Run by emily_michele
Nick sat stiffly on the back of an ambulance with a heavy blanket draped across his shoulders, holding an oxygen mask to his face as an EMT bandaged the burn on his arm. “Is he dead?” he asked with a gasp.
The EMT paused and looked up at Nick. “He wasn’t when they left with him,” the middle-aged man answered solemnly. “I wish I could tell you more, but anything beyond that would just be my best guess at this point.” Then he went back to bandaging his arm. Nick nodded silently and clenched his teeth, staring blankly ahead at the road in front of him that just moments ago was shrouded in flashing lights as the ambulance carrying Joshua Donohue sped away. A police cruiser pulled up to the spot previously occupied by the other ambulance, and Annie jumped out of it and pushed through the crowd, leaving Drew in the car with the young officer Nick vaguely recognized from the police station two weeks ago. “That the sister?” the older man asked. Nick gulped and nodded. “You want me to talk to her?”
Nick’s ragged breath hitched in his throat. “Oh, God,” he croaked. “No. I need to do it.” His mind flashed to the conversation he’d had with Howie on the plane two weeks ago. “I just wish I could have been there with her when she found out, you know?” he’d told Howie. His only consolation at the time was that her brother was there to tell her about the deaths of her parents, and she didn’t have to hear it from a police officer alone. Now, the thought of telling her that her brother may or may not have already suffered the same fate was beyond daunting. However, he knew he owed it to her to be the one to tell her, especially since he was one of the last people to see Josh alive. Nick winced in pain as the EMT secured the dressing on his arm. It still felt hot from the flames that surrounded him as he pulled Annie’s brother from the wreckage, despite the saltwater he’d plunged them into to pull him to safety and the first aid he was currently receiving
“Nick! What happened?” Annie panted as she jogged towards him and threw her arms around his neck. He drew in a sharp breath as searing pain ripped through his shoulder and hot tears pricked at his eyes, mostly unrelated to the physical pain he was experiencing. “Nick?” Annie hesitantly pulled away and sank down onto the back of the ambulance beside him. “Where’s Josh?”
Nick’s face crumpled. “The boat. There was something wrong with the boat.” Annie gasped and clamped her hand over her mouth to muffle the sob that rose in her throat. She feared she already knew where this was going. Why else would she get a police escort to the docks? Obviously, it was very bad news. “I did everything I could to get it to stop, Annie,” Nick whimpered. “When I realized there wasn’t anything else we could do, I tried to get him to jump off, but he wouldn’t because he wanted to try to save your dad’s boat. I grabbed him when I jumped off, but--” He trailed off and slumped his shoulders in defeat, looking down at his feet, which were dangling limply below the chrome bumper. “I’m so sorry, Annie.”
“Is he….dead?” Annie whispered, her breathy voice barely audible, even to Nick, who was only an inch away.
“I don’t know,” he lamented. “They say he was alive when they left with him, but--”
“You might have saved his life by going and pulling him out like that,” the EMT chimed in. Annie gave both men a weak smile. “We need to get you checked out,” he reminded Nick. “Let me help you get up in here.”
“No, no. I’m fine.” Nick insisted. He brushed the man off and attempted to stand up, but Annie promptly placed her hands on his chest and gently shoved him back down. “Get in the ambulance, Nick,” she said sternly.
“Annie. Nick.” Annie turned around, startled by the familiar voice behind her.
“Detective Jones? What are you doing here?”
********************
Kendall Jones didn’t know much about boats, despite the fact that he’d grown up in south Florida. He’d always preferred land sports like golf and volleyball. What he did know was that it was suspicious for the sons of two recent murder victims and the prime suspect, respectively, to be involved in a freak boating accident just two weeks after the murders. So, he enlisted the expertise of the boat dock operator in investigating the crash scene.
“See this?” Danny Alvarez was actually wearing a sailor’s hat. Kendall wasn’t sure if he was going for a touristy retirement community type of authenticity, or if he truly like wearing it. Nevertheless, he was having a hard time ignoring the corny white hat and taking the man seriously. It seemed that after over an hour or combing through the wreckage, he might finally be on to something, though.
“What’s that?”
“It’s the throttle lever.” Danny held the cylindrical piece of metal up in front of his face and eyed it carefully. “It’s broken.”
Of course it was broken. Everything around them was broken. “Couldn’t that have happened in the crash?” Kendall asked.
“Yes,” Danny replied matter-of-factly. Detective Jones stifled a frustrated sigh mixed with an eye roll. “But it didn’t.”
“How do you know that?”
“See this line of rust here?” Kendall stooped down and eyed the broken end of the lever opposite the hard plastic throttle handle as Danny pointed to it.
“Yeah.” He assumed it was possible that the lever could have naturally rusted in two due to age or a factory defect, but the line of rust was along an edge that was too clean, almost perfectly straight.
“That means it didn’t happen in the crash.”
“You’re right. It didn’t.” Detective Jones may not have known much about boats, but he did have the keen eye of a detective, and he didn’t like what he was seeing. The rust line stopped just short of the diameter of the throttle, meaning that someone had likely sawed through it so that it was still intact, but was likely to break once handled. “How long does it usually take for a piece of equipment to rust like this?” he asked the dock operator.
“I’m no chemist, detective, but as a deck hand, I can tell you it doesn’t take that long. Once the surface of a piece of equipment is compromised, the sea air can corrode it pretty fast. I’d say as soon as a matter of a few weeks, maybe even days.”
“So this could have happened just a few days ago?”
“Maybe.”
Kendall stood tall and placed his hands on his hips authoritatively. “So, tell me, Danny. Can you recall having seen anyone loitering around this boat any time in the past few weeks?”
The man flinched at the detective’s sudden change in demeanor. “There are almost always people loitering around here, detective,” He answered. “Mainly kids-- teenagers who can’t stomach another bite of Grandma’s cobbler or don’t want to hear another story about ‘the war’ from Gramps. Harmless, really.” He paused, seemingly deep in thought. “I’m sorry, detective, I can’t remember anything specifically about that boat at all.”
Kendall gave him a curt nod. “Okay, then. Thank you so much for your help.” He held a gloved hand out to retrieve the broken throttle and placed it in an evidence bag. “Please feel free to call me if you think of anything else that might aid in the investigation.” He held out his card, and the deck hand took it.
“Sure thing.”
********************
“He has multiple broken bones, and we suspect he has a spinal cord injury, but the more pressing issue right now is the fact that he has second and third degree burns covering over 60 percent of his body. This makes him highly susceptible to infection. It will be hard to regulate his body temperature, and to say that it’s extremely painful would be an understatement. In order to protect his airway, we have him intubated. He’s heavily sedated, but he is trying to breathe on his own over the tube. Based on what the paramedics told us about the crash site, it’s a miracle he even survived the impact.”
Nick clasped Annie’s hand reassuringly, then glanced over at her brother’s distraught wife. Since one arm was out of commission in a sling due to a dislocated shoulder, he momentarily let go of Annie’s hand, then reached behind her to give Katie’s shoulder a tentative squeeze. She gave him a small smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. With her straight blonde hair and sad blue eyes, she kind of reminded Nick of his sisters, which made him want to reach out and comfort her. Then, of course, there was Annie. How much more of this could she take? He prayed he’d never have to find out. Yet, as if on cue, Kendall Jones walked into the hospital waiting room, and the expression on his face gave Nick chills.
“How’s Josh?” he asked solemnly.
“Alive,” Annie answered quietly. “For now,” she added under her breath.
“That’s good news,” the detective acknowledged. “But I’m afraid I have some bad news about the boat crash.”
An eerie silence fell over them, but this was nothing new. It was the same silence that had enveloped them as they waited for news on Josh-- the same silence that would hang thickly over the room whenever they remembered what had brought them to Boca Raton in the first place. “Well, go on,” Nick prompted, an air of frustrated sarcasm in his voice.
“The boat was tampered with.” Annie and Katie both gasped in surprise, but not Nick. He’d been around boats enough to know that a malfunction like that was highly unlikely, especially in a boat the assumed Dr. Donohue kept well-maintained. “Somebody intended for this crash to happen, and for it to look like an accident. I’m not sure who his target was, but--”
Nick interrupted him. “Do you think it could have been me?”
