Page 14 of Desperate Justice

“Did anyone eat this or even touch it? Damn it, answer me!”

Several teens shook their heads.

“What is wrong with you?” Allison asked. “It’s candy.”

“It’s not candy. I don’t know what your game is, but...”

Allison glared at him. “I don’t have a game. I was trying to help add to the party. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to work.”

She stormed out of the room.

Less than half an hour later, the agent he’d phoned had arrived with the test kit. Rafe fumed as he saw the results. Three agents bagged the evidence and removed it carefully.

He addressed his family. “Sorry, guys. Party’s over.”

Rafe headed downstairs to the emergency room. Allison was at the nurses’ station, a half-eaten sandwich at her elbow as she worked on a computer. Blood stained her scrubs.

Rafe marched over to Allison and grabbed her wrist. “You’re under arrest for the possession of fentanyl.”

CHAPTER 5

Well, this truly sucked.

The night had started out as quiet, the dreadedQword for first responders because saying it aloud meant you’d get slammed. Then Rafe’s grandmother arrived with heart issues.

Then a GSW (gunshot wound) vic, to the chest, courtesy of the man’s son, Ken, who swore it was an accident. The dad died, despite their best efforts.

Allison’s repeated condolences and suggestions of getting help from a social worker had been met with an angry tirade of words until Ken peeled out of the parking lot, rubber tire marks on pavement.

His last threat to her was there would be hell to pay for letting his father die.

Guess this is my hell.

For an hour, Rafe had grilled her. Where did she get the candy? Why was it in the nurses’ station? Who was her contact?

Sitting at a cold steel table, thankful only for not being handcuffed to the steel pipe running the length of the table, Allison kept her answers brief. She thought about demanding a lawyer but knew it would make her look guilty.

Besides, she was too damn worried about Diana. Where the hell had her baby sister gotten that candy?

“I know my rights, Rodriguez. And I know I’m not dealing drugs. The candy couldn’t have been fentanyl.”

He gave her a level look. “It tested positive. The lab is running results now to determine how much was in the pills.”

The fentanyl had been in her space at the nurses’ station, and worse, she’d brought it to the party for Rafael’s niece and family to eat. She, who had dedicated her life to saving lives, could have killed innocents. This was the stuff of nightmares.

But she couldn’t reveal the truth and put Diana in jeopardy. She needed to talk to her sister first.

But no way was she talking to her sister with the FBI listening to everything she said.

More than caring about her own hide, or the humiliation of being taken in handcuffs out of her job and hustled into a waiting black SUV, was her concern for Diana. Had her sister gotten into something she should have avoided? Or had she thought the candy, like Allison herself had thought, only candy?

“Allison, where did you get the candy?”

She stretched out her legs, still clad in nurse’s scrubs, and studied a blotch of blood on her left thigh. The last patient she treated had bled out on the floor.

“I asked you a question. Stop ignoring me.”

Allison glanced up at Rafe. “I’m not ignoring you. I was concentrating.” She pointed to the blood spot. “Do you know how hard it is to remove old blood from cotton? All my scrubs are dirty. This was my last pair, and I had hoped to get home after my shift to do laundry.”