SEIZED, A Romantic Suspense Novella (7 page)

“DAVE!” she screamed, closing her eyes, prepared for impact.

It never came.

When she opened her eyes, she was amazed. Dave managed to pull them to a stop mere inches from the oak’s trunk.

Suddenly her door was wrenched open.

“Are you okay, babe?” Dave asked, squatting down to unbuckle her seatbelt, his hands skimming over her arms, legs, torso. Fear and need pouring off him. Fear that they’d almost died, need that she be uninjured.

She cupped his face in her hands. “I’m all right. Truly.”

“You’re sure? You didn’t hit your head or anything?”

“David.” She never used that name, only when she wanted his undivided attention. “I’m okay. Nothing’s hurt. Nothing’s broken.”

The next second she was swept out of the car into the drizzling rain and into his strong arms, his body heat warming her despite the cold rain. His heart pounded against hers.

“The son of a bitch came out of nowhere. I didn’t see him until it was too late.” He squeezed her harder. “I thought we were going to die.”

She knew his fear and relief were making him babble and all she could do was hold him tight. “We’re okay, sweetheart.”

“All I could do was try to keep the wheels steady and not head nose-first into something. The bastard didn’t even stop to see if we were okay.” He pulled away and gazed down into her face. “It’s my job to keep you safe—always.”

The phone on the OR wall rang.

Wilkes stalked over to her and hauled her up by her elbow. “You answer it, Ms. Judy. If they don’t have the senator outside the OR doors, you tell them someone in here is going to pay.”

“OR-four, Judy Edgars,” she said, trying to keep the phone from shaking. She flinched as Wilkes reached past her to hit the speakerphone button.

“Ms. Edgars, this is Agent Carlisle of the FBI. Is Mr. Wilkes there with you?”

She nearly sagged with relief at hearing her brother-in-law’s voice. “Yes. He’s right here and you’re on speakerphone.”

“Mr. Wilkes, I have Senator Klein outside the main door as you requested.”

“Push him to the window so I can see him.”

“I can’t just put him out there for you to take a shot at.”

Wilkes gave a harsh laugh. “I don’t intend to shoot him. I just want to be sure he’s here.”

“What exactly are you looking to accomplish here? You don’t have a means of escape.”

“What I’m looking for, Mr. FBI agent, is some justice. Setting right what these three did.”

“Killing all those innocent people in that room isn’t going to accomplish this.”

“Tick, tock. You’re running out of time. If you want them out of here, you’d best let me see that bastard senator.”

“Tell you what. I’ll stand in front of the door. You let me see that one of the hostages is okay, say, Ms. Edgars, and then I’ll hand the phone to the Senator.”

Wilkes pushed the mute button on the phone and looked at Judy. “Will this cord reach out into the hallway?”

She tried to remember the last time she’d pulled it into the hallway. “Yes. Barely.”

He grabbed the receiver from her hand and hit the buttons to take the phone off mute and speaker. “No tricks, or Judy is the first to die and it will be on your head.”

Holding the phone and his weapon in one hand, he hauled Judy out into the hall by her arm.

Judy could see Jake standing just outside the doors to the OR and behind him, eyes full of intensity focused solely on her, was Dave. A sudden sting of tears hit her eyes and she tried to hide the sniffle caused by the burning in her nose with a hard cough.

Dave slowly raised his weapon. He was hoping to get a shot of Wilkes, but her captor was using the open door to hide him from those at the end of the hall. Dave motioned for her to move farther into the hall.

She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t let him kill this man.

Her heart in her throat, she shook her head no at her husband.

“Here she is. Now let me see the senator,” he said into the phone.

It took a moment and Judy wondered if they’d truly managed to convince the politician to come meet Wilkes’ demands or if Dave and Jake had simply been bluffing. Then the grey hair of the senator moved into the small frame of the window.

Beside her, Wilkes let out a huge breath. “Put the bastard on the phone.”

Jake nodded and handed the phone to Senator Klein.

“Senator.” Wilkes stared at the main OR doors, his attention focused on the state senator. “Glad you could join us. Your son has to pay for what he did and I want you to hear justice finally taking place.”

He turned, raised his weapon at the senator’s son, lying prone on the table and fired at his chest.

Chapter Five

T
he gunshot echoed off the tiled walls of the operating room, the sound deafening Judy for a moment even as she screamed and turned to cover her ears.

“Judy!” She could see Dave screaming her name, more than hear him, even as Wilkes shoved her back into the operating room and slammed the receiver back on the wall mount.

“You bastard! You’re going to kill us all, aren’t you?” Dr. Smith said, eyes wide with fear. The resident surgeon wasn’t known for handling surgical emergencies well, even though it was his area of expertise. That he’d kept his calm thus far was a miracle.

“Want to be next?” Wilkes aimed right at him.

Forcing her fear deep inside, Judy stepped between them, hands raised in submission. “Please don’t. He’s just scared. We’re all scared.”

“Right now he needs to keep his mouth shut. You all do.”

Out of the corner of her eye she could see the tall nurse anesthetist, Bill, sliding along the wall toward the tubes and cords of the anesthesia machine. She needed to keep Wilkes focused on her and hopefully get him to lower his weapon.

“We’d all be less scared if you told us why you were doing this? What did Dr. Hodges and the senator do to you?”

He lowered his arm slightly, pointing the gun out to the side, moving in to invade her space once more, intimidating her with his anger. “Stop trying to get inside my head, Judy. I said to shut up.”

Despite her common sense telling her to back up, she held her ground. Her daddy had always told her a bully just needed someone to stand up to them. Of course, she doubted he was talking about gun-carrying, bomb-making lunatics. “Why? Or are you going to execute me like you did Dr. Hodges? I don’t know what your beef was with him or the senator, but I’ve done nothing to you.”

For what seemed like an eternity, she stared into the deep blue abyss of Wilkes’ eyes—hatred and pain staring back at her.

Then he blinked, his look changing to despair. Growling, he ran his free hand over the back of his neck—the same motion of frustration Dave had used during a fight when he knew he was wrong—and backed up two steps.

“They killed her.”

“Who? Dr. Hodges and the senator?”

He pointed his gun at the OR table and the patient bleeding out onto it. “He started it.”

Slipping her hand in the pocket with the syringe, she loosened the cap at the same time edging to the side to still hide the anesthetist’s movements towards the tubing from the anesthesia machine lying curled on the floor. “What did he do?”

“He slammed his sports car into the back of her and shoved her beneath a semi.”

“I’m so sorry, Paul. What was her name?”

“Betsy. She was the one who brought me back when the nightmares started. She was light and sweetness. She was carrying our son.”

His anguish tore at her heart. To lose a wife and unborn child would destroy any man. Send him over the edge for revenge. Maybe getting him to talk about her would make him see what he was doing was so wrong.

“Would she want you to be doing this?” she asked hesitantly, hoping to keep him focused on her and not Bill, who had his foot finally tangled in the cords.

“No. But she’s not here.” He turned from the bedside back toward Judy, every muscle in his face and neck tight with anger. Gone from his eyes was the despair of a man still grieving for his family. They’d shuttered, closing off everything but his rage.

Her heart stuttered as he narrowed the space between them.

“She’s dead. Cold, in the ground, dead.” He waved his gun hand at Dr. Hodges’ corpse and the inert patient on the table. “And
they
took her from me!”

A loud crash sounded behind her. They both jumped. He pushed her to the side and rushed past her toward Bill, his gun aimed at her friend. “What the hell are you doing?”

Judy, didn’t hesitate a second. She pulled the syringe out of her pocket and whirled, slamming the needle into the exposed skin where Wilkes’ shoulder met his neck and pressing the plunger down fast.

“Ah!” The gunman swung around with his gun arm, clotheslining her in the shoulder and knocking her hip into the metal operating table. She lost her balance and hit the floor with a grunt.

“What the hell…” he grabbed at his shoulder where the syringe was still imbedded.

Scrambling backwards out of his way like a crab on hot sand, Judy prayed the medication would work before he shot her. She watched him as if seeing a movie in slow motion.

Stumbling, he caught himself on the OR table. Waving his arms like a windmill, he listed sideways, a confused panic spreading over his face as his body faltered and he began gasping for air. His feet slid out from under him and he sunk to his knees, one hand at his throat, his eyes widened with fear as his airway constricted. His gun arm shook and he dropped the weapon on the floor.

“Judy, come undo my hands quick!” Bill yelled as he struggled to his feet. “I’ve got to get a tube down his throat before his throat closes completely.”

Snapped out of her daze, she pulled her gaze from Wilkes’ wobbling body and kicked the gun away from him. She grabbed the bandage scissors from the Mayo stand and hurried to the anesthetist’s side.

“You’re going to intubate him? Why?” Dr. Smith asked behind them.

“He may be a murderer, but we’re not,” Bill said to the resident, as Judy snipped through the tape binding his wrists. “We’ve got to get him intubated before his airway closes completely and somehow onto an anesthesia machine.”

As Bill grabbed a laryngoscope and ET tube, Judy cut Karen’s bindings then set Dr. Smith free, too.

“We have to get out of here,” the resident said. Eyes wide with his barely controlled panic, he pushed out the door to the OR hallway.

“Wait! Stop!” Judy ran after him, shoving him to the wall mere inches before he hit the door-open button for the main entrance. Her forearm pressed against his throat so he understood she meant business, just like Dave had taught her. “We can’t leave yet. The bombs are still set to go off if any of the doors open.”

“I can’t stay here, I can’t.” Smith tried to struggle away from her grip on him.

“You have to for now. See that man out there?” She pointed to the main OR doors and Dave standing on the other side, his rifle once again aimed inside. “You go anywhere near that door and he’ll shoot you.”

“You don’t know that.” Smith shifted his stare from her to the door and back.

“Yes, I do. He’s my husband.” She paused for the words to affect the young doctor. “You put my life in danger by going near that door, and he
will
stop you.”

And she knew deep down in her soul Dave would do just that. She looked out the door, her gaze meeting that of the man she loved. She gave a little nod to reassure him and he nodded back.

“What are we going to do?”

Glancing the other direction, she saw Bill and Karen drag the gunman’s body to the empty OR. She assumed they plan to hook him up to the machine to keep him breathing while the Succs was in his system.

“What we do best. You’re going to go back in the OR, act like the surgeon you’re trained to be and try to save the Senator’s son.”

The doctor’s body seemed to relax beneath her hands. “What are you going to do?”

“What I do best. Solve the problem.”

***

Katie stretched out on her stomach in front of the back operating room door. There was just enough space to allow her expanding scope to slide beneath. It would’ve been better if she could’ve shimmied it through the doors near the handles, but they were sealed tight. The space between the doors and the floor was all she had to work with.

“See anything?” Matt asked from above.

“Just a second.” She wiggled it forward then put her eye onto the face piece that allowed her to look through the fiber-optic lens.

“Where did you get this thing?” Castello asked. He stood lookout to her left.

“Don’t ask her,” Matt said in a near groan.

“Why not? Don’t tell me you let her do something illegal.” Castello said.

Katie shook her head at them. The pair was always ready to argue. She used to believe it was just about her, but now that she was happily married to Matt, she realized they just liked to argue and each always thought he was right.

She couldn’t help but smile. Like her sister-in-law Sami always said, “
Men. You can’t live with them and you can’t bury them in the backyard
.”

“No, I didn’t
let
her do something illegal. Not like I have that control over my wife, but it’s just gross.”

“Hush, you two. I’m trying to see in here and the arguing isn’t helping my concentration.”

“Where’d she get it?” Castello whispered.

“A medical supply company,” Matt whispered back a little more harshly. “It’s the same docs use to look at people’s guts during surgery.”

“Gross.”

“Hush,” she said, turning the knob to extend the fiber optics farther and then upward. She paused and studied the bottom of the explosives. “Looks like he has C-4 compound on both sides of the door. Wires connecting both.”

“So if we open the door and break the connection—” Matt started to ask.

“The door blows.” She twisted the knob to study the wires coming out of the far side of the clay-like explosives. “And he’s got wires running all along the wall, interspersed with more C-4, probably all the way to the next entrance, just like he told Judy.”