Miracle (68 page)

“
Ja
. And they said that Elliot will recover. It’s just his shoulder?”

“Yes. When the paramedics came they told me it was serious, but not life threatening.”

Frau Diebler pulled back and muttered darkly at Amy’s swollen wrist. “I’m taking you straight to the hospital. Right now!”

“I have to answer a few more questions for the detective. It’s routine, and I have to do it.”

“That Elliot, he didn’t say that you—”

“No. He told the officers who came to the apartment exactly what happened. The truth.” She bent her head into her hand. “The truth. He
apologized
to me.” She hugged herself and shut her eyes.

The detective, a portly, pragmatic veteran with kind eyes, came back into his office. “I need to talk to Ms. Miracle,” he said pointedly to Frau Diebler.

Amy patted her hand. “This is Detective Rodriguez. Wait outside.”

When Amy and Rodriguez were alone behind his closed door he sat on the edge of his desk, facing her, and studied her closely. “It will work the way you and I discussed it.”

“Meaning that a judge will probably reduce the criminal charges if Elliot agrees to be hospitalized for drug rehab?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. But what happens to him right now?”

“He stays under guard at the hospital for a couple of days. When he’s discharged, either his lawyer gets him set free on bond or we transfer him to jail.” Rodriguez touched her shoulder. “Go home. The worst is over.” But it wasn’t, not when she left the detective’s office and found Frau Diebler hanging up the phone on a clerk’s desk. “Thank you,” she told the man. “I charged the overseas call to my employer’s phone, just as I promised.”

Amy pulled her into a quiet corner. She hurt all over and
felt sick at her stomach. Wavering in place, she stared at Frau Diebler with dread. “
Did you call Dr. de Savin
?”

“Yes. I’m sorry. But yes.” Frau Diebler looked distraught. “I can’t keep this from him. I told him everything. He’s leaving to come here immediately. I’m sorry to do this to you, but he is, after all, the one I must answer to, the one who pays my salary. I am ashamed for deceiving him. If I had told him about Elliot Thornton a long time ago, maybe tonight wouldn’t have happened.”

Amy leaned against a wall and cursed. “What else did you tell him in your little frenzy of guilt?”

“That you are carrying twins, and that one time you had a problem with bleeding, and … that you’ve been trying to help Elliot Thornton. That he has been our neighbor for almost three months.”

Amy went to a chair and sank down. What did Sebastien think of her for concealing her medical problem, hiding the fact that there were two babies instead of only one for him to accept, and letting Elliot back into her life, making it possible for tonight’s confrontation to jeopardize her own safety as well as the babies’?

The chance of him softening toward the babies was now ruined. She even wondered if he still wanted
her
. Not that it would matter as long as he rejected their children. Would he understand that she had been trying to keep him from worrying, that she had wanted to present a perfect facade, the perfect pregnancy, so that he’d approve? Not now. He wasn’t coming here to tell her that he’d had a change of heart, of that she felt certain.

“There’s no point in your staying with me anymore,” she told Frau Diebler. “What happens next will be between me and the doctor. I doubt that he believes that I’ve kept my word about
anything
, so it doesn’t matter if I send you away.”

“But Frau Miracle—”

“You called him. I respect your reasons. But I don’t have to bargain with you, anymore. Go back to the apartment and pack your things. I want you gone by tomorrow. That’s all I have to say to you. I won’t be going back there with you tonight. Good-bye.”

“But—but Frau Miracle, you can’t … where are you going tonight?”

“A hotel. I don’t want to stay where Elliot almost … I just don’t want to stay in the apartment. And I don’t want to see you again. You’ve done your duty, but you’ve hurt me and the doctor more than you know.”

“Frau Miracle … I apologize, but I don’t understand.”

“Good-bye.” Amy lumbered into Detective Rodriguez’s office. He looked up from his desk. “I need a ride to a good hotel. Can someone take me, or should I call a taxi?”

“You need a sympathetic listener, from the look on your face.”

“I’ll settle for a lift to a hotel.”

“I think I can provide both.” He stood up and grabbed his car keys from the desk, while smiling at her in a fatherly way that made her want to cry.

She hardly slept that night. Rodriguez called the next morning. “I checked your apartment. The nurse is gone. But I have to warn you about something. A half-dozen reporters and photographers are camped on your doorstep, waiting for you. Word got out about last night.”

Amy’s sense of isolation and despair increased. With it came the anger that had been growing steadily. “I’m sitting here with nothing but my purse, my coat, and the maternity dress I put on last night when I called the police. And those vultures are waiting to eat me alive when I go home.”

“I can send someone with you to plow a path to your door.”

“I’m not going back there. I won’t be treated like some kind of ripe fruit they can peel to check for rotten spots.”

“Look, you might as well get used to it. They’re not going away. And sooner or later they’re going to find you.”

“I’ll go up to San Francisco. I’m not supposed to fly, so I’ll hire a car and driver.”

“Good. When you get to a hotel there, call me. Let me know where you are, in case I have any more questions.” She thanked him and hung up, then called Mary Beth, who had been waiting for more news all morning. “I need your
help,” Amy told her. “At eight months, with twins, I shouldn’t be traipsing around by myself.”

“I’ll meet you at the airport in San Francisco. Give me five minutes and I’ll call you back with my flight number.”

While she waited by the phone, Amy held her stomach and rocked slowly, trying to soothe herself as well as the babies. The hotel room made her shiver with its impersonal charm. She wondered when Sebastien would arrive in Los Angeles. More than ever she felt desperate for peace, rest, dignity. Sebastien would be too angry to give her that. The media’s greed for scandal wouldn’t give her that. And she had to deal with her own shame for getting herself into such an ugly situation with Elliot.

She had to take care of herself and the babies. She knew more than ever that she, and they, were survivors.

She bought a change of clothes and a few toiletries, then climbed into a small gray limousine for the all-day trip to San Francisco. The driver, a balding, stocky man as dapper as his car, gave her curious looks but said little. Amy napped fitfully during the hours that followed, between frequent pit stops for her overburdened bladder. Her stomach became queasy and she couldn’t eat. But the driver was patient and helpful, stopping to buy sodas for her and coaxing her to nibble crackers. By the time they arrived at the airport in San Francisco she was exhausted but felt strong enough to carry on alone.

Lugging a new tote bag filled with her meager possessions, she found a ticket agent and checked on Mary Beth’s flight. “Mechanical trouble,” the agent told her. “The flight made a stop in Dallas and just got back in the air thirty minutes ago. You’ve got a long wait.”

Amy dragged herself to a coffeeshop. Her ears buzzed with fatigue. She drank a glass of milk and, feeling restless, decided to make rental car arrangements, then find a place to lie down.

As she entered the queue at a car-rental booth, she staggered and clutched her stomach, prompting an airport customer service manager to rush over and radio for a
wheelchair. Though she protested, he hustled about, loudly calling to the car-rental people to hurry her paperwork through. She cringed at the curious stares from other travelers.

And then a strobe flash went off right beside her. She pivoted clumsily, throwing up one hand to cover her blinded eyes.

“What are you doing in San Francisco, Ms. Miracle?” The photographer was a small, fast-moving ferret with an abundance of gold chains and cameras around his neck. He continued to snap her picture, his shutter clicking repeatedly, an automatic weapon loaded with film.

“Who are you?” She turned her head and covered her face, feeling defenseless and trapped.

“Ron Falcone. Free-lance.”

She gritted her teeth. He was one of the paparazzi who hung out at the airport, hoping to catch celebrities on their way in or out. She’d watched Elliot preen for this brand of photojournalist often, when she was traveling with him. “I don’t have anything to say, Ron. Please—”

“How is Elliot Thornton?”

“I have nothing to say.”

“Leave her alone,” the customer service manager ordered, planting himself between them. To the car-rental clerk he yelled, “Get Ms. Miracle’s car ready!
Now
!”

“Did Elliot try to rape you?” the photographer asked loudly.

“No. No.” She snatched at the forms that were pressed toward her by a clerk, signed them shakily, and took her keys.

“Who’s the father of your baby? Is it Elliot? Why did you shoot him?”

“Get this lady to her car!” the airport man ordered. A security guard arrived and took her arm. “Need some help, ma’am?”

“Yes. Thank you—”

“Do you think this publicity will promote your career?” Falcone called, shoving at the customer service manager, holding his camera above the man’s head and continuing to photograph her.

She leaned against the security guard as he propelled her out of the crowd toward a side exit. “I hate that sonovabitch Falcone,” the guard muttered. “You shoulda seen how he dogged Pat Boone last week.”

“Pat Boone?” She chortled, heard herself making frantic little hiccupping sounds, and clamped her mouth shut. Her insides had turned to water. She decided that if she reached the car, she would drive until she felt safe. It might be a long trip.

The entrance to the hospital’s police ward was blocked by thick double doors with heavily reinforced glass. A young, harried-looking officer intent on adhering to rules staffed the desk outside. He seemed even less likely to compromise each time he scanned Sebastien’s rumpled trousers and shirt, the beard stubble darkening his jaws, and his generally frazzled appearance. Sebastien realized that to the officer he looked desperate. He
was
desperate, because he hadn’t been able to locate Amy thus far.

Frau Diebler’s words kept coming back to him with remnants of shock.
Twins
. Amy hadn’t wanted him to know. Nor had she wanted him to know that she was trying to help Elliot Thornton. She had feared and distrusted his reaction; he had made it impossible for her to confide in him, or ask for his help.

“I left Paris late last night,” he explained again, his voice raw with fatigue. “I just arrived in Los Angeles an hour ago. When I called your superiors, they told me that the detective would be here this afternoon, and I might be able to talk to him.”

“There he is. Good luck.”

A heavyset man had just stepped out of one of the rooms that lined the hallway beyond the security doors. He negotiated an obstacle course of nurses, orderlies, and gurneys as he walked toward Sebastien, studying him with a neutral expression. When he arrived at the doors, Sebastien saw from the badge on the lapel of his brown suit that he was Rodriguez, the detective in charge of Elliot’s case.