Critical Condition (16 page)

Her only other weapon was a disposable scalpel—useless except at extremely close range. Who was she fooling? She’d be mowed down by bullets long before she got close enough to use it. Still, it made her feel better having it, so she slipped the handle into her sleeve and hid the blade against her palm.

Before she could retreat into fear, she twisted her feet against the floor, activating its swivel mechanism. The floor rotated silently, bringing her closer to the darkroom entrance.

She pressed herself against the far wall, watching as the red light the techs used when developing film edged through the opening. The opening enlarged from a slit to a few inches to a foot and she sprang out, aiming her flashlight beam and ready to do battle with her plastic disposable scalpel.

The light zigzagged around the room before hitting a target. A man standing at the rack that held freshly developed films. He shielded his eyes against her light.

“Gina, is that you?”

“Ken, what are you doing here?”

He flicked on the main lights. “I wanted to get your mom’s CT scan transferred onto hard copies before the power goes out for good. I thought you were the tech. What were you doing in there?”

“We need to leave.” She pocketed the Maglite but kept the scalpel at hand as she ran to the door and opened it a crack, looking out. The hallway was silent.

“Why?” Ken asked, joining her, a sheaf of films in his hand.

“The power isn’t going out because of the weather. There are armed men taking over the hospital.”

Her dramatic statement thudded against the silence that followed. She could sense Ken staring at the back of her head. Sifting through her words and actions, his uncanny mind would skip past inane questions like was she joking and arrive at a conclusion—either what she said was true or that she was mentally unstable.

She didn’t have long to wait for his decision.

“They picked a silly time to do it—they’re as trapped as we are by the weather.” His tone was mild, disapproving of the gunmen’s lack of forethought.

As always, Ken’s Zen-like calmness infuriated her, though she knew that he had good reason to protect himself behind his Panglossian façade of acceptance—it was a hard-won defense mechanism he’d built after his wife and daughter had been killed.

“They don’t care about the weather—or about anyone else. I saw them shoot three men. And they’re planning to kill us all to cover their tracks.”

“What do they want?”

“Lydia—apparently she has some kind of evidence they want.” Gina cracked the door and peeked out. No one in the corridor. “We have to find LaRose. Where is she?”

“Everyone left when Tillman made the announcement about the power. Surely they took her with them?”

Gina didn’t trust radiologists—they spent too much time in the virtual world of their computer scans and darkrooms to remember that the images they peered at belonged to real, live people. “We’d better make sure. Which scanner was she in? We’ll start there.”

“Scanner two.” He followed her into the deserted hallway. “Her scan showed an ischemic stroke.”

Gina slowed to check both corridors as they came to an intersection. A stroke. Exactly what she’d feared.

“We need to get her started on TPA,” Ken said. There was a narrow window to successfully treat strokes with the “clot-buster” drug, and the sooner LaRose began therapy, the better her response would be. “If these men are only looking for Lydia, your mother should be safe with everyone else in the auditorium and she can get the TPA there.”

“No. These men are crazy. They were talking about burning down the hospital to cover their tracks. And they aren’t going to find Lydia because she’s not here. Which is really going to piss them off. So we may not have much time.”

“They can’t burn down anything until the weather clears enough for them to escape.”

Typical logical Ken. But logic had nothing to do with their situation. “I’m not risking my mother to the whims of Mother Nature and a bunch of psychopaths.” She thought hard. There weren’t many options to weigh. “Lucas Stone is with Jerry and Amanda on the eighth floor. We’ll take LaRose there.”

“It would be good to have a neurologist check her before we begin the TPA,” Ken conceded. “But maybe we should just stay here and hide.”

Gina shook her head. “No. If we can get to the eighth floor, we can get the others and cross over to the research tower; it would be safer there.”

Ken was silent. She knew he realized that as much as she liked Lucas and Amanda, part of her motivation in getting to them was also to get to Jerry, make sure he was safe. She didn’t want to hurt Ken more by coming flat out and saying it, but he was smart, he’d figure out where her priorities lay.

They halted at another intersection. Ken rocked back on his heels, thinking hard, but as always his train of thought veered away from her expectations. “This place, Angels, was the closest thing I had to a home after I lost my family. But now I think it’s got bad karma.”

“Nothing bad ever happened around here until Lydia came along. If it weren’t for her, Jerry would never have been shot.” Bitterness colored Gina’s tone but she was too frazzled to care.

“Just answer me this, Gina. If Jerry hadn’t been shot, do you think you—I mean, could we have ever—” Ken’s words stuttered into silence.

Ahhh . . . the question they’d been dancing around for weeks. Gina touched his arm. He flinched and she shoved her hand into her pocket.

“Sorry, Ken, but no. I like you; I love the way your mind works and how you make me think about things and you see me for who I really am and that doesn’t frighten or disgust you or anything. But I can’t help it. Jerry loves me; he takes care of me and puts up with me and, I don’t know, I feel safe with him.”

“You still haven’t said that you love him.” He turned to her, his gaze holding hers steady. He wasn’t flinching now. Or backing down. As always, Ken was forcing her to take a good hard look at the one place she preferred to leave alone in the dark: her own heart.

“I’m not sure I know how to love or what love really is. But what I feel for Jerry is the closest I’ve ever come.”

She turned away before he could respond and crossed the corridor to the CT scanner. Empty, as was the control room. She pushed through the door to the small patient waiting area.

There, huddled in a wheelchair backed up behind the door and almost hidden from sight, looking frail and frightened and utterly unlike the Queen Mother Gina was accustomed to, sat LaRose.

 

 

NORA STOOD AT THE SIDE AISLE BELOW THE STAGE and looked around the auditorium. There were now eighty-six people gathered, with hospital staff—nurses, nursing assistants, ward clerks, dietary workers, housekeepers, lab and radiology techs—far outnumbering the handful of patients and their families. Which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing because it meant that the dormitory area on the stage had gotten sorted out quickly as well as a patient care area for dressing changes and medication infusions. The medication carts were arranged around the stretchers so that if they suddenly became inundated with ER patients once the storm let up, they’d be ready.

The cafeteria workers had even brought in food, including milk and cookies to keep the nine kids and their families occupied. In fact, it seemed as if boredom would be their chief enemy once the night wore on. People were already joking about the stories they would tell about their unusual New Year’s Eve, spent trapped in a hospital by a blizzard.

Even Jim Lazarov had made himself useful, splinting Mark’s leg and having the men from the zoo give an impromptu presentation on penguins to the kids to keep them entertained. Nora hated to think what they’d do once the sugar high from the cookies set in.

Emma Grey approached her. She and her great-grandson, Deon, had also gotten trapped in the hospital by the storm. “I could help,” Emma said. “How about some reading material?”

Nora smiled at the older woman. Emma was the hospital librarian and always provided a soothing presence to patients and their families. “Great minds think alike.”

“Just one problem. The security guards won’t let me go to the library. Maybe you could talk to them? The one with the accent seems to be in charge.”

“He must also be new. I don’t know him.” Nora didn’t recognize the other two guards who stood inside the doors either. “Tillman must have hired them after the shooting.”

As if she’d conjured him by using his name, the doors opened and Oliver Tillman appeared, flanked by the DEA agent, Harris, and one of the guards. Tillman appeared frazzled, his hair mussed, plastered to his forehead with sweat. No one else seemed to notice his arrival—the hum of conversations continued unabated.

“Something’s wrong,” Nora said. Emma nodded.

“I need your attention,” Tillman said. He couldn’t raise his voice loud enough to be heard over the crowd. In fact, it came out as a thin squeak. “Please. Listen to me.”

Harris nodded to the guard, who jerked the doors open again. Two more men entered, wearing black combat suits and carrying machine guns slung across their chests, holding them sideways like bad guys in a movie.

Before anyone could react, both men fired their weapons into the ceiling. Nora pushed Emma down between the nearest row of seats, covering her with her body. The sound was like hail on a tin roof, not as dramatic as Hollywood portrayed it, but when added to the ghastly smiles on the men’s faces and the shower of shredded acoustical material, it effectively inspired terror.

When Nora dared to look up again, she saw people gaping heavenward, some ducking beneath the seats, mothers shielding their children, husbands and wives clinging to each other. Screams echoed from every corner of the auditorium.

The storm of bullets lasted only a few seconds, but the shouts and cries took longer to die down. Several people actually started forward, faces flushed with anger and fear, but the men in black pointed their guns at them and they froze where they were.

“Quiet!” Harris shouted. He shoved Tillman forward, adding him to the crowd. Slowly everyone hushed except for a few sobs. “I need your attention. Now!”

All eyes were on him. Nora clutched at Emma’s arm to prevent the older woman from running to find Deon.

“No sudden movement,” she whispered as she helped Emma to her feet. Emma’s eyes were narrowed in fury; she looked ready to take on Harris and his men single-handedly, but she nodded and stayed put.

“What do you want?” Nora stepped forward so that she was in front of Emma. Her heart was thudding as fast as the machine-gun bullets and she couldn’t swallow—her mouth was too dry—but she was damned if she was going to let him see any of that. “I take it you’re not from the DEA, Mr. Harris. Or whatever your name is.”

“Harris will do just fine,” he said with a benevolent smile. “And I want the same thing I did before: Lydia Fiore.” He turned his head to address the entire auditorium, his words carrying effortlessly thanks to the acoustics. “Dr. Lydia Fiore. It’s urgent that I find her—life and death, in fact.
Your
lives. Once we find her, we’ll leave.”

He paused, letting that sink in. Then he unholstered his own weapon and raised it, aiming at Nora. “Anyone who gets in our way dies.”

 

 

EVEN THOUGH THE MAIN HOSPITAL STILL HAD backup power from the generator, the research tower was low priority and had only battery-operated emergency lighting, which meant that the stairwell was a mass of shadows punctuated by a few halfhearted lightbulbs.

All Amanda could hope was that the bad guys hadn’t sent anyone over to the tower because all the noise they were making, sounds bouncing back and forth and up and down the concrete-walled stairwell, reminded her of the herd of cannibal hippos she’d seen on a nature show. A stealth operation, this was not.

Jerry and Lucas went down the stairs together—Lucas leading, pretending he wasn’t there to catch Jerry if Jerry fell. After a few failed attempts to use his cane, Jerry finally hooked it over his shoulder, pocketed his gun, and faced the stairwell wall, using both hands on the railing as he side-stepped down.

Amanda was the one who kept stumbling, tripping on the hem of the ball gown, now inches too long since she’d abandoned the stilettos. By the time they reached the second-floor landing, she’d ripped the hem in several places, soiled the beautiful silk, and bruised herself too many times to count.

“Let’s take a break,” Lucas said, holding the landing door open for them.

Jerry stole a glance at Amanda, nodded, and said, “Recon.”

By the time Amanda crossed through the door and out into the elevator lobby, Jerry was leaning against the picture window, peering down into the atrium that separated them and the auditorium. The snow had slowed—or the wind had, it was hard for Amanda to tell. She gazed out at the landscape transformed into an alien world by the storm.

The only lights were the ones from Angels; everywhere else it was dark, as far as she could see. But there was enough light to reveal the snowy swirls and dunes and drifts shaped by the frenzied wind. Small mountains heaped one against the other, stacked against the nineteen-foot-high glass walls of the atrium, almost to the roof. No one could get through that. Not without some serious earthmoving equipment.

The atrium’s glass roof was steeply angled and clear of snow, giving Jerry a good line of sight to the space in front of the auditorium’s doors.

“Nobody moving,” he reported.

Amanda slumped to the floor, kneading her eyes with the heels of her palms. They really were trapped. It was hopeless—there was no way help could reach them, not for hours, maybe not for days. Which meant all those people’s lives depended on them.

She sniffed, tried to muffle it without success. She was not going to cry. She absolutely, positively was not. She was too tired, too scared for tears—but then again, tears might be the perfect response to parading around an abandoned hospital actually searching for men with guns. It made as much sense as anything else that had happened today.