Lost (8 page)

Either all of
the practice was taking effect already, or someone besides just Ash
and I really wanted Kristin to live. The first stitch went in
perfectly and the next one was almost as good. After what felt like
forever I pulled the last stitch tight and tied it off.

Ash stuck his
head inside the car to check that I was done and then grabbed me by
one arm and helped get me up into the back seat as he passed me a
gigantic roll of medical tape.

"That will
have to be good enough. Get started on yourself before you lose any
more blood. We have to get out of here before the fire draws the cops
and more of Onyx's people."

I stared dumbly
at the tape for a second before looking around. "What fire?"

"The one
that is going to start in fifteen minutes when the time-delay fuses
on the two incendiary grenades I jammed inside of their car go off."

Ash threw the
SUV into gear and took off like we were already being chased by the
cops. I wanted to just lie down and close my eyes, but something told
me that would be a very bad idea.

I forced myself
to start taping up the huge hole in my side. Ash looked back at me
and frowned. "How much blood have you lost?"

"Honestly,
I have no idea, but it must have been a lot. I can't remember the
last time I was this loopy."

For some reason
that struck me as being incredibly funny. I started to laugh, but
that just pulled on the wound in my side and sent me down a dizzying
spiral of pain. I managed to get a hand out and stop myself from
falling over, but the motion pulled at something inside my chest and
got me started coughing.

"Isaac,
you've got to work faster. I can't stop, and not just for Kristin.
We've got to get out of this area or Onyx will find us."

I sucked down a
couple of big gasps of air to oxygenate my blood enough to keep me
from passing out, and then nodded as I ripped off another big strip
of tape and used it to hold the edges of my stomach wound closed.

"I know.
How long will it take us to get to the nearest hospital?"

"I think I
can get us there in twenty minutes, maybe a minute or two faster if
everything goes perfectly."

"You know
that's the first place that Onyx will check, right?"

"Yeah, I
know. We don't have any other choice though. We've got to get some
blood inside of Kristin and get her on oxygen or she'll never make
it. Honestly, the way you're looking we probably need to get a bag of
saline and some oxygen into you too."

The image of
Ash trying to sneak a canister of oxygen out of the hospital under
his jacket struck me as being so funny that I nearly broke out into
laughter again, but I'd learned my lesson the time before.

"I'm not
complaining, just trying to make sure you're working on a plan. I'm
not going to be good for much of anything once we get there, so I
can't bail you out this time."

"Your vote
of confidence is absolutely overwhelming, but yes, I'm working on
it."

"That's
good then. I'm just going to close my eyes then."

"Did you
get yourself all taped up?"

"I think
so."

I wasn't
positive I had, but I couldn't keep my eyes open any longer. Whatever
I'd managed to get done was just going to have to be good enough.

"Okay,
hold on the best you can. I'll have us there soon. And, Isaac…"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks
for taking care of Kristin and helping me keep things together."

"No
problem. You would have done the same for me if it had been Jess."

"Yeah, yeah, I would have."

Isaac Nazir
River Parishes Hospital
New Orleans, Louisiana

I must have
fallen asleep at some point. I came back to myself enough to be aware
of my surroundings about two minutes before we arrived at the
hospital.

The relief in
Ash's voice when I asked him how close we were was palpable. I
stripped off what was left of my ha'bit and used it to wipe away the
worst of the blood before I slipped my clothes back on.

I rolled out of
the vehicle as soon as Ash pulled up to the emergency room entrance,
and the two of us carried Kristin inside of the hospital. It was like
walking into a tidal wave. Within seconds of stepping inside the
modern-looking, gray building we were surrounded by people in blue
hospital scrubs, all of who were asking us what had happened as they
took Kristin out of our arms and placed her on a bed.

Ash handled
things much better than I would have. He'd had the benefit of being
able to plan out his story while I'd been passed out, but even so I
couldn't have done as good of a job throwing everyone off of the
truth.

Within seconds
he had everyone convinced that Kristin had been attacked by a
mountain lion. It wasn't a perfect match to her wounds, not unless
someone had run across a new breed of cat that had six-inch claws,
but at that point the doctors were more concerned with getting
Kristin into an operating room than with poking holes in Ash's story.

He made sure
that the surgeon knew that we'd stitched up the worst of the vascular
damage, told one of the nurses that I was in shock and in need of
some oxygen, and then disappeared back into the night.

I tried to wave
the nurse off—by that time I was feeling much steadier than I'd
been in the car—but she was pretty insistent. In the end I
decided not to fight her. Even shape shifters don't bounce back
instantly from that kind of blood loss, so I figured it was only a
matter of time before the adrenaline wore off and I'd be back to
staggering around like a drunk.

Ash showed back
up to my room fifteen minutes later with all three bug-out bags.

"I checked
with a nurse on my way back in. They've got her in surgery. It will
probably be another couple of hours before we know anything
substantial, but from what I could hear from outside the operating
room it sounded like they have her on oxygen and are transfusing
blood."

"Good, if
she's made it this long then she'll be okay. Once they get her
hematocrit and blood pressure back up then the only other thing to
worry about is infection."

"Yeah, if
we can avoid Onyx's people long enough for the doctors to finish
stabilizing her then she's got a good chance. One of the doctors was
admiring your handiwork, by the way. Craziest thing I've ever seen.
You can't run an IV, but you stitched her up like a pro."

"I got
lucky. You should see Donovan. He's better than most doctors with ten
years of experience under their belts. He's the one who taught me how
to sew up an artery like that. He insisted that we all learn what he
called 'the basics of first aid.' With the constant low-level
conflict between us and Brandon's pack we got lots of chances to
practice our skills. It wasn't until I got quite a bit older that I
realized that he'd essentially given us a residency as surgeons. I
think that Alec realized how much more Donovan was teaching us than
he was letting on, but Alec never said anything, never complained or
let on that he knew."

Ash nodded. "I
can't say that I'm surprised about Alec or Donovan either one.
Donovan is one of those rare treasures you don't come across very
often. It says a lot about Alec's judgment that he's listened so
closely to Donovan's advice for so many years."

"Yeah, I
guess you're right. It's hard to think of Donovan as being something
unusual. He's just been there for as long as I can remember.
He's…well, he's just Donovan."

"That's a
common tendency, but in my experience it's a dangerous way to think.
It's all too easy to miss out on greatness when you do that. Just
because you know someone doesn't mean that they can't be world-class
at something. You wouldn't dream of saying that Thanatas or Jaldul
were
just
Thanatas and Jaldul, but you think nothing of saying
that about Alec."

I was too tired
to get really indignant over anything, but I could feel the faintest
stirrings of unhappiness from my beast. It was the kind of
early-warning system that I had to heed these days.

"I saved
your life and your girlfriend's life today. Can you just do me a
favor and give the recriminations and sermons a rest for a few
hours?"

"Sure
thing. Sorry, I guess trying to teach Kristin everything she needed
to know over the last few months has me in lecture mode."

We sat in
silence for several minutes before I pulled the mask back off and
turned off the oxygen.

"So, did
you come up with a plan or are we just screwed?"

Ash pulled out
a small black box and looked at it for a couple of seconds before
stuffing it back into his pocket and turning back to me.

"Just
wanted to make sure that nobody's planted a bug in here. In answer to
your question, some of both. By now I expect that our SUV is gone. I
stripped the plates off of it and then turned it on, left the doors
unlocked and walked away. We'll have to buy or steal something when
it's time to leave, but that shouldn't be too much of a problem. I
can boost most of the older cars in less than two minutes."

"What
about the police?"

"I
stripped the barrel out of my gun on the way here and tossed it in
the bayou. I took care of Kristin's a few minutes ago. I wiped it
down and then jammed it down into the grass with my foot. The police
will search the scene of the fight and if they track us here they'll
search us and any dumpsters, but they'll never think to take a metal
detector out there and sweep the lawn."

"Does that
mean you're unarmed now?"

Ash shook his
head and tapped the magazine he had sitting in his lap. "Spare
barrel. It's cheaper than just tossing the weapon and goes a long way
towards making it so the police can't tie your weapon to the
incident."

"So
there's nothing left to tie us to the fight then."

"Some tire
tracks, but we used a pseudonym when we purchased the SUV, so even if
the police eventually track it down they won't have anything other
than Kristin's DNA."

"So we're
the evidence then."

"I'm
afraid so. I'm not too worried about the cops coming at us from that
direction though. Even if they find it tonight they won't do much
with the crime scene before the sun comes up. The more urgent worry
is that the hospital will call the precinct and let them know that
they've got someone here who looks like she might be the victim of a
stabbing or other violent crime."

"So what's
your brilliant plan there?"

"You're my
brilliant plan." Ash gestured at the black bags. "All of
your favorite toys are in there. My bet is that nobody will call the
police before the surgeons finish up with Kristin because they'll
want to have the full story. If you can hack their email and phone
system within the next couple of hours then the police won't know we
were even here until we're long gone."

"That's
your big plan?"

Ash shrugged.
"I didn't have a lot to work with. Besides, you said it's easier
to do this kind of thing from inside the facility."

I closed my
eyes and counted to ten.

"Sure, it
would be easier if I had access to one of the nurses' terminals.
Working on their public wi-fi isn't going to be any easier than
attacking from the outside."

"I don't
think it would be a good idea to go walking around in the hopes of
sneaking some time on an unlocked terminal. I'm pretty sure that the
nurses have instructions to keep an eye on us in case the doctors
decide that we are accessories to some kind of crime."

"You
think?"

The barest hint
of a smile played at the edge of Ash's lips as he closed his eyes.
"Be nice, Isaac, or I might not give you the present that I
picked up for you just outside the gift shop."

Before I could
come up with a suitably biting response Ash pulled a tablet out from
where he'd wedged it between the magazine and his gun.

"The
unlock code the nurse used is two-four-two-five. Hopefully that will
help."

"What are
you going to be doing while I desperately try to save our bacon?"

"I'm going
to take a nap. If things go as badly as I think they might, then it
might be a while before I'll get another chance to sleep."

I almost said
something cutting about him being a cold monster if he was really
going to be able to sleep while his girlfriend was being operated on,
but I thought better of it at the last second. Ash could be cold when
the situation warranted it, but he was right. We didn't both need to
be awake right now and if we were forced to make a run for it then
sleep might get really hard to come by.

I unlocked the
nurse's tablet and breathed a silent sigh of relief when I saw that
it was one of the operating systems that I was most familiar with. It
only took me a couple of minutes to pull the file containing all of
the encrypted passwords and transfer it over to my own tablet. I
plugged my tablet in and then pulled up my decryption program and
hoped that the hospital's IT staff was less paranoid than most.

The decryption
program was good—I'd written it myself when I'd found backdoors
in both of the off-the-shelf programs that I'd downloaded five years
ago—but if it had to brute-force its way to a solution by
trying every possible combination then we'd be in for a really,
really long wait. Our only hope was that the IT staff used something
relatively easy to remember so that they didn't have to enter a long
string of random characters each time they got a new batch of thirty
or forty tablets that needed to be configured
yesterday
.

While my tablet
was beating on the password file, I grabbed the tablet Ash had lifted
for me, pulled it out of the hospital-issue cover so that it wouldn't
be quite so conspicuous, and started loading it up with all of my
favorite utilities.