Page 21 of The Complete Truth Duet
The carpet. Right. Because, to a dying woman, that mattered. I didn’t have time to question him.
Penn became a man on a mission.
Shoving me out of the way, he tugged his shirt over his head, and then, ripping it at the seam, he tore it into two long strips. With fast but precise movements, he tightly tied off the exposed slash on her wrist. Then he moved to her other arm, doing the same.
With nothing to distract my mind, reality crashed over me. Tears stung my eyes as I watched him check for a pulse and then listen to see if she was breathing, but I refused them their dire escape.
“What did you do?” I whispered to the beautiful woman dying on the couch. As messed up as it was, I was angry at her.
For not talking to me sooner.
For not letting me help.
For…leaving me there.
Angela was a first-floor girl through and through. She had little to no ambition to go back to school or get out of the life. She told me often how much she liked her job. Easy money, she’d said. It wasn’t my favorite rationale, but it was one most of the lifers shared. But Angela—she was one of true good eggs in this business. She should have been some middle-aged man’s trophy wife, sitting on a yacht, drinking a martini, not lying on that dingy couch, life seeping from her veins.
I told myself that it wasn’t my fault, yet I still felt undeniably responsible.
Just like when I’d lost Nic.
The pain cut through me so deep that it threatened to take out my knees.
“Cora!” Penn called, snapping my attention up to his. “Lift her arm. Hold it above her heart. And pressure. Lots of fucking pressure.” His face was tight with the same desperation that was shredding me. Even in the throes of such heartbreaking chaos, it honestly puzzled me.
To some, a man helping a dying woman was the obvious expectation.
But that wasn’t the way our lives worked.
To most, we were nothing but trash.
A body to use.
A soul to control.
An object to ruin.
But that wasn’t the way he was looking at her.
Or treating her.
Or treating me.
Rather, he was holding her arms above her head as blood covered his hands and smeared over his chest, regarding her like a person and not just a random prostitute who had finally gotten what she deserved.
I could have cried from that small generosity alone.
I didn’t. I got to work.
Clutching one wrist to my chest, I leaned forward, wrapping my hand around the fabric he’d tied, and pinned it against the back of the sofa.
Penn started CPR, but if she had any hopes of making it, she needed more help than we could ever give her.
“River!” I yelled. “Call Marcos!”
She gasped in the distance.
“It’s okay,” I soothed. I looked at her over my shoulder. “He knows what to do. He’ll call Larry just like last time. It’s gonna be okay.”
She stared at me, pleading and begging with tears streaming down her pink cheeks.
God, she was scared.
But so was I.
“I’ll deal with Marcos,” I assured.
She shook her head and begged, “Cora, no.”
“River. Please. I can’t let her die.” I swallowed hard. “We can’t let her die. This is Angela, sweetie. We owe her this much.”
Her face crumbled, and I wished like hell I could take it all away, but I could only help one person at a time.
“Now. Go,” I clipped.
Thankfully, she took off.
For what felt like a century, Penn relentlessly worked on Angela. Sweat poured from his forehead as he alternated between rescue breathing and chest compressions.
He never slowed.
He never gave up.
As far as I could tell, he never even considered it.
Thirty minutes later, an ambulance arrived.
Angela was already dead.
Cora
She wasn’t the first person I’d lost.
But Angela? She was the first one I’d ever watched die.
That is if you didn’t include Nic.
But as I sat in my bedroom with the door locked, a pillow held to my face, blood crusted on my skin, dry heaves acting as the welcoming committee for my sobs, he was all I could think of.
“Cora,” River called from the other side of the door. “The cops want to talk to you. Oh…and, uh, Drew and Penn are here too.”
I blew out a controlled breath and willed away the tremors in my voice. “I’ll be right out. I’m just”—I glanced at my blood-soaked shirt and gagged—“Changing clothes.”
“Okay. I’ll tell ’em.”
She couldn’t see me, but she was still too close for me to reveal any weakness. I waited until her footsteps disappeared down the hall before I stood up on newborn-giraffe legs.
“You can do this,” I whispered to myself. It wasn’t a pep talk. It was a direct order from my mind to my nervous system. “Get it together,” I murmured, peeling my bra off and then stepping out of my pants. I wasn’t sure what to put on. Whatever it was, I’d have to burn the very next day.
