Page 75 of Deadly Attraction
Chapter Sixteen
I have to save her.
“Why would she do this?” Emma said, bringing a bowl of water over to clean Danika’s hands. Mitch had told them what he’d found. Officer Moses was dead, Danika nearly so. The girl had used a knife.
Her thin, dark hands were covered with blood and more was coming as Mitch unwound his wet shirt from one of Danika’s wrists.
“Don’t answer that,” Emma said. “I know why she did this, but how the hell did she get a knife?”
Blood was everywhere. It covered Mitch’s torso, his arms. Will had brought pillows and they’d propped Danika’s elbows on them, lifting her arms above her heart to slow the flow of blood.
Mitch and Will wrapped the girl’s arms in bandages and gauze. Mitch grabbed an afghan from Emma’s pile in the living room and covered Danika. He touched the girl’s forehead, then checked the pulse in her neck. “She’s definitely shock-y. Any chance you’ve got a hot water bottle or heating pad?”
“My heating pad is upstairs,” Emma said, heading for the doorway. “I’ll grab it.”
Will opened the pantry door. “I can make a field IV.”
“Do I want to know what that is?” Emma asked.
“Sugar water,” was his only reply.
Sugar water. A heating pad. Gauze pads and bandages. Not exactly first-class medical treatment for a girl who’d slit her wrists, but what else could they do until an ambulance arrived?
“Emma,” Mitch said, stopping her. His hand left a bloody print on her forearm. “You stay here with Will. I’ll get the heating pad.”
“Okay.” She handed him a dish towel and let him pass her. “Why?”
“Just stay with her.”
She didn’t argue, seeing the consternation on his face as he worked over the dish towel. Hustling back to Danika, she fiddled with the blanket and noticed that blood was already seeping through the bandages. Danika’s face was an ashen gray, her normally pink lips bluish.
Will emerged from the pantry with her sugar and a bottle of water. “Boil some water,” he said. “I’m going to the barn for tubing.”
Surely he didn’t mean… “That tube Mitch used on Second Chance? That’s too big for Danika’s arm.”
Will opened the door, swung out, Lady on his heels. He told the dog to stay. “Lock this behind me,” he said to Emma. “I’ll knock three times when I come back. Don’t open it for anyone but me.”
Emma shooed him with her hand. “I know, I know.” Danika was growing paler by the moment. “Just hurry.”
Mitch returned with the heating pad. He cocked his chin at the door. “Where’d he go?”
“To get tubing for the IV.” Emma grabbed the end of the heating pad cord and plugged it in to the wall. “How soon do you think the ambulance will get here?”
“No telling.” His phone rang and he answered it while situating the pad under the blanket. “Tell me you found that bastard Goodsman and you have him in custody.”
Emma rinsed her hands, then filled a pot with water as Mitch punched the speaker button on his phone and a male voice flooded the kitchen. It was the same one she’d heard earlier.
“Wish I could,” Agent Harris said. “Any chance you’re on the way to the safe house yet?”
“Not yet.” Mitch blew out a frustrated breath, rubbing his forehead. “We have a problem.”
Harris’s voice was gruff. “What problem?”
“Dr. Collins was scheduled to see a patient from the juvenile detention center twenty miles away. The girl is on the kitchen table right now, bleeding out. We staunched the flow and are waiting for the ambulance and police, but who knows how long that might take.”
“What the fuck happened to the kid?”
“It appears she killed her guard and tried to kill herself. Slit her wrists.”
