A Desperate Silence (Dr. Sylvia Strange Book 3) (33 page)

     
Mesa Verde's resident security—separate from Khalsa—was an elderly man who spent most of his time prowling the rear exit of the building.

     
When the two men reached the end of the hall, Khalsa paused at the door to the locked ward. Renzo knew that behind this metal-and-glass barrier he would find Serena. He detected a slight increase in his heartbeat—that was all. He prodded his hostage with gunmetal.

     
To Khalsa, the smack of the gun echoed in his ear like an explosion. The key ring was clutched in his trembling hands, and when he didn't recognize the metal shapes he suffered a wave of nausea. The sickness passed, and then he remembered that this door opened with a punch-pad code. He entered the code and pushed open the heavy door. Both men entered the locked ward.

     
As Renzo approached Room 21, he felt the security guard slow.

     
Renzo spoke hoarsely. "Open the door."

     
"I don't have the key." Khalsa shook his head, lying badly.

     
"Open the fucking door." Renzo's voice dropped to a lethal whisper.

     
The guard's fingers shifted over the ring of keys. Before he had a chance to speak, Renzo fired the .22. The explosion, muffled by the silencer, sounded like a very noisily popped top on a beer can. The guard dropped. Renzo stepped over him, stared down. The bullet's exit trajectory had done severe damage to the guard's face. Blood pooled under the dying man's head.

     
Renzo dragged the body away from the door to Room 21. The effort awakened new pain in his injured arm. He tried several keys before he found the correct master. Fortunately, the facility hadn't switched over fully to punch pads; he'd still be struggling to find the code. He opened the door. The child was asleep on the bed.

     
Renzo kept his eye on her sleeping form as he dragged Khalsa's body into the room. Dead, the man seemed to have gained twice his living mass. A few feet inside the room, Renzo released his grip.

     
The child had twisted her body and the sheet into knots. Street lights and shadow added to the confusing effect. Renzo crossed the space in three strides, grabbed bedding—but nothing more.

     
There was a soft rustling noise, like the sound of nesting mice. Renzo whirled around just as a shadow darted across the room toward the open doorway. He followed.

     
He stepped out of the darkened room, his eyes reacting to the lighted hallway. If he was stunned by the soft glow of fluorescence, the child must be blinded. She hurled her body down the hall toward the ward's exit door. She was barefoot, clad in green pajamas. Her dark hair was loose, flying over her shoulders as she ran.

     
She slammed herself against the locked door. Her small body vibrated, her ribs expanding with quickened breath. She responded to the sound of Renzo's approaching footfalls by stiffening. When he had almost reached her, she turned.

     
Something fell from her fingers and skidded a few feet across the slick tile—a child's coloring book. The cover was made of cracked blue vinyl decorated with cartoon dogs. Renzo recognized it instantly. Amado Fortuna's first efforts at record keeping.

     
Tuna's Diary
.

     
Renzo bent down to retrieve the small book. He kept his eyes on the child.

     
She stared back at him with the face of a little goddess. Silent. Stunned. Huge eyes filled with sorrow and reproach. And fear. There was so much fear, Renzo wondered how she was still able to stand. Abruptly her features went slack, and she seemed to be focused on some floating point above Renzo's head. She was staring that way, trancelike, when he reached for her. His hands closed around her body; he was immediately surprised by how light she felt. He cut off the blood supply to her brain, and she went limp in his arms.

     
Then he pressed the snout of the .22 caliber to the back of her skull, and his trigger finger began to contract, slowly, steadily.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

D
IANA
R
OSS WAS
belting out "Stop! In the Name of Love" when Sylvia stood abruptly.

     
Peggy looked startled. "What's wrong?"

     
"This time I
know
I heard something." Sylvia tossed the half-empty cup in the trash can and headed for the door of the staff lounge. As she strode along the hallway toward the main lobby, she told herself she was overreacting. But hell, there was no law against harmless compulsive behavior.

     
As she approached the lobby, she heard the front door swing closed. The sound was wrong—there was almost no traffic this time of night. She broke into a half run, reaching the reception area just in time to see a shadowy shape disappearing down the lighted hospital walkway, then cutting across the lawn.

     
Sylvia pushed open the door and stepped outside. There was no one in sight, but she heard the soft sounds of a car door opening. She turned, staring across the lawn past the parking area. The big American car was parked beyond the full arc of a streetlight's glow; but Sylvia saw the man, and she recognized Serena as he shoved the child's limp body into the vehicle's backseat.

S
HE CALLED OUT
, but the man was already behind the wheel. Her voice faded on the air just as the engine caught with a deep rumble. The Cadillac pulled away from the curb, and Sylvia turned on her heel and raced back to the hospital.

     
The door had locked behind her. She smacked her palm hard against the glass, yelling for help. Her eyes saw a dark smear marring the thick pane—her brain registered
blood
. Through the door, she could see Peggy half running into the lobby. The nurse's face froze in alarm when she saw Sylvia pounding her fist against glass. Within seconds Peggy had the door open. "What's wrong?"

     
Sylvia lunged into the lobby shouting out commands: "Call nine-one-one, tell them there's been a kidnapping—the child in Room Twenty-one!"

     
Peggy moved back to the admissions counter just as Theo's head appeared above the desktop—eyes glazed, skin swollen from sleep. The nurse slapped him hard across the face—either to shock him into a fully alert state or to punish him because the child was gone.

     
Theo stumbled out of his chair, a blank look on his face, puzzlement in his eyes, and he bumped into Sylvia. She grabbed him by the T-shirt and jerked him hard. She spit out the question—"Did you see anyone?"

     
When Theo shook his head dully, Sylvia directed her final words to Peggy. "Tell Dispatch—Serena was taken by an adult male. I'm going to follow the car—it's a Cadillac or an Oldsmobile, dark color, new."

     
She shoved Theo backward and yanked car keys from her pocket. "Theo, find out what happened to Khalsa.
Now!
"

     
The last view Sylvia had of the hospital was of Peggy talking into the phone. Then the psychologist was running across the grass toward Matt's battered pickup.

S
HE APOLOGIZED SILENTLY
to Matt as she jammed the standard shift into reverse. There was the harsh groan of tortured gears. She backed out of the parking place, rammed the stick into first, then revved out of the lot. She didn't have to worry about keeping distance between vehicles; the other car had disappeared. She prayed he would head east toward the main thoroughfare, St. Francis Drive. She pressed down on the gas, hurtling along the residential streets. Her hands were shaking on the wheel. Automatically, she reached for her cell phone. It was in her briefcase—the one she'd left in Rosie's Camaro.
Fuck
.

     
As she approached the blinking lights of the St. Francis intersection, she saw taillights turning right—south—
yes!
Sylvia hunkered down in the seat and guided Matt's pickup in the same direction. A station wagon cut into the lane in front of her, and she hit the brakes too fast. The pickup stuttered, then smoothed out She didn't want to get too close to the kidnapper's car. She could see now it was a Cadillac.

     
The car was moving as if the driver didn't know anyone was following. Get too close, he'd see her—or
feel
her on his tail. She knew instinctively he wouldn't hesitate to kill the child.

     
Or maybe Serena was already dead.

     
Sylvia stared at the upcoming traffic signal at St. Francis Drive and Cerrillos Road. The Cadillac passed through the intersection just as the light danced blearily from green to yellow to red. She braked to a stop, narrowly avoiding a collision with a single car that was crossing the intersection. She watched its slow progress from the idling pickup; the engine missed, the vehicle vibrated, and she could see smoke trailing behind the Ford. She didn't wait for the light to turn green—she checked lanes and then crept on through the intersection.

     
Now she passed state buildings, parks, office complexes. She knew he would continue to the interstate. It was less than a minute away. There was one more gas station before the highway entrance ramp. Ahead, the station's lights were glowing like fluorescent islands in a dark urban sea.

     
If she pulled off, could she convince a clerk to notify state police? She imagined the conversation—urgent shorthand, minus subtlety. "
Call nine-one-one, tell Dispatch it's about the child who was kidnapped from Mesa Verde Hospital. Tell them the kidnapper's headed for the interstate
."

     
In her mind, the gas-station attendant stared back at her dumbly. Her imagined words were gobbledygook. She could make the call herself—did she have a quarter? She wasn't close enough to read the license plate on the Cadillac.

     
A quarter mile ahead, the dark vehicle was accelerating—past the gas station. Her foot refused to ease up on the accelerator. The Cadillac—and Serena—were moving quickly out of reach.

     
She couldn't risk stopping. If she lost him, she lost the child. From the corner of her eye, she saw the Shell station pass in a blur of lights. Then there was the darkness of a high-desert evening at the edge of civilization.

     
She guided the old pickup onto the interstate, following.

     
He was headed north, not south.

T
ONIGHT—EXCLUDING THIS
brief cut over to Highway 285—Renzo Santos would stay off the main highways. While 1-25 dove down in a semistraight line all the way to Mexico, cops would be swarming the interstate. He figured he had thirty minutes maximum before the security guard's body—and the child's absence—were discovered. Maybe the cops had already been alerted. The trip from Santa Fe to the Mexican border took almost five hours on the fastest roads. His plan meant traveling on two-lanes, gravel, even dirt; back roads would take longer, but they had an advantage—he would make it to the border. He kept one eye on the exit signs as he followed the interstate toward the Lamy turnoff.

     
The child was in the backseat under a blanket. If they were stopped by the highway patrol, she was just a sleeping kid.

     
He glanced at his wrist—his gaze flicked to the blood staining his glove—then steadied on the watch face: 12:50
A.M
. Seven minutes later, he eased the Cadillac off the highway at the exit to Lamy. This was the same road he had followed days before when he was pursuing the shrink and the child. But he would not stop again at the godforsaken spot where Paco died, where he had been attacked by
lobo loco
.

     
Renzo had finally cornered his prey. It was his job to find targets—to kill them if necessary—or to make them give information and then leave them dead.

     
This time, his prey had proved a surprisingly worthy opponent. Renzo grunted at the thought of the child's efforts at evasion and resistance—her final fight. He felt something that might just be grudging admiration. She would stay alive—as long as she was useful as his hostage.

     
All this time, she'd possessed the one thing that could destroy Tuna—and others as well. But she had delivered the diary straight into his hands.

     
Renzo pressed one palm against the pocket of his jacket. He felt the small bulge of the book.

     
He'd known the bookkeeper for years, but only days ago had Renzo discovered Paco's secret home in Anapra. The home where the girl had been hidden away for a decade.

     
Renzo's thoughts slid back to a hot, sultry afternoon ten years earlier. The first part of the journey was clearest in his mind—the shocking discovery that Elena had fled with the baby. She had run back to Cash, deserting Renzo even after his anguished confession, his vow to change his life for her, his declaration of devotion.

     
The shame still burned in Renzo's gut. It had driven him north after Elena. He had wanted to travel alone, but Amado had insisted that Paco go along: "My cousin needs to prove his loyalty to me. Let him get blood on his hands. Let him learn he can't afford a heart."

     
For three hundred miles—and ten years—Paco had remained silent. The bookkeeper had never spoken of that day. But he had watched as Renzo injected liquid courage into his own veins. And he had witnessed what Renzo knew only as a fractured memory of blood, rage, and murder—and, finally, when it was all over—a dark sleep that lasted two days and nights until he regained consciousness.

     
Renzo was not aware that his lids had slid down over his yellowed eyeballs—but he blinked—twice.

     
"
Let him get blood on his hands. Let him learn he can't afford a heart
."