Jana folded her hands into a praying pose. “I know I could, but I don’t want another artist. I want you to do it. I’ve loved your art since the first time I saw some of your designs online. I even printed them off and have them on my walls.”
If I’d been Ahanti, I might have given in, but I’d always been a soft touch.
“Nikki,” Ahanti’s voice had a struggling-to-breathe quality to it. “I need help.”
My first thought was that Terrance had come back with a knife. Or that she was about to give in to Jana’s request, and she didn’t want to.
Then I turned to face her.
She had one hand up to her chest. “I feel funny. I need to—”
She sank to the ground.
A jolt shot through my chest, and I dropped to my knees hard, reaching for her to keep her head from hitting the pavement if she passed out. Pain careened through my knee caps.
Jana stared down at us, both hands pressed to her mouth.
“Call 911,” I said. It actually might have been more like a bark, but I had bigger things to worry about than hurting her feelings.
I helped Ahanti lean back into me. Her skin was stickier than it should have been, even given the summer heat. We’d just stepped out of the air conditioning. “What’s going on? Talk to me.”
She took so long to answer that I wasn’t even sure she was still conscious. “My hands. Numb. And chest hurts. Can’t catch my breath.”
She was too young and fit for a heart attack. Could someone have poisoned her?
Mentally I ran through everything she’d touched since I joined her. I’d touched all of it as well except for her tap, and someone couldn’t have poisoned a tap. But we hadn’t had breakfast or lunch together. If she’d eaten or drank anything, her stalker might have been able to sneak something into her food. For all we knew, her stalker was the takeout guy, and she’d gone back to the same place.
No, that couldn’t be it. Her stalker wouldn’t try to kill her without first attempting to make contact. In his fantasy world, he loved her and she belonged with him. Ahanti hadn’t yet rejected him.
Then what was going on? And where was the stinking ambulance? If only Mark were here, he’d know the best way to stabilize her until the paramedics arrived. “Help’s coming.”
I looked up at Jana for confirmation. She still had the phone to her ear, talking to the dispatcher, obviously trying to describe what was happening. She nodded.
They were on the way, but as hard as I strained, I didn’t hear sirens. I had to do something. “Try to take deep breaths with me.”
16
Mark and Geoff had met up with me at the hospital by the time the doctor came to speak with me.
His gaze touched on the two men, and an expression that looked suspiciously like relief flashed across his face. The paranoid part of me screamed that she’d died and he was worried I’d faint when he told me. The more rational side knew it was more likely because I’d been spouting theories about poisons as soon as we reached the hospital in the ambulance. I hadn’t been able to come up with any other plausible explanation for her collapse.
The doctor shook hands and reintroduced himself. He stayed standing, which seemed like a good sign. Surely if he’d had bad news that would require a long explanation, he would have taken a seat alongside us.
“She’s going to be fine. All the tests on her heart came back clear. It looks like this was a simple panic attack, so I’ve given her something to calm her down. You can go in to see her now if you’d like. We’ll be keeping her overnight just in case.”
There was nothing simple about it, I wanted to blurt out. I’d had mild to moderate anxiety attacks before, but I’d never seen or experienced anything like this.
But I didn’t say any of that. Geoff already looked on the verge of a panic attack himself. Instead I thanked the doctor and followed Geoff and Mark into her room.
Ahanti wore the same drowsy expression she’d had when I brought her home from the dentist after she had her wisdom teeth out. That was back when she and Geoff were only newly dating and she hadn’t wanted him to see her drooling on herself.
Geoff sank into the chair next to her bed and held her hand, but Ahanti reached out her other hand to me.
“I’m so sorry. I feel like an idiot.”
I could remind her about the half-dozen much stupider things I’d done intentionally just in the past year. She’d had no control over this. “It wasn’t your fault. There’s no reason to feel embarrassed. Especially with all the stress you’ve been under.”
She shook her head against the pillow. “It was seeing Jana there when she shouldn’t have known where I live. I know she can’t be my stalker. She’s a woman, and she would have been a kid when this all started. But I started thinking that maybe she was and how I couldn’t trust anyone.” She shook her head again. “It was too much, and then I couldn’t breathe.”
It probably also wouldn’t serve any purpose to tell her that her stalker could be a woman. We had no solid proof it was a man. A woman could be romantically obsessed with her as easily as a man could.
But I did agree that Jana wasn’t a suspect.
Tears slid down Ahanti’s cheeks. “I can’t live like this.”
Geoff leaned over, and she sobbed into his chest. Tears pressed against the back of my eyes, but I wouldn’t join her. I couldn’t.
Clearly this couldn’t keep going on the way it had been. The police were investigating Cary’s murder, but there was no telling how long that would take.
The very least I could do was make sure her apartment was secure—and camera-free—before she left the hospital. Eddie meant well, but he’d admitted that he hadn’t been working in his field long. We needed the very best.
That meant calling my parents.
According to Mark, my mom planned to head to the gym when they parted. Her phone went straight to voicemail.
“Do you know what gym your mom goes to?” Mark asked as we sat in the car in the hospital parking lot. “We could try to track her down.”
