Free In the Land of Milk and Honey by Jane Jensen

Harris and Hernandez, Lancaster Police. We have some questions for Amber Kruger. Is she available?”
    The guy looked surprised. “She, um, rents the apartment upstairs. I’ll go knock.”
    We stepped into the hallway while the guy took a set of stairs two at a time. The old row house had been converted into two apartments—one up and one down. The door to the downstairs apartment was slightly cracked open, and we could hear the faint sounds of a TV. The staircase turned so we couldn’t see the top of it, but I heard knocking.
    â€œAmber? There’re some people here to see you.” Pause. “Amber?” He knocked again.
    The guy came back down looking regretful. “She’s not answering.” He went to the front door and opened it, peeked out. “Her truck is here. Maybe she walked a few blocks to a restaurant or something, but I’d be surprised. She sounded pretty sick last night.”
    I felt the hair on the back of my neck prickle. “Sick? How do you know that, Mr. . . .”
    â€œNick. Nick Smith. Well, my wife and I heard her in the night. Her bathroom is right over ours. It sounded like she was in a bad way, so my wife went upstairs and checked on her. But Amber just wanted to go back to sleep.”
    â€œHave you seen Amber today?”
    â€œNo, but my wife and I both work. What’s this about?” Nick looked uneasy.
    â€œYou have a key to that apartment, bro?” Hernandez asked him with a voice like velvet over a sledgehammer.
    â€œUm . . . yeah. Sure. We swapped in case . . . you know. Fire or whatever.”
    â€œGet it,” I said.
    â€”
    I instructed Nick to stay in his own apartment while Hernandez and I headed up. Knocking got no response, so I unlocked the door and cracked it open. “Amber? This is the Lancaster Police.”
    Nothing, not a sound. The air in the apartment felt stifling, suffocatingly hot, as if the occupant had turned up the heat hours ago and never turned it down. The heat made the cloying smell of the sickroom worse. I started breathing through my mouth, and Hernandez wrinkled his nose. It wasn’t pleasant, but it didn’t smell like death, thank God. I knew exactly what
that
smelled like.
    â€œAmber?” I stepped farther into the apartment and nodded at Hernandez to go check out the kitchen. I headed for the hall and the bedroom.
    I found Amber Kruger in bed. She was on her side in baby blue pajamas, covers cast off, knees curled up protectively into her chest. Her skin shone yellow-white, like the moon, and therewas a sheen of sweat cast over her features. She looked young and petite with frizzy red-brown hair and freckles. And she lay so heavily on the bed she looked partially sunk through it.
    â€œAmber?” I knelt by the bed and put my fingers to Amber’s throat, dreading to find the flesh stiff and cold. But it was soft and there was a pulse, faint and slow like the final notes of a slow orchestral march. Thank God! As if to confirm the diagnosis of life, a tremor racked through Amber’s body. I had the strangest thought—that Amber was in the crack between life and death and her body was trying to shake her loose one way or the other. She didn’t waken.
    â€œShit.” I pulled out my cell phone and called dispatch. “I need an ambulance right away. And call Lancaster General and have them ready for a critical patient with tremetol poisoning.” I gave Amber’s address. Thankfully, the hospital wasn’t far. As I put the phone in a pocket, Hernandez touched my shoulder.
    â€œShe gone?” he asked quietly.
    â€œNo, but she’s going.” I stood up, ignoring the hand he offered. As a female police officer, I’d learned to never accept any gesture that underlined my femininity, no matter how innocent the intention.
    And now what? I felt useless. If this had been a heart attack or hypothermia, a broken leg or car