Fallen (35 page)

“How … how’d you know about Lydia and me?” He grimaced, tamping down a wave of nausea as she tucked a towel behind his back. Even with the terrible pain, he couldn’t stop from trying to fit the pieces together.

“I went to the hospital last night. To find out if Adam was dead. I saw you with her.
The two love birds
,” she said sourly.

Ryan hadn’t even seen her there.

Her tone was matter-of-fact. “You might think you can work it out with her, Ryan, but you can’t. I can hear the coldness in her voice every time she answers the phone. A woman like that doesn’t change. She’ll never forgive you for what happened. She only wants to keep you close so she can torture you.”

His eyes were squeezed closed, but he opened them again. Apprehension curled around his spine. “You … called Lydia?”

A faint smile played on her lips as if she was about to say something clever.

“
Tyler
called her, too.”

He felt his muscles go rigid. It had been Molly making the prank calls, not Brandt.

“Who … was the child, Molly?”

“A kid in my apartment complex. I was babysitting.”

“And the man who called?”

She shrugged. “Just a date.”

Ryan squinted at her, anger heating his face. “You sent the wasps.”

The afternoon sunlight caught her blond hair. Molly lifted the length of it behind her head and let it fall around her shoulders. The movement might have been sexy if not for the vehemence brimming in her eyes. “I wanted her smug face to swell. I wanted to make her ugly. I bet you wouldn’t like her so much then.”

He clenched his teeth. “She could’ve
died
—”

“Then she could be with her precious Tyler.”

Her flippancy hardened his stomach, just as his rage exhausted him. Ryan felt himself grow frailer as he tried to get his mind around the fact that the threats to Lydia had been about him.

“You’re white as a sheet,” she cooed, moving closer.
Too close.
He swiveled his head away, but she cupped his jaw and forcefully turned his face back to hers. “Don’t be mad. You need your strength. You can’t get so worked up about every little thing.”

He thought of all Molly knew about Lydia—her birth date, her allergy to bee venom. “But how’d—”

She laid her fingers against his lips, hushing him.

“Personal information’s everywhere on the Internet. You’re a detective, you know that,” she scolded as if she could read his mind. “I also work in a cop bar, and your friends like to talk, Ryan. Especially to a hot waitress who’s
overserving
them. All I had to do was ask the right questions.” Her fingernail scraped over his bottom lip. “I like your mouth.”

Ryan wrenched away from her.

“Frank mentioned the allergy. He was talking about some drama on the patio before you two were married. She was a lucky woman, Ryan. But she threw you away.”

He groaned, pain lancing through him as she suddenly lifted her thigh and moved to sit on top of him, straddling him intimately. The floral scent of her perfume mingling with his own coppery odor increased his nausea. His clothing was damp, his heart skittering in frantic, shallow beats. Bending her head, she pressed her lips to his throat as she undid the top buttons on his shirt. Then her mouth covered his, and he felt repulsion flow through him. Molly began to rotate her pelvis, grinding against him as she undid another button and slipped her fingers inside. Fresh perspiration covered his skin. He felt the warmth of more blood leaking from his wound with her movements. A gray mist fell over his vision.

She was going to kill him.

The electronic shrill broke through the sound of his ragged breathing. His cell phone. She must have taken it along with his shield and weapon. Based on the sound, it lay on the bed behind them. Ryan wheezed, stars exploding in his vision as she climbed roughly off him, clearly displeased by the interruption. She went for the phone.

“It’s
her
,” she said stonily, walking to stand in front of him.

Molly waited for the ringing to stop, then for the beep that indicated a voice mail had been left. She pressed the screen and put the device to her ear, and he saw her jaw harden as she listened to his message. Ryan’s heart twisted. He longed to hear Lydia’s voice, fearing it would be the last time.

There would be no 9-1-1 call. Molly wasn’t leaving here until he stopped breathing. He prayed her interest in Lydia would end there, too.

Lips pressed flat, she deleted the message, then tossed the phone back onto the bed. Picking up his shield from the carpet, she shoved it into her duffel. Ryan knew in his gut it held the others, packed beneath her clothing.

The call had angered her, her gaze now cold.

“And you
did
hurt me. The night you palmed me off on Adam so you could be with
her
. She can’t even give us our privacy now, can she?”

Stepping closer, she ruffled her fingers through his damp hair. “She’s looking for you, by the way. Adam died.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Standing in the
hallway outside the ICU, Lydia disconnected her phone. Unable to reach Ryan by cell, she had called the bungalow’s landline as well, but had spoken only to Tess, who had been there borrowing the oven. She’d told her Ryan had set out some time earlier for the hospital.

Then where was he?

She searched through the phone’s contacts, located the needed number and dialed.

“Hernandez,” Mateo answered curtly on the second ring. Wherever he was, Lydia could hear urban noise and conversation in the background.

“Mateo, it’s Lydia.” She paced a few steps. “I’m sorry to bother you, but Ryan isn’t with you, is he?”

“Lydia—I didn’t recognize the number. He’s not here, but I talked to him awhile ago by phone. He said he was headed back to the hospital. He’s not there yet?”

“No, and he isn’t answering his cell,” she said, faintly worried.

“Did you call the house?”

“Tess said he left there about an hour ago.” At the elevator’s chime, Lydia glanced to the bay a little farther down the corridor, watching as the doors opened. Ryan wasn’t among the exiting passengers. “I need to locate him—”

A strain entered his voice. “It’s not Adam, is it?”

“It’s
good
news,” she assured him. “He’s out of the coma. He’s still critical and isn’t able to communicate yet, but they’re hoping to take him off the ventilator soon.”

She heard his release of breath. “Thank God.”

“Ryan’s mother is here now, too.”

“Look, I’m sure he’ll show up soon. He’s pretty shook up, blaming himself for Adam being shot. Maybe he just needed some time. You know Ryan. He’s probably driving around somewhere trying to get his head on straight. I’d try to find him for you, but I’m tied up here—”

A male voice interrupted. Lydia heard the term
chain of command
. She knew enough about police protocol to understand they were talking about evidence handling.

“Hold on a sec, Lydia.”

She waited as Mateo gave directives. Then he stopped talking altogether, the noise around him receding. Lydia guessed he was taking the phone to a quieter area. Finally, he spoke again. “Sorry. We’ve got an active crime scene here.”

She felt butterflies in her stomach, almost afraid to ask. “Another officer?”

He hesitated. “In an alley off International Boulevard.”

Lydia ran a hand through her hair. The location wasn’t far from where Adam had been found the previous night.

“Confidentially, the deceased is from our precinct and until now was a person of interest in the investigation, so we’re back to square one,” Mateo said. “Ryan will want to know about this. I’m going to leave a message on his phone if I can’t reach him, either. When he shows up at the hospital, make sure he’s spoken with me, all right?”

Shocked by what she’d been told, she agreed. “Mateo. If you reach him, please have him call me.”

“You got it. As soon as I finish up here, I’m headed to where you are. I want to talk to Adam the second he’s able. So will Ryan.” He disconnected.

Tension tightened her shoulders. With a slow release of breath, Lydia turned off her phone—a requirement for re-entering the ICU—and returned it to the pocket of her lab coat. This wasn’t like Ryan. She’d had to practically throw him out of the hospital
, and even then he’d been adamant about being kept updated. Lydia thought about what Mateo had said.
He’s pretty shook up, blaming himself for Adam being shot.
She knew he was taking this hard, which was all the more reason she wanted to reach him with good news.

Pushing through the wing’s double doors, she nodded to the plainclothes officer who had been assigned guard duty before moving to the threshold of the ICU suite. Inside it, Melanie Winter sat in a chair next to the bed. She clasped Adam’s still fingers.

“Is something wrong?” she asked, a tremor in her voice, when she saw Lydia. “He’s unconscious again.”

Lydia came closer and laid a reassuring hand on her shoulder as she looked down at Adam. “He’s just asleep, Melanie. They had to sedate him pretty heavily so he wouldn’t fight the ventilator. But he woke up on his own, and his vitals are a little better. I talked to his nurse. The doctors are going to attempt to extubate him in a few hours, so they’ll start lowering his medication soon.”

Relief filled her blue eyes, her face framed by a soft, pixyish cut. Her hair, still mostly a light brown, appeared sun-streaked from her ocean cruise. “So he’ll be able to breathe on his own?”

Lydia smiled softly and nodded, feeling her own heart lift.

To her great relief, Melanie hadn’t snubbed her as she’d feared. Instead, her former mother-in-law had hugged her on sight as if she and Ryan had never come apart. There hadn’t been much time, and so far they had talked only about Adam’s condition. Lydia wanted Ryan to be the one to tell her about their reconciliation, anyway; it was his place. Hope flitted through her that Melanie would be happy for them despite everything.

“Did you reach Ryan?” Melanie asked.

“No, but I left a message.” Worry nagged at her once more.

We’re here again, aren’t we?
Last night … when we were together … I thought maybe everything was finally going to be okay.

She recalled Ryan’s telling statement, making her aware of the parallels he’d already drawn between Adam and Tyler. Lydia knew he was expecting and bracing for the worst. That he was already shouldering the responsibility for Adam’s shooting. His state of mind concerned her. She had ridden with Ryan to the hospital last night, but she could take a cab back to her place to get her car.

Her shift had ended a short time ago. Lydia touched Melanie’s shoulder again, capturing her attention. “Since you’re here with Adam now, I’m going to look for Ryan.”

Somberly, she thought of where he might be.

*

“You’re supposed to be heroes.”

His head had been leaned back against the footboard, but at her statement Ryan looked at Molly with reddened eyes. He felt a despairing anger. Her own ire apparently faded, she had returned to the room and come to sit cross-legged near him again.

Grief for Adam had distracted him. Only now did he notice she had taken the shields—sick mementos from her kills—from her bag.

“Do you know what your friend, Nate, liked?” she asked absently as she moved the badges around on the carpet, placing them in some special order only she understood. “Blow jobs.”

She pushed her long hair behind her, sliding one to the grouping’s center. “I sucked him off in his car a half-dozen times, probably. He’d come by after work and wait for me outside. He’d pull my hair and tell me to swallow. Men want what they can’t get at home.”

His face grew hot. He didn’t want to remember Nate—any of them—like this. Ryan squinted at her.

“Nate …”—he drew in a painful breath—“took you to The Grindhouse.”

Molly looked at him, surprised. “How’d you know that?”

When he didn’t respond, she went back to her badges. “It was a good band, and I wanted to go. I promised him something special afterward. I suppose Nate figured he wouldn’t know anyone there.”

“You went with Matthew Boyce, too.”

She gave a casual shrug. “Matt hated the place, but I still got him to meet me there twice. After that, he’d only come by my apartment …”

The reflective smile on her lips faded, her mouth tightening. “He told me he despised her. I thought with the divorce final he’d be willing to take things out into the open. But he said I’d gotten possessive and he couldn’t be serious with someone who’d fucked her way through the force.”

Ryan concentrated on his words, fighting lightheadedness. “Is that why you keyed their cars? Because they hurt you?”

She lifted her chin. “Men are psychos about their rides.”