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“Maven,” I whispered, devastated.
“My stepmother,” she whispered. “She’s dead.”
I swallowed hard before saying, “She’s gone.” The small whimper that left her had my heart seizing in my chest. “The last thing I told her was I wanted nothing to do with her.”
My belly clenched.
“She showed up at my house and asked me to come talk to her. I came outside because I didn’t want her in my place and it started raining, so we got into her car. As soon as my butt was in her seat, she confronted me about how I was treating my dad and my brother.” Her lip quivered. “And I told her I hated both of them. I told her I was moving out of Dallas so my dad couldn’t pull any more tricks with the health department. I then told her I was going to go to the media about how Dad was targeting me. I told her I would make sure my face was on every TV outlet in the city. And she got mad. Like irate in a flash. She told me she should’ve never agreed to marry my father, and that I was more trouble than I was worth. She got mad at me because I wasn’t being a good daughter and sped away before I could get out of her car. I was telling her she was fucking nuts, and just managed to get my seatbelt on when she ran that red light.” Her breath quivered. “Auden, I think she tried to kill me.”
My stomach sank at her words. “Baby…”
“I don’t even know why she was there. She never comes to see me. She’s made it obvious as hell that she only saw me as a necessary evil ever since I moved out.” Her breath hitched. “My dad is going to fucking flip.”
He was.
If the woman was the chief’s wife… Shit.
Ambulance sirens sounded in the distance, and I looked up in time to see the bus round the corner of the intersection and head our way. At the same instant a couple of units came in from another direction.
One of those units was the K-9 unit that Garrett was using.
He got out, his eyes taking everything in, including me holding C Spine on Maven.
The ambulance rolled up next, two medics bolting from the vehicle.
One came to my side and the other went to Maven’s dead stepmother.
“Deceased,” I said when he looked at me.
He nodded but checked her pulse anyway.
The paramedic on my side came to me and immediately started asking questions.
Firefighters were next to arrive, and within ten minutes everyone was on the way to the hospital. Including me.
“Don’t leave me,” she pleaded. “Please. He’ll be so mad, and I don’t want to be by myself when he comes.”
The way she was so desperately holding onto my hand was enough for me to acquiesce despite knowing the chief was going to lose his shit on me. That, and the fear I could see in her eyes.
Good thing I’d already interviewed with Sunnyvale. I had a feeling I was about to need that new job sooner rather than later.
The medic pushed me into a seat in the corner, and I was forced to let go of Maven’s hand or risk strangling her with our connection.
Which she most certainly didn’t like and allowed everyone to know about.
“Baby, hush,” I said as I leaned over and whispered into her ear. “Let him work and answer his questions.”
She calmed when she felt my hand in her hair and my breath against her face.
“Do you remember hitting your head?” The medic repeated his earlier question.
She sniffled, and the tears that were trailing from the corners of her eyes into her ears were killing me one drop at a time.
The feeling in the pit of my stomach wasn’t one I’d ever experienced before.
“Not on the dashboard. On my own hand. I lifted it right before we hit and my ring caught my forehead,” she answered, lifting her ringed finger and pantomiming what had happened. “I had my seatbelt on, thank God.”
Sure enough, when I looked down, the ring she was wearing was one I’d had in my truck. A plastic thing that I’d gotten for Dalia on a whim. The last time I’d seen it it’d still been in the plastic container that I’d gotten out of the claw machine at the Mexican restaurant last week.
