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grayish-brown and back again.
    When they reached the ambulance, Sara was there waiting, tears coursing down her cheeks when she saw Chelsea. Her lips moved; the words didn’t make any sense but Chelsea knew her friend well enough to guess Sara was apologizing for leaving her out on the loading dock.
    It wasn’t your fault, Chelsea tried to say. Don’t blame yourself. I’ll be okay—Fairfax saved me. But the words didn’t come out. She couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t do anything but let the world slip away as the paramedics loaded her into the waiting ambulance.
    Everything faded to the gray-brown of unconsciousness.
    She surfaced a few times after that—once as she was being wheeled through the hospital corridors, the fluorescent lights flashing brightly overhead, and once again during some sort of exam, when she heard doctors’ and nurses’ voices saying things like, “That doesn’t make any sense” and “Check it again.”
    She didn’t come around fully until early the next morning. She knew it was morning because of the way the light of dawn bled pale lavender through the slatted blinds that covered the room’s single window, and the way her body was suddenly clamoring for breakfast and coffee, not necessarily in that order.
    A quick look around confirmed that she was, indeed, in the hospital, and added the information that homicide detective Tucker McDermott was fast asleep in the chair beside her bed.
    The realization warmed her with the knowledge that her friends had closed ranks around her already.
    She knew Tucker through the ME’s office, and more importantly through his wife, Alyssa, who was a good friend. Alyssa, a forensics specialist within the BCCPD, was quick-tempered and always on the go. In contrast, Tucker was a rock, steady and dependable. He might’ve had a flighty playboy’s reputation a few years back, but marriage had settled him to the point that he’d become the go-to guy in their circle, the one who was always level in a crisis, always ready to listen or offer a shoulder to lean on.
    He made her wimpy side feel safe.
    She must’ve moved or made some sound indicating that she’d awakened, because he opened his eyes, blinked a couple of times, then smiled. “Hey. How are you feeling?”
    “I’m—” She paused, confused. “That’s weird. I feel fine. Better than fine, actually. I feel really good.” Energy coursed through her alongside the gnawing hunger, but there were none of the lingering aches she would’ve expected from her ordeal. Lifting a hand, which didn’t bear an IV or any monitoring lines, she probed the back of her head and found a bruised lump, but little residual pain. Oddly, though, she didn’t feel the brain fuzz of prescription-strength painkillers. “What did the doctors give me?”
    Tucker shook his head. “Nothing. By the time you arrived, your core temp was coming back up and your vitals were stabilizing. They decided to let you sleep it off and see how you felt when you woke up.”
    “I’m okay,” she said weakly, her brain churning. “Okay” wasn’t entirely accurate, though, because the more she thought about her ordeal the more scared and confused she became, as terrifying images mixed with the memory of the convict who’d saved her life, and the coworker who’d lost his.
    “Jerry’s dead, isn’t he?” she asked softly.
    She remembered the gunshot, remembered him falling, even remembered him lying in the van, limp in death, but a piece of her didn’t want to accept that he was gone. She wanted to believe he’d been stunned like she’d been. Not dead. Not Jerry, with his cold nose and ski-bunny girlfriend.
    But Tucker shook his head, expression full of remorse. “I’m sorry.”
    Chelsea closed her eyes, grief beating at her alongside guilt. She should’ve done something different. If she hadn’t been staring at Fairfax, she might’ve been quicker to recognize that there was a problem with the delivery. She