cord along with him. Lucy grasped the top of the door frame as he called in the code. She lifted her face to the warm sun, felt the rays on her cheeks and forehead, and shook as if she were coming apart. She couldn’t seem to get enough air into her lungs. Her mouth was dry and her throat hurt. She was afraid she just might hyperventilate.
Quinn tossed the mic onto the seat and got a blanket out of the trunk. He wrapped it around Lucy, then looked into her eyes. “Lucy, you’re going to pass out if you don’t try to take calm breaths.” He ran his hands over the wool blanket on her shoulders. “We don’t have much time before this place is crawling with cops, so I need you awake and coherent for what I’m going to tell you.”
Concentrating on Quinn’s face, she managed a deep breath. “Okay.”
“An ambulance is on the way to check you out. If you’re transported to the hospital, you’ll be interviewed there. If you’re okay and don’t need to be transported, someone is going to take you to the office and interview you. I don’t know who, but you’ll be all right. Tell them everything you know.”
“You won’t b-be there?” she stuttered. If she concentrated, she could control her breathing, but no amount of willpower could stop the shakes.
“I’ll be there, but I can’t be there with you. I’m sorry.”
Sirens cut through the sound in the distance. “I’ll get through it. Do you have some wa-water?”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here sooner.” He rubbed the side of his face with one hand. “I was en route when I got your voice mail. I think my heart stopped and hasn’t started up again.”
“It never even o-occurred to me that Cynthia Pool was Breath-less.” She hugged herself inside the blanket. “She was so…bl-bland. Even when she was telling me who she w-was and all the horrible things she’d d-done. She was just so calm about it. Well, until the moment she came completely un-unhinged.”
The sirens got closer, and Quinn hugged her to his chest. “You’re safe now,” he said next to her ear. “It’s over and you’re going to be okay.”
Three police cruisers and an unmarked car screeched to a halt in the middle of the street, their sirens blaring and lights flashing. A moment later, an ambulance pulled in front of Quinn’s Jeep parked at the curb.
Lucy was quickly hustled to the ambulance, and it wasn’t until she was sitting in back with a blood pressure cuff on her arm and an oxygen mask on her face that she calmed down enough for everything to soak in. She could be the one dead right now. Not Cynthia. Stabbed to death by a deranged psycho.
No. She’d fought back and couldn’t see herself going out like that. She was the type of woman to suck out the poison, after all. When push came to shove, she could punch a shark. Oddly, she felt more alive than she ever had before.
She glanced out the back of the ambulance, at the uniformed cops and plainclothes detectives, at the yards of crime scene tape that kept the public away. She didn’t see Quinn.
She looked for him as she was escorted by a Detective Gonzalez to an unmarked car. She finally caught a glimpse of him while she was being driven away. He was standing by his car, talking to Kurt Weber. He glanced up, and his gaze met hers for a split second before he turned away. In that second she saw a sort of bleak sadness in his eyes, and her heart ached to be with him.
At the police station, the interview took a little over two hours, and by the time it was over, Lucy was exhausted and numb. She just wanted to go home. To her home and snuggle with her cat. Tomorrow she would call her family and friends and tell them what happened. Tonight she just wanted her flannel pj’s, a cup of decaf tea, and a shower. If she was going to wait for Quinn, she preferred to be at home. She had the detective take her to her house instead of Quinn’s.
As Detective Gonzalez pulled to a stop in front of her house, she looked across the car at him and asked the question she wanted to know most. “Where is Detective McIntyre?”
“Right about now, he’s probably chatting with the guys from internal affairs.”
“Thanks for the ride,” she said and got out of the unmarked car. She let herself into her house and locked the door behind her. Mr. Snookums walked from the kitchen and let out a series of loud yowls, welcoming her home. She set her purse on the coffee table and scooped up her cat. Then for some reason she could not explain, she sank to her knees and burst into tears.
“I was so scared, Snook,” she sobbed. She didn’t know how long she knelt there on the floor, holding her cat while he purred. But once her tears subsided into mild hiccups, she filled Snookums’s dish with food and made her way to the shower. She stepped beneath the warm water and closed her eyes. She was stiff and sore and didn’t know if it was because of her fight with Cynthia or the result of all that shaking she’d done.
After her shower, she dressed in her flannel pajamas with the pink dogs on them. She made herself some chicken noodle soup and waited for Quinn. At ten o’clock, she watched the news. The film footage showed the front of Cynthia’s house and the cops working the scene. Lucy spotted Quinn leaning his behind against the back of his car, looking as grim as she remembered when she’d been taken from the scene.
Pending notification of relatives, Cynthia’s name was not released, but the news did report that the police believed her to be the person responsible for the deaths of four Boise men. Lucy was reported as “a local woman,” but Quinn was named as the officer who’d shot and killed the suspect.
After the news, Lucy took her cat and went to her bedroom. Maybe Quinn was planning to wait until morning to come and see her. An adrenalin overload had left her physically exhausted and emotionally spent-except where Quinn was concerned. She wasn’t too tired to think about him.
She turned on the light on her nightstand and crawled into bed. Quinn had said they would continue to see each other after everything was over. The longer she sat in her bed waiting, the more she began to wonder if he’d meant it. He hadn’t said he loved her. Their lives had been in such chaos lately that maybe he would want a break. She certainly didn’t want a break, but if he did, she’d give it to him.
She picked Clare’s latest romance novel off the nightstand, but after reading the same page three times, she gave it up. At 1:30 a.m., the telephone by her bed rang, and she picked up.
“I’m standing outside,” he said. “I would have rung the doorbell, but I didn’t want to frighten you.”
She smiled, and her heart beat heavy in her chest. “I’ll be right there.” She didn’t bother with a robe or looking through the peephole. She opened the door, and there he stood, on her porch, beneath the soft glow of a sixty-watt bulb. The light shone in his hair and poured over the shirt she’d buttoned that morning. Had it really only been that morning?
His soft “Hello” filled the space between them.
“Hello, Quinn.”
He stared at her for several long moments then cleared his throat. “How are you?” he asked.
“I’m doing okay. The interview wasn’t bad.”
“Good.”
He continued to stare at her, looking a little uncertain, and she asked, “Do you want to come in?”
“Not yet.” He shook his head. “I’m on paid suspension for a while. So I have some time on my hands.” He was standing so still she was starting to feel a little uncertain herself.
“How long are you on suspension?”
“I’m not quite sure. We can talk about what happened later, but right now I want to ask you something important.”
“What?”
He swallowed. “Would you go out with me?”
“Where?”
“On a date.”
She smiled, and her stomach got a little spongy. “Right now?”
“I thought we should get started dating tonight.”
“Okay.” She moved aside, and he stepped into the house. Lucy closed the door and leaned her back against it. “Should I change?”
He shook his head. “What you’re wearing is fine. I thought we’d grab your cat and I’d take you two to my house.”
“Snookie’s invited, too?”
“Yeah. Him too. I want to take you home and make sure you’re really okay, and I think you’ll relax more with your bag of fur around.”
“Maybe
