Page 14 of Heartbeats Amidst Chaos: Part 1

“I need you for a little longer,” Elio told her, his momentary lift of spirits vanishing in response to the cold dread on her face. He couldn’t leave her just yet. Not only did he need her, but something inside him begged for a chance to redeem himself in her eyes. If he could just have a few more minutes with her to explain, maybe she wouldn’t completely despise him at their parting.

He could not have explained why he couldn’t bear the thought of her forever despising him, even if his escape had depended upon it.

“To make a clean getaway. Please,” he added. The gun hung at his side. It had been enough of an effort to keep it buried in her side on their trek through the hospital. He wasn’t sure he could point it at her again now even if he wanted to.

Rissa stared at him, her eyes assessing him and probably noting that his pain medication was beginning to wear off again and he was still getting waves of dizziness. He waited for her to refuse, to dare him to try and force her into the ambulance. But to his relief and surprise, she abruptly turned and climbed into the ambulance herself, stumbling over the console into the passenger seat.

He was about to step up after her when the big doors behind them flew open with a bang. He spun around to see both detectives barrel through, their guns already drawn and ready as they swept across the length of the garage. At the handrail, Hupp finally came alive.

“He’s there!” he yelled, and Elio dove for the ambulance doorway as the crash of pistol fire erupted, echoing against the cement walls of the garage. Fire tore through his left leg, and Elio yelled in pain, but he didn’t slow down. Slamming the driver’s side door after him, he thrust the key into the ignition, and the ambulance roared to life.

He could hear the detectives shouting as they ran toward the vehicle, but at least they weren’t shooting any longer. Probably because they didn’t want to hit his hostage—which was the entire point of a hostage, he reminded himself. Criminals escaping from the law didn’t take hostages to try and explain to them why exactly they were going on the run. Not usually, anyway.

His thoughts were rambling, slowing his reflexes as he jammed the gear shift into drive. He stomped on the gas, sending the big vehicle lurching forward. As they swerved out of the garage and into full daylight, Elio glanced over at Rissa. She was clinging tothe handle above the door, no doubt made for just that purpose. Her expression was a mix of fascination and horror as she looked at him and then craned back over her shoulder to see if the detectives had followed.

Elio barely had time for a glance in the rearview mirror before he was spinning the wheel once again, turning them onto the road. All he saw were the detective’s backs as they hightailed it back into the garage. They would be heading to their car to give chase, he thought. Would he have enough of a head start? He couldn’t say.

His left leg felt as if a hot iron rod was pressing against his calf muscle, and he could feel the blood soaking his pant leg and sock. Additionally, he realized that the sutured gash across his abdomen felt as if it had been torn back open, probably when he jumped the cop in the office; adrenalin had just kept him from noticing it until now.

He shook his head as his vision threatened to cloud over once again, taking deep, slow breaths. He glared at the road ahead, watching for his turnoff, shaking his head once more as if he could shake the fog right out of it.

“Are you feeling faint?” Rissa asked, her voice hesitant yet tinged with the same quiet authority he had heard when she first took over his care at the hospital.

“Yes,” Elio said. “It’s okay, though. I won’t crash us.”

“You’ve already done that,” Rissa said bitterly. Elio swung his head to look at her and spotted his turn at the same time. He spun the wheel, the ambulance tires screeching as it skidded onto one smaller side road and then another.

What was she saying?

“I had to get out of there,” he said, his tongue stumbling over even those simple words.I’m bleeding out,he thought. The spike of fear that pierced him at the thought momentarily cleared his brain and vision. He took another turn, entering an empty parking garage that was still under construction.The place you met your cousin,Nonno had said. This was it.

The ambulance swerved along the aisles as he scanned for the promised vehicle.

“I was being set up,” he explained to the silent doctor who was still clinging to the handle across from him. “I may not be the most stand-up guy in town, but I’m no bomber. And if they had been able to pin the whole thing on me, what about the real bomber? Someone has to be out looking for him. If not me, who’s going to do it?”

There was the car: a small, dark blue Honda parked in the shadow of a concrete beam. Elio swung the ambulance in beside it and stopped the engine. All was silent.

They had time. He looked down at his leg. There was a pool of blood on the floor beneath it. Standing up, he popped open the door between their seats and stumbled into the back of theambulance, searching haphazardly for something to stop the bleeding. But the dizziness was back in full force.

He heard a sound and turned to see that Rissa had followed him.

“Please,” he said, thinking of her words moments before about him already having crashed them. It had to mean that she felt some of the same things he had in the hospital during their time together. “Help me one more time. I promise you—I’m not who they say I am.”

Even as he said it, he relinquished all hope that she would relent. She was so beautiful. Like a sad, disapproving angel. And good. She was entirely out of his league and had been from the beginning.

He stepped toward her, staggering slightly, and took her hands in his. He pulled the handcuff key from his pocket and unlocked her handcuffs, letting them fall with a clatter.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “You can go. I never should have. . . “

And then he fell, the blackness swallowing him whole.

Chapter eleven

For a moment, Rissa could do nothing but stare at her erstwhile captor, out cold on the ambulance floor. Then, she roused herself to kneel beside him. With trembling fingers, she searched the pockets of his jeans.

“Shit!” They were empty. What had he done with her cell phone? She scrabbled across the ambulance floor, looking for a dispatch radio or something of the kind, but her knee slipped in Elio’s blood.

There was so much of it.

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