Quintic (74 page)

Gear. Car.
Clothes. Or clothes, then a car. She put on Ingrid’s gift.
Underwear, check. Where could she buy clothes at ten past eleven on
a Saturday night? Did all-night grocery stores sell clothing?
Probably not. And even if they did, could she shop in the hospital
avocado monstrosity? Without shoes? Christopher had taken the shoes
too, most infuriating. Could she steal clothes? She had never
stolen anything. Well, except for Joshua’s million-bet, but that
didn’t count since it had been Joshua, not her, doing the stealing.
And the theft had been only theoretical; nobody took the money for
real.

The neat
thing about private rooms was that they were, well,
private
.
Nobody to watch one think. The other usefulness of said rooms was
that they shared a bathroom with the adjoining rooms, yes, even
private hospital rooms.

She sneaked
into the
connecting room. Empty.
Christopher’s doing yet again?
Perfect. Thanks, Big guy
. Nobody
occupied the bed hence no one caught her switching room, and nobody
was out in the aisle guarding
that
room. She cracked the door
open and waited for the copper (the infuriating man had left
at
her
door) to look the other way. Copper was busy teasing the
nurses passing by. A boring job he had, watching her door for
nothing; no creeps were going to come at her. When posting cops in
a hospital, the man in charge should choose the best man for the
job, or as in this instance considering all those nurses, the best
woman. Tonight was not her first escape from a hospital, not the
first time she observed a cop on duty flirt with nurses. Good. When
a particularly engaging nurse chatted up the young cop, Patricia
strolled out of the empty room and headed the opposite way with
purpose.

Four doors
down, she came upon the medical team’s lounge. This early in the
night shift, not one nurse or doctor lingered in the cushy seats.
The small kitchenette and two rows of staff lockers were empty
also. She quickly searched the lockers until she found something,
anything to replace her khaki camouflage. All were locked, but she
found one with an old Dudley-type combination lock. She might not
be proficient at jumping locks but those she could crack in record
time. Inside, she found a lone sweater and a mammoth scarf she
turned into a long skirt. With shoes and a hat to cover her
bandage, she’d be incognito.

The
hat,
a baseball cap, she found by a
patient’s side. The black cap beckoned her from an elderly man’s
side table. The patient was hooked up to so many beeping machines
that he never heard her approach. The man’s head was bald, not one
wound or suspicious rash marring its cleanness gleaming under the
red and white of the blinking machines. She promised herself to
return the cap as soon as she had dealt with the creep.

She didn’t
find shoes, but Machine-man had a pair of rain boots, too big or
running or climbing but tolerable for a cab ride to a store if she
ever found one opened at this hour. She sure could have used her
phone just about now, for a quick search on commando-style disguise
but her infuriatingly overprotective cop boyfriend had taken that
too. That he had forgotten about her bag betrayed how upset he was.
Unless the gifts and slutty magazine piled on top had camouflaged
it? She made a note for future occurrences.

S
he was out the door by midnight.
She signalled one of the cabbies waiting near the emergency
entrance and offered the driver to double his fee if he took her to
an all-night clothing store.

“
I know a
place near the suburbs, that OK for you, kiddo?”

Kiddo?
Did the taxi driver not
notice her tablecloth of a skirt? “As long as you guarantee it will
be open when we get there,” she agreed even if the ride took her
further away from the creep’s hideout.

The store
was open all right, and it had everything, food, clothes, arcades,
even a bar. The clothes were more into erotic, sex-plaything getup
than her usual attires, though. She settled on a pair of leather
pants that still allowed movements. She kept the sweater, replaced
Machine-man’s boots by a pair of low-heel boots, a little long on
the legs (as in up to the knees) but comfortable enough. Besides,
she wasn’t expecting to sprint in the damn contraptions. They had
rubber soles, perfect for a climb to a second-storey window. She
exchanged the cap for a black bandana wide enough to cover her
bandage. Luckily, she had packed not only gear in her bag but also
hard cash, a ton of it for the sex kitten boots and trashy pants
were ridiculously expensive.

Another taxi
later, she arrived at Ingrid’s place by two-thirty. The driver had
punctuated the ride with an impressive number of suggestive
remarks. Not that she blamed the weasel, she did look particularly,
hum, cheap. She wasn’t wearing makeup, but with her face this pale,
her eyes too wide, her lips red from her nervous biting, the
puss-in-boots, and second-skin pants, she looked quite the gothic
hooker.

Ingrid’s
spare car key was taped
to her white
luxury toy of a car’s left rear corner, between the fender and the
frame. One needed delicate fingers to fish it out. Ingrid had long,
delicate fingers and so did she. The key was out in no time. Damn,
she should have bought bondage equipment at the store. Double damn,
she didn’t have a truck, rope or mover blankets as she had
initially planned. Hum. Time to regroup. She had the scarf from the
hospital and, most importantly, the gear. For the rest, well, she
was good at improvising, wasn’t she?

By three
o’clock
, she was in front of the shop.
She drove up and down the street once with her lights out, parked
two buildings down and studied the area. Lights shone from the
front second-floor window farthest from the carport, the colour and
intensity flickering. A television.

Afraid she
would lose her nerves if she gave herself time to get scared, she
didn’t observe for long. That too should have told her something.
The dumbest of ideas. She waited barely long enough to make sure
the ground floor was empty. No lights anywhere except from that one
window.

She fiddled
with the gear. The commando pants she had been wearing yesterday
had plenty of pockets contrary to those damn leggings that only had
two very tight back pockets. She wrestled the cuffs in, but none of
the other gear fitted. Too bad. She should have bought a belt at
the sex shop. She put the stun gun in the front of her pants; it
was the only weapon she planned on using anyway, and the gun in the
small of her back as Christopher did with his backup piece
sometimes. He had suggested once or twice she did the same as if
she ever carried a gun in her everyday life.
There you go, Big guy. Too bad you can’t see me.
You’ll get a kick out of it when I tell you, once you’ve cooled
down, of course
.

The pepper
spray and the rest of the ammunition stayed in her bag.
Lights
off, she drove up to the carport.
Ingrid’s vehicle lacked height-wise compared to the truck Patricia
had planned to climb on. With a hard push, though, she should make
it up on the port roof. And hopefully, the pussy boots wouldn’t
leave any marks on Ingrid’s precious white possession; the woman
hated going to the carwash.

Showtime.

C
hris spent most of
the day with Internal. His last
fucking
day on the case. The last
week had been harassing, but not a glitch had come up during the
investigation. Central was collaborating for once − his payback for
the murder shit − so he had not expected any.

They bought
it all
. How could they not? Internal
already had a thick file on the creep. The sonofabitch had died
while pointing his gun at Patricia. He was shot in an aborted
attempt to kill her when she had gone to reason with
him.

“
Why did she
go in the middle of the night?” Internal had questioned.

“
She had
spent the previous day drugged up at the hospital, a post-traumatic
shock the doc called I think; the concussion and painkillers
impaired her judgement.”

“So you’re saying she didn’t
know what she was doing?”

“
Do women
ever?” Chris answered back, cringing internally. “With the drugs,
she probably didn’t even know the time of day.”

The two
Internal
cops were assholes. Closer to
sixty than forty, they were just wasting time before retirement.
They were easily convinced. Chris only hoped Patricia never got her
hands on the transcript of
that
conversation.
I, for one, believe you knew
precisely
what the fuck you were doing, Angel.

She
had
declined to talk to the two men; in
fact, had flat-out refused to speak to anybody, about any of it.
Since this was about him, not her, Central let it go. Besides, the
damn woman had a good lawyer, the best in town. For the nth time,
Chris wondered where she had found the man. Wondered and yet, for
once, he appreciated Lawyer-man working his magic. Hence, everyone
left her alone. Yah, right. As if anyone could have convinced him
to leave her alone.

Three
weeks
later, she remained shaky. An
entirely normal reaction, he thought, yet wished she would talk to
him. He hadn’t heard her laugh once since that night. After today,
he was taking a vacation. So what if they’d gone on a thoroughly
enjoyable beach trip after the murder fiasco only a few months
back, he had years of missed vacation time to make up
for.

He didn’t
consider t
he fucking cruise where they
had met as a vacation. Hunting an alleged killer was no holiday;
that trip had been his first time tailing her. The damn woman had
rocked his world for the start, and he had not stopped following
her ever since, had he? He saw a pattern here for sure. Shrink
assholes might make something out of that, some dysfunctional
liaison shit, but the hell with them, he liked their relationship
immensely. The only thing lacking was a fucking library.

Perhaps
if they went on a cruise,
just the two of them? She’d have nowhere to run on a cruise ship.
Or the beach, like the last time? Nowhere to run naked. He would
get her all to himself.
Mine.
I’m a selfish bastard when it comes to you, Love of
mine
. Hell, he would even send her to
Italy if it made her well again. Send her to the Italian food,
Italian wine, Italian sun, to the fucking Italian men if they got
her laughing again.

She was
waiting with a small smile when he got to her place that night, but
green sparkled in her eyes, too much emerald, and the smile did not
quite reach the green-blues. She was beautiful with the green, but
it tore at his soul. He was willing to do anything to make her feel
better.
Anyfuckingthing
,
Angel
. He
hadn’t told her yet about the naked beach or the cruise. Why not a
nude cruise, he could have part of a cruise ship isolated, couldn’t
he?

“
All done
for the day, Big guy?”

“
Yup.”

Although
s
he didn’t ask about Internal, she looked
him over carefully. Had someone from the office called her? Or
perhaps she had just guessed. The faintest hint of a smile reached
her eyes. Fuck, she was stunning. Only the shadow of a bruise
showed on her face. The bandages were off, the shaved area on her
head hidden by all the curling waves. The doctor had done such a
clean job that the spot was hardly visible even when she pulled her
hair back into a ponytail.
I
do think that ER doctor too liked your hair, Princess.

More
importantly, she had gone back to her long walks already, alone,
without a limp, at least in front of him. The hotel staff confirmed
her pace barely faltered. Physically, her body had healed. As for
the rest of her, he couldn’t tell for sure even with the strolls.
She was tough, that he knew, but the creep had come too fucking
close to her. And his death hadn’t brought back Lemieux, had it?
She needed time to mourn. Not too long, he hoped for her
sake.
Take as much time as
you need, Angelface. I’m staying right here
.

Before
he left the team in
LeRoy’s care for the next week, his guy had insisted on a
man-to-man talk. Fucking asshole.

“
Come on,
Chris. We’ve known each other too long. I know how much you care
about her.”

“
She’s going
to be fine, and so am I.”

“
Bullshit.
Look, I’m not playing shrink here, and forget you’re my boss for a
minute. As your friend, I just want to know how you’re feeling. Are
you OK?”

He thought
about it. “Of course, I’m OK. I can survive anything.” Part of his
mental strength came from that knowledge. He believed in himself,
always had. His core. He could survive anything
except
Patricia
getting killed because of him. She nearly had. “I left her alone,
Le.”

“
You posted
guards at the hospital. What more could you have done?”