Kissed Blind (Hot Pursuit #2)(86)

Vance and Cici appeared on the stage kneeling next to Oliver. Vance turned him on his back, and I was there in seconds. Oliver’s coloring was awful, and his breathing shallow and labored. Vance had his ear to his chest and two fingers on his neck feeling for a pulse.

“Someone call an ambulance!” I looked off-stage, and a man held one hand in the air and the other held a phone to his ear.

“Have they?” Vance looked at me.

I nodded.

“He’s having a hard time breathing. We need to get him off stage.” Vance placed his hands under Oliver’s shoulders.

“Oli! Oli!” Camille said on her knees next to him, lightly smacking his cheeks. “Look at me, darling. What’s wrong?”

Oliver released his first groans followed by a horrible gurgling noise.

“Get him out of here,” Camille uttered. “No one needs to see him like this.”

Vance and another robust man carried him off stage. Camille followed closely behind and stopped to say something to the emcee along the way.

The emcee stepped up to the microphone and addressed the crowd. “Please, everyone, remain calm. Oliver needs a little fresh air. Tonight is a celebration, so please, celebrate.” She walked off to where they’d laid Oliver.

We all surrounded him, and the deep, wet gurgling sound started again.

“Is he choking?” I bent down next to him. “Turn him on his side.”

No sooner had I uttered the words had Oliver began to froth from his mouth and cough.

“Where is that damn ambulance?” Camille covered her eyes and held back tears.

Someone had thrown me a towel, and I held it to Oliver’s lips. “Can you hear me? Oliver, open your eyes.”

Oliver’s lids opened a crack, and his eyes rolled back in his head. He began convulsing.





Twenty-Nine





A team of doctors and nurses surrounded Oliver in the emergency room, poking, prodding, and hooking him up to more machines than any human should ever have to be connected to. His blood pressure and pulse had dropped to a heart-stopping low. I’d heard a variety of terms ranging from dilated pupils, cardiac dysrhythmia, and partial paralysis. None of them sounded like good prognoses. They pumped him full of various medicines, and by some miracle stabilized him. Oliver was taken to a private wing in the hospital. How could he have been fine one minute and the next not?

One of the nurses had come out of his room and said he’d regained consciousness, and normally that would have been a good sign, but he was hallucinating and running a fever. It seemed similar to the illness he’d come down with in Cincinnati, although this was, without a doubt, more severe than that had been. The hospital ran a slew of tests and a full toxicology report. Being in Hollywood, I assumed they’d thought a certain designer drug was the culprit, and for all I knew, it was possible.

After a long wait, the doctor walked into the waiting room with bronzed hands crossed in front of his crisp white lab coat. “Mrs. Pierce, Oliver is beginning to come around. He’s becoming more lucid and—”

She hopped out of her seat. “He-he is?”

“Yes, but he’s not out of the woods yet. He requested to speak with you.”

She took two steps before the doctor stopped her. “Actually, he’d like you two to join her as well.” He pointed to Vance and me.

Vance and I looked at each other with furrowed brows, shrugged, and stood.

“Whatever he wants,” I added.

“What about me?” Cici asked.

“Why don’t you release a statement to the media and tell them Oliver is coming around, but we don’t know much else. I’m sure they’re chomping at the bit by now,” Camille said.

“Sure.” Despite her chipper tone and broad smile, Cici left with rounded shoulders.

Camille knocked on Oliver’s door before entering. We found Oliver supine in his bed, looking pale and slightly green. He watched us enter the room. His eyes were sunken in and rimmed in red. Vance and I stayed at the foot of his bed.

“Darling.” Camille sat at his side and attempted to put his hand in hers, but he pulled away. “Darling? What’s wrong?”

“I know.” His voice was cold as steel.

“You know what?” Her chin tilted down as she shrank back.

“The bourbon. I know you poisoned me and probably have been poisoning me.”

Vance and I looked at each other with wide eyes. I went through the catalog of events over the past weeks and everything I’d heard in the media in recent months regarding his health.

She laughed heartily and placed her hand over her abdomen. “That’s absurd! Totally ridiculous.”

“My toxicology report came back. It could have only been you Camille. All these months where I’ve suddenly become ill. I’ve been to doctor after doctor and thought it was just a string of bad luck combined with exhaustion, but it’s been you all along, hasn’t it?”

“I find it rather telling that you’re so quick to accuse me, of all people, the one who constantly speaks your praise. Have you ever thought to look at that doe-eyed assistant of yours? I bet she tries to sneak strawberries into my food like she did with that smoothie she accidentally forgot to throw away. She just wants to be the next Mrs. Pierce.”