“I WANT THAT DOOR open now,” Schultz said. “Lives are in imminent danger.”
“You got it, Detective. Stand back.”
Shotgun blasts dug into the beautiful oak door at May’s house. In about thirty seconds, the scarred, ten-foot door hung by one hinge at the top. Officers from the backup cruisers poured into the opening, weapons drawn, looking for the woman Schultz described as “armed and very dangerous, take no chances.”
They nearly tripped over a body in the foyer. Heart in his throat, Schultz saw that it wasn’t PJ, but was bad anyway. It was Mary Beth, a woman whose strength he admired. He felt for a pulse and found none. Sure that the next body was going to be PJ’s, he charged after the officers, who’d gotten ahead of him when he stopped to check for a pulse.
There was another body at the base of the sweeping, marble staircase, broken, blood pooled on the shiny floor.
But it wasn’t her. He caught sight of PJ sitting on the stairs, her leg bloody and stretched out in front of her, her eyes fastened on the corpse.
Weapons were trained on PJ, who wasn’t responding to orders to lie on the floor.
“Don’t shoot! One of ours!” Schultz came hurrying up. Her appearance was shocking. There was blood in her hair, a fragment of bone jutted from her leg at the ankle, and she looked as though she’d lost a fight with a bulldog. He took her pulse with one hand and lifted her chin with the other. The gesture reminded him of PJ lifting Shower Woman’s head, and bile rose in his throat. That woman was irretrievably gone. His woman still had a pulse.
Thank God.
Wailing sirens announced the arrival of the ambulances he’d called for.
Recognition lit her eyes. “Leo?”
“Yes,” he said. He clasped one of her hands in both of his, protecting it, wanting to hold her but fearing that would make her injuries worse.
“Children upstairs to the right. Don’t know where May is,” she said. Every word seemed to take a focused effort. When she’d said them, she closed her eyes and collapsed. Schultz caught her before she hit her head on the cold marble, and he was immensely grateful that it wasn’t a cold slab in the morgue she was heading for.