Page 103 of Second Chance Fate

“That dog of yours crapped in my flowers again.” Mr. Santino lifted his cane and pointed it in the direction of his flower bed.

Taylor wasn’t sure if Mr. Santino was just getting things mixed up or what, because Casper hadn’t been to the cottage since she went into the hospital. She wasn’t about to get into thatwith him, though. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Santino. It won’t happen again. I promise.”

Out of the corner of her eyes, Taylor could see Martin’s patience for the interaction reach its limit. He put the gun in the waistband of his jeans, turned around, walked toward Mr. Santino, reached up, and tried to close the garage door in his face.

Mr. Santino lifted his cane and stopped the garage door from shutting. “Now son, I wasn’t done speaking to the young lady.”

“If you know what’s good for you, you’ll walk away, old man.” Martin’s tone was menacing.

“What’s that now?” Mr. Santino squinted and took a step toward Martin as if he were hard of hearing.

Taylor saw Martin reach for his gun. She lunged across the garage and grabbed Martin’s arm. And then everything happened all at once.

There was a loud pop.

A bright flash of light.

She was on the floor.

Martin was on the floor beside her.

Mr. Santino was standing over him with his foot on his chest and his cane against his throat. And there was blood. Mr. Santino’s arm was bleeding. She heard a horrible cry that sounded like a wounded animal. She managed to open one eye, and it looked like Mr. Santino was breaking Martin’s arm. That’s the last thought she had before everything went black.

32

When Caleb sawthe turnoff for the Pine Ridge Memorial Hospital from the highway, he had no memory of getting there. It was sixty miles from Lake Tahoe, mainly through winding mountain terrain, and he’d made it in record time, which he was not proud of. It wasn’t a good thing that he was probably driving incredibly unsafely. He hadn’t done it consciously; he’d been on autopilot. His phone was dead, and he didn’t have a charger. Usually, he kept one in the car, but he’d let Owen borrow it to take to Jonah’s, so he had no idea how Taylor was.

When he got out of his morning session, he had a voicemail from Eric. He’d only been able to make out every other word or so. There was something about Martin showing up at the cottage, an incident, someone was shot, and they were “all” at Pine Ridge Emergency Room.

That’s it. That’s all the information he had. Caleb raced to his Jeep and started driving, and as soon as he tried to call back to find out more details, his phone died.

Why didn’t Taylor just wait for him until Saturday? Why did she have to go get the boxes herself? Caleb knew this wasn’t her fault, but he just needed her to be okay.

They just found each other. Owen needed her. He needed her.

Caleb turned into the hospital and screeched to a stop in a parking space close to the emergency room entrance. He pulled the E-brake, cut the engine, and hopped out of the Jeep. He ran across the ambulance lane to the entrance. The hospital’s automatic doors exhaled a burst of cold, clinical air as Caleb entered at a full sprint, nearly colliding with the starched blue scrubs of an ER tech pushing a supply cart. The bright, fluorescent lights overhead were so aggressive they seemed to vibrate at the corners of his vision. The lobby’s floors were an endless, spotless grid of off-white linoleum, and each frantic step of his rubber-soled shoes squeaked a desperate code into the near silence.

He scanned the waiting room: a woman clutching a child with a bloody nose, two men in work shirts staring numbly at a sports channel, and a teenage girl with her head on her knees. There was no one he knew from Hope Falls who could give him information about Taylor. There were other people, but none of them registered as anything but obstacles between him and the triage desk, where a tired-looking nurse with tight gray curls and a neck tattoo was pressing a phone to her ear, scribbling with the other hand.

Caleb managed to keep his voice level—just barely—as he asked, “My wife, Taylor—Rebecca Taylor, she was brought in. I need to know—” The nurse held up a finger.

Caleb’s hands curled into fists.

She covered the mouthpiece. “Name?”

“Rebecca Taylor. She was shot. I think. Or maybe not. I don’t know. There was an incident. Police Chief Eric Maguire left me a message. She’s from Hope Falls.”

The nurse flicked her eyes to her monitor, tapped on her keyboard, turned away, slid her chair across the floor with her back to him, stood up, and walked into the back.

“Excuse me,” he called out, but she completely ignored him and kept going.

Caleb walked around the desk to see where she went. He couldn’t see her, but he knew that the double doors led to the emergency room where patients were. Nurses, visitors, doctors, x-ray techs, and all sorts were buzzed through the double doors. All he had to do was wait and slip inside before they closed.

He was leaning against the wall, trying to look inconspicuous, when a young woman in a white lab coat and Snoopy scrubs with a blonde buzzcut stepped out of the double doors and approached Caleb like a bouncer. “You can’t stand here,” she warned, not unkindly, but with a bored authority. “We have to keep the hallway clear.”

It made sense to him that they needed to keep the hallway clear so they could wheel gurneys and not have people sneaking back like he was trying to do.

Caleb’s heart hammered, and his voice cracked. “I’m sorry, I just need to know if my wife’s okay. I got a message that she’d been involved in a shooting from Police Chief Eric Maguire. My phone’s dead. I can’t get ahold of anyone.”

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