Page 58 of Secrets Beneath the Waves (Beach Read Thrillers #2)

CHAPTER

TWELVE

Dante paced the small hospital room. Each time he reached the end of the bed, he stopped and studied Jules’ face—pale as the white sheet pulled up to her chin—willing her to wake up.

When he’d heard about the fire through the shared first responder radio channel, his first thought had been of Jules. Was she involved? Was she in danger?

Not his business, of course, since she was nothing more than a witness to him and her work had nothing to do with the case.

Something he reminded himself repeatedly as he cruised the streets of Calgary with his partner, Coop.

Besides, that was her job, fighting fires.

Which meant she was often in danger, same as he was.

A good reminder that he needed to focus on what he was doing, not on what she was doing, or people could get hurt.

Then more details trickled in. One firefighter had been treated for smoke inhalation and another taken to the hospital. No names. No genders. Only chatter about possible arson and the firefighter who’d been hospitalized having a handcuff on one wrist after barely escaping the burning house.

A handcuff? How could that have happened? Had someone tried to prevent whoever it was from leaving the scene? Was there any chance this had to do with their missing murder suspect? That thought paralyzed him. If it did, there was a high probability that the injured firefighter was Jules.

When his shift finally ended, Dante headed straight to his superintendent’s office to fill her in on everything that was transpiring with the case.

Somehow, he managed to convince her to make a few calls and confirm that the firefighter was Jules and which hospital she had been taken to.

As desperate as he was to head over, Dante took two more minutes to persuade his boss to agree to him taking a week off of his regular duties to provide security for Jules, given that she was the star witness in a murder investigation and had clearly experienced a credible threat to her life today.

Now here he was. His worst fears confirmed. That psychopath had gotten to her. Could easily have killed her. Jules had been unconscious when she arrived at the hospital, and all the doctors would tell Dante, even after he flashed his badge, was that she was being treated for smoke inhalation.

He’d been in her room for two hours and even when he had spoken to her, touched her shoulder, she hadn’t opened her eyes.

She hadn’t twitched a muscle, as far as he could tell.

Was she in a coma? Was there any chance she wouldn’t wake up?

The head of the bed was raised, likely to help her breathe better.

Even so, every inhalation sounded as though it required effort.

That scene from a show he liked, This is Us , haunted him. The father had died after inhaling smoke from a house fire. After going to the hospital, being treated, and everyone thinking he was fine, he’d had a sudden heart attack and was gone, just like that.

Could the same thing happen to Jules?

Dante returned to the chair next to her bed, the one he hadn’t been able to sit on for more than a minute or two since he’d arrived. Nervous energy had propelled him to his feet each time and he’d returned to pacing.

He reached for her hand. Her left wrist was bandaged. Was that from the cuff? If she’d been attempting to free herself for long, no doubt her skin was raw and chafed. He clenched his teeth.

When they did finally track this guy down, Dante would like nothing more than a few minutes alone with him.

What he had in mind would likely end his career.

In this moment, gazing at Jules’ closed, red-rimmed eyes, an oxygen tube inserted in her nose—an improvement, at least, over the intubation tube she’d had the first few hours she had been here—her hand small and limp in his, he couldn’t care less.

“Jules?” He’d said her name a hundred times with no response.

This time, though, her eyelids flickered slightly. Dante straightened. “Jules? Can you hear me?”

A low moan escaped her lips. The sound tore through him. Was she in pain? Helpless to do much to ease her discomfort, he held her hand in his right palm and rubbed slow circles over the back of it with his left. “Can you open your eyes?”

Her lids flickered again before she finally, finally lifted them. For a few seconds, she only gazed at him. Then she said, in a slightly raspy voice, “Frat Boy.” She glanced at their clasped hands but didn’t attempt to pull away.

Dante attempted a wry grin but couldn’t quite manage it. “How do you feel?”

“Terrible.” She pressed her free hand to her chest. “Hurts.”

“I’m sure it does. You breathed in a lot of smoke.”

Her lids flickered again, as though she was attempting to remember. If she couldn’t call the scene to her mind, what would she draw on—the smell of the smoke, the fear and frustration of being trapped, the roaring of flames and wailing of sirens? The intense heat? All of those, maybe.

Emotions passed like shadows over her face before she closed her eyes. “He was there.”

“Yes.”

“He tried…” A fit of coughing gripped her, and Dante let go of her hand so she could keep the other pressed to her chest as she lifted her wrist to her lips.

It felt like forever, but at last the coughing eased. “Water.”

He grabbed the glass sitting on a wheeled cart next to the bed and held the straw to her lips. After several sips, she waved the glass away. “Tried to kill me.”

Dante nodded. “I know.” He hesitated, not wanting to push her before she was ready but deeply aware that every second counted. “You saw him, Jules?”

“Eyes.” She waved her fingers feebly in front of her bloodshot ones. “Respirator.”

“Did you note anything?”

Her lids drifted closed. “Strange amber color. Brown flecks. Set deep. Little lines extending from the corners. A few freckles across the top of his nose.” She slumped against the pillows as though the effort of speaking—or maybe of remembering—had taken everything from her.

Without opening her eyes, she mumbled, “Thick, dark eyebrows.”

Dante had brought the sketch pad with him, stuck inside a bag propped against the chair leg. He snatched it up now, along with a sharp pencil, and filled the eyes in on the portrait slowly—painfully slowly—taking shape. After a moment, he turned it toward her. “Like this?”

Jules forced her eyes open and contemplated the pad before lifting a hand in a helpless gesture. “I think so. I can’t picture his eyes to make sure. All I have are my notes.” She coughed again, less ferociously this time. Dante reached for the glass, but she shook her head.

“Okay. No worries. We’re making progress.

” He flipped the pad to study it. Still too little to identify the guy, but they were definitely getting closer to solving the puzzle.

One piece at a time. “This is great, Jules. Amazing, actually.” And almost unfathomable, given what she had to be going through at the time.

She truly was one of the strongest and most courageous people he knew.

And he’d blown any chance they might have had with his ill-thought-out plan for their first date.

Focus, de Marco. All you need to do right now is keep her safe.

Turning the pad around, he rested it on his knees and scrutinized it.

The question was, if the latest piece had nearly cost Jules her life, what price would she have to pay to get the next one?

After providing him with those additional details, Jules had fallen asleep again.

Several of her co-workers, including her captain, had filtered in and out.

They stood next to the bed, speaking in hushed voices and touching her knee or arm to let her know they were there, that they were thinking of her.

Dante got that. Whenever a colleague of his was injured in the line of duty, he and his fellow officers would do the same, deeply aware that at any moment, during any given shift, they could end up being the ones in a hospital bed. Or a morgue.

Before leaving, they would shoot Dante, who had moved to a chair in the far corner to be out of the way, a generally approving look. Likely because he still wore his uniform and appeared to be there to watch out for her. Which he was.

Twice he had slipped from the room when she had visitors to find the public bathrooms or grab a coffee or snack from the cafeteria. Each time the urge to get back, make sure no one was getting close to her who shouldn’t be, gripped him, and he was never gone for more than five or ten minutes.

When visiting hours ended and dark shadows crept across the room, he returned to the chair next to her bed and switched on the light above her to its lowest setting, giving the room a soft glow.

Around ten, a doctor came in to examine her. Dante waited in the hall, his back to the wall, drumming his thighs with both hands the way Jules had done in the hospital elevator when they were trying to get to her mother.

After the woman in pale blue scrubs, stethoscope hanging around her neck, exited the room, nodded at him, and headed to the next patient, Dante returned to Jules’ side.

She sat up in bed, holding a cup of water.

A little color had returned to her cheeks, and she looked more alert than she had since he’d arrived.

When her gaze landed on him, she leaned sideways to set the cup on the table. “You’re still here.”

Dante tried to gauge her tone. Relief? Annoyance? Given their interactions to date, probably both. At least she sounded a bit better, less hoarse, and her voice was stronger than it had been earlier. “I am.”

“I can’t get rid of you, can I?” She pressed a fist to her mouth as she coughed lightly.

“I mean, if you order me out of the room, I’ll go.”

“Not far though, right? Like when I ordered you out of my house and you parked at the curb.”

Dante huffed a laugh. “Not far, no.”

“The doctor said my oxygen saturation levels look good. He thinks I’ll be able to leave tomorrow.” She shot him a look. “I’m planning to go to a hotel.”

“Actually,” Dante dragged the green faux-leather chair closer to the bed and lowered himself onto it, “I have another plan in mind.”

She pursed her lips. “Is that right?”

“Yeah.” Dante tugged his work phone from his shirt pocket and powered it down before doing the same with his personal phone.

Given how tech-savvy their perp had shown himself to be, no sense taking any chances he was somehow listening in.

He nodded at the burner phone on the tray next to her water. “Mind if I turn that off?”

She waved a hand toward it. “Go ahead. I admit I’m intrigued about this plan of yours.”

He grinned as he shut off her phone and returned it to the table. “All right, here it is. Since we can’t seem to get ahead of this guy, I truly believe our best bet is to disappear for a bit, until he can be brought in.”

Jules raised her eyebrows. “Disappear? Where?”

He leaned in closer and lowered his voice. “My parents have a place in Kananaskis County, a couple of hours from here. They use it as a cottage, so no one is there right now. We can lay low for a few days, give the PD a chance to bring in our perp.”

She gestured to his uniform. “Don’t you have to work?”

“Actually, since you’re a valuable witness and your life is clearly being threatened, my boss has authorized me to provide security to you for the next few days. So, this is my work.”

He watched those emotions playing across her face again. Was there any chance she trusted him enough to go away with him for a few days? To hedge his bet, he added, “I promise you’ll be going into protective custody with Officer de Marco and not Frat Boy , as you are so fond of calling him.”

Her lips twitched slightly at that. Even so, she didn’t speak for another minute or two, which felt a lot like the stretch of time a defendant had to wait for the jury to return with its verdict.

Finally, she blew out a breath. “All right, Officer de Marco. You’ve caught me in a moment of weakness.

I’ll go with you. Just for a few days, though.

If your colleagues haven’t captured this guy within the week, I’m coming back and resuming my life.

Understood?” The long speech must have irritated her throat, as a fit of coughing gripped her until she took another sip of water.

Relief coursed through him. Even if she didn’t fully trust him, at least she trusted him more than she trusted the killer not to come after her again. Dante would take it. “Understood.”

Now all he had to do was prepare himself for the fact that when Jules returned home in a week and resumed her life, it would very likely be one that did not include him.