The Rescuer

  Craig nodded. “I meet him at his hotel room in downtown Chicago at midnight. I’ll be back here no later than 5 A.M.”

  Neil stared at him, and Craig felt sweat trickle down his back.

  “The back door will be unlocked. I’ll be waiting for you.”

  Craig nodded and closed the briefcase. He would consider double-crossing a lot of people, but Neil was not one of them. The man was just crazy enough to be unpredictable.

  CHICAGO

  The ambulance smelled like disinfectant by midafternoon. Stephen wiped down the gurney with warm water. It never failed to amaze him where blood ended up. The last transport had been a simple nosebleed, but neither ice nor pressure had stopped it. The doctors would have to pack it off. Now the ambulance was parked in Memorial Hospital’s side parking lot while they cleaned the rig and restocked supplies.

  Ryan closed drawers and locked the drug cabinet that held the morphine and Valium. Including those vials in the red medical case they carried with them to a scene just meant someone would inevitably grab the case and run. “We’re in pretty good shape.” Ryan passed over the clipboard. “Sign on page four and six and initial nine.”

  Stephen tugged a pen from his pocket, read the pages, then scrawled his signature. “Add another O2 cylinder and a replacement nebulizer, and see about a dozen more biohazard bags. We’ve got a persistent sharps problem by the end of the shift.” He’d nearly stuck himself with a used needle that had been slid into a discarded IV tubing for lack of something proper to encapsulate it.

  Ryan nodded and took the pad. “I’ll go sweet-talk Supply for us.” He stepped down from the ambulance and headed toward the hospital.

  Stephen wiped down the storage cabinets under the bench, then rubbed sweat off his face with the back of his sleeve.

  “Maybe this will help.”

  He glanced to the back of the ambulance and set down the rag to take the large glass of ice water. “Thanks, Meghan.” He wondered if she was working today. He leaned over to touch the sleeve of her uniform. The white fabric still had a pressed crease in it. “Air-conditioning. I’m jealous.”

  She laughed and perched on the bumper. “It’s actually a bit chilly inside. Guys have an advantage—you look good sweaty.”

  He drained the entire glass then removed a piece of ice to rub on the back of his neck. She definitely did not look wilted. He flipped water from the melting ice at her and then set aside the glass.

  It was nice having her back in his life. Her family had moved away from the Trevor House neighborhood when he was fifteen, and it wasn’t until she was in nursing school that they’d been able to catch up on their old friendship.

  She leaned into the ambulance to look at the roof, getting in his way and nearly dragging her hair in the dirty water. “Where is this bullet hole I heard about?”

  He shifted her away from trouble and pointed toward the front of the ambulance. “The guys on last night’s shift had an interesting time.” They had been trying to treat a gunshot victim and had come under fire from shooters on the roof of a building across the street. It was a sad day when an ambulance wasn’t considered an out-of-bounds target.

  “If it rains tonight it’s going to drip in here.”

  “Ryan is getting us some patching material. You think it’s going to rain and break this heat?”

  “Ken thinks so. He’s predicting four inches of rain, with heavy winds and unusually strong lightning.”

  Stephen hoped her cousin was at least partially right. They needed rain.

  “According to his forecasts, it will probably blow in around 7 P.M. and last well into the night.” Meghan reached for the lotion he kept in the cleaning supply case and rubbed it liberally into her hands. “I’m going storm chasing with him tomorrow. I want a tornado picture for my wall and am determined to get it this year.”

  “Quit wishing for trouble, Meghan, and drive carefully tonight. You’ll be heading right into the rain.”

  “I get off at six. I’ll either go before the rain arrives or wait until the worst of it passes.”

  “Just don’t chase lightning when you can’t find your tornado. I want you coming back as you are, not with lightning curled hair.”

  She laughed and tugged over the supply case to help him out.

  Stephen was beginning to suspect she had a boyfriend in Silverton given how many trips home she made, but he drew the line at probing the subject. If he knew a name then he’d have to go check the guy out to make sure he was good enough for her, and that would cross the line into meddling. At least she was smart enough not to say yes to some of the doctors around here who asked her out. Meghan wasn’t a city girl at heart, and it would do her good to find someone back in Silverton, move home, and work in her father’s medical practice. She talked about it often enough. A house, babies, and working with her dad. The girl had good dreams.

  His phone rang in his shirt pocket. He’d just plunged his hand into the bucket of water. He looked around for his towel and scowled when he saw it already pitched in the laundry bag.

  Meghan solved the problem by reaching over and tugging out his phone. “Hi, you’ve reached Stephen’s secretary.” She grinned and leaned against the bench, lifting one foot up onto the bumper. “Hi there, Jennifer. Your brother is cleaning up the rig at the moment and making faces at me.”

  It was unusual to hear from Jennifer in the middle of the day. Stephen opened a new roll of paper towels. Meghan covered the phone. “Are you interested in a twenty-one-inch painting of a fish?”

  He held out his hand. “Jack will love it for his birthday.”

  “Oh, that’s awful and so perfect.” Meghan passed him the phone.

  “Hi, Jen. Yes, buy and ship it.”

  “It comes close to matching that set of painted eggshell salt and pepper shakers he gave you last year. I saw this and thought of you,” Jennifer said.

  “You’re flea market shopping?”

  “I’m making a house call on a fourteen-year-old who likes to paint. She’s actually pretty good. The fish painting, however, was a joke for her brother, and in the end she couldn’t go through with wrapping it.”

  “I love this kid. Trust me; I’ll have no problem giving it to Jack.”

  The radio up front sounded dispatch tones. “Jen, I’ve gotta go.”

  Meghan scrambled off the bumper and grabbed the bucket of water. “I’ll dump this for you.”

  “Thanks, Meg.” Stephen shoved back supply cases and slammed doors. He piled into the driver’s seat while Ryan ran out the ER doors and scrambled into the passenger seat.

  Ryan called up the address and details. “A fire on Lexington Street. Better rush it. They’ve already gone to a second alarm so it must be big.”

  Stephen punched on the lights.

  Meghan stood holding the bucket and watched the ambulance pull out. The man needed a haircut. She had to think of something that could be improved on, for the bottom line was when Stephen smiled at her, her day turned over. That smile made it impossible to look away. Then he’d notice she was looking at him that way and his eyes would fill with laughter. He’d inevitably tease her about it.

  He didn’t see her as anything but a friend. It was for the best: Stephen wasn’t interested in settling down. As far as she knew he had never set foot inside a church, and she couldn’t imagine him ever being content to live in a small town that only had a volunteer EMS crew. She’d watched him grow into a tall strong handsome guy who inspired confidence by his presence. His years as a fireman had forged his muscles into an impressive build, and the last years as a paramedic had added a touch of gray now streaking through his brown hair. She watched him play basketball with his brothers and thought he was the best looking of the O’Malley guys. She was probably a bit prejudiced there.

  Meghan washed out the bucket with the garden hose hidden by the planters and flipped it upside down to dry. She lifted a hand to the cop car pulling into the circular drive. She hoped Stephen’s date with Paula L
ewis fell through again. The doctor was nice and likely to turn Stephen’s head, but she was heading to California in a couple months to take a position with a university medical group. Meghan didn’t want to listen to Stephen’s inevitable, “I miss her” remarks.

  The guy was lonely. She knew him too well not to know that. He always kept dating relationships casual and short. Her mom said he wasn’t yet ready to risk his heart—with people or with God. Maybe Mom was right and it was time to let go of her teenage crush. It just felt like a failure to give up on him.

  “You know he likes you.”

  Meghan glanced at Kate O’Malley who was strolling over from the hospital side entrance. “I saw the ambulance heading out,” Kate explained.

  Meghan grimaced. “Stephen still sees me as a twelve-year-old.”

  “Not entirely. He just doesn’t think about dating old friends.” Kate draped an arm around her shoulders in a show of sympathy. “He notices when you’re not at work, keeps tabs on your travels, comments when you are happy or sad. You’re in a class by yourself. Think of Stephen as a tree that is inevitably going to fall hard someday. He’s looking for something without realizing it’s right in front of him.”

  “Right now I just want him to notice me so I can turn him down.”

  Kate laughed. “That’s my Meg.”

  “How’s the hand?”

  Kate moved her bruised fingers. “The ice helped. Next time a kid slams my hand in a door, I’m asking for hazard pay. Come on, let’s get a late lunch.”

  Meghan took one last look at where the ambulance had disappeared and nodded. Stephen would be back after he rescued someone. He just didn’t seem to realize how much he needed rescuing himself.

  SILVERTON

  Ken hung up the phone in his home office and jotted down Friday’s temperature and humidity numbers called in from the barge floating down the Mississippi. The captain was a fellow amateur weatherman. The weather map on Ken’s table showed isometric lines coming close together at Davenport. The coming storm tonight would be big. He had to get out there. His phone rang as he packed his camera bag. The name on the caller ID urged him to answer. “Are we on, hon?”

  “Two weeks in the Bahamas.” His wife bubbled with the news. “Mom loved the idea of coming back to work for a couple weeks. I told you she was bored,” JoAnne said. “She’ll handle the store. You want me to call and confirm the tickets?”

  “Absolutely. Neil said he’d buy the brooch himself if he couldn’t find an immediate buyer for it. Book the tickets and I’ll stop by to see Neil this afternoon then make the bank deposit.”

  “I’m so excited about this.”

  Ken folded the latest weather map and slid it in his case. “You found the locket and brooch, hon. You should get the vacation of your dreams as a reward. That and a new dishwasher.”

  “We might get more for the pieces if we waited a while to sell them.”

  “We weren’t expecting to find real jewelry in that music box in the attic. There’s no use being greedy. We’ll keep the locket, sell the brooch, and enjoy the honeymoon we never had.”

  “Okay, I’m calling. Are you going storm chasing?”

  “Just for an hour. I’ll be back before you get home from work.”

  “Is Meghan coming home or should I call to tell her the news?”

  “She’s driving down tonight.” His cousin and wife had been best friends since high school.

  “I get her for shopping tomorrow. You’ll have to take her storm chasing another day.”

  “How about a trip to Davenport to shop, then we can keep going to get some pictures?”

  “If the sky looks interesting,” JoAnne compromised. “I’ll see you in a couple hours.”

  “Love ya, JoAnne. Drive careful.”

  Some things were too valuable to trust to the jewelry store vault. Neil returned the workbench to its original position and carried the hidden ledger over to his desk.

  A brooch and a locket… He had to turn the pages back to 1982 to find the pieces. They had been stolen from a couple at the Wilshire hotel in Chicago during a false fire alarm, and excellent fakes were substituted for the genuine pieces. He vaguely remembered the theft…it had been so very long ago. There was no star by the line to indicate the theft had ever been discovered and a police report filed. The lady or her heirs probably still thought they had the real stones. It was rare for one of his substitute pieces to hold up for twenty years, but it was possible if they were in an unopened jewelry box or a safe deposit box.

  He never sold the originals until the thefts were at least a decade cold and never in the same state as they were taken from. Stashing the brooch and locket in the music box as a place to let them cool off had been a bad move. He didn’t know when his wife gave away the music box, or to whom, but it eventually ended up in Ken and JoAnne’s attic.

  It was only the fourth time in years he’d had to buy back a piece he had originally stolen. He would have to do something about that locket. If JoAnne had taken a fancy to wearing it— He had best make another fake piece and recover the original from her. She wasn’t the kind of woman to stay in a small town like Silverton when a few hours’ drive could have her shopping in Chicago or in Davenport. Someone who knew jewelry would find the piece fascinating, and that locket was in a jewelry catalog as an interesting piece of work by a French artisan. He didn’t want a chance question raised.

  Neil flipped past pages of entries and wrote a new line for this purchase. Someday he would have to create a list of where exactly he had stashed all the pieces he had cooling off. It was getting rather hard to remember. For security reasons, he had never written down that information. It was one thing to record all he knew about a piece that had been stolen, another to admit he still possessed it. He refused to hide pieces at his store, and safe deposit boxes weren’t worth the questions. Everyone in town knew he owned his own vault.

  As friends in the business died off, he sold fewer and fewer pieces when they reached their decade cold mark. The new generation of young men willing to move a valuable piece such as those he acquired had no honor, and Neil refused to deal with a man whose word wasn’t good for something. He was too old to spend a day in jail, and his wife needed someone around to take care of her.

  He sold enough that they never lacked money, and he had enough pieces to last him through a comfortable retirement. But a man had to keep his hand in the game, and occasionally a collection was worth acquiring.

  Tonight would be profitable.

  He took the ledger back to its resting place. Where should he hide the pieces Craig was bringing back? He needed somewhere special for a special collection.

  Two

  CHICAGO

  The house on Lexington collapsed on itself, flames raging against multiple streams of water from fire companies fighting it. Stephen watched the fire crews from the comfort of the ambulance left running to keep the air-conditioning on. He was a fireman before training as a paramedic. He knew the risks the guys were in from the flames, steam, and heatstroke. He watched for trouble but was content to be bored. Firemen rescued people; paramedics kept them alive. The profession change gave him the greater challenge.

  When the fire was suppressed and they were finally released from the scene, rush hour traffic was well underway. Stephen and Ryan took up station in a grocery store parking lot on the south end of the district waiting for the next call. Stephen remembered why he hated the ambulance passenger seat. His knees were crammed against the dashboard, and he was ready to get out and yank the gray leather seat out of the vehicle to find the broken latch that wouldn’t give him another two inches of legroom. Ken had been right about the storm. Heavy rain splattered against the windshield, the noise on the roof like crickets slamming into tin.

  Stephen ate a burrito, trying not to mess up his new tie. His dinner with Paula was in two hours, and he was still trying to decide on what to wear. Ryan thought the tie he’d picked up was too upscale for the jeans. A 10-55 dispatch?
??car wreck with injuries—came as Stephen finished his late lunch. “There’s construction on Cline. You’d better come in from the north on Lewis,” Stephen recommended, picking up the radio to confirm their ETA with dispatch. “Unit 59, Roger code one to Cline and Lewis.”

  Ryan punched on the lights and siren and pulled out of the lot. By the time he parked behind cop cars and a fire engine blocking off the accident scene, Stephen’s knuckles were white on the dash. His partner did not understand Chicago drivers and actually assumed they would get out of the way for an emergency vehicle. “Nice driving, ace.”

  Ryan grabbed his slicker. “I learned it from you.”

  Stephen barked out a laugh, set down his drink, which miraculously hadn’t spilled all over his lap, and grabbed his own rain slicker.

  A red Honda rested thirty feet across the interchange accordioned into a blue Toyota. A white van with Flowers and Finery painted on the side had come to a violent stop across the concrete median. Broken glass and a debris trail of headlight fragments and muffler parts marked the point of the three-vehicle collision. Stephen spotted two air bags in the Toyota still inflated from their explosive deployment.

  Firefighters were clustered around the crushed red Honda and two EMTs were working at the van. Not enough ambulance crews had been dispatched. Stephen got on the radio to request two more.

  Ryan opened the rear cabinet and grabbed the blue go-case with the airway supplies and trauma dressings. Stephen pulled out the red case packed with drug and IV supplies. The fire and rescue guys would already have collars, splints, and backboards out.

  The fire captain met them. “The van driver had a rack of flower vases crash forward and he’s covered in glass. We’ve got a mother and her young daughter trapped in the Honda—the mom is critical; the girl is stable. The Toyota driver walked away a bit dazed.”

  Stephen absorbed the information. No fatalities; that was a relief. “Two more ambulances are on the way.”

  “I’ll make sure the cops clear a route out of here.”