The ambulance transported me to the nearest hospital, which happened to be the same one where I used to work years earlier. Being wheeled into the familiar lobby felt surreal, like my life as Mrs. Ford had been a dream. Or more accurately, a nightmare. Strange and wonderful things had happened, but terrible things also. And I waited, knowing that the most terrible of all was about to descend on me and change my life forever. I expected bad news about Connor. The delay did not bode well.
They bandaged my cuts and contusions, diagnosed me with a concussion, and held me for hours for observation. They did an ultrasound and told me the baby was fine. Seeing her on the screen, all I could think was Where is her father?
They told me to wait in the treatment room until the nurse came with my discharge papers. I was climbing the walls, cooped up there with no phone and no information, not knowing the fate of the man I loved. I asked every nurse who walked by about the police investigation, whether they knew if anyone else had been brought in. Nobody did.
As soon as my papers were signed, I got up and walked the halls until I found someone who remembered me from when I’d worked here. Kelsey was an administrative assistant in the emergency department. She searched admissions records and told me there was no indication that Connor had been brought in for treatment. The fact that he wasn’t yet hospitalized made me more afraid than ever. Given his condition, he’d been in urgent need of medical attention. Yet they hadn’t brought him here, to the nearest hospital. In the recesses of my brain, I’d already known that they hadn’t gotten him to a doctor. The Suburban had left and then returned to the ski house in less time than it would take to get here. I’d been blocking that knowledge, but it flooded in now, along with the consciousness of what it must mean—that Connor had died in the car on the way to the hospital. I sat very still and focused my heart and mind on praying for that not to be true. But reality seeped in. I knew it was hopeless, and knowing that, I felt numb with despair.
“Tabitha, you look awful. Can I call someone for you?” Kelsey asked.
I asked her to track down the phone number for the police department back in Southampton, then borrowed her phone, called, and explained who I was. The dispatcher told me that Hagerty and Pardo were on their way to New Hampshire now, because of my case. She connected me to Hagerty’s cell phone.
“I’m glad to hear you’re okay,” Hagerty said. “We were worried.”
“Forget about me. Where’s my husband? Tell me, I need to know.”
“He’s not with you?”
“With me? No. He got shot. He was in bad shape. I gave one of the local cops an address where he might be. Please, do you know if they found him?”
“I don’t understand. I was told you were brought in with an injured male who was treated and released.”
“But that wasn’t Connor. I ran from Kovacs and Juliet, and a guy named Alex picked me up—”
“Wait, you’re saying Connor Ford was shot and seriously wounded?”
“Yes. You don’t know that?”
“No. Last night, we received an alarm that your bracelet had been deactivated, and around the same time there was a call about shots fired at Windswept.”
“Yes, like I said, Connor was shot.”
“We responded immediately and found blood in your bedroom, but we assumed it was yours. The housekeeper said she witnessed you and Ford get pushed into that Suburban at gunpoint by Kovacs. We’ve been very worried about you, Tabitha.”
“How did you find me?”
“The housekeeper got the plate number, and we put out an APB. You’re saying the assistant was involved, too? I got the text you sent with the photo of her birth certificate, but I didn’t understand the relevance.”
“It’s complicated. Everything is explained on the recording from the ankle bracelet.”
“I haven’t had a chance to listen to that yet. It’s being downloaded as we speak by a technician at the DA’s office. Can you fill me in?”
“There’s no time to explain. Just—Juliet killed Nina, okay? Kovacs was involved somehow. I don’t really know how, exactly. But Connor is innocent. Juliet shot him. And I’m afraid he’s dead. Please, Detective. Please. Do something.”
I broke into sobs.
“Okay, now I understand,” Hagerty said. “Listen. Hang up. I’ll find out whatever I can and get back to you ASAP at the number you’re calling from.”
As I sat in the chair beside Kelsey’s desk, crying hysterically, a familiar figure marched down the hall toward me. It was Liz, my manager from the restaurant, with her arms outstretched and a concerned look on her face. I stepped into her comforting embrace.
“Alex called me, and I rushed right over. What the hell happened?” she said.
“Alex?”
“The guy who picked you up in his truck, escaping from kidnappers apparently? He’s my husband’s cousin. What the hell is going on, Tabitha?”
I tried to talk through my sobs, but it was just too hard.
“Never mind, you can explain later. What can I do to help?”
I managed to get out that Connor had been shot, and I was waiting to hear if he’d survived. I had to wait by Kelsey’s desk, because I didn’t have my phone, and the detective was going to call me back on hers.
“I’ll stay with you for as long as you need me,” Liz said. “Let’s text him my number instead, so we’re not stuck waiting in this hallway.”
After that, Liz brought me to the cafeteria and made me drink some herbal tea and eat something. It felt like a lifetime, but only fifteen minutes passed before Hagerty called Liz’s cell. The recording from last night had been downloaded and reviewed by the DA. They now understood I’d been telling the truth all along.
“We’re sorry for the inconvenience,” Hagerty said. “Your charges are being dismissed.”
I huffed in disbelief. “You’re sorry for the—Jesus. My husband was shot. Would that even have happened if—”
I dropped my head into my hands, crying again, my breath coming in harsh sobs. Liz took the phone. I couldn’t tell from her end of the conversation what was happening. She hung up after a couple of minutes.
“They’re on the way here right now. We’re supposed to meet them in five minutes in a conference room in the basement.”
“I never want to see those cops again.”
“You need to be strong, hon. I think they have news.”
Her eyes were veiled with worry. It was bad.
I leaned on Liz all the way to the elevator, down four floors and one long, sterile corridor. Hagerty and Pardo were already there, waiting for me in a small conference room with buzzing lights, along with another man in plain clothes who had the look of a cop about him. I knew what was coming. I could see it in their eyes. The truth was, I’d known for hours. I couldn’t forget what I’d seen—the deathly pallor on Connor’s face, the blood soaking the back of the Suburban, Juliet’s horrified expression when she checked his pulse. I knew in my heart that he couldn’t survive all that. Yet, I’d been hoping. Praying. Pretending none of it was real.
“I’m sorry, Tabitha,” Hagerty said, and his choirboy face looked crumpled and sad. “The local PD recovered a body from the ski house—”
I collapsed into the nearest chair, shaking all over.
“—and we believe it’s your husband.”
My body felt cold as ice. I stared back and forth between them, everyone in that awful room, for whom this was just another day on the job. I’d thought I’d known what was coming. How it would feel. I’d had no idea. It felt like the world had stopped. Like there would be no tomorrow. All I could do was tremble and beg.
“No, please. You must be wrong. It’s not true.”
But I knew it was.
“This is Detective Martinez. He’ll take it from here,” Hagerty said.
“Ma’am, my condolences,” Martinez said. He was middle-aged, balding, with a sober expression. “It appears that the cause of death was a gunshot wound to the abdomen. The morgue is right down the hall. I have to ask you to identify your husband’s body.”
I dropped my head into my hands. “No, no, no,” I whispered, but words couldn’t make this nightmare go away.
“I understand this is very difficult,” Martinez said. “But until he’s identified, we can’t proceed with the autopsy, and we can’t release the body. He’ll just stay in the morgue.”
“Tabitha. Come on, sweetie, I know you’re strong,” Liz said.
I nodded blindly, my eyes full of tears, and reached for her hands. She helped me to my feet, and I followed Martinez from the room on shaky legs. The walk of twenty feet seemed endless, and I knew I would live it many times over in my dreams. We reached a pair of closed metal doors. The detective typed a code into a keypad on the wall, and I heard a lock disengage. We stepped into a refrigerated space no larger than a doctor’s waiting room, and I gasped. There were no lockers for the bodies, like on TV. Just several steel gurneys and a smell of death and chemicals in the air. Two of the gurneys held bodies, covered by sheets. A pair of bare white feet protruded from the sheet of the gurney on the left.
His toe had stopped bleeding, at least.
“It’s him,” I said in a small voice. “I know because he was shot in the foot last night.”
The detective stepped to the head of Connor’s gurney and prepared to lift the sheet. “I’m sorry but we can’t rely on that for the ID.”
“Yes, I understand. Go ahead. I want to see him.”
The breath left my body as he pulled the sheet aside.
Connor looked like himself, his perfect features so familiar, his dark lashes lying against his pale cheeks. He was just tired, I told myself, and pallid, and lying very still. I stepped up beside him and reached for his face, desperate to touch him again, as if my caress could awaken him from this terrible sleep. The detective stopped my hand.
“No contact.”
“Please.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am. His body is evidence in the homicide investigation.”
I doubled over in my grief, my hands on my stomach. It was just beginning to sink in that this baby would never know her father.
“He was shot protecting me. I want that known.”
“Of course. We’d like to get your perspective, as soon as you’re ready to be interviewed. Your husband’s, uh—your husband will be released to you after the autopsy. I’m going to cover him again, okay?”
I nodded wordlessly.
“I’m sorry, but I need to ask one more favor. We have a second victim here, a female, who was found deceased from a gunshot wound in the passenger seat of the Suburban. The circumstances of her death are under investigation. We’ve tentatively identified her as Juliet Davis, though I understand that may be an alias. If you could—”
“Yes. Show me.”
He pulled the sheet aside.
“That’s her,” I said. It gave me no pleasure that Juliet had lost her life. It wouldn’t bring Connor back.
“What happened to Steve Kovacs?”
“Shot in a firefight with our officers. In surgery. Not expected to make it.”
We returned to the conference room. I collapsed into a chair. Someone brought me a glass of water. The detectives and Liz talked around me, but I had trouble understanding what they were saying. Eventually, it was agreed I’d go home with Liz and return tomorrow for a full debriefing, after I’d had a chance to rest.
Somebody lent me a coat, a red puffer jacket from the lost and found. I followed Liz out to the parking lot. It was starting to snow in sharp, icy crystals that stung my cheeks and made me cold deep in the bone. She cleared a box of tissues and a stuffed animal off the passenger seat of her minivan and threw them in the back. I sank down and breathed deeply. I’d ridden in Liz’s car a few times before. It still smelled like Goldfish crackers and sports equipment. Life went on for some people, but mine would never be the same. Being with Connor was a dream that I never quite believed in. And now it was over, before it had really begun.
Liz started the car and turned up the heat. Just then, the baby gave me a hard kick, and I remembered that I wasn’t alone. That I had her. And that part of him would live on in her. My hand flew to my midsection. The wonder of the moment must have shined in my eyes, because Liz turned to me with a sad smile.
“When are you due?” she asked.