“Well, I’m not gone yet. Abby. You can’t handle a dog this size,” Sasha said practically.
“He’s very well behaved,” she pleaded his case, while Charlie waited for the verdict, go or stay.
“Why don’t you all try him out, and see if it works? If it doesn’t and he’s a problem, Abby can take him back where she got him,” Alex suggested. Morgan looked dubious, but it sounded sensible to Sasha and Abby, who both said okay. And as though he knew what they were talking about, Charlie lay down again with a sigh and stretched his legs and closed his eyes, and a minute later he was sound asleep.
“He’s kind of sweet,” Abby said, looking down at him, as her two roommates laughed and Alex grinned.
“Never a dull moment around here,” Alex commented.
“You couldn’t get a Chihuahua or something small?” Morgan asked her as she went to get her shoes.
“He talked to me,” Abby said to Alex and Sasha, as Alex leaned down to stroke him, and Charlie groaned with pleasure. He was one lucky dog. And for the moment at least, Charlie had a home.
Chapter 16
Sasha tried to reach Valentina again that night to tell her about her engagement, but the call went straight to voicemail. Sasha didn’t want to just leave her a message about something that important. And the next day, she and Alex were at the hospital, and Sasha had no time to call. All the pregnant women who had held out through Christmas past their due date were delivering that day, two days after the holiday. Alex and Sasha had been engaged for three days.
By ten o’clock that night, Sasha had been on duty for fourteen hours, and she finally got a break. She had just done her last C-section, and put a ten-pound baby boy in his mother’s arms.
“There can’t be a baby left to deliver in New York. I think I delivered them all today,” she said, as Alex rubbed her back in the doctors’ lounge. Her cell phone went off as she said it. She looked, and a number she didn’t recognize came up.
“Dr. Hartman,” she said into her phone, in case it was a patient.
“Lieutenant O’Rourke, NYPD,” the voice said, sounding official. “We have your sister here. You’re listed as her emergency contact and next of kin.” Sasha’s heart started to pound as she listened. “She’s all right,” he said in a gruff tone, “but she’s been injured. There was a homicide. The victim was shot in the back, and the bullet went through him and lodged in your sister’s leg. It missed the artery, but she’s lost a fair amount of blood. She’s conscious. She’s in the trauma unit at NYU hospital. Can you meet us there?”
“Oh my God, I’m upstairs. I’ll be right there,” Sasha said, and hung up, and looked frantically at Alex.
“What happened?”
“Valentina. Someone got killed and the bullet went through him and lodged in her leg. She’s in trauma.”
“Here?” She nodded and ran out of the doctors’ lounge to the nurses’ desk.
“Get someone to cover for me,” she said, trying to sound calmer than she felt. “My sister’s been shot. She’s downstairs in trauma. If you can’t find anyone, I’ll come back. We don’t have anyone in labor.”
“Yet,” the nurse added, shocked by what Sasha had told her. “Is your sister okay?”
“I don’t know. I think so. She was shot in the leg.” She kissed Alex goodbye then—he had to go back to work—and she left the floor at a dead run and went down the stairs to the main floor to the trauma unit. She asked for Valentina, and found her in a cubicle surrounded by policemen, covered with blood from head to foot, and hysterical. “What happened?” Sasha asked her. She was deathly pale, and they were examining her leg, and had given her a shot for the pain.
“They killed Jean-Pierre. We came back today. We were making love, and someone shot him. The bullet went through him and is in my leg. But they killed him.” She was sobbing, and was in shock. Sasha watched them sedate her, and left the cubicle when Valentina got drowsy, and went to look for Lieutenant O’Rourke. He was waiting for her outside. After she introduced herself, she watched him do a double take when he saw her. He took her into an examining room to explain. Kevin O’Rourke was a burly Irishman, and he announced himself immediately as “Homicide. NYPD.”
“Your sister’s boyfriend was an arms dealer,” he said simply. “One of the biggest in France. He expanded his operation to the States and the Caribbean several months ago. We’ve been watching him since he got here. He just did some kind of big deal in France. We don’t know what it was yet—we’re waiting to hear from Interpol. Someone got to him tonight. They shot him in the back while they were…er…uh…in bed. The bullet went right through his heart, angled downward, through his back, came out his chest, and lodged in her upper thigh, where it is now. That’s all we know for the moment. We’ll need to talk to your sister to see what she knows, after they get the bullet out. She’s in no condition to talk to us now. She’s damn lucky—the bullet could have hit the artery, and she’d be dead.” He looked serious as he said it.
“Is she in trouble?” Sasha asked bluntly.
“Not that we know of. We’ve seen her with him for months. She may be able to identify some faces for us. But these big guys don’t usually share information with their women. She’s not in trouble with us, for the moment, but she will be with them, whoever killed him. She may have seen the shooter. If she did, she’s in serious danger. Jean-Pierre was no small dealer—he moved up recently to selling nuclear weapons, to Middle Eastern countries and individuals of assorted nationalities. The French authorities have been watching him too.”
“What are you going to do to protect my sister?” Sasha asked in panic, still concerned she could wind up in trouble with the law herself.
Kevin O’Rourke was unhappy when he answered. “Ten minutes ago I thought we had a problem. Now we have two of them. I didn’t know she had an identical twin. We may have to help her disappear for a while.”
“I can’t disappear with her,” Sasha said firmly. “I’m a senior resident on the OB ward. I can’t take time off while you look for the killer.”
“You may have to,” he said grimly.
“I can’t,” Sasha said, without giving him an inch. She was not going to screw up her residency for Valentina. She had worked too hard for it.
“Your life could be at risk too.”
“No one has any reason to connect her to me. She hangs out in high-flying circles all over the world. I’m here all the time, delivering babies.”
“We’ll talk about it,” he said, sidestepping the issue, as the surgeon came to talk to Sasha. They were about to take Valentina into the OR to remove the bullet. He said she had lost blood, but her vital signs were stable, and they were giving her a unit of blood. Sasha went back to see Valentina again, she was woozy from the pre-op sedation, but Sasha kissed her and told her she’d be fine, and then they rolled her away. Sasha didn’t go into the operating room with her, and a few minutes later Alex joined her. He had found someone to cover for him for a little while. She filled him in on what had happened, and what the lieutenant had told her about Jean-Pierre. It was all seriously unnerving, particularly about any future risk to Valentina from the shooter.
“I had a terrible feeling about him when I met him. I don’t know where she finds them. But this one was the jackpot.” Sasha was deeply upset.
“Maybe this will teach her a lesson,” Alex said, looking unhappy. Sasha nodded, but in the meantime, this was going to change Valentina’s life dramatically, if she had to go into hiding, possibly for a long time. And Sasha was not going with her. She didn’t tell Alex about the risk to her, and what the lieutenant had told her, and then he went back to work upstairs.