Page 39 of Sinner's Salvation

The paramedic nodded, looked down, then frowned at something on the floor of the ambulance.

A fresh puddle of blood.

He looked around, first at the spot where Luca had fallen, but the two places were completely separate. His gaze rose slowly until it hit Anna at her chest.

“Holy...were you shot?” he asked, his voice rising with surprise instead of as a question.

“No,” Anna said, looking down. There was a lot of blood on the front of her shirt. Too much blood to blame it on a mere scrape or cut.

When in doubt, deflect. “I don’t know where this came from.”

The paramedic reached out with his hands to touch her, look for a wound, but she leaned away from him.

“I’m fine,” she said, in a firm voice.

He froze with his hands still extended toward her. “You might think you’re okay now, only to find out in thirty minutes or an hour that you have a life-threatening injury.”

When her only response was to raise both her eyebrows, he said, “I’ve seen it happen before. I had a guy who’d been stabbed, but he thought the assailant had hit him with the hilt of the knife, not the blade. He was fine, walking and talking, for about twenty minutes. Then he crashed. Hard. He’d been bleeding internally and didn’t know it. Adrenaline is great, until you run out of it, then you die.”

“I’m not hurt,” Anna said, then to satisfy his need to know, she pulled up her shirt until her abdomen was revealed. It showed some bruising, but no cut or stab mark. “I have so much blood on me, and I don’t know where most of it came from.”

Tony stared at the area as she released her shirt, his whole face rigid with tension. “Okay, then.” He tried pasting a smile on it, but it only made him look afraid. “Hey, I’m not complaining, I’m just doing my job.”

“I apologize,” she said, rubbing her face and letting her shoulders drop until she was nearly hunched over. “I haven’t slept in...a very long time and it’s making me overreact.”

“Roger,” Tony called. “How far out are we?”

“Three minutes,” the driver called back.

Her paramedic gave her a tight grin. “We’ll be at the hospital soon and get you completely checked out.”

He was trying so hard to be comforting and not freaked out.

She patted his hand and said, “Thank you.”

“We will also call the police, get you some protection.”

“You’re very kind. Oh...” She put a hand to her head and said, “I’m feeling dizzy, can I...?”

“Oh, of course.” The paramedic slid off the gurney so she could lay down.

He stepped in the various blood pools on the floor of the vehicle as he moved toward the front of the ambulance.

She glanced at Evan, who raised an eyebrow at her, and flashed him a smile. He didn’t smile back. The worry on his face wasn’t going anywhere.

Brian was texting on Evan’s throw away phone. When he finished, he looked at her and nodded.

She sighed. He thought their problems were over and everything would be fine, but like Evan, she was sure their problems were just beginning.

The ambulance slowed down, and the siren went silent. They entered a large parking garage that was about half full of ambulances.

As soon as the vehicle came to a stop, Tony opened the rear doors, then turned to Anna. “We’re going to check in with hospital security, make sure they’re aware of the danger to you.”

She heard the driver’s side door open and close. The other paramedic had gotten out. “Okay.”

The paramedic gave her, Evan, and Brian another tight smile, then went out the doors and disappeared.

“Paramedics don’t normally leave a patient alone,” Evan said, with a frown, his gun back in his hand.

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