Page 403 of Cold Case, Warm Hearts

She stopped the car with no thought about the white lines or whether she would be blocking traffic. Almost no one was out here, but someone had been. And they’d left Jake for dead on his backside, leaned against the truck.

She nearly fell out of the car but scrambled up and raced to him. “Jake.” A prayer brushed across her lips as she fell to her knees beside him. “Jake, can you hear me?”

The knife stuck out of his abdomen. Blood everywhere.

Don’t take it out.

The words rolled through her mind, and she realized that was right. She had to leave the blade there because it plugged the hole in him right now. A surgeon needed to be the one to take it out, preferably in a sterilized room at the hospital.

She realized she’d reached for the handle but held her hands over it without making contact. “Jake.” She touched his cheek. “Maybe you shouldn’t wake up and feel this. But I do want to see your eyes.”

An ambulance siren cut through the night.

Jake let out a groan.

Addie waved over the ambulance so they could get here as quickly as possible. The ambo pulled up, and two uniformed EMTs got out. One was a tiny African American woman with braids pulled back who grabbed a duffel and raced over. The other was a blonde man who retrieved a yellow backboard.

“Hurry.”

The woman got to Addie first. “Hey, you found him?”

“He’s my friend. We were on the phone when someone—” The cameras. Addie’s head whipped around to the light pole with the device mounted to it. Whoever did this would be on camera.

The woman lifted the stethoscope from Jacob’s chest and wrapped them around her neck. “I’m guessing he was stabbed.”

Her colleague knelt on the other side of Addie.

The woman waved them into action. “Let’s pack this and get him to the ED.”

Addie frowned. “Don’t you mean ER?”

The woman tore open two packs at once. “They don’t call it that anymore. It’s the emergency department now.”

“Oh.” Was that really the point here?

The EMT held gauze down on either side of the blade. Her colleague handed over more. Then they taped the gauze down tight so the blade wasn’t going to move around while they loaded him in the ambulance.

“He’s going to be okay, right?”

The woman frowned. “You did good calling us so fast, getting us out here. The rest is up to him, the doctors, and the Good Lord.”

“That’s true, I suppose,” Addie said.

Her partner’s jaw flexed. “Whatever.”

The female EMT shot him a look. “Let’s get this guy loaded.” She looked at Addie. “I’m Freya.”

“Addie Franklin.” She figured it wouldn’t hurt for them to know. “FBI Special Agent.”

The guy whistled, but she wasn’t sure he wasn’t being sarcastic.

Freya motioned. “That’s Trey. He’s always like this. It’s not just you.” She reached for the yellow backboard. “Time to roll.”

They slid Jacob onto the board, and the two EMTs loaded him in the ambulance. Freya called out, “Meet you there!”

The doors slammed shut.

Addie looked down at her hands and realized there was blood on both. She lifted her arm and used the sleeve over her bicep to wipe the tears on her face.Jacob.Back in her car, she couldn’t quite get her fingers to turn the key without slipping off. She hissed a breath and let some more tears fall.

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