Bones Don't Lie (Morgan Dane #3)(55)

But even as the thought passed through his mind, he rejected it. His mother showered in the morning. Jennifer Kruger didn’t just decide to alter her personal routine on a whim.

He knocked on the door. “Mom, it’s Lance. Open the door.”

He curled his knuckles and banged again, harder. Nothing.

“I’m coming in!” he shouted. Sweat dampened the back of his shirt.

The door was locked. He ran his hand along the top of the doorframe, where the simple, cylindrical interior door keys had been kept since he was a boy. He found the key and used it to pop the push-button lock. The door opened.

The bedroom was empty.

With Sharp close on his heels, Lance moved quickly across the carpet to the closed door of the master bathroom. He banged just once, then tried the door. The knob didn’t give. He unlocked the door and pushed. The door cracked a few inches and stopped, something was blocking it.

“Mom!” Lance pushed against the door enough to get his head inside.

Not something. His mother.

She lay on the floor, curled in a fetal position, her legs on the bathmat, her torso and face on the tile. Her face was turned away from him, but her body was still and her skin matched the bone-colored tiles.

He froze for half of a second, his heart stuttering, his gaze on her ribcage watching for respirations, but he saw none.

She couldn’t be dead. She couldn’t.

Sharp called 911 while Lance muscled the door open enough to squeeze through sideways. Dropping to one knee, he rested two shaking fingers on his mother’s neck. Her pulse beat in a weak rhythm against his fingertips, and he caught the faint movement of her ribs as she took a shallow breath.

Relief rushed through him like a fighter jet. “She’s alive.”

Sharp gave the dispatcher the address and requested paramedics and an ambulance, then he climbed over her and crouched on the other side of her body in the small bathroom. Lance took her pulse and counted her respirations before moving her legs and opening the door all the way. Grabbing the blanket from her bed, he draped it over her.

“Maybe she fell and hit her head.” Sharp ran a gentle hand over her scalp. “I don’t feel any bumps or blood, but that doesn’t mean much.”

Lance stood and scanned the bathroom. When he’d first rushed in, he’d only seen her body. Now his gaze locked on to the sink and the two orange prescription bottles in the white bowl.

Both open. Both empty.

No!

She wouldn’t.

His gaze tracked back to his mother’s face.

Sharp had followed Lance’s gaze. He was tough, but his face paled as he took in the empty bottles.

Lance dropped to his knees. “Oh, Mom.” He bowed his head and put a hand on her forehead, then brushed a lock of hair away from her face. She didn’t react. Her eyelids didn’t even flutter. “I didn’t see this coming.”

Sharp grabbed his arm. “This is not. Your. Fault.”

“I know.” Lance took her hand in one of his. Her fingers were cold. He tugged the blanket over her shoulders, then checked her pulse and respirations again. “She seemed all right when I left her earlier. How could I have completely missed the signs? I was just here a few hours ago.”

“She’s breathing,” Sharp said. “Don’t count her out.”

Her heart rate was the same, but her respirations had slowed. He counted her breaths and kept his fingers on her pulse point, ready to start CPR the instant her breathing ceased or her heart stopped beating.

Time seemed to tick by in slow motion.

Even with his mother’s long and troubled history, he still couldn’t believe she’d try to kill herself.

Ten minutes later, sirens approached. Lance went to the door and let the paramedics in. They rushed the gurney into the bedroom and left it just outside the bathroom while they assessed his mother. Lance stood outside the door, hands curled into frustrated fists at his sides.

Sharp put his hand on Lance’s shoulder, pulling him backward. “Give them some room.”

The medics took her vital signs and started an IV, their rapid efficiency projecting the severity of the situation. One injected something into the IV line.

Sharp scrubbed a hand across the top of his head. Disbelief creased his face. “This doesn’t seem like your mom. Even when she’s been self-destructive, she’s never been suicidal. In fact, when her anxiety takes over, she isn’t thinking clearly enough to do anything except crawl into a dark place.”

“I don’t know what to think,” Lance said.

“Exactly what did she take?” one of the paramedics asked.

“The bottles are in the sink,” Lance said. “One’s for depression. She takes the other for anxiety and panic attacks. I had just refilled them last week so the bottles were nearly full. The anxiety medication is relatively new.”

Once, she took several more medications, but the new drug seemed to take the place of several of her old ones. Lance dropped his head and hooked a hand around the back of his neck.

Sharp frowned. “Are you OK?”

“Yeah.” But Lance didn’t know how he felt. His body was numb. But there was also pain. Pain buried so deep in his heart, it was going to take a scalpel to carve it out.

“Respiratory depression.” A paramedic called out. “We’re going to intubate her.”