By Your Side Page 2

  What on earth?

  Macy stopped short, wobbling on one heel, to stare at the confusing scene ahead. That same deputy. Standing beside the BMW and shining a penlight into Elliot’s eyes. Doing a medical assessment? Not only was he unqualified; it was totally unnecessary. Neither Elliot nor Macy had sustained so much as a scratch.

  “Elliot!” She waved her hand, then gave up and yanked off her shoes to run the last dozen yards, arriving beside the car just as he handed his driver’s license to Fletcher Holt.

  “What’s going on? What’s wrong?” she asked, starting to get a bad feeling. Elliot’s face had gone pale beneath his carefully maintained tan, and perspiration beaded along his thinning hairline. His lips were tense. “Elliot?”

  “Please, ma’am.” Holt’s intense blue eyes met hers, his expression—and the fact that he’d gone back to the more formal ma’am thing—clearly ordering Macy to stand down. There was no hint of that earlier gentle assurance: “It’s going to be okay. I promise.”

  “This conversation is between Mr. Rush and me,” he advised.

  Macy frowned. “But we didn’t even come close to hitting anyone.”

  “It’s not about that, Macy.” Elliot cast an anxious eye skyward as the News 10 helicopter hovered. He suddenly looked a decade older than his forty-seven years. “This officer thinks I’ve been driving under the influence of alcohol. Of course I informed him we were on our way to dinner, not from. So . . .” He pocketed his wallet after his license was handed back.

  “You didn’t consume any alcohol?” Fletcher’s gaze flicked to Macy for an instant. “Maybe stop for drinks on the way to your dinner date?”

  “Business meeting,” Macy corrected, not sure why she needed to make that clear. Except she often found herself explaining her longtime relationship with Elliot Rush and his wife, Ricki. He was a financial adviser, the Hope medical system’s retirement plan representative. And because of regrettable circumstances, someone she’d been thrown together with since she was a teenager. Elliot might even have been a father figure, if her life experiences hadn’t completely tainted that word. “And,” Macy added, “I don’t drink alcohol.”

  “Good to know.” Fletcher’s barely tolerant expression said otherwise. He glanced toward a slow-moving CHP vehicle, offering her a good glimpse of his profile. Nice nose, strong jaw. With his height, that close-cropped blond hair, the blue eyes, and that intriguing Southern stretch in his voice, Fletcher Holt could be extremely attractive. If he weren’t a cop. And so determined to be a royal pain in the—

  “No,” Elliot answered. “No drinks. We’d very much appreciate it if you’d let us get back in the car now.” He nodded toward the wrecker preparing to tow the gravel truck to the shoulder. “It looks like they’re going to open the lanes soon.” He pulled his dark glasses from his pocket, tapped them against his slacks. “With all due respect, Officer, you’re barking up the wrong tree here.”

  Is he? Macy tried to convince herself Elliot’s eyes didn’t look any more bloodshot than usual and that she hadn’t just noted the slightest bit of nystagmus—sideways jerking of his pupils. They hadn’t driven for more than a few minutes before the accident, and she’d done most of the talking. Had she been so absorbed with her sister’s situation that she didn’t notice the signs he’d been drinking? She bit back a groan, hating that this overeager cop had her second-guessing things. She didn’t have time for any of this; she needed to get back to Annie Sims. Elliot was right that this interrogation needed to end. Now.

  “You know . . . ,” Macy began, slipping her foot into one of her shoes and stepping sideways to locate the other. “I think everyone’s just plain tired after all of this mess. I’ll bet you are too, Fletcher.” She offered him a tentative smile. “Back at the van, you told me you were going off duty. You’re probably anxious to get home.”

  “More than you could possibly know . . . ma’am.” The edge in Fletcher’s voice said Macy wasn’t going to succeed in sending him away a second time. “I was about to do that when Mr. Rush walked over to my car to lodge a strong complaint about the delay in clearing this highway. I detected unsteadiness in his gait and some slurring of speech.” The blue eyes held her captive as effectively as a set of handcuffs. “As a nurse, you may recognize those symptoms as suspicious for substance abuse or an altered neurological state. Either way, I have an obligation to—”

  “What do you plan to do?” Elliot blurted, anger warring with anxiety in his tone. “Make me take a sobriety test? Do your little do-si-do right here on the highway?” He glanced up as the news helicopter churned the sky overhead. “You’re new to the department—maybe to this state by your accent. Do you have any idea who I am?”

  “Yes, sir,” Fletcher answered, not missing a beat. “You’re a driver who could be risking the life of his passenger—” his gaze darted toward Macy—“and the lives of other citizens. It’s my sworn duty to prevent that tragedy. I think Miss Wynn might agree there have been one too many innocents injured already.”

  Macy nodded. The man had a good point. And apparently no clue Elliot was the brother-in-law of an influential US senator.

  “You have a choice, Mr. Rush,” Fletcher continued, raising his voice over a volley of shouts in the distance. “Consent to a PAS—Breathalyzer—right here or—”

  “Up there, look!” a voice shouted in the distance.

  “What’s he doing?” someone else yelled.

  There was a return volley of shouts as Fletcher’s portable radio roared to life, 900 codes repeating rapid-fire. In an instant, people started to run, point, scream.

  “He’s got a rifle up there, on the overpass!”

  “Sniper!”

  “Down!” Fletcher vaulted toward Macy.

  Like an echo, his shout was repeated by the CHP officers: “Down, down! Take cover and stay down!”

  “A snipe—” Macy’s heart lodged in her throat, choking her words. Her legs went weak. She dropped to a crouch next to the car in horrified disbelief, fingertips trembling against its side. She saw Elliot scramble to safety at the rear of the BMW. The air pulsed with a surreal mix of helicopter blades, screams, and a sickening crack-crack-crack.

  “Down!” Fletcher ordered again, grasping Macy’s shoulder hard. “All the way down, on the ground.”

  “But those children—”

  His hand flattened against Macy’s back, and in an instant her face met the highway with a sharp sting, lips so close she tasted the tar. There was another loud crack and the sound of shattering glass from somewhere far too close. The car door swung open above her, and Fletcher dropped down behind it, a gun gripped in his fist.

  4

  WITHIN MINUTES, the wail of sirens drowned panicked shouts as officers from all surrounding agencies and the sheriff’s department SWAT team raced to the scene. STAR, the sheriff’s department’s helicopter, hovered overhead. Patrol car strobes and near-blinding searchlights pierced the darkening sky, lighting the shrubbery in the direction the shooter had disappeared—vanished as quickly as he’d appeared, with no further shots fired. And now, twenty minutes later, the freeway remained closed, while people in the surrounding neighborhoods were told to “shelter in place” as officers with K-9s conducted yard-to-yard searches.

  “Copy that,” Fletcher replied to the comm center, acknowledging a radio update. His long day had morphed into night. And he was on a perimeter position, like it or not.

  For the first time since the drama began, it was quiet enough to hear the voices of folks still hunkered in and around their vehicles. Whispers and nervous laughter, people on cell phones reassuring family and friends they were safe, and car radios tuned to a jarring blend of insistent news broadcasts. Here and there headlights flicked on. The fear that had bonded the freeway captives was fast giving way to irritable impatience to be done with it.

  Fletcher knew the feeling. He’d texted his mother to say he’d be late, sparing her the details.

  His radio crackled again and went
quiet.

  “Is the ambulance leaving?” Macy asked from where she leaned against the BMW’s rear fender. She sounded different in the darkness. Less mama bear, more little girl lost. There had been fear in her eyes when he drew his Glock. “I think I see the rig moving,” she ventured, pointing at lights in the distance.

  “Yes.” He watched as she slipped the band from her hair, letting it fall loose around her shoulders. “They’re beginning to clear the freeway. In about ten minutes two lanes should open so these remaining cars can start moving southbound again.” Someone in the next vehicle hit a flashlight app on his cell phone, just long enough that Fletcher could read the concern on Macy’s face. And see the small abrasion on her cheekbone; he felt bad about that. “The last update I heard said Annie Sims was stable and awake,” he assured her. “The foster parents are waiting at Sac Hope.”

  “Daddy . . . ,” a child’s voice whined from the darkness a few yards away. “I have to go potty.”

  There was a car door squeak, a rustling sound, then a deep voice giving hasty instructions regarding an alternate use for a paper cup from a fast-food restaurant.

  Fletcher had no doubt Elliot Rush’s amble toward the shoulder of the highway a few minutes ago had been for similar reasons. Too dark to see if he could walk a straight line.

  “Do you have any idea who I am?”

  Fletcher smiled at the irony: right now, the self-important Elliot Rush was a mere mortal who’d likely trade his “business meeting” for the discreet convenience offered by a Happy Meal paper cup. There was some small justice in that.

  “What did I miss?” Macy leaned closer, enough that he detected a trace of her scent. Like warm almond coffee cake. “You laughed.”

  “It’s nothing.” Fletcher shrugged, the movement causing his leather gun belt to creak. “Adrenaline ebb, dinner deprivation. Long day. Same as in the ER.”

  Macy tipped her head to peer at him in the darkness. She was much taller up close. “Sounds like you know.”

  Fletcher thought of Houston Grace Hospital. Of Jessica. He pushed the memory down—a little easier every time. “I’ve darkened the doors of my share of ERs. Cops and hospitals—happens too often.”

  “Can’t argue there.”

  Somewhere in the distance, a car radio stuttered the latest news update: “. . . search for Highway 99 shooter continues. Authorities believe . . . cause of tire blowout on a city truck during rush-hour traffic. An accident that injured a six-year-old girl. Witnesses spotted the shooter on the . . . There were no other victims, thanks to the fast response of—”

  Fletcher cleared his throat. “I’m sorry I had to shove you to the ground. I hope I didn’t hurt you.”

  Macy lifted her shoulders in a shrug, and he swore it sent a waft of coffee cake directly to his senses. His blood sugar must be hovering at zero.

  “I’m okay.” Her fingers tested her cheek again. “Better than a gunshot wound.” She shivered a little. “No matter how many times I see something like this on the news, I still don’t get it. Why would someone do that? Shoot at complete strangers?”

  “I don’t know,” Fletcher admitted. “Thrills, maybe. Same reason kids toss rocks or Coke bottles off an overpass. Malicious sport.”

  “Sport?” Macy hugged her arms across her blood-smeared shirt. “Huge difference between a Coke bottle and a bullet.”

  “Maybe not in this shooter’s mind,” Fletcher ventured, though something about this didn’t feel like kids. The shooter had lain low after that first shot, waited, then taken the risk to do it again. Kids ran. “Fortunately he didn’t hit people,” Fletcher added, not sure if he was assuring Macy or himself. “Only a truck tire and—” he glanced toward Elliot’s damaged car—“windshields.”

  Macy grimaced. When she spoke again, her in-control timbre was back. “I estimate we’ve been out here for nearly two hours.”

  “Close enough.” He had a hunch where this was headed.

  “Enough time to lower a blood alcohol level.”

  Fletcher’s turn to be quiet.

  “I’m not saying I think you were right,” Macy explained. “That Elliot wasn’t telling the truth. I’ve known him a long time. If I had to pick somebody to trust completely, it would probably be him. And on top of that, there’ve been a couple of hours as a safety cushion . . .”

  “So I should look the other way,” Fletcher deduced, finishing her thought. “Let your friend slide. Are you asking me to do that?”

  “Not exactly.” She had the decency to squirm. “I only thought maybe—”

  “I’d set aside my professional observations, my experience . . . my integrity? Step away and take a chance that it’s all good?” There was no way Fletcher could stem the rising anger. Not about a drunk driver—not ever about that. “I don’t want to believe you’d ask that of me. Because I sure didn’t see you doing that. Over at the school van, when you dug in your heels and told me there was no way you were leaving Annie Sims. You remember that?”

  In the meager light, Fletcher saw Macy swallow, her incredible eyes glancing down. “I remember.”

  “I thought so.” Fletcher scanned the freeway for a moment. The ambulance was moving now, flanked by two county cars. The general exodus would begin soon. “The fact is, we’re pretty much the same in that respect, you and I. So you should know there’s no way I’ll allow an impaired driver to climb behind the wheel of a car. It’s no safer than some lunatic aiming a rifle from a freeway overpass.”

  “But what if he refuses the Breathalyzer? Will you actually arrest—?” She turned as Rush approached.

  “Looks like we’re making progress, at least,” the man observed, pointing his cell phone toward a line of cars inching forward at the direction of police and fire personnel. He drew closer, and his face was partially illuminated by the freeway lights. There was none of the earlier bravado in his expression or posture. “I assume my car will need to move soon. Do you have a plan for that, Deputy Holt?”

  Fletcher let a few seconds pass, swearing he heard Macy Wynn’s heart ticking like a metronome. He assessed the amazingly orderly progression of cars. There was no time or space to do a field sobriety test now. He didn’t carry a PAS. But there was no way he’d let Macy know she was probably right about the clearance of the alcohol. He was certain Rush had been drinking. He wouldn’t be surprised if there was a flask somewhere in that BMW.

  “Got your keys?”

  “Yes, sir.” Rush produced them from his pocket. “Right here.”

  “Good.” Fletcher nodded toward Macy. “Toss them to her. She’s driving.”

  5

  IT WAS WELL AFTER 8 P.M. when Fletcher finally parked his Jeep in front of his parents’ place. Only a few months back, he’d had to squint and search for this porch because of the Sacramento Valley “tule fog,” a dense cloud that had chilled him to the bone despite his flannel shirt. Fletcher still couldn’t get a grip on humidity that wasn’t sauna warm. Sometimes it felt like he’d ventured much farther than the mere two thousand miles from south Texas to northern California. Sometimes—in weather, culture, and politics—it was like walking on the far side of the moon. But his father needed him to be here for his mother, stand in for him while he completed the project in Alaska.

  The nondescript Roseville house had been purchased over a year ago when the oil company transferred Fletcher’s father to California. Even in the improving economy, builders had been eager to unload inventory, so the Holts bought it as an investment. The job transfer was temporary, three years at most. Home would always be the house in Houston, with its thick layers of gray paint and crumbling pink brick facade. A nineties split-level shaded by a giant laurel tree that hosted noisy hordes of summer cicadas and Fletcher’s initials surrounded by a boldly carved Superman shield.

  “Dinner was supposed to be on me,” Fletcher told his mother as she spooned a second helping of corn bread–topped tamale pie onto his plate. A rising curl of steam wafted scents of cumin, chili powder, and simm
ered-soft onions, like proof of his mother’s familiar refrain: “God’s on his throne and Mom’s in the kitchen—all’s right with the world.” There was nothing Fletcher wanted to trust more than that. He’d been relieved by his mother’s report of her doctor’s appointment earlier today. Still . . .

  “I’ll take a rain check for dinner; you’re not off the hook,” Charly teased, her eyes sparkling despite the faint shadows and new hollows framing them. “I’d rather wait until I feel more like ordering something that will make a respectable dent in that fat county paycheck.”

  “Fat?” He managed to chuckle around a mouthful of corn bread, watching as his mother brushed her fingers through the tufts of blonde hair she insisted were “growing back like Rapunzel’s.” But after the chemo, Mrs. John Holt looked more like the baby mockingbird she and her seven-year-old son had rescued from a neighbor’s cat. Feather fluff, big eyes, vulnerable. They’d nursed the fledgling for more than a week, kept it in a Kleenex box on top of the dryer, fed it with an eyedropper, and . . . Fletcher let the comparison stop there. They buried that box under a peony bush.

  “Besides,” his mother added, glancing at the iPad lying next to her open Bible, “I had a Skype date with a hot geologist in Prudhoe Bay.” She smiled the smile Fletcher hoped to inspire in a woman someday. Then her sparse brows pinched together. “While you were busy dodging bullets on the interstate. It was all over the news, but of course I had no idea.” She pointed the serving spoon at him. “You should have called me, Fletcher.”

  “Sure.” He raised a palm like a cartoon traffic cop. “Everyone, freeze; I’ve got to phone my ma.” For some reason an image of Macy Wynn came to mind. She’d been more than disappointed not to accompany the injured foster child to the ER, almost as frustrated as Elliot Rush having to hand over those Beemer keys. He wasn’t going to be a happy passenger. Fletcher hoped Macy knew how to drive a stick shift without grinding the gears.