Breaking Steele (Sarah Steele Legal Thriller)

Chapter 45

“MISS—MISS, WE CAN take it from here.” A paramedic took my arm and pulled me away from Angela. I stumbled back and Detective Monroe grabbed me.

They’d come with a full SWAT team. Without a sound. All I saw were flashlights glowing on the end of big guns before they surrounded me. If Detective Monroe hadn’t been there, I’d have been handcuffed and accused.

I watched as the medics worked on Angela to stabilize her, and they soon had her in the back of the ambulance and on her way to the hospital. “Where are they taking her?” I asked a medic standing by the pool of blood.

“St. Luke’s. She’s lost a lot of blood. We gave her something to stop the bleeding.” He looked gravely at the blood and then back at me. “She wouldn’t have survived much longer. Good thing you came when you did.”

“You mean the wound wasn’t new?” I whispered. Detective Monroe leaned in to listen.

“No, it looked to be a few hours old.” He wiped his hands with a disinfectant cloth and then handed me a clean one.

A few hours old. That was probably around the time Mandy and Rick called the police.

I shuddered. The Williams’ knew every one of our moves.

“Thanks.” My head was spinning and I sat down on a wooden sawhorse. Forensics teams were appearing, and Detective Ross was telling them where to go and what to do. It was just a flurry of words and noises.

She was alive, I found her, and if I’d been even fifteen minutes later, she’d be dead. I was so angry that I had to force myself to think about my surroundings so I wouldn’t fly into a fit of rage. He used me, was playing me, and I felt like a puppet on a string.

Detective Monroe finished a phone call and then turned to me. “The hospital said they’ve stabilized her. They think her attacker gave her a blood thinner so she’d bleed out faster.”

I curled my lip. “It was Hank Williams, not just some attacker.”

Detective Monroe put his hands on his hips and sighed. I braced myself for the inevitable scolding.

“Sarah, what you did was ginormously stupid.”

I didn’t think “ginormously” was a word, but I wasn’t going to mention it to him.

“But . . .” he hesitated, and his mouth twitched through his frown, “but you did good. You saved her life.”

I hugged myself, hunching over, suddenly feeling cold all over.

“Hey!” he said. I looked up quickly. He had a sober look in his eye. “Don’t you ever do that again, you hear me?”

My whole body felt like mush, and weariness enveloped me. “I hope I never have to,” I said.