“Go now. I’ll be right behind you.”
As she moved—back into her office to grab the jacket she’d shed while she worked—she tagged Roarke. “Garage. Hurry.” She clicked off, then called in a friend.
“Dallas.” Dr. Louise Dimatto beamed at her. “How—”
Struggling into the jacket, Eve switched her ’link from hand to hand. “I need you at Angel’s Hospital asap. Incoming patient, transported from Central, Detective Lilah Strong. Injuries from a fall.”
“How—”
“I don’t know her condition. I need you to get there, Louise, and to take her. Her life’s on the line. I need you to report as her doctor, and I need you to fix her. I don’t want anyone near her you don’
t know and trust with your life. Not another doctor, nurse, orderly, not a bedpan near her you don’t trust. Baxter and Trueheart are on their way there now. No other cops get near her without my clearance. None.”
“I’m on my way. I’ll call ahead, set it up.”
“Thanks.”
She sprinted from floor to glide, from glide to elevator, and across the garage where Roarke waited.
“How fast can you get us to Angel’s Hospital?”
“Very. Strap in.”
21
SIRENS BLASTING, ROARKE WENT AIRBORNE the instant they shot out of the garage. He touched down, punched it to plow through a field of traffic, two-wheeled it at the corner. He skimmed by a couple coats of paint between a cab and a sedate town car, then tore into a hard-line vertical to rocket over the heads of pedestrians clipping across the crosswalk in spite of the screaming sirens and flashing lights.
“Strong’s down,” Eve told him. “I don’t know how bad.”
He simply nodded and ripped a line through the city canyons. When he swerved onto the ER ramp, he said, “Go.”
She was already slapping the release on her safety harness, shoving open the door. She slammed through the ER doors, caught sight of the medicals whisking a gurney around the corner of Admitting with Baxter and Trueheart flanking them like guard dogs.
“Status! What’s her status?”
Blood from the head wounds, the face lacerations soaked Lilah’s clothes. Eve saw the splint support on her right arm, another caging her leg, the brace collaring her neck.
The MTs were spewing out a string of medical terms to a man in scrubs who barely looked old enough to order a brew. He in turn reeled out orders as they shoved the gurney through another set of doors.
He shot another order at Eve. “You have to stay back.”
“Her doctor’s on the way. Louise Dimatto. She’s in charge.”
“Right now I’m in charge.” He counted off to three, and they lifted Lilah’s bloody, broken body, strapped to a stabilizer, from gurney to table.
At the movement, Lilah moaned. Her eyelids flickered. The doctor peeled an eyelid up to examine her pupil while another medical cut away her pants to reveal a nasty break beneath the splint cage.
Eve managed to slip through, grab and grip Lilah’s hand as the team worked around her. “Report, Detective. Give me a report.”
Lilah’s eyes, blind with shock and pain, rolled open. “What?”
“Detective Strong!” Eve watched the eyes widen, very slightly. “I need your report.”
“Killed me.”
“No, they didn’t. Why did they try?”
“Oberman. Behind Oberman.” The words garbled as Lilah’s fingers moved weakly in Eve’s. “My mother. Tic.”