistant. We think she may have some kind of crazy crush on her boss. But Sarah wouldn’t have any reason to go after Kate.”

            Skip went back to stroking his wife’s hair and massaging her limp fingers. Suddenly his hands stilled and he sat up straighter in his chair. “Unless... Cherise yelled at Sarah this morning and sent her home.”

            He felt a flare of anger at the prima donna’s stupidity and selfishness. If she’d bothered to call him back before she took off on that horse, he wouldn’t have been in Howard County when...

            Skip shook his head. He would have been at the office, not home. He still wouldn’t have been there to protect his wife from her attacker.

            “If Sarah sees me as competition for Cherise’s affections, as the reason why Cherise rejected her, then Sarah may have come looking for me. And Ben would have let her in if she’d had some plausible explanation, that she had a message from Cherise or was bringing us the latest note. The note that Cherise said she saw Sarah put
in
the mail sack this morning. It said, ‘This is your last chance. If I can’t have you, nobody will.’”

            “Shit,” Rob said. “Did this woman seem that crazy to you?”

            Skip shook his head, then let go of Kate’s limp fingers for a moment to scrub his hand over his face. Suddenly he was exhausted. He was trying to capture the random thought that was skittering around in the back of his head, when Rob said, “Skip!”

            Rob’s eyes were on Kate’s face. Her eyelids were fluttering and she seemed to be trying to say something. Both men leaned in closer, Skip’s ear practically touching her lips.

            “Kids,” she whispered.

            “They’re safe, darlin’. They’re with Maria and Mac, at Mac’s apartment.” Skip kissed his wife tenderly on her cheek. Then she mumbled something else. Rob couldn’t make out what she was saying.

            But Skip did. Suddenly he was on his feet, ripping off the paper gown. “Take care of her, Rob,” he said, as he headed for the door.

            Rob stared after him. Where the hell was he going? But Skip was out of the room before Rob could say anything.

            Kate spoke again. Rob leaned over her. “What was that, sweetheart?”

            “Ben?” came the faint reply.

            Rob swallowed hard as he tried to push the lie past the lump in his throat. “He’s fine,” he finally managed to get out.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

            A combination of agonizing worry and pure rage rode shotgun as Skip drove to Howard County. He punched the speed-dial number on his car phone for Rose and Mac’s apartment, and told Mac not to let anyone near his children, until further notice.

            “What’s going on? How’s Kate? Rob said she was outta surgery.”

            “She just woke up. The doc thinks she’ll be okay. I’ll call you later.” Skip disconnected. He wasn’t even going to try to explain the jumble of thoughts churning in his mind.

            When he stopped the truck, he took two deep breaths before getting out. He had to stay calm.

            Cherise opened the door. Skip looked her over carefully. Her hair was damp. Her face, free of make-up, looked fresh and innocent. She was wearing clean jeans and a loose-fitting shirt. Her feet were bare.