High Noon

out. Detective…Bull, I need someone I can trust over at Dave’s, talking to the bomb team, the CS people. I know you don’t want to leave him.” She reached out, squeezed his hand. “I promise I’ll contact you the minute there’s anything to do. But I need someone I can trust on that scene.”
    “Okay. Okay.” Sykes scrubbed his hands over his worried face. “You let him know I’m around. Cops all over the place in here, so you let him know we’re all around.”
    “I will. Thank you.”
    “Why don’t you sit down?” Duncan said when Sykes headed out.
    “I don’t think I can. I’m good at waiting, but I need to know…something. I just need to know.” Her hand vised on Duncan’s arm when she saw the gurney and the medical team.
    She lunged forward. There were cuts and burns on his face, a gash at his left temple. And blood on the sheet that covered him.
    “How is he? Where are you taking him?”
    “You family?”
    “Yes.”
    The young doctor continued to move at double time toward the elevators. “He’s going into surgery. He’s bleeding inside. Somebody’ll let you know as soon as he’s out.”
    Phoebe signaled the two uniformed officers. “They go where he goes. You wait outside the OR. I’ll be there as soon as I talk to the witness.”
    She stood back and watched them push the man who’d been her father most of her life into the elevator.
    “It’s the best trauma center in the city.” Duncan laid his hands on her shoulders. “One of the best in the state. He couldn’t do better.”
    “No. I wish I could fall apart. I wish I could just fall apart until they come to tell me…We should’ve put cops on his house. Anyone who knows me knows what Dave is for me, what he is to me.”
    “Take a minute.” Gently, Duncan turned her into his arms. “You can fall apart for a minute.”
    She let herself cling, let herself shake. He was holding her, good, solid arms around her. “I’m so scared. I don’t know what to do I’m so scared.”
    “Just hold onto me until you figure it out.”
    “Don’t go anywhere, okay?” She gripped him tighter. “Will you stay with me?”
    “Of course I will. Phoebe.” He put a hand under her chin to lift her face to his. “I’ll be right here.”
    She sighed, and laid her head on his shoulder. It was such a comfort, she realized, to have someone else be strong. To have someone else be the one who was right there.
    “I thought I forgot how to need somebody to stay.” She eased back. “Lucky for me I remembered when the somebody can be counted on.”
    She spotted Maggie coming out of a treatment room. “That’s Dave’s neighbor.” Phoebe blew out a long breath. “All right. Here we go.” She took two steps forward. “Maggie?”
    At the sound of her name, Maggie jolted, looked over. Then, bursting into tears, all but fell into Phoebe’s arms. “All right now. Hush now.” Even as Phoebe looked around for somewhere marginally private, Duncan had a hand on her shoulder to steer her and her charge toward some chairs.
    “Y’all sit right here,” he told Phoebe. “I’ll go hunt up some coffee.”
    “Good, that’d be good. Maggie, I need you to stop crying. I need you to stop.” Firmly, Phoebe pulled back to take Maggie by both shoulders. “I need you to stop and talk to me.”
    “David. I think he must be dead. Oh God!”
    “Well, he’s not. They took him up to surgery. They’re taking care of him. Don’t you start going hysterical on me again. I mean it. I need you to take some good, deep breaths. In and out. You do what I say, you hear? In and out. That’s right. That’s better. Now, you tell me what happened. Right from the beginning.”
    “I don’t know. ” Tears still streamed as Maggie fluttered her hands. “I swear I don’t know.”
    “You tell me what you do know. You were with Dave, at his house?”
    “No. Yes. I mean to say I’d been out with a friend—you met my friend Delly when David had that barbecue last summer? We went out for lunch, and a little shopping spree. I’d just pulled up at home, right before the storm, and I saw David.”
    She covered her face with her hands, but Phoebe yanked them ruthlessly away. “I know you’re upset, but you’re going to keep talking, keep telling me. Where was Dave when you saw him?”
    “Going up the walk to his front door. I beeped the horn, and he waved. I thought how he could help me carry my shopping bags in, so I beeped again, and got out right quick