Bad Bones (Claire Morgan) (37 page)

“Yeah, I’m okay, I think. I’m okay now. Thank God, you found me. He was gonna beat me to death. He had the bat in his hand.”

“I was afraid something like this was gonna happen. I know the way these guys operate only too well. We’re goin’ in on them tonight, raiding Fitchville on the gun charges. . . .”

A sharp
blam
suddenly shattered the quiet and a slug slammed into the wall right behind them. They both hit the ground and scrambled for cover. That’s when Claire got a glimpse of the man who’d fired at them. He was now kneeling over Punk’s lifeless body, and when he looked up, Claire couldn’t believe her eyes. Oh, God, Bones Fitch was
not
a figment of Punk’s imagination as Dr. LeCorps had believed. Punk really did have a twin brother. Bones Fitch was real and alive, and he was back and he was armed and he was angry. She watched him throw back his head and wail plaintively for his dead twin brother. Laurie didn’t need any more encouragement. She rose on her knees and got off a couple of quick shots, but Bones saw her and was too quick. He returned fire, hitting Laurie as she tried to scramble away. She was knocked backwards and fell on her side, her weapon skidding off on the dirt floor toward Bones Fitch. Laurie groaned and tried to push herself up, but then just collapsed and didn’t move. Claire took off in the opposite direction and headed for the dark passage where Punk had exited with the dead man’s body. Bones got off a shot at her just as she reached the first turn in the tunnel.

The shaft was low and narrow, and she heard another shot go off behind her, and then she heard the bullet ricocheting off the stone walls and knew Bones was hot on her heels. Good, at least he wasn’t finishing off Laurie. She fled through the frigid darkness, unable to see anything, feeling her way along the cold damp rock walls with both hands, but she could smell fresh air and feel a breeze on her face and she knew that the passage was leading her outside the mine. She ran faster, stumbling on the loose shale covering the ground, cutting her palms on the sharp edges of the rocks, hoping Laurie wasn’t dead, hoping she’d stay alive and get away somehow, but she could hear Bones Fitch coming hard down the passage after her.

Minutes later, she burst from a low arched opening and into the whipping blizzard winds outside. Icy sleet hit her and sent her backwards a step. She could barely see but realized she was up high on a cliff, a dead end with no way down. There was a frozen river below, one that was enclosed by high granite walls. She tried to run down the steep hill in front of her but slipped on the slick ground, her feet going out from under her, and then she hit hard on her side and slid all the way to the bottom on her back and then farther out onto the frozen river.

Another shot rang out behind her, and she tried to get up without falling and slide her feet out over the ice toward the opposite side of the river, but then in the reflected light off the snow she saw the dead bodies. They were all around her. Five or six bodies, at least, lying on the ice, some half in and half out of the water, like Paulie Parker had been, all frozen into stiff and grotesque human ice sculptures. She grabbed at the nearest one, shocked when she realized that it was Misha Chicherin. She tried to pull his legs out of the water and realized that he’d been wounded in the chest. Bones had shot him and disposed of him with the others. She dropped down behind him and tried to use his body for a barrier against the gunfire.

Then he made a little moan, and she realized that somehow he was still alive. She couldn’t think about that very long because Bones was shooting down at her from the higher elevation, still up in the opening where she’d started her slide. His bullets were slamming into the ice all around her. She heard the crackling and sucking sounds as the ice began to give way under her weight as the rounds cut through it, and then the ice suddenly cracked wide open, and Claire and Misha both plunged down into the dark frigid water. She held on to him as best she could, trying to keep his head out of the water and break through the gradually splintering ice, trying to get them away from the shooter, but then Bones was out there on the ice with her, coming out toward her, only ten yards away, screaming curses, his shrill voice blown away on the wind. He had his gun pointing straight down at them, and then Claire remembered that Misha carried her Glock and the Beretta at his waist under his parka.

Frantically, praying that Bones hadn’t disarmed him, she jerked at the tail of his coat, trying to find the guns, and when her fingers finally touched the icy grip of her Glock, she got hold of it, jerked it out, and aimed it up at the man above her, her back braced against Misha’s shoulder, praying it would still fire, and then pulled the trigger and kept pulling it.

The slugs hit Bones Fitch dead center in his chest, all of them, in a tight pattern that sent him reeling backwards a few steps and then sprawling down on the ice. He broke through and floated there on his back. Panting, heart thumping, adrenaline surging through her veins, her waterlogged coat dragging her down, Claire tried desperately to get her arms up on the ice and pull both of them out, but she just couldn’t manage it, she was just too tired and Misha and her wet clothes were too heavy. She hung on as best she could, her feet not touching bottom, grasping Misha’s coat tightly, shivering and shaking with cold, and trying to summon enough strength to climb out of the water and onto the ice.

Then she heard the retorts of more gunfire not far away, and somebody calling her name. She hoped to God that it was Laurie Dale, still alive and looking for her. She lifted the gun in her hand somehow, and fired a couple of rounds up into the air to pinpoint her location and struggled to hold both of them out of the water while the ice continued to crackle and break up all around them.

Then Laurie was there, coming out toward her, wounded arm hanging uselessly at her side, but still up on her feet, her coat off and flung out for Claire to grab on to, and Claire did grab it and clung to it with all her remaining strength as she was slowly pulled in, ice breaking and coming apart in front of her as she moved through it and in toward the snowy bank. She had a death grip on the back of Misha’s waterlogged orange jacket, her fist pretty much frozen into place on the handful of material she was clutching. But then she was out on the ground, gasping and shivering and trying to help Laurie drag the wounded man out onto the snow. Claire managed to tell Laurie to fire shots to summon help and hoped to hell Joe McKay was at home and could hear them echoing over at his place, and then she just collapsed on her back beside the unconscious Russian, sleet pelting her body. Laurie emptied her gun into the air and covered up Claire with her own coat and then stumbled off on foot to find the snowmobile.

After that, Claire just lay there alone in the dark, so very cold, completely still, as if she were already frozen like the other corpses in the water, thinking that freezing to death wasn’t going to be so bad, if it was her time to die, and a lot better than her bones being smashed apart with a bat. In time, even those thoughts faded away and she began to feel sleepy and content, and slowly entered into a lovely dream where she was snuggled up close to Black at home in their bed, warm and cozy, his arms around her, where she always felt safe and secure and happy. That was the last conscious thought she had, except that death seemed to be slowly creeping up on her, pulling her away as the grim reaper was purported to do. Finally, those thoughts faded, too, and it was just cold and dark with the sound of wind and blowing snow, and then even that faded away, and there was only nothing, nothing at all.

Pacing the floor and worried sick about Claire, Nick Black hadn’t been able to get hold of her or anybody else on their cell phones, the heavy snow making connections impossible for hours. He couldn’t get her coordinates on GPS, either, and didn’t have a clue where she was or what she was doing. But he wasn’t willing to wait any longer and was ready to go out searching for her when his cell phone finally rang around two o’clock in the morning. Caller ID said that it was Claire. Damn it, she was way out of line this time. She should have called him and let him know where she was. What the hell was she doing out in a raging blizzard in the middle of the night?

“Claire! Where the hell are you? You all right?”

“Hey, Nick. Listen, it’s Joe McKay. I’m at the hospital. . . .”

Black went rigid. “Where’s Claire? Is she okay?”

“Well, actually she’s pretty messed up, but she’s gonna be okay, they think.”

Black shut his eyes, and his heart pretty much just stopped. “What happened to her?”

“She got herself into some trouble with those maniacs she was tracking. I heard gunfire out in my backwoods, and I took off out there on the snowmobile to see what was going down. That’s when I found them.”

“Found who? For God’s sake, Joe, tell me what happened!”

“Claire, and some FBI agent she knows named Laurie Dale. Claire was lying unconscious in the snow, wet and half frozen. God, Nick, I thought she was dead, for sure.”

“Oh, God.”

“Somebody worked her over pretty good. The Dale woman was gunshot but still on her feet, and some guy with them had been shot, too, and was barely breathing. I got them all back to my house as quick as I could and wrapped them up in blankets, and then got them down here to Canton County Medical in my truck. Claire’s asking for you. Told me to call you and tell you that she was okay and ask you to come to the hospital.”

“I’m on my way.”

Despite the inclement weather, Black made it to the hospital in the Humvee in less than ten minutes. He pushed through the emergency room doors and found Joe McKay just inside the entrance, leaning against the wall and waiting for him.

“Where is she?”

“They just moved her into a private room, just down there.” McKay pointed down the hospital corridor to his right. “Room 157. She’s waiting for you. Afraid you’d be worried.”

“Damn right, I’m worried. But thanks, Joe, for everything. I owe you.”

“I better warn you, Nick. She doesn’t look so good.”

Black took a bracing breath. “Thanks again for getting her here. I mean it, Joe.”

“I know. I just wish I’d been there when it all went down.”

“Yeah. Me, too.”

Black hurried down the hallway, pushed through another set of swinging doors and found Claire’s room right next to the nurses’ station. Claire was inside, sitting up in a hospital bed, her face turned to the window, wrapped up in electric blankets with a warming lamp focused on her. At first, he was relieved because she wasn’t on IVs or flat on her back and unconscious. Then she turned her head and looked at him. Nick’s stomach plummeted, and the floor seemed to drop out from under him. Appalled, he stared wordlessly at her. Her left eye was black and swollen shut, the other one getting there, her nose was packed with gauze to stop the bleeding, maybe even broken, and her bottom lip was stitched up and twice its normal size. Neither of them said anything for a moment. Black just tried to absorb the shock he felt on seeing the extent of the damage to her face.

Then Claire said, “’Sup, Black?”

Definitely not amused, Black moved over to the bed. “Oh, God, Claire, what the hell happened to you?” He reached out and picked up a strand of her hair. “You’ve got blood in your hair.”

“It’s not all mine. I got in a few good punches.” Claire tried to smile, but it looked more like a painful little grimace. Her voice was hoarse. “Hey, I’m fine. Really. Just a little cold. Ran into some trouble tonight. Kept wishing that you’d show up and bail me out again but couldn’t get through to you. Or anybody else. Big blizzard going on, and all that.”

Black couldn’t manage even the slightest smile. He kept shaking his head. “If I’d known you were in trouble, I would’ve been there.”

Sitting down on the edge of the bed, Nick picked up her hand and pressed it to his lips. He tasted dried blood. God only knew whose blood it was. The knuckles on her hand were cut and swollen, but she still had on her engagement ring. It was caked with dirt and more dried blood. For a moment, he just felt ill, really, really sick, down deep in the pit of his stomach. Overwhelmed with helplessness and hopelessness and the inability to stop terrible things from happening to her, he just sat there and stared down at her injured hand. In that moment, he wasn’t at all sure that he could deal calmly with the seriousness of the situation anymore. He wanted to slug somebody. He wanted to yell and curse and ram his fist through a wall. He wanted to beat whoever had done this to her to a bloody pulp. He tried to gain control but couldn’t quite pull it off, so he just sat there and said nothing.

“C’mon, Black, please don’t look like that. I’m okay. See. Just a little bit worse for the wear, that’s all. I’ll be okay after I get some sleep. I’m just really, really tired.”

“You’re not okay, Claire. You’re terribly hurt. Your face alone looks like you’ve been hit by a damn truck.” Suddenly, Black felt so angry that he could just barely contain it. He stood up. “Where’s your chart? I want to see what they did to you.”

Claire didn’t answer, just sat there, all beaten and abused and watched him move to the end of the bed. He jerked out the metal chart and skimmed through the reports. Good God Almighty. Hypothermia, mild frostbite on her legs and feet, possible concussion, two cracked ribs, lacerated nose and mouth, cuts, abrasions, bruises, contusions, on and on and on. She was damn lucky to be alive. Then Black’s fury got the best of him, and almost overwhelmed him completely, but he somehow managed to fight it down. It wasn’t so easy. He wanted to explode and rant and rave and yell at her for putting herself into that kind of danger.

“Who did this to you?” His voice was now so low and controlled and gruff that he barely recognized it himself.

Claire was frowning at him, and it looked as if that effort was hurting her bruised, swollen face. “You need to chill, Black. Hey, you know that guy we were looking for? Punk Fitch? Well, I found him. And his very real twin brother, too. Guy named Bones. And get this. Bones has been impersonating Patrick Parker all the time Punk was in the hospital. Apparently, Patrick really was one of their brothers but Bones killed him and took his place somewhere along the line.” She stopped there and wet her stitched lip. The talking was hurting her, all right, but she continued as if it weren’t. “And he played that role pretty damn well, too, enough to fool me and Joe, and Bud, too. You see, all the Parker boys look a lot alike, especially with the beards they wear. His brothers were so deathly afraid of Bones while Punk was locked up at Fulton that they went along with whatever he said.” She paused there, swallowed, wet her lips again, and shut her eyes for a moment. “You know, killing your brother in front of your other brothers is an awfully effective deterrent to ratting somebody out. The shrinks made the wrong call, too, with that split personality thing. Except that they both were homicidal maniacs, I’ll give them that.”

“Tell me everything that happened tonight.”

Claire sighed and started to relate a very ugly story that began with his phone call to her earlier that evening. Nick listened, his frown growing deeper and more disbelieving as she talked, halfway shocked that she managed to escape alive from that hellish lair, or mine shaft, or whatever the hell it was. Despite her condition, Claire had been lucky, and extremely so.

Unfortunately, Claire was not finished. “And there’s more. Your old Moscow buddy, Ivan Petrov? One of his guys sucker punched me, believe it or not. A guy named Misha Chicherin, or at least that’s what he told me it was. He works for Petrov, and it seems Petrov is hot and heavy into a little gunrunning business down Mexico way with our pious little Fitchville friends.” She stopped there, took a breath. “The FBI’s been all over that with surveillance, and they’re probably raiding the place as we speak, or will when they hear about what happened to Laurie Dale out there tonight. But Misha let me go because of you and your brother’s connections. So you did save me in a way, so thanks for that. Misha wasn’t so lucky. He might not make it. Last I heard he was still in surgery.”

Nick said nothing at all to any of that, but he didn’t like a single word of it. Claire laid her head back against the pillow and closed her eyes, as if all the explanations had finally taken their toll. She sighed heavily. “So, Black, how about we talk about the rest of this stuff later, huh? My mouth hurts pretty much now, and I am just so damn tired I can’t think straight.”

“I’m not sure you should go to sleep just yet. If you’ve got a concussion, you might ought to stay awake as long as you can. Just to make sure.”

“Dr. Atwater said it wasn’t that bad, a mild one, so I’ll be fine. They’re gonna give me sedatives so I can rest tonight and quit thinking about what happened. Don’t think I need them, though. I can barely stay awake.”

Nick leaned forward and gently fingered the giant bump and stitched laceration behind her ear. He felt his teeth clamp down hard and his fists ball up so tight that his nails bit into his palms. He was still so furious that those animals had dared attack her and lock her up in a cage that he couldn’t even speak.

Claire opened her eyes again and studied his face. Her left eye was so swollen that he could barely see it. “You’re mad, right?”

“Well, no. Not at you. What makes you think I’m mad?”

“Your jaw is clenching like crazy, and you haven’t even tried to climb in bed with me, which is a first.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Claire. How do you think I feel? Seeing you all beat up like this?” Black paced a few steps away from the bed, shook his head, and inhaled a couple of deep, calming breaths. After a minute or two, he turned back around. “I’m just glad you’re here now, safe and alive. I’m not mad. I’m just upset that you got hurt again.”

Claire watched him and then he watched her wet the stitches in her cut lip with the tip of her tongue again. She was in more pain than she was letting on. There was no way that she couldn’t be. She had a couple of broken ribs, for heaven’s sake.

“Oh, God, Claire, I just can’t take seeing you like this. What did they do, just tie you up and hit you with their fists?”

“Kind of, I guess, but not exactly. I tried to fight back. I know I don’t look like it, but I did get in a coupla good licks and a kick or two before it was over. They were going to beat me to death, but luckily Laurie Dale showed up and that didn’t happen. I’m gonna have to buy her a great big thank-you present.”

Yeah, luckily
. After listening to that less than reassuring little speech, Black paced over to the window and stared outside at the falling snow. The wind was still gusting hard, billowing snow up in swirls and whorls around the light poles in the hospital parking lot. He had just about reached his breaking point, was maybe half an inch from losing his cool entirely. Fortunately, a nurse walked in and gave Claire some pills out of a little white cup, helped her suck water out of a straw, and then checked her body temperature. Black recognized her from his own stay at the hospital. Her name was Chris Dale Cox, and she was friendly and very good at her job.

“Well, now, we’ve almost got you back to normal,” Chris was saying to Claire, switching off the warming lamp and patting Claire’s hand. “You’re almost there, detective. Just get a good night’s sleep and you’ll feel a whole lot better.”

Claire appeared to be more concerned with her friends’ medical conditions, which was par for the course with her. “What about Laurie Dale? You sure she’s gonna be all right?”

“She just came out of surgery. They repaired the gunshot wound to her shoulder, and she lost a lot of blood before your friend, Joe, got her down here. She’s in recovery now. She’s gonna be fine. Her husband, Scott, and her parents are all down there with her.”

“What about the other guy? Misha Chicherin?”

Hesitation. “I’m afraid that’s still touch and go. The bullet missed his heart, so that’s good, but it still did a lot of damage. The surgery is going well, and the good Lord willing, he’ll pull through somehow.”

When the nurse finished straightening the bedcovers and left the room, Claire shivered a little. “You see, Black? Everything’s looking pretty good now. Laurie and I are gonna be just fine. Misha’s gonna pull through, too, I know he will. So no need to get all bent out of shape and worry yourself half to death. I’m alive and talking and walking, so that’s the important thing, right? Just in time for the wedding, too.” Claire was trying to smile again, and it hurt her again. Which made him angry again. Good God, with all his money, his training, his security, his supposed ability to protect her, why the hell couldn’t he do it?

“What am I going to have to do, Claire? Lock you up with me and throw away the key. Goddamn it, this is getting old.”

Claire managed another weak smile and ignored everything he said. “You gonna get up in this bed and help me warm up, or not?”

Black was still fuming, but he wasn’t about to turn that down, so he stretched out beside her on top of the warm blankets and pulled her close, then cringed at how cold her skin still felt to the touch. But inside him, frustration was building up with nowhere to go, and he was still so damn enraged that those psychopaths had put their hands on her and abused her that he couldn’t think about anything else.

“Somehow you just don’t seem overly happy to see me alive and breathing.” Claire was half-heartedly joking again, but Black knew that she was also well aware of how he felt. He knew that. He just didn’t think any of it was the least bit amusing.