Cozy. Safe. The IV drip was unhooked and coiled. Hospital slippers positioned side-by-side under the bed. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
Except that Treva was gone.
A trail of blood, a series of irregularly-spaced black-red droplets, shone wetly on the white floor.
Like a trail of scarlet bread crumbs in a nightmarish fairy tale, they led me away from the bed.
Out of the room.
Into the corridor behind me.
Toward a service door at the far end.
Disappearing under that door…
Without a thought, I pulled it open and half-ran, half-fell down the right-angled service stairs. The stairway was as brightly-lit as the ICU corridor had been dark, and the drops of blood glowed absurdly red against the worn paint-flecked concrete steps.
Three floors down, and the blood trail went right, under another door. I pushed it open.
Another, smaller hallway. Violently bright from the overheads. But just as empty as the corridor above.
A series of double-doors lined the wall to my left.
But the only doors that got my attention were the ones that stood open, a dozen feet or so down the hall.
I slowed my steps. Came up carefully to the opening. Took a breath. Steadied myself. For some reason—perhaps in answer to an old impulse—I clenched my fists.
And stepped inside.
It was an operating room. White-sheeted surgical bed in the center. Trays of instruments on wheeled carts. A canopy of goose-necked lamps positioned for maximum visibility, beneath the familiar ceiling fluorescents.
The room held two people, both staring at me, wide-eyed. Faces drained of color. Pinched with fear.
Lloyd Holloway. The young doctor I’d met up in the ICU. Standing at the surgical bed, hands at his sides. Linebacker’s body ramrod straight, strained from tension, held upright by extreme force of will.
And Treva Williams. Sitting on the floor, knees up, her back against a far corner. Shivering in her flimsy hospital gown. Hands behind her back, obviously bound. Bare feet also bound, at the ankle.
I registered them both in what seemed only a second.
Then I saw Treva’s mouth open, forming an “O,” and her eyes widening, looking at me with sudden horror.
No, not
at
me.
Past
me…
I felt a searing pain at the back of my head, and looked up at the blinding overhead lights as they began to whirl like a vortex of spinning stars.
And then I saw nothing at all.
Consciousness came back to me in a kind of roaring rush. Eyelids squeezed shut, I felt rather than saw the intensity of the OR’s relentless light. Which only made the sharp throb of pain at the back of my head more insistent. Relentless.
My whole body felt stiff. Muscles aching. Then, threaded through the muffled pounding in my skull, a new sound. Voices. The soft hush of practiced movement. The clicking of metal.
When I finally risked opening my eyes, I was sitting next to Treva Williams. My own knees drawn up, feet bound at the ankles with surgical tape. Hands bound behind my back.
“Welcome to the war, buddy.” A gruff, ironic voice. Vaguely familiar. I looked up.
It was Wheeler Roarke. Ex-Chicago PD. Ex-Blackwater. The man I’d once known as George Vickers.
He sat on the surgical table, the security guard’s shirt thrown across it beside him. Roarke’s thick chest was naked, streaked with sweat and grime. His injured left arm hung limp at his side. Caked with blood. Wound exposed. Layers of skin held by tiny clamps.
His other arm was bent at a right angle, elbow on his lap. In that hand was a gun. Thick, ugly. A revolver that I’d seen before. In George Vickers’ belt holster.
It wasn’t pointed at me. Nor at Treva.
It was pointed directly at Dr. Holloway, who stood at Roarke’s bedside. Gloved hands deep in the gunman’s wound. Face a grim mask of determination and fear. He worked feverishly, suturing through rivulets of blood trickling between his fingers.
Roarke had the gun pressed hard against the doctor’s ribs. Forehead sheathed with sweat, he kept his hard eyes riveted on Holloway’s every move.
Suddenly I felt Treva shifting beside me.
“Are you all right?” Voice trembling. Barely audible. The first words she’d spoken since I got here.
“I’ve been better.”
Wincing in pain, Roarke risked a glance over at me.
“Sorry I hadda knock you out. Price o’ showin’ up uninvited.”
He smiled at the gun in his hand. Still welded to Holloway’s side.
“Just your standard .38 S&W. Nothin’ like the butt-end of a .357 Magnum. But still, it makes a statement. Though you got a harder head than that loser upstairs.”
“You sneak up behind
him
, too, Roarke?” My voice sounding like it belonged to someone else. Someone weak and far away.
He aimed that dark smile in my direction.
“So you guys know my name?”
I nodded. Big mistake. Pain splintered up from the base of my skull.
“Yeah, ’cause you screwed up and left some prints at the crash site. Just like you were lame enough to drip blood all the way here from the ICU.”
Roarke choked out a laugh. “Lotta lip ya got there, pal. And big clankin’ balls, given your current situation.”
“Please,” Treva whispered. Urgent, imploring. “Please don’t make him angry.”
Roarke laughed again. And grimaced from the pain.
“Fuck, girlie, it’s
way
too late for that. Besides, Rinaldi here has a point.” He raised the gun and scratched his chin with the barrel. “I mean, no question, none o’ this is textbook. But sometimes you gotta improvise.”
“Like in the ambulance,” I said.
“Right. Soon as our girl here wakes up and sees me wearin’ Vickers’ uniform, she freaks. I got no choice but to put her to sleep and make a play for the driver.”
“But the really smart thing was coming here anyway. You knew the cops’d be checking every medical facility in the area. The last thing they’d expect—”
“—Was for me to make straight for here. Where the ambulance was headin’ anyway. Lucky for me, I got a little help from a truck I flagged down. You’ll find the driver in a drainage ditch somewhere off McKnight Road.”
“Still breathing?”
“Couldn’t say. Seemed like it at the time. But things were happenin’ kinda fast, ya know?”
I flexed and relaxed my shoulders a couple times, to get some feeling back in my arms. Tried shifting my wrists where they were bound behind me. I got nowhere.
He noticed my efforts. Shook his head.
“Now you’re just bein’ stupid. Chill-lax, okay? Long as the Doc here fixes me up and you two don’t get cute, everybody gets outta this alive.”
Roarke dug his gun deeper into Holloway’s ribs.
“Speakin’ of which, Doc, you wanna wrap things up here? That local you gave me is startin’ to wear off.”
Holloway’s voice was a croak. “I told you, that wouldn’t be enough to—”
“Shut up and keep workin’. My guess is, we’re gonna have some unwanted company real soon.”
“I just need a few more minutes. I—”
Suddenly Treva cried out and looked up. I followed her gaze to where a wide observation window looked down into the OR from a small tiered room above.
Roarke did the same.
“Fuck.” He let out a weary sigh. “I get so goddam tired o’ bein’ right all the time.”
It was Biegler, Polk, and Lowrey. Plus a few other plainclothes officers I didn’t recognize. All arrayed on the other side of the window, peering down at us.
But no Robertson. He’d probably been found, and was receiving medical attention. Maybe he’d even been able to tell them what had happened. Or else the cops had just done what I did. Followed the blood.
That’s when I heard it. What sounded like muffled footsteps on the other side of the OR doors. Tentative, trying for stealth. And not succeeding.
I could tell Roarke had heard it, too.
I found my voice.
“That’s it, Roarke. You got cops right outside the door. You’re toast.”
“Shut the hell up!” His eyes became angry slits. Aimed them at Holloway. “What did I say about kickin’ it in gear, Doc? Huh?”
Holloway nodded as though in a trance. Hands shaking, frantically bandaging Roarke’s arm.
I heard the crackle of an intercom speaker. Looked up again to see Lt. Biegler speaking into a wall mike next to the window on their side of the observation bay.
“Give it up, Roarke. Don’t make things worse for yourself.”
Roarke frowned at me. “Who is this ass-wipe? I mean, who the fuck says shit like that anymore?”
“He does. Lt. Biegler. You wouldn’t like him.”
Roarke shook his head in disbelief. Yelled up at the window.
“You pricks gotta be
kiddin’
me! You got a goddam hostage situation here. Not the first one today, in case you forgot.
I’m
callin’ the shots, not you!”
“Don’t screw with me, Roarke!” Biegler’s aggressive tone sounded strained, false. “There’s no way out of this for you. We have teams at every exit. I got people right outside your door.”
“No shit? If even
one
of ’em tries bustin’ in, you’re lookin’ at three dead bodies here.”
He swung his gun hand around, aimed in our direction.
“Startin’ with the girl. In and out, right between the eyes. They’ll be moppin’ up blood splatter for a week. Then I do the shrink. I’m thinkin’ gut shot, just ’cause he pisses me off. Hurts like a motherfucker and it’ll take him forever to bleed out.”
He turned back, this time pointing the gun directly at Holloway’s head.
“Then the doc here. Back o’ the head shot. So he can forget all about donatin’ his brain to science.” His eyes squinted up at the glass. “You mooks
feelin’
me?”
Silence from the wall speaker.
Looking up at the window, I saw Biegler confer with Polk, who nodded once and ran off. Eleanor Lowrey, face constricted in anguish, leaned forward, open hands splayed against the glass. Eyes riveted on Treva and me.
“Hey!” Roarke shouted again. “Up there! Do I strike you as a patient man? Get your people away from the door or else start rollin’ out the body bags.”
As if in answer, there was the sound of hurried movement on the other side of the doors. Footsteps receding, leaving only an eerie silence.
Which was quickly shattered when Roarke turned and fired at the room’s wall speaker. It exploded in a loud, glittering shower of metal shards and bits of wire. Beside me, Treva jumped as though hit with a thousand volts.
Roarke swiveled his head to stare at Holloway’s white, watery eyes. Pointed the gun once more at his head.
“Circus is leavin’ town, kid.”
Holloway stammered out a response. “We’re…that’s it. There’s been some radial nerve damage. I did the best I could, but…but I’m afraid some range of motion is affected. Dexterity. Grip strength.”
“I ain’t lookin’ to go bowlin’, Doc. Long as the arm’s saved, I’ll get me some rehab later. Shit, I took worse hits in Iraq.”
I spoke up. “The cops’ll never let you leave here.”
Roarke’s look at me was flat. As though his hours of pain had cauterized his feelings. Left him blank, empty.
“I ain’t done too bad so far. After I got here, I hid out in one of the morgue rooms downstairs—nobody minded. Just the poor bastard workin’ there, and he wasn’t much trouble. Neither was that lame excuse for a detective up in the ICU. Department oughtta pension his ass out, you want my opinion. That limp-dick motherfucker wouldn’ta lasted a week in my old squad.”
I risked needling him. Giving the cops a chance to re-group. Come up with a move.
“Speaking of limp-dicks,” I said, “where’s your partner? The other guy in the bank.”
Roarke’s face reddened. “
Fuck
him.”
He slipped off the surgical table, stood and worked his way back into the torn security guard shirt. Moved his wounded arm gingerly from the shoulder. I couldn’t tell if the limited range of motion was due to the pain or the tight constriction of the heavy bandages.
Roarke flexed his fingers, wincing.
Holloway gasped. “I told you, there might be—”
“No worries, Doc.” Roarke gave him a sidelong look. “What do I owe ya?”
Holloway blinked in confusion, which only made Roarke smile. Before he swung and raked the barrel of his gun across the doctor’s wide jaw.
Holloway, without a sound, collapsed to the floor.
Roarke looked down at his inert form. “Hope that covers it.”
I heard Treva’s breath coming in shallow gasps beside me. I turned, saw her eyes rolling up. She was seconds away from passing out.