Magic Line by Elizabeth Gunn

it, deal with it, move on.
    Easy for you to say. Only it wasn’t – Delaney might take heat for her error in judgment; he was responsible for the job his crew turned in. Damn. Driving toward the hospital, her gut burned with shame. I should never have let that Blake kid rush me. One part of her mind was already playing the scene over, being shrewd Sarah Burke this time, saying, Wait a minute , I need to see his underwear and get those boots off before you take him away . Making everybody wait while she patted every inch of that little sneak down, stripped him bare. Found his weapon – maybe even – is it possible that dirty little sneak got away with a pile of money too?
    No. I’d have felt—
    Finally – the hospital. Need a parking spot close to the . . . there’s one.
    She badged the desk attendant, said she needed to speak to Officer Fitzgerald, asked for his room number and met the frozen indifference of a male clerk so young he thought thirty-five-year-old women were edging into their quaint phase.
    â€˜Just have a seat there, Detective,’ he said, sliding a glance past her ear. ‘I’ll see if he can have visitors.’ Sarah fixed him in a stolid stare and stood where she was, rehearsing the two quick stages by which her request would turn insistent and then threatening if this pushy upstart decided to make her wait.
    Luckily he was just showing his chops, not really looking for a fight. He showed a lot more respect after he got an instant OK from the guard upstairs. She squeezed into an almost-full elevator and got an aide to help her negotiate the maze upstairs.
    Fitzgerald was propped up on pillows with a big bandage on his broken nose. He had sedative in him and was getting glassy-eyed, but rallied when she asked if he could talk.
    â€˜Oh, shur.’ He sounded like the first day of a massive head cold. ‘Lucky to hab a dose to worry aboud.’ He looked sheepish. ‘Feel so dumb ledden that li’l shit ged the jump on me.’
    â€˜Join the club, John,’ Sarah said. ‘He fooled me, too.’
    â€˜You can call me Fitz – most people do.’
    â€˜OK, Fitz. I won’t ask you to smile.’ She took his picture and showed him she was pushing the start button on her recorder. He wasn’t startled. Street cops recorded almost everything they did now, wary of a public that could go from please-help-me to sue-your-ass in a blink. ‘Start at the beginning, will you?’ she asked him. ‘You left in the ambulance with the prisoner and the rescue crew—’
    Fitzgerald touched his rapidly darkening eye bruises and winced. ‘Yeah, the driver was floor-boarding it, we had this supposedly dying man on board. Patient’s eyes were closed, he wasn’t breathing that I could see. The paramedic, his name was Blake, was setting up the IV and having trouble because the vehicle sways a lot. He’s kind of a perfectionist, I guess, seemed very anxious to get everything right.’
    â€˜Got kind of a high-stress job, I guess,’ Sarah said.
    â€˜He should try mine. Anyway, he said help me, hold his arm like this so I can get the needle in – and I leaned over the gurney. I’m hanging onto the overhead support with one hand, see, we both are, because we’re screaming around corners on one wheel . . . then like lightning, that supposedly dead guy hit me in the face with something hard.’
    â€˜How? We had him strapped on that gurney—’
    â€˜I know. And we covered him with a blanket, but Blake had pulled both his arms out, looking for the best vein for an IV . . . the weird thing is, that victim had blood all over him, he looked completely wasted, but when he went into action, holy shit he was strong. He threw me right across that gurney into Blake. Knocked him down, and he and I got wedged together in that tiny space with me on top, bleeding on him like a stuck pig from my broken