Chapter 28
TWENTY-EIGHT
I t couldn’t end like this.
Eddie sprinted for Bianca. Riley and Kelson dashed off in the opposite direction.
He fell to the ground beside her. A stick jabbed into his hip, but his hands went to Bianca’s face.
Her breathing was harsh and quick. She was alive, but for how much longer?
Why weren’t the police moving in?
“I’m here.” He pulled out his phone with unsteady fingers and switched on his flashlight app. Blood seeped from Bianca’s shoulder.
He tugged off his polo, leaving on his undershirt, and pushed it against the blood.
Bianca whimpered.
“I know, honey. But I’ve got to get the bleeding stopped.”
Her fingers reached up and grazed his cheek. He wanted to nestle against her touch, but he forced his strength to remain on her wound.
Her hand brushed against his shoulder and dropped against his thigh.
Her eyes closed.
“No. No. No. Stay with me.” He kept his left hand on her wound and reached for her pulse with his right fingers. It was faint. “Come on, Bianca. You got to stay with me.”
Footsteps crunched nearby. Was it the police, or Riley or Kelson coming back to finish them? Either way, he wasn’t leaving Bianca. Not this time.
A bouncing light landed on his chest. “Rice’s been shot.” Ridge’s hushed voice echoed over Eddie’s own heartbeat.
His crew was somehow there, not the police.
Eddie glanced down at the light on his chest. Blood stained his white undershirt, but it must have come from Bianca.
“I’m not shot. Bianca is.”
The light landed on Bianca—her pale face, her eyes still closed. Blood-stained neck. She needed a miracle.
Ridge slid to a stop right beside him, and Zack dropped on the opposite side.
Bryce set a stretcher next to Bianca. “On three, we lift and slide. Then we’re racing out of here. One. Two. Three,” Bryce commanded.
Eddie kept pressure on her wound until his team lifted the board.
Bryce shifted to the opposite end of the backboard. “Fast yet steady is going to win the race today.”
They sprinted along the gravel as more and more red and blue lights appeared in the sky. “How did you even know to come for me?”
“Someone at dispatch messaged me. They knew it was you and knew we were the closest,” Zack said from his hold of the stretcher, down by Bianca’s feet.
Flashlights headed toward them. A dog barked in the distance. Someone raced right at them.
The headlights gave Macon a silhouette appearance. “Where’s…”
“He’s here, Chief,” Bryce answered. “Bianca’s been hit.”
Macon slid in across from Eddie, and the weight lifted out of Eddie’s hands. “Ambo’s not here yet, but we’ll load her up in the truck. Get her to the hospital.”
A police car pulled around the corner, and gravel slid behind tires as the car stopped. Olivia hopped out, gun in her palms. “What have we got?”
Macon put his hand over the top of Eddie’s on Bianca’s wound. “I’ll get her loaded. You give the police what they need.”
As much as he hated it, his chief was right.
Eddie swallowed. He had to let her go. But for the right reasons this time.
She’s in Your hands, Lord.
She always had been.
He released his hold on Bianca, and Macon took over.
Eddie jogged to Olivia. “Riley, the makeup artist from the film set, and her brother Kelson fled, probably to the main cabin up the curve. Both armed. Riley shot Bianca. I think Kelson may have killed Roger Pointe. Last I saw, his body was on the porch. Roger’s girlfriend, Janice, the mayor’s assistant, might be tied up in the cabin. Or dead too. I don’t know. She might have killed Nathan Kensington. There are smaller cabins in various building stages. That’s how I managed a callout. I got a signal by one. Riley has at least a truck on location.”
Another cop car pulled in, and Olivia nodded. “We’ll find them.” She pulled her radio to her mouth and issued a series of commands, but all Eddie heard was the truck’s siren as they drove away.
Eddie chased after the truck. He needed to be next to her. What if…what if she didn’t make it? He’d never get to tell her how much she meant to him.
A horn blared from behind him. The captain’s truck.
Macon rolled down the passenger window. “Get in.”
Eddie didn’t have to be told twice. His heartbeat and the truck’s siren were the only noises filling the ride to the hospital. When Macon slowed down enough in front of the hospital door, Eddie jumped ship and ran inside.
Ridge and Zack met him before he could tackle the lady behind the welcome desk for information.
But it was Zack who grabbed Eddie by the shoulders. “Bianca’s in surgery.”
He didn’t like the look in his friend’s eyes.
Eddie gripped Zack’s shoulders right back. “Tell me, what did the doctor say?”
Zack winced as Ridge clenched his jaw next to Eddie. “She’s lost a lot of blood.”
“Look!” A girl he hadn’t noticed stood on top of a chair and pointed to the television hanging in the corner of the entryway. “It’s live.”
A helicopter was circling treetops on the television screen, a spotlight set on what looked like Kelson as he ran toward a half-constructed cabin.
“One down.”
Macon, who had come up beside Zack, put his hand on Eddie’s shoulder. “Why don’t you guys both find Eddie a drink?” Macon steered Eddie away from Ridge and Zack in the opposite direction of the television.
Eddie waited for Macon to sit across from him. His captain’s gaze met his, and Eddie dropped his to the shined floor. “I’m not ready to let her go yet.”
“Good. Because I’m not here to make you.” Macon cleared his throat. “But I’ll be here for you if she’s?—”
“Where is she?” A woman dressed in a wrap cheetah dress and heels raced in from the hallway and roared at the lady behind the welcome desk.
He remembered that tone. “Mom?”
Mary looked like she’d aged since the last time he’d seen her, with extra-deep circles under her eyes. She rushed to him, her necklace banging against her chest. “I saw on the television. Did someone really shoot her? Bia can’t be…”
Macon moved beside Eddie. “Mary, why don’t I help you find a glass of water?”
His stubborn mother shoved past his boss. “Who shot her? I pray it wasn’t one of those creeps who stalked Joel. Joel was the one who pointed at the television when it came on upstairs. Come on, Eddington, we have to go check on her. You shouldn’t have to sit by your loved one’s side alone.”
Her words sucker punched him.
He’d left her alone at this hospital when she’d been afraid of losing the one she loved.
Because he’d been angry. At what had been said at dinner, and from what had happened so many years ago. It was past time to surrender it all to God. “Mom, I forgive you. I don’t understand why you had to give me away, but it doesn’t help anyone for me to hang on to my anger. I don’t always understand God’s plan, but His plans are for His glory, even when I can’t see it. He offered forgiveness, so I need to as well.”
His mother pulled him into a hug. “You’re going to be the best big brother.”
Eddie closed his eyes. He couldn’t stop her from adopting a child, but he could be around at least a little to make sure the child was loved.
With a sniff, his mother released him. “Let’s go get your girl.”
At the check-in desk, the lady picked up a paper map and unfolded it. “Are you lost?”
Thankfully, no longer. Eddie gripped the counter. “I need to see Bianca…I mean, Bia Pearl. What room will she be in?”
The woman pushed up her glasses and frowned. “She already has a waiting visitor. I doubt she’d want to wake up to her ex and her fiancé fighting over her.”
His mother lifted her chin. “My son isn’t Bia Pearl’s ex, he’s her?—”
“She doesn’t have a fiancé.” He shook his head. Even if she had gotten back with Nathan—Nathan was dead. “Her visitor…what did the man look like?”
The woman pushed her glasses higher on her nose. “Umm…” Her cheeks reddened. “He’s tall and dark-headed and…kind of looks a little like you, actually.”
“Like me?” He remembered Bianca’s comment about Carter’s post hinting at something between them. “Carter? He must be after another publicity stunt.”
“Yes, that’s right. Carter Cane. I knew he looked familiar with that grin.” The woman smiled but stopped when Eddie leaned forward.
He didn’t know why Carter was pretending to be Bianca’s fiancé, but he’d never trusted that man.
Eddie grabbed the hospital map off the counter. “Ma’am, I really need you to show me where the woman I love is.”