Few things are as lonely as an empty hospital hallway. I don’t know if it’s the smell, the cold fluorescent lighting, or even the constant faint noises that point to activity and life just around some distant corner, but the end result always depressed me. I’d spent a long time in corridors like this at the end of Maggie’s life, and it was exactly the same. I might be there now, the intervening miles and years suddenly meaningless.
I had left Anne behind in the room. This wasn’t going to be pretty, and I figured that she’d been through enough at Georgia’s house. Despite Henry’s willingness to take his chances, there was no way I was letting these pieces of shit kill my friends. If it worked out that they got to keep breathing after I got what I wanted, fine. But I wasn’t going to go out of my way to coddle them.
I listened at the stairwell door. In order to be sure that we couldn’t leave the floor, they would have to watch the stairwells and the elevators here. Once we got off of this floor, it would be impossible to watch all of the possible exits from the hospital without a small army. Therefore, there must be someone watching the stairs on this floor. It was quiet behind the door, so I pushed it open and stepped inside.
As I suspected, my target was standing in the corner away from the door at the top of the stairs. He was about twenty-five or so, and wearing a red and white Nike jogging suit with the top unzipped, showing a wife beater T-shirt underneath. His hair was slicked back and he was wearing gold around his neck and on both wrists.
Actually seeing one of the men sent to kill us somehow made it more real to me, rubbed my face in it. Fire licked up from my belly and I tried to keep it from becoming more.
He recognized me as soon as I came through the door and went for his gun, hidden in the small of his back. He didn’t make it.
I hit him in the solar plexus hard enough to bounce him off the wall and he dropped to his knees on the concrete landing. I took his gun out of his waistband and tucked it behind my back. It was a Glock, so I didn’t have to worry about checking the safety.
He surprised me and came up off of his knees hard, powering an uppercut to my groin. Sharp, nauseating pain hammered into me. The restraint that I was fighting to maintain vanished in that instant, along with any plans I had to extract information from him. I was no longer thinking in human terms of strategy and manipulation. I could feel my lips split into a savage grimace.
I lifted him off the floor by his shoulders and threw him down the stairs.
Before he hit the ground I leapt after him, slamming into the concrete on the landing below a split second after he did. His face was bloody and his arm had too many joints in it.
His next words came out shrill. “You fucked up, man. Me and my boys are gonna kill you for this. Kill you, your bitch, and your nigger friends, too.”
He started to say something else, but I have no idea what. I yanked him off the floor with a snarl and threw him bodily back up the stairs. It felt good.
He sailed in a graceful arc up the stairwell until his trajectory was interrupted by the concrete wall at the landing where we started. He hit with a nice meaty slap and dropped like a rock.
I raced up the stairs and pounced on his prone form. My fingers dug into his flesh, desperate to crush and tear. My face was inches from his, my eyes drinking in his terror. Blood began to well up under my hands.
The urge to hook my fingers through his ribcage and tear him in half faltered. Begging and sobbing registered in my consciousness and I became aware of the acrid smell of urine and the tight muscles in my face and jaw.
I let go of him and stepped back. Tried to focus on what he was saying.
“Elevator. By the elevator.”
Information. I wanted information. I took his wallet and cell phone.
“How many? Of you?” I focused. “How many of you are there?”
“Three. Just three. One by the elevator and one in a car in the parking lot.” His eyes searched my face in terror. This was obviously not the first time he’d volunteered this information in the last few seconds.
“The guy who hired you. Dominic. Where can I find him?” The words came easier now.
“Downtown Boulder, in Colorado. Dom has a front there, a real estate office. It’s called Coyote Realty. He’ll go back there, I promise. He will.”
“Don’t make any sounds. Don’t leave the stairwell.”
He shook his head violently up and down. Looking at him I could see that he was badly injured. One arm and one leg were clearly broken, and from the sound of his breathing I had probably damaged his ribs.
He wasn’t leaving under his own power any time soon. Remorse touched me. I hoped that the staff found him before too long.
I wiped my hands clean on his clothes, then took the stairs down to the next floor and exited into another, identical hospital hallway. Getting close to the guy in the car would be difficult, so I decided to handle the one at the elevator first.
I took some deep breaths and tried to calm down. I was doing the right thing. I was in control. Henry was wrong. Those three thoughts chased themselves around my head in a loop.
I needed to focus on what I was doing. I walked down the corridor and took the elevator up, back to the floor I started on. I couldn’t approach a sentry stationed near the elevators by coming at him down the hallway, that would give him plenty of time to get out his cell phone. Or worse, grab a hostage from the nurse’s station next to the elevators.
But if I popped out of the elevator ten feet away from him, I could get to him before he could react. I needed to contain him before he could pull his gun on me. For both of our sakes.
The bell chimed and the doors slid open. Elevator guy was wearing a windbreaker, jeans, and cowboy boots. He looked a hell of a lot more like a real hospital visitor than the thug in the stairwell, as long as you didn’t count the bulge under his left arm.
I came out of the elevator at a fast walk and sat down next to him on the visitor’s couch as he looked up from his magazine. His eyes went wide with surprise.
“I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” I said loudly for the benefit of the two night nurses at the desk behind us.
He answered me in a much quieter voice. “Mr. Griffin, you need to return to your room. There are still thirty minutes left on the clock.”
“You know I can’t do that.”
He went for his gun. I clamped down on his forearm as it went into his jacket. He strained against me to get that last few inches to the holster, but it was pointless. He might as well have been a small child for all the good it did.
“Be still, or I’ll break your arm.” I had to squeeze until he gasped to make my point. I ignored the thrill that small sound gave me and forced myself to stop increasing the pressure.
I reached into his coat with my other hand and pulled out his gun, careful to keep it lower than the back of the couch. It was a blue-steel.38 revolver, a workman’s tool, reliable and lethal.
“Time to stretch our legs.” I guided him up off the couch and back to the elevator, keeping him in front of me and the.38 between us.
We rode up to the fifth floor, which was the top. I nodded pleasantly at the night nurse on duty, but it was a wasted gesture. She never looked up from her work.
Elevator guy was quiet and cooperative as I herded him into the stairwell at the end of the hall and up the last flight to the roof entrance.
I was grateful for the cooperation. I had managed not to kill the guy in the stairwell, but I didn’t want to test myself again so soon.
We pushed out of the last set of doors and into the cool, breezy night. Our shoes made scraping noises on the gritty concrete of the roof.
“You’re doing good. This is almost over. Just help me out with one more thing, and I won’t have to do you any permanent damage.”
“You’re not going to do me any permanent damage no matter what I do. You fire that gun up here, and people are going to come running. So you can go to hell.”
“You’re right about the gun.” It went into my pocket.
I hit him in the gut hard enough to lift his feet off the ground. I stepped to one side to keep from being splattered as he threw up all over his feet. My breath quickened, but stepping back helped me stay focused on what I was doing.
I pulled his wallet out of his jeans while he was catching his breath and flipped it open to read his ID. Jesse Smith. No doubt fake.
He put his hands on his hips and sucked air through his teeth.
“Son, I’ve been doing this a long time. If you think roughing me up a little is going mean diddly-shit to me, then you’re in way over your head. Just walk away, and I’ll make sure you don’t suffer when the time comes. Last chance.”
I hit him again. He grabbed my arm as he doubled up, and then he showed me how overconfident and stupid I was. With his other hand he stabbed me in the stomach.