The sunlight streaming through the window was annoyingly bright, but survivable, so she walked into the room and grabbed her purse, desperate for a cigarette. She didn’t know if Ben was a smoker, but he had ashtrays so she made herself at home and lit up.
He stirred on the couch, but didn’t wake up immediately. So Maggie finished her cigarette and then leaned in close and kissed him on the forehead. His eyes creaked open and he looked up to see her. His face managed a small smile as he sat up and looked at her, his eyes still bleary.
“Good morning, handsome.” She looked at her watch. “Or good afternoon.”
“Hi. You okay?”
“Never better.” This was true. She felt rested and invigorated for the first time in forever.
“I was a little worried.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t normally pass out.”
“Been a couple of rough days.” There was no judgment in the tones, merely an acceptance of fact.
“Yeah, that’s for sure.” She sat down next to him, and he moved his legs away to let her.
“Guess I’m lucky you found me.”
“Wasn’t luck.” He shrugged. “You knocked on my door.”
“I did?”
“Well, fell against it.”
“Well, thanks.”
“Hey, you did it for me. Besides, I wasn’t doing anything, anyway.” He smiled and then covered his mouth as he yawned.
“It was still nice of you. So thanks.”
Ben looked uncomfortable and shifted his weight a bit. She felt a flash of absolute hatred for Tom: the discomfort had never been there before. She looked at him and then leaned over. A quick kiss on the cheek and she stood back up.
“I should go.”
He nodded and the smile on his face faded a bit. “Don’t be a stranger.”
“Not on a bet.”
She slipped out the front door with another wave and crossed over to her own apartment. The sky was overcast, but the world still seemed too bright.
A moment later she was inside where everything was tolerable again. Just the act of walking across the courtyard left her feeling as weak as a baby.
She’d barely gotten into her living room before the phone rang. It was Tom. He needed to see her and he had a job for her that was going to pay well. She agreed to meet him just after six at his place.
It was a job. It was what she did.
But not for much longer. She just had to decide how to break it to Monkey Boy without him putting a few bullets through her head or doing something even worse that would leave her alive and ruined when he was done.
VI
Alan Tripp tore a few layers of skin away from his hand and reopened the wounds under his stitches, but he finally managed to get free of the restraint. After the first one, the rest were easy, if painful. He rummaged in the supply drawer until he found gauze and tape, and then awkwardly applied a pressure bandage.
Now all he had to do was get out of the psychiatric ward.
They were calling to him every night, just as soon as the sun set, and this time around, he intended to answer his family when they called.
They needed him, damn it, and he wasn’t going to let down Avery or Meghan again.
He leaned against the wall near the only entrance into the room and closed his eyes, letting himself drift for a while. The pain was just enough to stop him from going to sleep, and when he feared that he would actually start counting sheep, he just slapped his hand against the wall. One quick explosion of pain and he was good to go again, a trick that worked every time.
Some time later, he heard the wheels on the meal cart squeaking down the long hallway. It was a distinctive noise far different from the other tables and carts the interns were rolling around. Best of all, it was usually manned by only one person.
That was important; he didn’t know if he could bring himself to kill more than one.
It hadn’t taken long to figure out the routine; every few hours the cafeteria worker would bring food, normally something that could be eaten with just fingers, and set it down on the ReadyServe rolling table at the foot of the bed. The table was put into position and locked in place at the height of the patient’s chest, and the meal was left behind. The straps had just enough give that a patient who was limber enough could eat, even if they couldn’t quite get the cloth covering their wrists to the right level for chewing through their restraints.
The less fortunate ones got spoon-fed or, in extreme cases, forced to choke down their liquefied meals with a tube down through the nose.
Alan had made sure to avoid that particular experience.
He wasn’t really in the full-scale loony bin. He was “under observation” because he’d assaulted two police officers. He supposed he was lucky he hadn’t gotten himself killed. But because the rooms were all full at the inn, he got put in the manger: the rooms he and four others were occupying were technically being renovated. That was okay. He could handle that.
In all honesty, it was kind of a bonus, because at least these rooms weren’t equipped with cameras. He didn’t know for sure, but he figured the really serious cases were kept in rubber rooms with several cameras taping their every move.
So he had a chance, at last. He could maybe get himself free from this place and get out to Meghan and Avery. He was willing to try; he was willing to die trying.
They needed him.
The wheels rolled closer and came to a stop outside his door. He waited as patiently as he could for the door to swing inward.
And when the man with the food tray stepped inside, he was ready. He was a big man, six feet, two inches tall and somewhere around two hundred and fifty pounds; most of it was muscle. The guy had shaved his head, presumably to stop patients from ripping it out by the roots. So his large, shiny skull made a perfect target. Alan pushed away from the wall and slammed his forehead into the back of the man’s skull. It hurt, but it worked. The tray the man carried—paper, of course—fell from his hands and he reached back to check what had happened. As he did, Alan moved forward, too, bringing both of his fists into play and punching the poor bastard in the face and in the neck.
The bruiser hit the tile and grunted. Alan reached for him, ready to slam his face into the ground as many times as he had to in order to get free.
He never made it. The man spun on one hip and cocked back his leg. An instant later Alan had a size twelve loafer buried in his stomach and knocking him back against the wall.
“You outta your fucking head?” The man didn’t talk, he growled. He also stood back up, a look of absolute rage on his face. Alan managed to duck the fist that tried to separate his face from his skull.
Alan didn’t have time for any of this. He’d expected to be on his way by now and instead the damned fool was fighting him. Alan swung his left hand in a wide arc and the guy ducked under it, just in time to meet Alan’s knee at the apex of its rise from the ground. Alan felt the nose give out against his kneecap and heard the man grunt, then sigh. He landed like a sack of potatoes when he fell to the ground. This time he didn’t get back up or suddenly pull a Bruce Lee maneuver. Just to make sure, Alan kicked him four times in his stomach.
Then he left the room, pausing only long enough to pull the keys from the man’s belt loop.
His hand was bitching and moaning about its mistreatment, and his knee was singing a similar song. Alan didn’t care. He didn’t have time to care.
He hopped down the hallway as best he could and looked for an exit sign. It was a hospital; they were always nice enough to have exit signs all over the place. When he found one and tried the door under it, the door was locked. The fourth key opened it. He took the key ring with him and went down the stairs as nimbly as he could manage. Graceful he was not. The knee he’d used as a battering ram was swelling, and he could actually see it happening. The sad side effect of wearing a hospital gown was that it didn’t let you lie to yourself about how bad the injury was. He got to see the bruising colors as they formed.
It took him ten minutes to reach the second floor of the hospital. He let himself breathe for a minute when he got there and then he pulled the fire alarm right next to the secured door to the second floor.
Alarms started screaming shrilly and he nodded to himself. In a minute or so, the entire staff would be busy trying to find the source of the fire and while they were busy he would make his escape. He hobbled down the rest of the stairs and pushed the door open. It led to a garage just filled with cars.
He started trying handles.
VII
“I can see the headlines now,” Boyd held his hands up to show the imaginary paper to Danny. “Escaped ball-buster seeks revenge against cop that did him wrong.”
“Bite me.”
“I figure he should be after you in no time. You’re the one that got away with only one cracked nut.”
“It was both, Boyd. And if he shows, I’m using you as my shield.”
“You would, too. Wouldn’t you?”
“Damn straight. It’s why I keep you around.”
“I thought that was why I kept
you
around, Danny.”
“See? I always get confused about that part.”
They sat down at the booth farthest back in the diner and waited for Sally to come serve them. She knew who they were and what they wanted, so she just waved and indicated she’d be there soon.
“I don’t get it.” Danny slipped his napkin into his lap and placed his flatware just so.
“Get what?”
“Why the guy would go all postal and break out of his room when they were planning on letting him go?”
“Because they didn’t fucken tell him is why.”
“How many times do I have to tell you to watch that nasty fucking language in my restaurant, Boyd?” Sally set down his burger—rare, extra onions—and Danny’s fried shrimp as she spoke. The third plate, a double order of onion rings, she placed between them.
“Sally, I love you. Marry me.”
“In your dreams and my nightmares, hon.” She smiled as she said it.
They waited until Sally had put down the coffees and the large pot on the side before they started talking again.
“What did you find out about Jason Soulis?”
“Not much. Lived in Ohio before this, and off in California before that. Guy gets around. Mostly he likes to travel. In the last few years alone, he’s hit almost every continent.”
Boyd looked at him and chewed his burger slowly. “What? There was a really hot tamale at the information center?”
“What do you mean?”
“You were gone four hours and all you can find out is that he liked to travel?”
“There’s nothing else to find out, Richie.”
“My ass! How about where he’s from? What about his date of birth? What does he do for a living? Why the fuck did he move here?”
Danny eyed him and popped a shrimp into his mouth before answering. He chewed nice and slow, too. “Oh, that stuff.”
“Last nerve, Danny Boy, you’re stepping on it.”
“Don’t get your panties in a wad.” He took a sip of coffee. “Soulis was born in Europe, the records were destroyed in some bombing or other, but he lived in Scotland, Ireland, and Wales when he was a kid. He doesn’t do anything for a living, because he’s fuckin’ rich as hell. His date of birth is among the missing, but he’s supposed to be forty-five. He likes to move around because he’s rich and easily bored. He bought his house from Albert Miles, who I also can’t find out much about.”
“Four hours of my life wasted so you could find out jack and shit.”
“They weren’t wasted. You had your own work to do. Tell me what you learned while I was breaking my balls for you.”
“I learned that ‘rush job’ don’t mean shit to the losers who do DNA tests. They won’t have anything solid for at least another forty-eight hours.” Unlike Danny, he spoke with his mouth full. He was capable of doing two things at once. “I learned that Captain O’Neill is a real hardass when he wants a problem solved and it ain’t happening fast enough. I learned from a phone call that we have a lot of crows in town.”
“Golly.”
“Yeah, no shit, right?”
“Any new developments?”
“No. I think that’s enough for one day.”
“This is fuckin’ stupid. What? We have a white slave ring in town now?”
“Maybe. Stranger shit than that happens all the time.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
“Loch Ness Monster.”
“There is no Loch Ness Monster.”
“Sure, instead there are just rocks that turn people into jelly and we have a race of human lemmings sneaking out every night.”
“I’m telling you, Richie, there’s something about those rocks in the bay. They don’t look right, they don’t feel right.”
“Anyway, so guess who got bailed out?”
Danny stared at him with a half-chewed shrimp in his mouth and forgot to finish chewing. His handsome model’s face went red around the edges.
“You better not fuckin’ say Freemont.”
“So I won’t say it.” Boyd shrugged.
“What kind of asshole would bail that prick out of jail?”
Boyd finished attacking an onion ring before he answered. He liked to make Danny sweat. It was a cheap and easy thrill, but he would take them where he could get them.
“Does the name Tom Pardue mean anything to you?”
“You were right, Richie. We should have shot the bastard when we had the chance.”
“Which bastard, Pardue or Freemont?”
“Yes.”
“There’s always tomorrow, Danny.”
“We could go looking today.”
“No, we’re on the shit list. No way is O’Neill gonna approve the overtime.”
“Fuck it. I ain’t poppin’ them for free.”
“Not what you said about those stewardesses.”
“Believe me, there was nothing to pop.”
“Spoken like a sexist pig.”
“Takes one to know one.”
“Screw this. We’ve been running around town all damned day. I say we call it a night.” Boyd covered his mouth with his napkin and belched as softly as he could. He loved onions, but they seldom loved him back.