Kiss Me Gone (13 page)

Eden

Dried blood covered the top half of my uniform in a demented Rorschach pattern. Gore from the woman on my gurney made my gloved fingers slippery as I stopped the IV. A physician had called off resuscitation attempts after intubation and all attempts to restore circulation had failed.

After I had failed...

I looked at the mess in front of me, doubting she had been conscious through any of the ordeal. Her nose was caved inward, most likely after she hit the ground following a sideswipe by a mini-van. Running near the cliff's edge on the trail, the hit had propelled her onto a sharp outcropping of rock, breaking several ribs. It would be for the medical examiner to confirm, but all signs pointed to one of the fragments piercing her heart. She had been gurgling her last breath when we arrived, her pulse barely detectible by our instruments and not at all by touch.

Hair spilled off the gurney, it's color indiscernible from all the blood. Her left hand flopped lifelessly over the edge. I placed it back in position along her hip. A diamond solitaire with no second band glittered dully on her ring finger.

"She was going to get married," I told Felix.

"Don't," he warned. "You are Miss Fierce. If anyone could have saved her, it was you. Don't go thinking about who she was or might have become. It's not your fault."

I wanted to tell him that didn't matter. All that mattered was that I hadn't saved her. But a day or a week or a month from now, he would be the one in the back with a corpse and I would be offering the same platitudes, so I kept my mouth shut.

"You know I'm right," he continued. "You fight all the way to the end, chica."

"They need to shut that fucking trail down," I growled, redirecting blame toward the county. "Next time it's going to be a kid on a bicycle we're scraping off the road."

An image of that future scenario sucked all the oxygen from the ambulance. I pitch forward but caught myself before I came into contact with the dead jogger.

Felix had been too busy heading off my guilt trip to kill the sirens and lights and I reminded him to do so. He hit the switch and we covered the last five blocks to the hospital in silence. He helped me unload the body then planted a hand against my chest before I could wheel her toward the sliding doors.

"You're a mess, chica." He shoved a sealed plastic bag containing a spare uniform into my hands. "I'll get the paperwork started while you clean yourself up and change."

"Thanks." I disappeared through a side entrance. Twenty minutes later, I returned to the ambulance to find Felix absent. I squawked at him over our handsets to find out where he had disappeared.

"Getting you a fresh coffee and a bagel sandwich," he squawked back. "I'll meet you at intake in about six minutes. Line is out the door down here."

"You're the best," I answered, my voice choking up at his thoughtfulness. I would and had done the same for him. Unlike some of the other crews, ours was a genuine partnership. We looked after one another on the clock and off, and I thanked whatever power had brought Felix into my life at the end of each shift.

Reaching the intake desk, I motioned one of the nursing staff to the side.

"Did you make an ID on the patient we brought in?"

Given the location of the accident, I didn't doubt the woman had been a tourist. If she had been carrying a fanny pack or other bag, it hadn't been anywhere near the body. The responding police unit that arrived a few minutes us had been too busy rendering first aid to the dead woman to search. And none of the onlookers gathered at the edge of the scene acted like they knew her.

I imagined a hotel room somewhere in the city. Maybe she had come to Tucson with a bunch of girlfriends for a bachelorette party or with her mom and dad for one last family trip as an unmarried woman. Maybe the loved one waiting at the hotel was the man with whom she intended to spend the rest of her life.

"We found a hotel keycard," the nurse confirmed. "A patrol unit is bringing the fiancé over. Based on the hotel registration, her name is Laurie--"

"You!"

A voice I never expected to hear again sliced through the cooled air surrounding the intake desk.

"You did this. She died because of you."

My mouth dropped open, shock rendering me incapable of speech. The nurse at my side had no intention of letting me respond. Spotting Felix, she gripped my arm and hustled me toward my partner.

"Because of you." The harsh accusation faded to a mumble as he repeated himself.

"Crap," the nurse said under her breath as she handed me off to Felix. "Another one ready to sue before the corpse is even cold. Get your asses back to base and make sure your paperwork is perfect."

Felix nodded, his confused gaze darting in my direction as he lead me to our vehicle.

"Who's hot to sue," he asked, strapping me into my seat.

I shook my head. This wasn't about liability and lawyers and malpractice. At least I didn't think it was.

"The fiancé," I answered, the rest of the explanation stuck in my throat.

"Dumb ass is out of luck if they weren't already married. And you did everything by the book, chica. Don't let this asshole worry you."

I couldn't stop shaking my head. As we stopped for the first traffic light, I placed my hand on Felix's arm. "You don't get it. The fiancé--"

He turned and looked at me, his long fingers tapping nervously at the steering wheel.

"The fiancé is Dare O'Donnell."

*******************

The rest of our shift passed at home base, half of it in our supervisor's office with one of the city attorneys asking Felix and me questions over the speakerphone. We spent the other half of the shift in the break room filling out endless reams of incident reports.

Most days, especially when the sky was clear of clouds and the temperature had dropped below ninety as evening approached, I took a bus home. The day of Laurie Quade's death, Felix insisted on driving me back to my apartment and walking me all the way to the front door of my second floor corner unit.

I begged off letting him inside with the excuse I wanted time alone to decompress. I told him I adored him more than ever for all the support he had shown and then I sent him off after a long good-bye hug that comforted me more than he could possibly understand.

When I heard a knock at my door less than three minutes after Felix's departure, I patted the pockets of the uniform I still wore and glanced at the small entry table upon which I had placed my keys and cell phone. Keys and phone on the table, wallet in my side pocket -- everything I could think of was with me.

"What did I forget?" I asked, naively opening door.

Immediately, I realized my mistake. The swaying body in front of me wasn't Felix. It was Dare O'Donnell and, judging by the unsteady legs and glaze to his blue eyes, he had spent the remaining hours of my shift getting drunk.

He lurched forward, his arms reaching for and missing the door frame.

I should have let him fall flat on his face. Instead, I caught him, tried to get him upright. He was too big, too clumsy from the alcohol. His hands pawed at my shoulders as he tried to separate from me.

"Get away," he said, the words sloshing against my ear. "You killed her. Killed my Angel. Sweet Laurie."

"We did our best," I answered. I fisted the fabric of his t-shirt so I wouldn't drop him.

"Your best sucks." His arms and torso moved like someone had poured itching powder down his collar and onto the skin. He didn't want me touching him and I couldn't blame him.

"Yeah," I agreed.

"Was going to marry her." He tried to remove my hands from his clothing, but he couldn't manage to capture them.

The alcohol through his vision off and he overshot his target each time. I would have laughed at the vague grasping motions if I hadn't felt like I was dying inside.

"She loved me," he continued.

My back started to ache under his weight. The shake in my arms meant I had a few seconds to get him on the ground or a piece of furniture. Then he twisted. We fell while he kept mumbling about how good she was -- unlike me -- and how she never gave him a bit of trouble -- unlike me.

Shifting the momentum of our fall, I propelled Dare into a side chair a few feet from the threshold.

"Yeah," I said, suppressing an eye roll. "She seemed sweet when I met her."

His gaze suddenly sharpened, the blue eyes surprisingly sober for a few hard blinks. "You never met her. She would have told me."

Was he saying Miss Perfect had a secret or two?

I turned the possibility over in my mind. Having a patient die on me had felt like a ton of bricks landing on my shoulders before I ever learned her identity. The weight of self-doubt and guilt tripled when I learned it was Laurie. That she had withheld from Dare that she was the second to last person to see me on the day I disappeared from his life -- and that his mother had ushered me out the door -- eased a little of the burden I carried.

I offered a non-committal shrug. "She showed up at the house with your mom when you were on the all hands call."

His face turned red. "I came here to talk things out. I can't do that if you're going to lie to me."

My own cheeks began to heat. He had come to my home, tried to place Laurie's death at my feet and now he wanted to brand me a liar? Seriously?

"You really think you were talking to me?" I spit out. "Is that what it was? Laurie good, Eden bad. Laurie loved me, Eden--"

I bit at my bottom lip, my nose crinkling with disgust over how weak I felt in Dare's presence.

His gaze dropped to his lap. His nails picked at the surface of his jeans.

"I'm calling a cab to take you back to the hotel." I strode past him to the entry table, scooped the cell phone off the charger and scrolled through my contacts to find the taxi company I occasionally used.

He lumbered to his feet. The fine hairs on the back of my neck lifted and my body braced against the possibility of an attack.

This is Dare. Drunk or not, he won't hurt you.

Not physically...

I turned with an order on my lips for him to sit his drunk ass down. With an unexpected agility, he plucked the phone from my grasp and tossed it onto the table.

"Not going," he challenged with a slur. "Guess you'll have to run away like you always do."

He swayed forward. My first instinct was to save him again before he smashed his perfect nose into a wall or my living room floor. For once, I looked out for my own interests and sidestepped his lunging body. Grabbing the back of the chair he had occupied a moment before, Dare narrowly missed falling on his face.

"The fuck I am," I shot back. "I finally have a place to call my own, real friends..."

Seeing him advance toward me, his feet still unsteady, I tried another sidestep. Somehow, he anticipated the move. Grabbing the sides of my face, he jerked me to him. His mouth landed on mine, his lips tender but his breath reeking of beer and chasers of whiskey.

The kiss extended, deepened, the heat produced between our bodies hot enough to curl my hair. Pushing me away, he fell back into the chair.

"There," he said. "Now you have to go. You can't stay if I kissed you."

He wagged a finger in my general direction. "Your rules, not mine."

I shook my head, suddenly sad because, for one stupid second, I thought he wanted the kiss to mean something more, something other than a measure of how much he despised me and wanted me gone. Looking in his drunken gaze, all I saw was loathing.

"She would have been the best wife a man could ask for," he said, the hate evaporating as he looked forlornly around the room.

"I guess that's why you put a ring on it." Done arguing, I returned to the door and reclaimed my phone. I grabbed my keys at the same time then jerked on the handle. As I stepped onto the walkway, Dare let loose a final barb.

"It should have been you."

I could understand him wanting me dead instead of Laurie, but it hurt like hell to have him voice the thought. I staggered away, down the steps. I turned right at the nearest breezeway and pressed my back to the cold concrete wall. A few deep breaths later and I managed to scroll through my contacts. As belligerent as Dare was being, I didn't trust his care to a cabbie. He would wind up in jail before the night was through.

He might hate me, but all I felt in my heart for him at that moment was sorrow. He had just lost the woman he loved, the woman he was going to marry.

I hit the listing for Felix and explained my dilemma. He agreed to wrangle a two hundred pound firefighter into his car and deliver Dare safely to the hotel. Fifteen minutes later, we stood in front of the door to my apartment. My hands shook too badly to use the key.

Felix took over and entered first.

"You sure you didn't imagine the visit, chica?" He called out after a few seconds.

Stepping into the living room, I looked around then took a deep breath. "You think my place always smells like an alehouse?"

"No, baby girl. I doubt it ever smells like one." Returning from the kitchen, he handed me a recipe card. "Found this on the counter."

It should have been you.

"That's one cold motherfucker," Felix said before launching into a long string of Spanish words I couldn't understand despite two years of riding shotgun.

"He was drunk," I said, my heart unconvinced. Drunk or sober, Dare would blame me for Laurie's death for the rest of his life.

Wrapping his arms around my shoulders, Felix pulled me into a tight hug. "I don't care, chica. If I ever meet this guy, I'm crushing his
pendigo
ass into the dirt."

"Deal," I agreed, certain the event would never transpire. I felt it deep in my bones -- Dare O'Donnell was out of my life for good.

Dare

Deputy Chief Williams, the man in charge of training and my new boss in the Tucson Fire Department, pointed at a blank spot along the back wall of the staff meeting room then walked down the center aisle to the podium. I slumped against its brick surface, my arms resting across my chest and a folder in one hand.

The room was larger than I remembered from my tour the week before when I had been interviewing for the only open spot in the department. I was now the lead training instructor for the city's firefighting teams, one step below DC Williams -- the doer to his planner.

I sighed, my gaze scanning the room to assess the men and women I would be working with. I belonged in the field with an axe and a hose, not in a classroom or some training environment with a clipboard checking off times and offering advice on how to move faster and smarter. But the work held no meaning outside of the location. More than anything, I needed to be in Tucson.

Seeing EMT patches sprinkled in among the firefighters, I straightened to my full height. A dark auburn head, the long hair pulled into a braid, captured my attention.

Eden Abbey.

Her presence and that of the other EMTs surprised me. They had their own home base. I had expected a few days minimum before I bumped into her or she stormed into my office demanding to know what the hell I was doing in her city.

I drew a slow breath, closed my eyes and let a dozen or more images and sensations flicker through my mind. I saw the first time a roof caved on me. I remembered the weight of a squalling infant in my arms as I pulled it from a burning crib. I remembered a red haired beauty on her knees in a burning hotel.

I was at home in hell, calmest when adrenaline pumped through my body. I was fireproof and I damn well refused to be afraid of a woman, no matter how hard a hold she had on my heart.

Polite applause erupted around the room, jerking me from my trance. My attention returned to the podium, where DC Williams had invited some civilian to speak to the audience. I had missed the man's name and the reason behind his presence.

"Yo, Graf!" A big man center row continued clapping.

I flipped the folder open and looked for his name on the directory DC Williams had given me. Not finding it, I settled back against the brick wall and waited for him to work up the nerve and begin talking.

"As you all know..." He paused, seemed to choke with emotion. Reaching up, he loosened the tie around his neck, the thin line of silk looking out of place against a short-sleeve dress shirt. Wasting another minute, he shuffled through the papers he had brought to the podium before he started over.

"Many of you have experienced the loss of a team member. The staff and volunteers of
For the Fallen
work tirelessly to ease the loss."

He kept talking but my brain blanked on the words coming out of his mouth. I looked to DC Williams. He had taken up a spot near the front door, a few feet from the little man commanding the podium. Williams had his cold gray stare fixed on me. I looked away, back to Graf with his red silk tie and his many papers.

Without a doubt, my new boss was studying my reaction. He was a fool if he thought I would do anything to make him regret his decision. Beyond Eden, Williams was the only person in the room who knew about my connection to Laurie. I suspected he had also learned about Laurie's job back in Hagersburg as the
FTF
coordinator. Graf's speech was a test to determine whether I was unstable.

Not that I blamed Williams for thinking I might be ready for a straight jacket. What man in his right mind, after losing his fiancée in an accident thousands of miles away from their home, quit his job and seek a new one working around the very people who had failed to save her?

The move had nothing to do with Laurie and everything to do with Eden. And, for the time being, Williams didn't have a clue that my connection to Eden extended beyond Laurie's death. I wanted to keep it that way.

I looked through the crowd to find the woman who had twice broken my heart. Her head was half turned so that I could see her face in profile. She looked pale. The words filtering across the room from the podium finally penetrated my brain and I understood why Eden appeared ready to puke.

"We lost one of our own last month. Her name was Laurie Quade, she was visiting from back east." Graf lifted his hand in the direction of Eden and the big Hispanic male sitting tight by her side. "Everyone did everything they could to save her."

Another round of applause went up. I didn't have it in me to clap. I had blamed Eden at the hospital and I vaguely remembered doing it again that night at her apartment after a pint of Jack Daniels and a six-pack of beer. My accusation had been clumsy. I hadn't meant that she had failed to render competent aid to Laurie.

I had blamed Eden because she existed, because she left me when I had been ready to promise her a future together and, ultimately, because I had brought Laurie to Tucson with the specific intent to put Eden in my past. No Eden, no Tucson trip, no dead fiancée. Simple logic even if it was entirely flawed.

"With less than a hundred staff members across the country," Graf droned on after the applause died down. "It was a statistical improbability that a
For the Fallen
representative would need the aid of the very community they work to uplift. But the improbable has come to pass. I have asked national, and they have approved, the creation of a scholarship in Miss Quade's name so that she can continue to serve the families of America's fallen firefighters, police officers, paramedics and other city EMS personnel."

Feet began to stomp in approval. Voices lifted, hooted their endorsement. The muscles in my face hardened like cement curing under the desert sun. Heat blistered my skin. I looked at DC Williams to find that I was still under scrutiny.

Graf called for silence, his hands pushing down at the empty air above the podium. When the room went quite once more, he took off his glasses and rubbed at his eyes.

"Thank you, that really means a lot. I'll be sending out emails today with a schedule of fundraising events specifically designated for this scholarship. I hope each of you will pick one or two that you can participate in. I will also be calling Laurie's family and letting them know how deeply she has touched so many lives in a city that only held her for a short time."

The stony sensation fanned across my body. The muscles along my chest flexed but didn't relax. I wanted to march across the room and grab my new boss by the neck. I tracked his steps as he walked up to the podium and shook Graf's hand before addressing the crowd.

"The EMS teams are dismissed. I need all firefighters to remain seated while I have your new lead training instructor, Dare O'Donnell, come up to the podium and introduce himself."

I sensed heads turning in my direction as DC Williams extended an arm toward me. I didn't look at anyone. The EMTs hadn't finished vacating the room. Eden was among them and she had just gotten hit hard twice, first by Graf's announcement and then by my introduction.

If I caught sight of her face, I would stare -- long and hard. She might crack. Even if she remained composed, my focus would draw unwanted attention to Eden.

Far from moving to Tucson with the intent to ruin Eden's life -- I had moved there to claim her as mine.