Weekend Warriors (Sisterhood #1)(3)

It couldn’t be. She wanted to shout, to scream, to stamp her feet. Instead, she knuckled her eyes and stifled her sobs.

“She’ll be all right, won’t she Nikki? Broken bones heal. She was just knocked unconscious. Tell me she’ll be all right. Please, tell me that. Please, Nikki.”

The lump in Nikki’s throat was so large she thought she would choke. She tried not to look at the still body, tried not to see them straighten out Barbara’s arms and legs. When they lifted her onto the stretcher, she closed her eyes. She thought she would lose it when the young woman with the long curly hair pulled a sheet up over her best friend’s face. Not Barbara. Not her best friend in the whole world. Not the girl she played with in a sandbox, gone to kindergarten with. Not the girl she’d gone through high school, college and law school with. She was going to be her maid of honor, babysit her baby. How could she be dead? “I saw her look both ways before she stepped onto the curb. She had a clear path to cross the street,” she mumbled.

“Nikki, should we ride in the ambulance with Barbara? Will they let us?” Myra asked tearfully.

She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know what the sheet means. How was she going to tell Myra her daughter was dead?

The ambulance doors closed. It drove off. The siren silent.

“It’s too late. They left. You’ll have to drive, Nikki. They’ll need all sorts of information when they admit her to the hospital. I want to be there. Barbara needs to know I’m there. She needs to know her mother is there. Can we go now, Nikki?” Myra pleaded.

“Ma’am?”

“Yes, officer,” Nikki said. She loosened her hold on Myra’s shoulders.

His voice was not unkind. He was too young to be this kind. She could see the compassion on his face.

“I need to take a statement. You are…”

“Nicole Quinn. This is Myra Rutledge. She’s the mother…” She almost said, “of the deceased,” but bit her tongue in time.

“Officer, can we do this later?” Myra interjected. “I have to get to the hospital. There will be so much paperwork to take care of. Do you know which hospital they took my daughter to? Was it George Washington or Georgetown Hospital?” Myra begged. Tears rolled down her wrinkled cheeks.

Nikki looked away. She knew she was being cowardly, but there was just no way she could get the words past her lips to tell Myra her only daughter was dead. She watched as police officers dispersed the crowd of onlookers until only the three couples remained. Where was the car that hit Barbara? Did they take it away already? Where was the driver? She wanted to voice the questions aloud but remained silent because of Myra.

Nikki watched as the young officer steeled himself for what he had to do. He worked his thin neck around the starched collar of his shirt, cleared his throat once, and then again. “Ma’am, your daughter was taken to the morgue at George Washington Hospital. There’s no hurry on the paperwork. I can have one of the officers take you to the hospital if you like. I’m…I’m sorry for your loss, ma’am.”

Myra’s scream was primal as she slipped to the ground. The young cop dropped to his knees. “I thought she knew. I didn’t…Jesus…”

“We need to get her to a doctor right away. Will you stay with her for a minute, officer? I need to get my cell phone out of the car to make some calls.” Her first call was to Myra’s doctor and then she called Charles. Both promised to meet her at the emergency entrance to GW Hospital.

When she returned, Myra was sitting up, supported by the young officer. She looked dazed and her speech was incoherent. “She doesn’t weigh much. I can easily carry her to the cruiser,” the officer said. Nikki nodded gratefully.

“Can you tell me what happened, officer? Did you get the car that hit Barbara? Those couples standing over there must have seen everything. We even saw it from the restaurant window. Did they get the license plate number? I saw a dark car, but it came out of nowhere. She had a clear path to cross the street. He must have peeled away from the curb at ninety miles an hour.”

“I ran the license plate one of the couples gave us, but it isn’t going to do any good.”

“Why is that?” Nikki rubbed at her temples as a hammer pounded away inside her head.

“Because it was a diplomat’s car. That means the driver has diplomatic immunity, ma’am.”

Nikki’s knees buckled. The young cop reached out to steady her.

“That means he can’t be prosecuted,” Nikki said in a choked voice.

“Yes, ma’am, that’s exactly what it means.”





Chapter One


Sixteen months later



It was dusk when Nikki Quinn stopped her cobalt-blue BMW in front of the massive iron gates of Myra Rutledge’s McLean estate. She pressed the remote control attached to the visor and waited for the lumbering gates to slide open. She knew Charles was watching her on the closed-circuit television screen. The security here at the estate was sophisticated, high-tech, impregnable. The only thing missing was concertina wire along the top of the electrified fence.

Nikki sailed up the half mile of cobblestones to the driveway that led around to the back of the McLean mansion. When she was younger, she and Barbara referred to the house as Myra’s Fortress. She’d loved growing up here, loved riding across the fields on Barbara’s horse Starlite, loved playing with Barbara in the tunnels underneath the old house that had once been used to aid runaway slaves.