Out of Nowhere (The Immortal Vagabond Healer Book 1) (16 page)

‘How is she?’ Nique asked with deep concern, her earlier disdain for Tiffany banished.

‘She’s in and out. Got hit on the head bad. They’re just waiting for CT. Got a bunch of bruises on her face. Not much below the neck.’

‘They see who did it?’ asked Pete.

‘Not really. She was walking to her car when this dude jumps her. Brian from security chased him off. Said the guy just vanished into thin air. He called 911 on his cell, since he didn’t want to move her and carry her into the ER.’

‘Vanished into thin air?’ said Pete. ‘Yeah, right, happens all the time. You mean Brian couldn’t catch him ‘cause he wasn’t dressed like a doughnut.’

I walked toward the room. I caught Jane’s eye on the way, gave a quick concerned look and pointed at the door. She nodded.

I pushed open the door and walked in. There was a tech checking the monitor but she recognized me and looked away quickly. I looked down at the form on the hospital stretcher. She was still on a backboard, the cervical collar on her neck. She was breathing on her own. Small, sobbing breaths through split lips crusted with blood. Her face was a swollen mass of bruises. There was an IV line in her left hand, and another up high in her forearm. Her right hand was hastily splinted, the once deft, graceful fingers reduced to purple sausages sticking out from the wrapping.

‘Hey, you,’ I said quietly, brushing a long curl, now stiff with dried blood, from her forehead. As I did, I felt her injuries, down to the small bleed in her brain that the CT scan would show whenever they got it, if the machine was up tonight and the tech was on the ball and the radiologist answered his pager. He probably would, and since she was a hospital employee, they’d go the extra mile; but I wasn’t going to leave it to fate.

I rested my hand against her forehead, in a way that would look normal enough for a distraught friend if somebody walked in, and let the energy flow. I sealed the bleed, and sent some energy to quiet the nerves, easing her pain a bit. I gave the tissues a nudge in the direction of healing, willing the swelling to go down, the damage to start to reverse. I couldn’t do much more without being obvious, and it pained me to hold back.

Still, I stopped the life-threatening issue and eased the rest. That was as much as I could do in safety. Maybe I could visit her later and keep an eye on her, make sure she recovered properly.

It was a hollow comfort. I felt like a coward because I was being one, withholding healing to keep myself safe.

Withholding healing for injuries she got because she did me a favour.

I shook with frustration. I could fix all of this. But if she got up from the cot, walked out to the desk with a smile and signed herself out, Bad Things would happen. A dozen people knew she was hurt. There were x-rays. Indisputable evidence. There could be no explaining a miraculous recovery, and people would talk and wonder and start looking around. And I would have to leave.

For good.

I took a deep breath. I’d done what I could, I forced myself to believe, and I’d do more when it was safe to. But first, I had to eliminate a threat.

How the hell had they tracked this back to Tiffany, anyway?
I wondered.
The demographic sheet she gave me had very little info and that had run me to a dead end...

It had
trapped
info. Not just bad info, trapped info.

I saw it all now. The info he gave out would be just a bit wrong, so he couldn’t be tracked, but uniquely wrong, so all he had to do was watch the false address or phone for a hit, and if it wasn’t from the hospital billing department or an insurance company, he’d know somebody was after him, and where they’d gotten the lead. We used to leave trapped info all the time when I was doing recon. It helped us find out which locals were in bed with the enemy. You tell each suspected leak a slightly different thing, and see what the enemy act on, then you know your informant.

And we all knew what happened to informants in the Old Country.

So, when I went online to check out his info, he’d found out about it and tracked it back and...

Online?

Sarah was surfing linguistics sites looking for a language.

A language used by brutal men.

And she said she’d found a lead.

I turned and ran from the room.

Chapter 17

I THREW MY CAR INTO GEAR and fumbled my cell phone out of my jacket pocket, tearing out of the parking lot as I punched in Sarah’s number.

Come on, come on
, I pleaded as it rang twice. Then it went to machine.

‘Fuck!’ I yelled and hung up before the beep. Sarah didn’t screen. She was brighter than I was, and knew how to use the caller ID. She was out, or somebody was there. If somebody was there, the last thing that would help would be my voice on the machine.

I stomped on the gas.

In a few minutes, I pulled into the apartment complex, threw the shifter into park and reached into the back seat. I had no time to go get a real weapon, but I had my cue. I opened the case and took the heavy half of the disassembled cue, sliding it up my right sleeve, then ran to the door.

I stopped, looking at the row of doorbells in between the sets of big glass doors. I didn’t want to ring Sarah’s, in case they were there now, but I had to get in. I could use my cue as an Irish lockpick, which would have the added bonus of sounding an alarm and bringing the police, but it might also make anyone there panic and do something drastic. I’d just seen their version of drastic.

And if I was wrong and smashed my way in, I might wind up explaining things to the boys in blue myself.

I calmed down, chose a button other than hers and pressed.

‘Hello?’ came the voice.

‘Ambulance,’ I replied.

‘I didn’t call for the ambulance,’ the voice said.

‘No ma’am, but your neighbor did, and she’s fallen and can’t get to the buzzer. Could you buzz us in?’

‘Oh, yes, right away.’ The door buzzed and I was through it in a heartbeat.

‘Thank you,’ I said into the intercom, just to maintain my ruse.

‘Who are you here for?’ asked the voice. ‘Is it Mrs O’Leary?’

‘Sorry, ma’am, patient confidentiality.’ I bolted away, leaving the intercom babbling questions.

I pushed the elevator button, waited impatiently for a three second eternity, then sprinted to the stairs. I sprang up two at a time and grabbed the handle of the door on the third floor when some ancient instinct made me stop.

It was a cold, calm voice cutting through my rage and fear like a knife. While most of my brain screamed to hurry, to think what might be happening in that apartment, the clear, rational, cynical voice that had saved me before, preserved me through too many campaigns to ignore, told me to wait, to slow down and do some recon.

It’s not a very noble part of my mind, but it’s hard to argue with.

I slowly pushed the door open a crack and peered down the hallway.

A burly guy in a black trench and a crew cut stood at parade rest, one hand inside his coat, keeping watch.

His attention was on the elevator doors because, really, who takes the stairs anymore?

I slipped my shoes off, stuffed them inside my jacket and quietly stalked down the hall, thanking the landlord for the ugly but functional industrial carpeting. Now that the enemy was in sight, I felt the surge of adrenaline. I let the pool cue slide into my hand as I accelerated over the last few yards, just like before we crashed into Cope’s line at Prestonpans.

He must have heard something, because he began to turn at the last minute, pulling something from his coat, but I was already on him. Driven by the energy of my charge as well as all the anger and panic boiling inside me, the cue cracked across his temple and he fell to the floor, arms and legs twitching.

I reached down to his nerveless fingers, expecting a gun. What I found was another knife, twin to the one I took from the man back outside Dugan’s. I shifted the cue to my left hand and took the knife in my right.

The door was slightly ajar, closed on a rumpled welcome mat. Hearing sounds of violence within, I pushed it open.

The apartment was a wreck. The curio cabinet lay on the floor, crockery scattered in shards, pictures knocked off the walls. I took a second to slip my shoes back on before crossing.

Maybe a hero wouldn’t have wasted time on that, but then a hero wouldn’t mind fighting on lacerated soles.

I heard raised voices in the back. I moved in as fast and quietly as I could, the knife in my fist and murder in my heart. I rounded a corner and saw the broad back of another muscle blocking the bedroom doorway. He had his fist balled up and barked an order in that same guttural, almost-Slavic dialect to someone I couldn’t see. I heard pained, frightened sobs beyond.

‘I will not ask you this again,’ he said with more accuracy than he realized.

Dropping the cue, I stepped behind him, yanked his head back and rammed the point of the knife into the side of his neck, then ripped it out the front in a slashing sweep that severed windpipe and blood vessels and turned him into a Hired Thug Pez Dispenser.

That, kiddies, is how you cut a throat. Brutal, perhaps, but if you have an issue with brutal, you have no business cutting throats.

I shoved his body aside. As it fell, jerking and kicking and leaking, I looked into the room and saw Sarah slumped to her knees on the floor, bruised and battered, one eye wide in shock above her tear-streaked cheeks, the other a slit in a bulging purple bruise. Another heavy held her up by the arms.

The thug looked at me, his eyes widened and the color drained from his face. He looked as though he were peering into the abyss, staring into the eyes of the Grim Reaper.

Again, totally accurate.

The man pushed Sarah towards me, drew his own dagger and lunged at me, staking his hopes for survival on a single vicious thrust. I dodged sideways, deflecting his attack with a swipe that cut open the inside of his right forearm. I grabbed his injured knife hand and thrust my own blade at him. He caught my wrist and we lurched into the dining room, spinning around one another. He tried to twist my wrist, but I snapped my head forward, butting him in the face. He staggered back into the table. I drove forward, my legs churning as the table slid scraping along the floor and smashed into the wall. I brought a knee up between his legs, wrenched my hand free of his grasp and then slammed the knife into his body again and again. No finesse, no technique, just white-hot rage. I stabbed until his struggles stopped and he went limp. I released his body and let it fall, first to the table in a crash of plates, then to the floor with a dull thump.

I was on my haunches beside Sarah by the time he hit the floor.

She looked bad.

One eye was already swollen shut, her lips split and bleeding. She breathed in short, painful gasps and held an arm across her side.

‘Oh, God,’ she sobbed.

‘Shh.’ I held her gently, letting my senses sink in, looking for the source of the pain. ‘It’s OK. They’re gone.’ I winced as I catalogued her injuries. Orbital fracture, damage to the globe of the eye, loosened teeth, cracked ribs, lacerated liver, broken wrist. What kind of sick fuck could do this to a woman?

A dead one
, I reminded myself.
That
’
s what kind.

‘It’s OK,’ I repeated. ‘You’re gonna be fine.’

‘Don’t lie to me,’ she whispered. ‘I know it’s bad. I feel things broken inside. I might not make it, that’s true, isn’t it?’

‘No,’ I said simply. ‘It’s not.’

I sent messages to the nerves first, to quiet the pain, then I focused on the liver, the most immediately life-threatening injury. I coaxed the tissues to knit, the vessels to stop leaking. I repaired the cheekbone and eye next, then the teeth, lips and wrist. I felt her stiffen as she realized something was happening far beyond her understanding, but I held her close, whispering the nonsense sounds you make when comforting a spooked horse or a crying infant, and kept pouring healing energy in.

I kept on until she was as good as new, physically at least. Better, even. She’d been brutally beaten because of me; if she decided to look for a pitchfork when I finished, so be it. I was through hiding.

She pulled back a bit, but didn’t break away.

‘My God,’ she said. ‘Who are you?’

‘Just a man. With a talent, but a man just the same.’

‘No.’ She shook her head, looked around at the carnage, touched the soft, whole flesh below her eye. ‘I don’t know what you are, but you just healed me. Instantly healed horrible, probably permanent injuries. After you brutally killed two men.’

‘Three. There was a lookout in the hallway. And they deserved it. Believe me.’

‘Who are they? Why are they looking for you?’

‘I swear to you, I don’t know,’ I said earnestly. ‘I have no idea what they want. I had no idea you were in danger, really.’

She nodded. ‘But how do you... do...?’

‘I don’t know. Well, I know
how
, I don’t know why I can do it. Just that I can. I couldn’t tell anyone; people wouldn’t understand.’