Aimpoint by Candace Irving (best mystery novels of all time .TXT) 📗

pretty about the knife embedded in her belly. Two men knelt along the woman's left. Judging from his sobs, Regan assumed the bare-chested man just past the woman's head, smoothing curls, was her husband. That pegged the man at her torso, leaning over to blow air through her lips, as the medic. Like the husband, the medic had removed his T-shirt. The shirts were packed around the hilt of the knife, immobilizing the blade in a desperate attempt to keep the flow of blood corked. Given the amount of red saturating the cotton, it wasn't working. Danielle Blessing was bleeding out. But that wasn't the worst of it.

She was pregnant.

"Jesus H. Chri—" Jasik swallowed the rest.

The MP regained his composure and grabbed his radio to yell for the paramedics as Regan and Wickham shot through the open slider and across the snow. She'd have to trust that Jasik knew enough to secure the interior of the duplex after his call.

Regan dropped to her knees opposite the medic as the man thumped out a series of chest compressions. Staff Sergeant Wickham was two seconds behind and two inches beside her.

Odds were, they were already too late.

Danielle Blessing's abdomen was extremely distended—even for a third trimester—and rock hard. An oddly sweet odor wafted up from the makeshift packing, mixing with the cloying stench of blood. It was a scent Regan would recognize anywhere: amniotic fluid. Worse, scarlet seeped from between the woman's thighs, pooling amid the snow.

Regan holstered her Sig and ripped off her camouflaged parka. "What have you got?"

The medic looked up. "No breathing, no pulse. Been that way since I got here—six damned minutes ago." The rest was in his eyes. Hopeless.

The medic continued thumping regardless. Working around the knife, she and Wickham covered the woman's lower abdomen, thighs and calves with their coats. Danielle's feet were still exposed to the snow and midnight air. Like her face, they were beyond gray.

Regan shook her head as the medic completed his latest round of chest compressions. "I've got it." She sealed her mouth to the woman's lips. They were ice-cold and unresponsive.

Wickham took over the compressions as Regan finished her breaths. But for the husband's raw sobs and Wickham's thumping, silence filled the night.

Two more rounds of breath, and Regan lost her job. So did Wickham. The paramedics had arrived.

Blessing's neighbor dragged the sergeant to his feet as she and Wickham scrambled out of the way. Two of the paramedics dropped their gear and knelt to double-check Danielle's airway and non-existent vitals as a third probed the saturated T-shirts. Ceding to the inevitable, Regan turned toward the duplex. Jasik stood at the kitchen window, his initial search evidently complete.

The MP shook his head. If someone had broken into the Blessings' home, he or she was gone now.

The slider was still open. The medic had reached the snow-covered steps and stood to the left. Sergeant Blessing had turned and slumped down at the top, halfway inside the slider's frame, his naked feet buried in a drift, his dark head bowing over bloodstained hands, and he was shaking.

From grief? Or guilt?

Unfortunately, she knew. As with the icy furrows left by a drunken Doe's stolen pickup, the snow provided the proof.

Footprints.

They covered the yard. But upon their arrival, there'd been but four telling sets. Once Regan eliminated those left by the his-and-her moccasins of the medic and his wife, she was left with a single, composite trail of overlapping, bare footprints. The leading prints were woefully petite; the following, unusually large. Both sets were dug into the snow as if their owners had torn down the slider's steps and across the yard...all the way to where Danielle lay. Finally, there was the blood. Save for the scarlet slush surrounding the body, there was no sign of splatter—at the slider or along the trail.

For some reason, Sergeant Blessing had deliberately chased and then stabbed his wife.

Regan turned to Wickham. "I'll take the husband, question him inside. You take the neighbor. Stay out here." She glanced at the paramedics. "They might need to talk to him." Though she doubted it. There was nothing the sergeant could say that would help his wife now.

Danielle Blessing had been placed on a spine board, stripped down to gray, oozing flesh and redressed with several trauma pads. Half a dozen rolls of Kling gauze anchored the pads and the hilt of the knife. As the brawnier of the paramedics finished intubating the woman's throat and began manually pumping oxygen into her lungs via a big valve mask, his female partner attached the leads of a portable electrocardiogram to Danielle's shoulders and left hip.

Silence had long since given way to a calm, steady stream of medical jargon.

"Patient on cardiac monitor."

"IV spiked on blood set. One thousand milliliters NS. Starting second line—LR on a Macro drip, sixteen gauge."

"I still can't get a pulse."

Judging from that last—not to mention the wad of fresh dressing one of the paramedics used to dry off Danielle's chest—the next step involved shocks. In a perfect world, the woman's heart would restart. But the world was far from perfect. Regan had learned that the hard way. Given that this woman's heart had already been subjected to eight-plus minutes of unsuccessful CPR, the odds that she'd recover were all but nonexistent.

Regan shifted her attention to Wickham. "Ready, Staff Sergeant?"

His nod was stoic. But his sigh was resigned. Bitter. "Merry Christmas."

The past crowded in despite Regan's attempts to keep it at bay. She shook it off. "Yeah."

Wickham doffed his camouflaged cap as they headed for the slider. Though his bald scalp was exposed to the winter air, he appeared not to notice. She couldn't seem to feel the cold either. Nor did the medic.

The husband was still staring at his hands, shaking.

Regan exchanged a knowing frown with Wickham as she reached for her handcuffs. Two strides later, the distinctive whine of a cardiac defibrillator charging filled the night.

And then, "Clear!"

A dull thud followed.

The shocks had begun. Even if Danielle made it, there was no hope