Before I could say anything, she held up her hand. It was covered in blood.
“Zoe, I need your help.”
TWENTY-FOUR
I guided her into the hotel room and called 911.
“What happened?” I helped her take off her dark pink jacket. It was covered in blood, too.
“Someone shot me as I walked up to the hotel.” Her face was very pale, eyes sunken, with dark circles around them.
“Where’s Marsh?” I looked at my cell phone, called his number and the emergency services number. I hoped the paramedics wouldn’t be far away.”Listen to me a minute.” She put her hand on the cell phone to stop me from calling for help. “I learned something about the killer. I haven’t had time to tell anyone else. You have to remember—”
Her voice started fading, and her eyes closed. Her hand dropped from the cell phone, leaving a smear of blood behind it.
“You can’t die,” I told her. Weren’t people supposed to stay awake? “Stay with me, Macey. Don’t lose consciousness.”
Her eyes fluttered open for a moment, and her lips moved, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying.
I tried to flag down a passing porter. Maybe the hotel could get someone here faster. Hotel staff passed me by like I was invisible.
“Zoe?” Miguel said on his way to the elevator. “Oh my God, what happened?”
Tina came in and sat on the bed while Miguel knelt by my side on the floor.
“She said someone shot her. I don’t think she knew who it was. How long does it take for an ambulance to get here?”
I heard the elevator chime. Uniformed paramedics rushed into the room with a stretcher and other equipment. “Help her, please.”
Miguel put his arm around me and we moved away from Helms. The paramedics were all over her, calling out her vitals and attaching needles and other apparatus to her. She was so helpless.
“She said she was shot,” I repeated, wanting to be some help.
One of them briefly turned to face me. “We can see that, ma’am. Best for you all to wait outside until we can get her out of here.”
“Come on,” Miguel urged me, taking Tina’s hand and leading her out, too.
Marsh was next off the elevator. I told him what had happened. He started to storm into the hotel room, but the paramedics pushed him out of the way and walked quickly past him.
“What happened?” Marsh asked me. “Who shot her?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t know why she came up here. She was trying to tell me something. I couldn’t make out what she was saying.”
Tears in his eyes were hastily pushed away as he pulled himself together. “What is it with you people? This race needs to end now.”
He rushed for the next elevator to follow his partner to the hospital.
Hotel security came next, ushering me out of my room and into another room. The red bloodstain on the beige carpet stood out as I quickly gathered my things together and hid Crème Brûlée under a blanket. He was squirmy and hard to carry.
“Why did she come to see me?” I kept asking Miguel as he helped me relocate. “She said she was shot outside the hotel. Why didn’t she stay outside and call for help? Or ask for help at the check-in counter. That would have made more sense.”
“People do strange things during emergency situations,” he explained. “It’s as though whatever is on your mind supersedes what’s happening to your body.”
Tina was crying and following us around like a puppy.
“She’s exhausted. Let me get her somewhere she can sleep,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
After he was gone, I looked around the new room. It was exactly like the old room, except there was no blood on the floor.
It was crazy. The whole thing seemed crazy to me.
Maybe Marsh was right. Maybe the race should be stopped. How many more bad things could happen before we got home?
I sat in a chair and held Crème Brûlée close to me until Miguel got back. He brought Uncle Saul with him. “Do you think this had something to do with the race?” Uncle Saul sat on the edge of my bed.
“I don’t know.” That sparkly, fun feeling I’d had after drinking too much was gone, leaving me with a raging headache. “Helms said it had something to do with the killer. I couldn’t understand anything else she said.”
“That poor woman.” Miguel shook his head.
“We should see if Chef Art still has his limo out.” I jumped up. “We could go to the hospital and find out how Helms is.”
“I’m sure someone will let us know,” Uncle Saul said.
“I can’t sit here not knowing. I don’t care if I don’t sleep at all tonight—I have to know if she’s okay.”
“Someone will call and let us know,” Miguel said. “You should get some sleep.”
“I don’t know if I can.” I completely lost it, sobbing into Miguel’s shirt. “I want to go home. I don’t want anyone else to get hurt or die. This is it.”
While I cried and tried to stop myself from hiccupping, Miguel and Uncle Saul came up with a plan. I was so glad they did because I wasn’t drunk, but my brain wasn’t functioning right, either. We went downstairs to get Miguel’s car. Several of Birmingham’s uniformed police officers passed us. I kept my head down, not up to answering a barrage of questions about what had happened to Helms. We managed to get out of the hotel. Miguel used his cell phone GPS to find the hospital.
When we got to the hospital, Miguel asked at the admitting desk about Helms. The nurse pointed to a place we could wait. Marsh was already there. He only looked slightly better than his partner had after she’d been shot.
He was staring at a pack of Marlboro cigarettes that hadn’t been opened. “I gave these up six weeks ago. I promised Macey I’d quit. Neither of us is married anymore. No close family. She’s all I have that makes my life normal.”
“They won’t help,” Miguel said as he sat down next to me. “I smoked for a long time after my wife died. It never made me feel better. Nothing does.”
It was another little piece of the puzzle that was Miguel Alexander. I was almost too tormented to even notice. I excused myself and went to the ladies’ room to wash my face.
Blotchy complexion and swollen, red-rimmed eyes had taken their toll. Even my curly hair was flat. I blew my nose on some rough toilet paper and splashed cold water in my face. “Don’t make me slap you, Zoe Elizabeth Chase. You know I’ll do it. Pull yourself together. This behavior isn’t going to help.”
They were my mother’s words on occasions like this one. I imagined her standing in this hospital bathroom saying similar things to herself. Somehow, that grounded me again and made me take a deep breath.
My mother was a tough, pragmatic taskmaster at times, but she was also a rock. I’d never seen her panic or lose it, as I had back there. My dad was a different story. He cried at movies and after listening to his favorite jazz songs.
Maybe it was the curly hair.
When I went back out to the waiting area, I was calmer and beginning to cope with the situation. My head still hurt, so I bought a Coke from a vending machine and swallowed two Tylenol. Good thing, too, because the Birmingham police had caught up with us.
They were actually very polite and apologized for bothering us. They asked a few questions but didn’t stay long.
Marsh kind of vouched for us. I was surprised that he suddenly seemed to trust us. Maybe it was because Helms had come to me after being shot.
The only sticking point I seemed to have with anyone was that I hadn’t been able to understand what Helms had been trying to tell me before she’d passed out. I said the same words over and over, attempting to explain the situation. The Birmingham police looked skeptical.