Pushed Too Far: A Thriller (18 page)

Lowering his face near her lips, he watched her chest, willing it to rise and fall. He listened for breath, praying for the light touch of her exhale on his skin.

Nothing.

“Hang in there, Val. For Grace. For me.”

He pinched her nostrils shut, then sealed his lips over hers and blew a breath into her lungs.

Her chest rose, then fell.

He gave her another, breathing for her. Then he started the next cycle, shifting back to her chest, compressions pumping her blood through her body, taking over for her heart.

“You aren’t going to die, Valerie Ryker,” he commanded, voice hoarse. “I won’t let you.”

V
al remembered little of the trip in the ambulance other than sleepiness and confusion and a female EMT with the shoulders and bedside manner of a professional wrestler peeling off her clothes and ordering her not to talk.

All in all, not one of her better dates.

Now she lay in bed with warm compresses on her neck and groin and a plastic tube of oxygen with its fingers up her nose.

A rap of knuckles sounded on the door.

“Come in.”

She’d been hoping it was the doctor, giving her the go ahead to check out and go home, but she couldn’t hold back the smile when Lund stepped into the room.

“Hey, there.”

“Hey.” She remembered his voice calling her out of unconsciousness, his lips on hers, his touch warm, demanding she live.

David Lund had saved her life.

“How did you find me?” she asked.

He gave her a crooked smile. “Just lucky, I guess. How are you feeling?”

“Kinda cold.”

“You should have known better than to go swimming in December.”

“Live and learn.”

He stepped into the room and stopped, as if unsure if he should come closer. “I’m just glad you’re living. I doubt you’ll ever learn.”

“You might be right about that. Although I don’t think you’re one to talk.”

“No, I guess not.” The smile slipped from his lips. “I’m … I’m just glad it worked out okay.”

“Thanks to you.”

He shook his head. “I should have gone with you to Chicago.”

When she’d left, she’d urged him to get out of town. She’d never mentioned him going with them to Chicago. But somehow the thought had been in her mind at the time. And it sounded good on his lips now. Natural.

Maybe that was what happened when someone brought you back from the dead. “Yes, you should have.”

“You’re just saying that so you could dump me off at your friend’s house with Grace.”

“You mean, where you’d be safe? If I could have, I would have.”

“And you would rush back to Lake Loyal all on your own to be the blue canary?”

“Blue canary?”

“Our nickname for cops.”

“Like a canary in a coal mine?”

His grin was his answer. “Cops charge in. Firefighters like to assess the situation, take a more intellectual approach.”

“Cowardly, you mean.” She had to match his smile. If ever there was a word that didn’t describe David Lund, cowardly was it.

“No more coal mines, okay? At least not for a while?” He stepped closer.

For a moment, she thought he might take her hand in his and was surprised to realize how much she wanted him to. “How long?”

He gripped the bed rail instead. “How about until Hess is back behind bars?”

“I have to do my job.”

“You’re on suspension. It’s not your job.”

“You don’t really think that’s going to stop me.”

“Not really, no. But he almost killed you, Val.”

“The truck … I don’t think it was Hess.”

His brows arched in surprise.

“Hess wants revenge.”

“Ramming you off the road and into the river isn’t good enough for revenge?”

“It’s not personal enough. He’d want me to know it was him. He would want to look me in the eye.”

“So who was it?”

She told him about the inconsistencies and missing documentation surrounding Elizabeth Unger’s death. “The death records show that she died from a car wreck ten years ago, but none of the other paperwork exists. There’s no accident report. The cemetery president says she was never buried there.”

“And who knows what you found?”

“I called Harlan Runk around four-thirty and asked him to compare her medical records with the skeleton of Jane Doe.”

“Let me guess. He was the coroner who certified her death.”

“Yes.” Just thinking about it made her upset all over again. She’d trusted Harlan, even liked him. She hated the idea that he might be wrapped up in something unethical or even illegal. She couldn’t imagine it.

“You think the coroner killed her?”

She automatically shook her head. “That’s a pretty big leap.”

Lund nodded. “But could it be possible?”

She wanted to say no, but it was beginning to seem as if anything could be possible. “Haven’t a clue. But I do know he was aware I was driving back to Lake Loyal.”

“And if he falsified a death certificate for some reason, he might have motive to run you into the river.”

“Right.” As hard as all this was to wrap her mind around, it felt good to be able to talk about it.

Lund shifted his feet, the soles of his shoes squeaking on the waxed tile floor. “But if Jane Doe died ten years ago, and she wasn’t buried, why didn’t we find her until now?”

“Maybe she didn’t die back then. Or maybe her body was hidden all that time.”

Another knock and the door opened. A beanstalk of a man wearing scrubs and coke bottle glasses entered. His gait was awkward, a cross between Big Bird and Pee Wee Herman, comparisons Val was sure would date her immediately.

“Doctor Seabrook.” He thrust out a hand, first shaking Lund’s then Val’s. “Sorry to have to break up the party.”

Lund nodded to the man and tossed her a small smile. “I’ll go only as far as the cafeteria. Be back in a few.”

Val nodded. Pushing thoughts of false deaths, hidden bodies and murder to the back of her mind for the moment, she reluctantly focused on her health.

Doctor Seabrook turned out to be as quick, professional and efficient as a doctor could be, save for the strong scent of wintergreen floating around him and his ice cold hands. By the end of the examination, she wondered if she had been fine all along, and he should be the one getting treatment for hypothermia.

After making several notations on her chart, he eyed her through his thick lenses. “Any medications?”

“Just birth control pills. I take them for cramping.”

“Pretty severe?”

“Without them? Yes.”

“Are you still taking the Gilenya?”

“Not anymore.”

He frowned and peered at her over his hawk-like nose.

She knew that wouldn’t go over well. But she didn’t want to explain why she’d discontinued the prescription, that taking the drug was an unhappy reminder of a condition she was desperate to ignore.

Obviously she couldn’t ignore it any longer.

“We’re going to have to get you back on it.” He made a couple more notes, ending the last with a flourish of his pen. “That should be about it. Any questions?”

“I’m just wondering … my condition … “ She didn’t know why it was still so hard to just come out and say the words, even to a doctor treating her, but clearly she was still clinging to any form of denial available.

His eyebrows pulled together and he looked down at the clipboard in his hands. “You’re referring to the multiple sclerosis?”

There it was, floating in the air like a poisonous cloud. “How does it mix with hypothermia?”

“Hypothermia can be a complication of multiple sclerosis. It’s rare but severe.” The confusion lifted and he gave a shake of his head and a short chuckle. “But that’s not what you’re asking, is it? In your case, I’m pretty sure it was the river that did the trick.”

“Will it increase symptoms?”

“Any stress on the body can increase the incidence and severity of symptoms.”

That’s what she figured, and she knew what was coming next. “Don’t tell me, we won’t know until we know.”

He pressed his lips into a sympathetic line. “Everything about the disease is unpredictable. I wish I could tell you more.”

“When can I leave?”

“Tonight, if you really want. But I’ll need to see you tomorrow morning to get you back on the medication. Your heartbeat will have to be monitored after taking the first dose. I’ll have a nurse set something up.”

She nodded. With no vehicle, she’d have to ask Lund to give her a ride to a rental company. “Thanks, doctor.”

“You’re a lucky woman.”

Funny, she didn’t feel lucky. But she knew he was right. At least Lund had been at the river to find her, and Grace was safe in Chicago with Jack. “Thanks.”

Dr. Seabrook turned to leave, coming to a halt in the doorway. “Looks like the party’s back on. Listen, she’s been through a lot. Don’t tire her out.”

Val eyed the door, expecting to hear Lund’s answer. Instead, a young female voice familiar and dear as her own heartbeat answered with a tear-soaked promise. “I won’t.”

Fatigue covered Val like the river’s cold water, sapping her strength, dragging her down.

She watched Grace enter the hospital room, steps tentative, eyes red around the edges.

“The doctor,” her niece said. “He was talking about multiple sclerosis?”

Val’s head throbbed. This couldn’t be happening. Out of all the people she wanted to keep the MS secret from, the most important was Grace. “Why aren’t you in Chicago?”

Grace’s eyes shimmered in the fluorescent lights overhead, another flood building. “I got a call on my cell. They told me about the car, asked who was using it. I … I had to make sure you were okay.”

The possibility of someone in the Sauk City PD following up on the car in the river hadn’t even occurred to her. If it had, she could have called Jack, warned her, asked her to keep Grace from racing back to Wisconsin in some kind of panic. Of course, her niece had to have left Chicago hours ago, while Val was in no shape to do anything, even if she’d known about the call. “How did you get here?”

Grace stared at the floor. Grasping her hands in front of her, she picked at the cuticles of her right hand, something she’d done since she was little. During the bad times, she used to keep at it until her fingers bled.

“How did you get here, Grace?”

“I borrowed Jack’s car.”

“Jack’s car? That old Nova?”

She nodded.

“You stole Jack’s Nova?” Val brought her hand to her aching head, getting tangled in the oxygen tube on the way. Her straight-A, brainiac niece was a car thief? She had to call Jack and explain, apologize.

“I’ll give it back.”

“That’s not the point.”

“The point is that you almost died.” Her voice caught, and the tears surged, spilling down her cheeks. “And … and now you have a disease?”

“Never mind that.” Val glanced around the room. Her cell phone was laying somewhere on the bottom of the river or being swept on its way to the Mississippi. How in the hell was she supposed to make a call? “I need a phone.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you were sick? I could help you. I could take care—”

Val jolted upright in her bed. “That’s exactly why I didn’t tell you.” She wanted to take the girl by the shoulders and shake her, make her listen. Instead she felt so shaky herself, she wasn’t sure she could get out of bed without landing on her face.

“I can help.”

“I don’t want your help, Grace. The last thing I want is your help.”

Her big blue eyes looked genuinely bruised. “Why?”

“Because
I’m
the one who’s supposed to help
you
.”

“But I don’t need—”

“Yes, you do. You need to go to school. You need to live your life. You don’t need to take care of someone who’s sick. Not again.”

“But Aunt Val, I love you.”

Now tears brimmed her own eyes. The room rippled in front of her, white on white, Grace’s distraught face a blur. “I love you, too, sweetheart. But I don’t want you to worry about me. I don’t want you to take care of me. You’ve had enough sickness in your life.”

“It’s not your choice what I do.”

“This part? This is my choice.”

Grace shook her head, her hair sticking to one wet cheek.

Val knew she had to find a way to explain, to make Grace understand, but she didn’t have a clue how. “Do you know what MS is?”

“I don’t know. Not really.”

“It’s a problem with my immune system. Those defenses my body has to fight off infection? They’re attacking my nervous system. My brain, my spinal column, any of my nerves. When an attack happens, the swelling can make the nerve shut down.”