“D? Can you hear me?” Jake knelt beside his partner, felt for the carotid pulse. Weak. D’s face had gone gray, green, sweat coursing down one cheek, his skin clammy, hot and cold at the same time. Eyes closed. Breathing? Barely.
“What’s happening?” Trey Welliver cringed in his chair, as if something he did had triggered this.
“Use that black phone on the table,” Jake ordered Trey. “Push zero. Say ‘Interview room C, we have an officer down.’ Got it? ‘Officer down, room C.’ Now. Now. Now.”
With his own heart slamming against his ribs, willing his hands to work and his brain to function, Jake rolled D—D!—onto his back, opened his collar, loosened his belt, watching his friend and partner changing into a wraith, a ghost, a … Jake thought of all D’s cryptic phone calls, that surreptitious texting.
“You okay, D?” he whispered. “Stay with me here, bud.” He heard Trey on the phone, saying what Jake had told him to, already heard footsteps in the corridor hall thudding toward the room.
Aspirin. I need to give him an aspirin. He patted the pockets of D’s jeans, felt a lump. Pulled out a flat pad of folded tissue, opened it. Aspirin. He put one under D’s tongue, wondering if this was a myth or if it would really help.
CPR. Do it. He cleared D’s airway, adjusted his head, and started pumping his chest. The door slammed open and three uniforms pointed their weapons at Trey.
“Hands in the air!” one yelled. “Freeze!”
“No!” Trey yelled.
“No!” Jake yelled, too, realizing what this must look like. “He’s not a shooter! It’s D. I think he’s having a heart attack.”
How many bodies—people—had Jake seen, lifted onto stretchers, strapped in by medics? How many oxygen masks and chest compressions? It was all part of the deal, part of his day, part of what he’d signed up for. But this—was D.
The medical team flooded into the room, moving Jake aside to begin the swift efficiency of their lifesaving dance.
“Thanks, Jake, we got this now,” one EMT said.
During emergencies, Jake’s mind always worked triple-time, torqued up, the pressure and the speed and the uncertainty, the need for instant decision-making all part of his skill and training. But this was D. This was different. This was the other side of the equation. And Jake was full-blown angry now. The medics were pushing him out of this, all by the book—this wasn’t his job, he understood that—but he had to go to the hospital, go with D, and they were saying no.
“Why the hell not?” He grabbed a medic by the arm, demanding. “He’s my partner, for crap sake.”
“You’re interrogating a suspect, Jake. You can’t just leave him,” she said. “And we can’t wait for your backup. Sorry, Jake. We’ve got DeLuca, okay? Got him. Rely on it.”
Forget that. He’d go to the damn hospital on his own, haunt the place if he had to. They were partners. EMTs were already powering D away, racing down the hall on the rumble of metal wheels.
“Uh, sir?”
Trey. Right, Trey. Standing there, looking annoyed, or bored, or confused. Trey, the polar opposite of DeLuca. Young, strong, wealthy, privileged, with the rest of his life ahead of him. And a criminal.
Tell his parents? Jake remembered the kid’s imbecilic threat. He’d better tell his parents to get a lawyer. A fricking good one.
“Theodore Welliver.” Jake spat the words, furious with the whole ridiculous unfair world, a world where happy endings were rare, a world that was unreliable and could take away a colleague—a brother—before you knew what happened.
He had one more thing to do, damn it, before he raced to the hospital.
“Yeah?” the kid said. “So can I go?”
Jake focused on him. He should clear this with the DA, of course. Jake knew the protocol. But screw protocol.
“Theodore Welliver? You are under arrest for the murder of Avery Morgan. You have the right to remain silent.…”