Jamison promptly rolled onto his side and curled into the fetal position, still clutching his bloody shards. He began weeping loudly. Blood was smeared on the floor beneath him, in gory, circular swirls.
Lily winced and looked away. It hurt to watch.
“Oh, dear,” the nurse murmured. She tugged his arm. “Come on, Jamison. On your feet. I’ll call Sandy for you.” She looked at Lily. “I’ll find someone to clean this up and be right back for you, OK?”
“Whatever,” Lily said, distracted. “Don’t sweat it. I’ve had worse.”
They watched, transfixed, as the guy shambled from the room, clinging to the nurse’s arm. Shoulders hitching.
Silence hung heavy in the air. Even Rachel had stopped crying, intimidated by the weirdness. Lily blew out a slow breath, squeezing the blood-soaked tissues over her arm. “That was strange,” she said quietly.
Aaro stared at the door through which the nurse had gone. “I’m sorry I let him get so close to you,” he said. “This was my fault.”
She rounded on him, appalled. “Your fault? Have you gone nuts?”
“He cut you.” Aaro’s voice was bleak. “He could have killed you. If he’d meant to. With me, standing there, three feet away!”
“Yeah, but he didn’t! For God’s sake, you guys are all alike! These insanely high standards!”
“Failure is unacceptable,” Aaro said.
“Oh, shut up,” Lily snapped. “Failure is also human, which you still are, more or less, last I checked. So get over it.”
“Excuse me? Miss? You’re up! Come on back!”
Lily looked up. The nurse beckoned her from the medical suite.
“Oh, don’t worry about it,” Lily assured her. “It’s a scratch.”
The nurse rched over with the air of a woman on a mission. “It’s the least we can do.” She grabbed Lily’s arm, peeling up the wad of Kleenex. “Hmm,” she murmured. She prodded it with a latex-gloved finger, making Lily flinch. “No, you come along with me. We’ll fix this.”
“Not alone,” Aaro said. “Rachel, Zia, come on. We’re all going.”
The nurse pulled Lily to her feet and gave Aaro a quelling look. “No, you are not. Not while she’s being treated. Hospital rules.”
She took off, hustling Lily alongside her.
Aaro followed, grabbing Zia Rosa and Rachel by the hands and dragging them with him. “Too bad,” he growled. “We’re coming in, too.”
“Are you her husband?” the nurse demanded.
“No, I’m her goddamn bodyguard!”
“Well, guard the door then,” she snapped. “You’re not bringing a loud, unruly crowd of people into an examining room while I’m stitching a wound, and with a small child, too! I wouldn’t allow it even if it weren’t against the rules, but it is, so wait outside if you’re so anxious!”
“He’s just nervous. We’ve had some strange adventures lately,” Lily explained. She patted Aaro’s shoulder. The guy thrummed with tension. “I’m sure this’ll be quick. Tell Bruno I’ll call him right back.”
The nurse pulled Lily through the door, slammed it in Aaro’s face, and turned the door lock.
Click.
Lily could hear Aaro, holding forth viciously in that language again. He was not going to be fun to deal with after this. There was a screen up, shielding the bed from the casual view of whoever was passing by the door. Lily took a step—
Whump,
a wad of white gauze slammed down over her face. An arm jerked her back, pinning her arms.
Oh,
shit.
She struggled, squirmed against a tall male body, but the bare arm clamped over her torso was horribly strong, and there was some drug soaking the cloth. She tried not to inhale, but she was desperate for air. Taut, wiry muscles, clammy skin. His grip bruised her. Strength was draining out of her, a dark wave of chill and nausea surging up. The guy wore surgical scrubs. She twisted. Oh, God. It was Jamison. He’d taken off his ski cap. His long hair was a crisp brown haircut, and his goatee and mustache were gone, but he still stank of whiskey. He had a pleasant, unremarkable face.
He smiled at her, looking immensely pleased with himself.
Oh, God. She needed to breathe. She was going to yark, or faint. Or die. Probably in that order. She had to warn the nurse. She had to—
Sylvia Jerrolds stepped from behind the screen, clad in a tank top and underwear. She gave Lily that same friendly smile she’d used in the waiting room. But this time, Lily saw the death behind it.
The woman shoved discarded scrubs into a knapsack, tossed the laminated name tag she’d worn onto the floor, tugged a latex mask over her head. She worked fast. It was a good mask, the skin tone lifelike, turning her into a jowly old lady. Baggy, shapeless black wool pants, a round-shouldered wool coat, a gray wig.
“Hurry, Mel,” the guy muttered.
The not-nurse put on a pair of pink-tinted, distorting glasses and smiled at Lily. “Off we go, sweetheart,” she whispered.
Lily had to inhale. Darkness surged. The guy yanked her backward off her feet, into a chair. A wheelchair. With her last crumb of conscious awareness, she felt them twist her hair pull a wig onto her head. Glasses, on the bridge of her nose, a plastic oxygen mask settling onto her face. Cold. Ticklish. She could no longer move at all.
She saw Bruno’s face in her mind. Felt a sting of aching regret. Something that was slipping away forever, but she couldn’t grasp what it was, just that it was rare and lovely, and never again. She groped for it, but it was going, gone. She had no point of reference to cling to. The sadness, the ache of disconnected loss, the fear, it was all whipping up into a huge vortex, roaring in her ears like the souls of the damned.
It sucked her down deep, into nowhere.
26
“I
f Bruno were here, he would never have let that
stronzo di merda
anywhere near Lily,” Zia Rosa informed him.
Aaro c
lenched everything he had. Teeth, hands, toes, ass. “Thank you for that useful observation,” he said, his voice rigidly even.
“He wouldn’t have let that nurse lady bully him, either,” Zia Rosa went on. “Bruno doesn’t let anyone put their foot on his face.”
“Yeah, Bruno’s perfect. I suck. We’ve established that. Let’s move on. Or better yet, just shut up.”
“I’m going to see Mamma now.” Rachel tossed her black curls.
He stared her down, eyes squinted in his best Dirty Harry stare. “No, you are not,” he told her. “Stand there. Do not move a muscle.”
Rachel sniffed and threaded Lily’s shoelace around her fingers. Zip, snap, and yank. She showed him the knot form she’d made. “Look.”
He looked. “Yeah?” he asked warily. “What’s that?”
“My witch’s broomstick,” she announced. “Lily showed me.”
He knew he was being set up. “You’re a witch, now?”
“Yeah.” She fluttered her long lashes. “I’m going to turn you into a frog. Or a pig. Or a bug. I haven’t decided yet.”
Aaro forced air out of his constricted lungs. “Do your worst,” he said. Things couldn’t get much worse. He did not look forward to telling Bruno about the day’s events. The guy already thought he was pus.
“A centipede,” Rachel mused. “Lots of creepy-crawly legs.”
“Speaking of legs,” Zia Rosa said truculently, fanning herself. “Get me a chair, Alex. I can’t stand on these legs much longer. Standing in one place, they swell up! Like balloons! And my varicose veins,
madonna mia!
See? Look!” She leaned on the wall and stuck out one thick, swollen ankle for his inspection.
He averted his gaze hastily. “Suffer until Lily is out of there.”
“Maybe I’ll turn you into a big, slimy slug,” Rachel suggested. “Or a spider. A big fat one, with hairy legs.”
Aaro was suddenly afflicted by a pang of longing for his quiet, solitary house in the woods outside Sandy. Where he would have been right now, blessedly alone, if only he’d kept his various protruding body parts out of this god-awful mess. He banged on the door of the suite.
“How are you guys doing?” he shouted.
Not a peep. The nurse was punishing him with silence. Or to be fair, maybe they were concentrating on stitching up torn human flesh.
The door of one of theadjacent medical suites opened down the hall. An elderly lady backed out, muttering querulous instructions. A tall guy in scrubs followed, pushing a wheelchair that held another old lady, this one slumped low in the chair. Her head flopped to the side, slack. Gray hair was matted against the nape of her neck. A stroke patient, maybe. The trio moved slowly down the corridor away from them. The lady on her feet clutched the wheelchair for balance. An oxygen tank accompanied them, rattling along on a rolling trolley.
Prickles shivered over his flesh as he watched the little triad. A goose walking over his grave. Unacknowledged fear of death, age, infirmity. Who knew. He hated hospitals. They made him tense. But then, he didn’t like introspection, either. There were enough threats coming at him from the outside to stress about. He didn’t have the stomach to entertain the ones from the inside, too.
Besides. Threats from the outside were easier to kill.
Rachel started dancing from foot to foot. “I have to pee.”
He stifled a groan. “Hold it,” he told her.
“I can’t! I’ll pee my pants!”
A door flew open down the hall. A middle-aged black woman in a white coat came out, looking harried. She looked to the right, the left. “Sylvia?” she yelled. “Sylvia!” She yanked out her beeper, punched numbers into it. “Angela? Goddamnit, where is everybody?”
“You looking for the nurse?” Aaro asked.
The woman gave him a sharp look. “Did you see her?”
“She went in there.” He jerked a thumb toward the suite. “Our friend got a cut. The nurse is stitching it up.”
The doctor’s brow furrowed. “For God’s sake. I’m already short-staffed, and now my nurse disappears on me!”
“I need to pee,” Rachel moaned, dancing on her toes.
The doctor pointed down the hall. “Bathroom’s there,” she snapped and vanished back into the room.
Rachel gave him an imploring look. He strode down the hall to the bathroom, jerked open the door, ascertained that it was an empty one-header. He held the bathroom door open for them. “Go for it.”
They went about their business. Aaro positioned himself between the two doors, and caught a whiff of . . . whiskey. Someone tippling on the job? Here? Not the bitch nurse. That chick was as sharp as a tack.
Maybe it was the ghost of Jamison, lingering in the air.
Still. He tried banging on the door again. “Hey! Lily?”
No answer. Maybe they’d gone into an adjacent room with an insulating door between them. Or maybe he’d just better stop being a chump asshole, listen to the hairy spiders and centipedes crawling on the back of his neck, and get a key for that goddamn door already.
He jogged up to the front, poked his head inside the enclosed space for administrative staff. “Hello? Anybody in here?”
No one answered. He stepped inside, saw the chubby legs in blue rayon slacks and sensible loafers sticking out under the reception desk.
Fuck.
Fear stabbed, deep and fast. Oh no, no, oh Jesus, no . . .
He came at the medical suite door like a bullet, slamming a flying kick into it with all his strength. The lock held. He tried the next door. Same thing. The next was unlocked. He thundered through the interconnected rooms to the one where the nurse had taken Lily.
The smhit him first. Jamison’s whiskey-soaked coat, lying discarded on the floor. A name tag with a fluorescent nylon strap beside it. A wad of gauze, no doubt soaked with some knock-out drug. A young woman in her underwear, crumpled on the floor. Not Lily. The nurse. A torrent of filth in Ukrainian was coming out of his mouth as he lunged to touch her carotid artery. She had a pulse, thank God.
The old ladies. The male nurse. Of course. What a fucking
idiot.
He burst out. Zia Rosa, Rachel, and the doctor stared at him, wide-eyed. As if he’d gone crazy.
“Your nurse was attacked. The receptionist, too,” he yelled to them as he sprinted away. “They got Lily! Call the cops!”
He rounded the corner. The trio had been moving at a slug’s pace, so maybe they were still . . . no. Not in the corridor, nor the waiting area, nor the drive-up. He thudded out into the parking lot as a black Mercedes sedan accelerated toward the exit. A clean-shaven Jamison in scrubs was driving. The crone in the hat sat in the passenger’s seat.
No Lily. Unconscious in the backseat or in the trunk.
He ran faster, squinting for the license plate, but somebody had obscured it with spattered mud. He started to close the gap as they paused to merge with traffic. He drew his gun but hesitated to shoot on the run at a moving target with Lily in the back or the trunk.
The tire. He slowed, aimed . . . and the car slewed through a huge mud puddle. Icy water splattered into his face as he pulled the trigger. The shot zinged against the back of the car. It surged ahead unchecked. He wiped mud out of his eyes.
Jesus, no. Please don’t let that bullet have perforated the trunk. Please don’t let that bullet be lodged inside of Lily. Please.
He pounded after the Mercedes, shoving the nightmare thought away. They had a straight stretch now, no lights, no turns. The gap lengthened. He couldn’t catch up, but he kept chasing, like a stubborn dog. Failure was unacceptable. Same old clusterfuck. Goddamn him for getting involved. He knew this would happen. It always did. He worked alone, he stayed alone, he kept it simple so he could avoid this scenario.
This clawing, frantic feeling he got when he let people down.
The front window came down. The fake nurse stuck out her hand, fluttered her fingers at him, a taunting little wave.
Buh-bye!
They hung the curve and were gone.
“I’ll kill the bastard.” Bruno jittered on the car seat, fists clenched. Trying to breathe, trying not to vomit. “I’ll rip his limbs off.”
“It’s not his fault.” Kev’s tone had the flatness of one who had repeated the same phrase many times. “He’s not the one who needs killing.”
“What the fuck was he thinking?” The words exploded out of him. “Letting the drunk guy within fifty feet of her? Letting someone drag her into a locked room? Was he on drugs?”
Connor spoke up, hesitant. “I can see it,” he said. “They were good. The place was understaffed. Conditions were perfect. Taking out the receptionist and nurse while the doctor was busy with Tam. The woman established herself multiple times as the nurse, fabricated a legitimate job—Christ, they’d have fooled me. Give Aaro a break, man.”
“No!” Bruno yelled. “I can’t! I will not swallow this!”
“Nobody’s asking you to, Bru,” Kev said softly. “I’m sorry.”
He stared out the window at the raindrops against the glass, jittering his leg while the next outburst built. “How the hell did they know?” he demanded. “About Tam’s bleeding? That was random! Impossible to predict! How could they have known about the choice of Rosaline Creek? They could have gone to the Urgent Care in Craigsville, or Dawson Falls—they’re all more or less the same distance! But those fuckers were in exactly the right place, lying in wait!
How?
”
Con rubbed eyes that were deeply shadowed with exhaustion. “They have tracers planted somewhere? A bug?”
“In Tam’s house?” Kev let out a sharp laugh. “No way.”
Con shrugged. “So? What else could it be?”
“I’m going to kill him,” Bruno said again, though the words were empty, they did not release any of the tension. He rocked forward, folding over that stone hard lump.
“Bad as Aaro feels, he just might beat you to it,” Davy murmured.
Bruno looked at him, and Davy glanced swiftly away. “Don’t try to make me feel sorry for that incompetent fuck,” he said harshly. “He’d better not. I want that satisfaction for myself. If nothing else.”
Heavy silence. There was nothing anyone could say to this catastrophe. No comfort, no help possible.
They passed signs for an exit off the freeway, and Connor leaned forward. “Get off at the next exit,” he said, looking at Bruno. “There’ll be a car rental on the strip. Head east in this car. Just for God’s sake don’t get stopped in it. With the firepower packed in here, they’d take you for a domestic terrorist, and you have enough problems.” He turned to Kev. “Assuming you didn’t rent this car in your own name.”
“Hell, no,” Kev said. “With all the stuff going down? I knew we were going to need an invisible car.”
“Wait a minute.” Bruno looked around at the four men. “How am I just supposed to drive away from this? I have to follow Lily!”
The others wouldn’t meet his eyes.
“Follow her where, Bru?” Kev said. “You’ve got nothing else to do. Rosaline Creek is crawling with cops. They’ll do their job without your help. And you’re a wanted man. Remember? That little detail?”
“We’ll follow every lead that we can from here,” Davy offered.
“But what could they be doing to her? I can’t . . . I don’t have time to road-trip across the damn country! While they hold Lily captive!”
“You can’t fly,” Con said. “You’d never make it onto a commercial flight. Unless you have a good disguise and a fake passport. Do you?”
Kev’s brothers looked at him hopefully.
“Vaffanculo,”
Bruno muttered, disgusted. “Of course not. I don’t play paranoid games with myself like you McCloud boys. I can’t just drive away from Lily!”
“You’re not,” Kev argued. “You’re driving toward the only clue in the whole fucking world that we have. You’re going where it all started. If you don’t get a lead there, you’re not going to find one anywhere.”
“Thanks for the pep talk. You’re warming my cockles again.”
“You get more than encouragement,” Kev said. “I’m going, too.”
“Me, too,” Sean said. “Wouldn’t miss this freak show for anything.”
“Right. Bruno stared at them. “Real smart for a guy on the lam to bring along six foot four, blond identical twins, one of whom has distinctive scars on his face. Might as well paint you both neon pink.”
Kev and Sean glanced at each other. “If there are three of us, we can go faster,” Kev said. “We can’t go over the speed limit. If you get stopped, you’re meat. You’ll need someone to spell you.”
“No, I don’t. You think I’ll sleep while those assholes have Lily? I’m never sleeping again. It’s a piss-poor idea. You’re not doing it.”