Love Is in the Air Read Online Free PDF Page B

the detective referred to was Maria’s. She’d stepped in her best friend’s blood.
    Richard kept his arm around her, but stood to his full height. “That will be enough. You don’t actually suspect her of this crime?”
    The detective had to shake her head.
    “Clearly, then,” her fiancé explained, “if she remembered anything of value regarding her best friend’s murder, she would tell you.” He raised his voice another octave to quiet the detective. “The harder you force her to relive the traumatic events, the deeper you will drive her away from the very memories you need.”
    “She’s a material witness. I can hold her until—”
    Sal stiffened. She didn’t want to stay here. Didn’t want to be questioned anymore. She just wanted to crawl in a hole and sleep until this could all become just a vague nightmare.
    Richard flipped his cell phone open and hit a speed dial number. He waited patiently while it rang.
    The detective’s frown was back. “Who are you calling?”
    “Your Chief of D’s,” he said casually. “I’ve been treating his daughter for PTSD. You might have read about it in the papers.”
    “Who hasn’t?” Paul snorted, freeing Sal from the blood pressure cuff.
    The girl they referred to had been assaulted in Golden Gate Park, and even though she wasn’t that physically injured, the college student had descended into a near-catatonic state. After three other psychiatrists had failed, Richard coaxed her back into true consciousness. Then, to prove his reputation had been earned, he helped the girl remember and identify her attackers. After they had been convicted, her father had given Richard a commendation from the department.
    “Fine,” the detective admitted. “But I need her down at the station first thing tomorrow morning to make a statement.”
    Richard snapped his phone closed. “I’ll drive her there myself.”
    As the detective left, Manning tried to maneuver her fiancé out of the way. “You might have spoken too soon, Richard. I’m not sure if I’ll be releasing her any time tonight.”
    “I’m taking her home,” Richard stated. “ Now .”
    “But I’m still waiting on blood work and…” Stacy stammered.
    “We both know her CT was clean. So just call me with the lab results, and I’ll monitor her mental status at home.”
    “But—”
    “Get the paperwork ready, Stacy,” he said with a finality that shut even Manning up.
    Without a stethoscope constantly around his neck, it was easy to forget that not only had Richard gone to medical school, but he was a senior clinician, outranking everyone in the room.
    Sal had never been so grateful to Richard as when he draped his coat over her shoulders and escorted her out of the trauma bay. The lights were too bright. The noise too loud. The pain too sharp.
    Maria was dead, and there wasn’t a thing she could remember. Was she there when her best friend was killed? Had she done anything, absolutely anything at all, to save her?
    With Richard at her side, she made it toward the ambulance doors and was almost gone when EMTs pushing a gurney passed by them, its occupant draped with a white sheet. The mid-region was stained burgundy.
    Maria.
    She reached out to the passing body, but Richard pulled her back.
    “Come on. Let’s get you home.”
    He wrapped his arms around her in a protective manner, but they felt thinner than she remembered. The embrace, while meant to be reassuring, felt only soft. His shower-fresh scent gave her no comfort.
    With a wobbly gurney wheel squeaking, her best friend’s body rolled past.

CHAPTER 11
    Sal stood at Richard’s bedroom window, watching the rainfall. If only she could cry as easily as the heavens. None of what had transpired felt real. From the smallest detail of missing a suture placement not once, but twice, to her best friend meeting a bloody end in the basement.
    Arms wrapped around her waist, she stared at San Francisco from her vantage point atop Nob Hill. The