Mortal Pursuit

80

Her eyes opened, and she was on a gurney being trundled out the front door of the Kent house, into the night air.

Hoses ran from the oxygen mask on her face and the I.V. drip in her arm. “Watch it,” someone said as she was carried down the flagstone steps. “Don’t tangle the lines.”

You’re a mess, Trish, she thought blearily. First week on the job, and already you’re burned out.

Lightbars pulsed around her-four patrol cars, two ambulances. Parked alongside the smashed front wall, a fire truck.

Barbara Kent, coughing weakly into a mask of her own, was lifted into the first ambulance on a stretcher. Philip and Judy Danforth, shell-shocked and sooty, were already seated on a bench in the rear.

But where was Ally Trish craned her neck, didn’t see the girl.

“Relax, Officer.” One of the medics. “You’ll be okay.”

“Ally,” she murmured through the mask, but no one heard, and perhaps she hadn’t said it at all.

A stretch of blankness, a missing beat. She was jostled alert as the medics latched the gurney into the back of the second ambulance.

Blood pressure cuff on her arm. “Start her on dopamine.”

Quick hands rummaged in a cabinet near her head. Among the boxes of gear she made out a peculiar rolled-up thing like a tarp.

Body bag. That’s what it was.

Cain’s voice drifted back, promising to put her in a bag like that.

She shivered. One of the medics spread a blanket over her legs, leaving only the left calf uncovered. He was cutting away the bandages.

“Looks like gunshot trauma. Why aren’t we rolling”

“Got another passenger. Here she comes.”

A stretcher came through the rear doorway and slid onto the bench across from Trish.

Sideways glance, and there she was-Ally, masked and I.V.’d, eyelids fluttering like moth wings as she slipped in and out of consciousness.

“Hey, partner,” Trish whispered.

The girl rolled her head, brown eyes widening.

“Trish.” Ally caught her breath, and Trish saw stripes of tears glistening on her sooty face. “When the van blew up, I thought … I thought you were …”

She didn’t finish, and didn’t need to.

“Came dose,” Trish said. “By the way, thanks for the good-luck charm. It really worked.”

Smile. “You can keep it.”

“I-uh-sort of gave it away. To a mutual friend.”

The doors banged shut, a siren cried, rattle and bump as the ambulance cut across the Kents’ front lawn.

Scissors snipped through the remnants of Trish’s uniform and Ally’s party dress. The medics reported pulse rates and respirations and blood pressure readings, and up front a radio crackled with a dispatcher’s voice, but all of that seemed far away.

“My dad was part of it,” Ally whispered. “He was … with Cain.”

Trish reached across the narrow space between them and clasped the small pale hand. “I know.”

They lay quietly, holding hands. One of the medics said something about Demerol. That was a painkiller, wasn’t it

It would be good to have no pain. And a bath. Trish wondered if they would let her have a bath, even if only a sponge bath. She was so dirty, so tired, and every part of her was a separate, throbbing ache.

On the radio the driver was reporting to the hospital. “Fifteen percent dehydration … one gunshot trauma, one smoke inhalation … It’s a war zone back there. She must’ve bandaged the wound herself, like my old corpsman in Nam…. A rookie too, can you believe that She’ll have some story to tell…. ETA in ten.”

His cool monotone lulled her half asleep. Or maybe it was the Demerol they’d mentioned.

Whatever the reason, she was fading, fading, when Ally said, “Trish …”

She blinked alert. “Yes”

“You won’t leave me, will you I mean, once we’re out of the hospital …”

Trish gave her hand a gentle squeeze. “What makes you think I’d split up a winning team”

“Well, you know. Wonder Woman usually flies solo.”

“Nice try, kiddo.” She shut her eyes, pain receding. “But it’s not that easy to get rid of me.”

From Ally, a low giggle. “Yeah. I noticed.”

Trish smiled, and Ally went on laughing softly, a bright girlish sound, Marta’s laughter from long ago, as the ambulance carried them away.

Author’s Note

As always, readers are invited to visit my website at www.michaelprescott.net, where you can find information on my books, as well as unpublished essays and other writings, and an email address.

Mortal Pursuit, the last of six books I wrote under the pen name Brian Harper, was originally published in December 1997 as a Signet paperback. It was out of print for many years until I decided to bring it back in a new, self-published edition.

For this edition, I made some minor changes in the manuscript but didn’t alter or update the essential story, which still takes place in 1997. Thus the outdated technology (no cell phones) and occasionally dated slang.

The team at Dutton Signet-editor Joseph Pittman, associate publisher Michaela Hamilton, and publisher Elaine Koster-all did a fine job of guiding the story from initial proposal to final draft. Throughout the process, my agent, Jane Dystel, offered valuable support and assistance.

LAPD officer Spencer Marks reviewed the manuscript for accuracy in the depiction of police procedure, firearms, and security systems. Whatever verisimilitude the story achieved in these areas was largely to his credit. Any remaining mistakes were and are wholly my own.

-Michael Prescott

First Printing, December, 1997

Copyright c Douglas Borton, 1997

All rights reserved