Fourteen

For a few seconds, blackness descended. Not sleep, just a bleak, disconnected darkness. Death without the afterlife.

As the nothingness lifted, the cold seeped in. I felt the hard frozen ground beneath me and heard the traffic sounds around me, along with the voices of strangers—

“Wow! What happened?”

“That scooter hit her and just took off!”

“Is she okay?”

“Clare? Can you hear me?”

Wait. The last voice didn’t come from a stranger. Low, steady, and firmly commanding, that one came from a man I knew—and loved.

“People, back up. Give her air.”

Opening my eyes, I found myself looking into the worried face of my fiancé. Mike Quinn’s arctic blue eyes, usually cop-cool, were now staring at me with open concern. And though the chilly night air barely ruffled the man’s trimly cut sandy brown hair, his crow’s-feet dug deeper than usual, and his angular jawline appeared rigid with tension.

I could see his tall body folded in half and crouched beside me. I just couldn’t make sense of it. How could Mike be here? How could he have possibly found me so quickly? Swallowing dry cotton, I rasped—

“Am I delusional?”

Mike responded by pulling off a glove. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

“I don’t understand,” I croaked. “How did you—”

“Clare, answer me. How many fingers—”

“Three. Press them together and you’ve got my old Girl Scout salute.”

“Do you know your name?”

“Of course. Clare Cosi.”

“Do you know who I am?”

“For heaven’s sake, I should know my own fiancé. You’re Michael Ryan Francis Quinn. And I have a question for you. Did you teleport here? How else could you find me so fast?”

“I was walking to your shop from the Sixth Precinct when I saw you tearing across Hudson. You almost got hit by a sanitation truck, and you kept going. I assumed you had to be running like that for a reason, so I followed, just in time to see a scooter turn you into a hit-and-run victim.”

“I’m not a victim. It was my fault. I darted out in front of that scooter—”

“Doesn’t matter. The driver should not have left the scene.”

“That’s true. But I’m all right—”

“No, you’re not.”

“Yes, I am!” I began to get up.

“Stay down.”

“Are you kidding? This ground is freezing!”

“You’re shivering,” Mike said, looking even more alarmed—and annoyed at himself for not figuring that out sooner.

As I got to my feet, he shrugged off his heavy overcoat. When he draped it around me, the heat of his body came with it. Then he pulled me close, and the bundled warmth felt better than an electric blanket.

“Thanks,” I said with a sigh of relief.

Mike’s steady blue gaze stayed on me. “Let’s get you inside that club. We can wait for the ambulance there.”

“I don’t need an ambulance. You didn’t call one, did you?”

“Not yet, but—”

“No buts. And no ambulance. I got the wind knocked out of me, that’s all. Nothing feels broken or sprained. My head is fine—it never struck the pavement. My arm hurts from what feels like a bad scrape, but that’s the worst of it.”

“You should still be checked out.”

“Then walk me back to the Village Blend. The paramedics should be there by now.”

“Paramedics? Why?”

“I asked Madame to call 911. That’s the reason I was running. I was chasing someone who attacked a customer in our alley. And, no, I’m not crazy. I had no intention of confronting the person. I only wanted to ID them for the police.”

Mike nodded, finally understanding. “All right, okay. Then we’ll deal with your runaway perp and that hit-and-run scooter driver later. Right now, let’s get you home.”

I didn’t argue, though I did give one last, long look at the street.

By now, the crowd of curious onlookers had melted back to the entrance of the club, and Scrib’s attacker in the black hooded puffer coat was nowhere to be seen.