Chasing Ghosts (28 page)

Sara felt the whoosh of air and silently
prayed that they made it to the surface in time, that the guards
hadn’t somehow destroyed the elevator’s controls. She didn’t want
to die trapped in the shaft. She counted away the seconds until the
door finally slid open. It had taken ten seconds for the elevator
to rise one mile.

“
Dagger, stay awake.” Sara dragged him
through the store to the street outside. The Cobalt was parked
several doors away. Sara quickly settled Dagger in the passenger
seat, tossed the weapon into the back seat, then rushed around to
the driver’s side. How many minutes left now? Seconds? She didn’t
see a key, didn’t even see an ignition. Just some type of print
pad. Sara grabbed Dagger’s hand and pressed his thumb against the
pad. The car rumbled alive. “Skizzy and his toys.” The dashboard
clock said it was just after nine o’clock. The sun had just dipped
below the horizon, but dusk provided enough light so Sara could
avoid maneuvering her way through pitch dark.

She continued to tick off the seconds as she
floored the accelerator. The Cobalt shot off like a rocket. Sara
didn’t know what Skizzy did to the car but it was the fastest thing
she had ever driven. She looked over at Dagger. He was leaning
against the door, his face gray in the dim street lights. His shirt
and jeans were wet with his blood. He wasn’t responsive enough to
put pressure on his own wound. Maybe he needed water but they had
left the gym bag in the lab.

Sara’s eyes kept watch on the clock, losing
track of exactly how much time they had left before the explosion.
And what kind of explosion would it be? Would two miles be a safe
distance, or did she need to be one hundred miles away, a goal she
couldn’t possibly achieve. The speedometer pulsed at 140 miles per
hour.

Her eyes scanned the road looking for signs
designating a hospital. She looked for houses along the way but the
area was a flat, desolate piece of land. She felt the pockets of
her jumpsuit to make sure she still had the sub-compact. That’s
when she noticed the blood on her hand, her arms, and now on her
clothes.

The ground started to shake. The console said
the Cobalt had traveled four and a half miles. Sara checked her
rearview mirror. A huge cloud of sand had kicked up but it was
getting too dark to see if the ground had opened up. At least there
wasn’t any fire or a mushroom cloud, not that she would have been
surprised to see one.

A couple blocks ahead off of the main
road Sara saw two houses. She slammed the gear shift into second
and peeled around the corner. As she got nearer she saw a ranch
style home. The detached building a couple lots away was a smaller
one story building with a sign out front that said,
Animal Hospital, Doctor Judith
Engles
.

“
We have help, Dagger.” Sara looked
over at him as she slammed the car into park and laid on the horn.
His eyes were closed. “DAGGER?” She saw the outside house lights
flick on and blew the horn several more times. Sara ran around to
the passenger side and helped Dagger out of the car and up the
sidewalk to the hospital.

A woman in stone-washed jeans and a blouse
came running toward them. “Excuse me. The hospital is closed.”

“
He’s injured,” Sara said. “Are you
Doctor Engles?”

The woman gasped as she saw the blood
streaking his arm and Sara’s clothes. Since Dagger’s clothes were
black, it was difficult to tell the extent of his injuries. “Get
him inside.” Doctor Engles opened the door to the reception area. A
blood trail followed behind them. She led them through a doorway
and turned on the overhead lights.

Sara hefted Dagger onto the examining table.
Doctor Engles stared in shock at Sara’s ability to lift Dagger by
herself but she didn’t say anything. The doctor peeled Dagger’s
shirt away from his chest and gasped.

“
How did this happen?” She opened a
cabinet and pulled out a stack of white gauze pads. She pressed a
mound of them against the wound.

“
He was shot. I don’t think the bullet
lodged in him.” Sara wasn’t sure of anything. The weapons didn’t
appear to shoot bullets. She felt nauseous looking at all the
blood.

“
He needs a blood
transfusion.”

“
Do it.”

“
I can’t. My hospital is closed. I
don’t have any supplies. Besides, this was an animal hospital, not
a normal hospital.”

Sara reached into her pocket, pulled out the
gun and pointed it at the woman. “I said to fix him.” The doctor’s
eyes grew wide as she stared at the gun. Her hands froze above the
gauze pads that were turning red with Dagger’s blood. Sara looked
at the gun as though wondering who put it there. Her hands started
to shake and tears ran down her face. “I’m sorry,” she sobbed as
she slowly lowered the gun. “Please, please make him better.”

Doctor Engles averted her eyes from the gun
and pulled more pads from the package. She tossed the bloody pads
onto the floor and pressed clean ones to the wound. She flicked
stray hairs from her face leaving a bloody stripe across her
forehead. “Damn,” she said in frustration. “He needs blood, lots of
it, and I don’t have any.”

“
Take mine.”

“
You don’t understand. He needs LOTS of
blood.”

Sara pulled a second examining table over and
butted it up against Dagger’s. “Take as much as you need.”

“
You don’t…”

“
DO IT!” Sara closed her eyes. “Just
take whatever you need.”

More bloody pads hit the floor. “There’s a
reason people only give one pint of blood at a time.”

The vet pulled tubes and catheters from a
drawer. Sara wasn’t sure what all of the supplies were and had only
been in a hospital one other time. She didn’t remember a needle
that large.

The vet worked quickly, wrapping a blood
pressure monitor around Dagger’s arm, then doing the same to Sara’s
arm. “He’s lost way too much blood.”

“
I’ve heard of people losing ten to
twelve pints of blood and surviving,” Sara said.

“
Yes, but those patients usually get
immediate attention in an E.R. This isn’t an E.R.”

“
Close enough.”

“
Listen,” the doctor said with a hint
of exasperation, “I don’t have extra blood lying around to give
him. And I can only give one pint of my own blood but that is
provided we are the same blood type. Are you a blood match for
him?”

“
Yes,” Sara said but she wasn’t sure.
When she had been in and out of consciousness in the hospital she
vaguely remembered Dagger saying his blood type was universal
donor. That’s fine for him, but would her blood kill him? All she
knew for sure is if he didn’t get any blood he would definitely
die.

Engles ran water in the sink until it started
steaming, then scrubbed her hands, all the time keeping an eye on
the gauze pads that continued to soak through with blood. “Damn, I
should have been in Montana already. My son wants to open a
wildlife sanctuary, not that the damn government gave me enough
money when they bought this place from me. Eminent domain. Damn
bureaucrats.” She shut the water off with her elbow and slipped
into latex gloves. Turning back to Sara, the vet said, “Please tell
me you two didn’t rob a bank or something that I’m going to get
into trouble for.”

“
We didn’t. I promise you who did this
to him was the bad guy, not us.”

“
Fine. I don’t care to know the
details.”

Sara didn’t want to see what the vet was
doing. She turned her head to study the animal prints painted on
the walls. There were different paw prints for each animal. The
pinch in her right arm felt like a metal pipe going through her
vein.

“
The most I can take from you is 1.42
liters.” “How much is that?”

“
Three pints.”

“
Take four.”

“
It will kill you.”

“
No it won’t. I promise.”

Engles laughed softly. “You are making a lot
of promises.”

“
How long will it take?”

“
About thirty minutes per pint. But I
warn you, if your blood pressure starts to drop dramatically, I’ll
stop.”

In her peripheral vision, Sara could see the
vet starting to work on Dagger’s injuries. The doctor looked like
she knew what she was doing. Her hands worked without thought. Salt
and pepper hair was pulled back in a casual bun with little care
for smooth and tidy. Sara could imagine Engles working in a
sanctuary, hair and makeup of little concern as she cared for the
animals she so obviously loved.

Sara forced herself to look at Dagger. His
eyes were closed and damp hair clung to his neck. He appeared
unresponsive to everything the doctor was doing. Sara started to
feel lightheaded and wondered what would happen if she passed out.
Would the good doctor call the police? Would they be arrested? She
didn’t have any identification on her. Did Dagger? She watched as
her blood flowed down the tube and into Dagger’s arm. She had no
fear of losing a lot of blood. Her body could regenerate blood at a
faster speed than it could regenerate limbs. But if it killed
Dagger she would never forgive herself. She slowly reached over and
brushed Dagger’s arm. It was cold to the touch.

The medicinal odor was the first thing that
broke Sara’s sleep. She felt weak and barely able to open her eyes.
A veil of light streamed through the window. Was it daytime? She
tried to remember where she was. At home? In the car? In the
control room of BettaTec? Then she saw Dagger lying on the table
next to her. His shirt had been stripped from his body. Doctor
Engles appeared to be changing Dagger’s bandages. Of course. Now
Sara remembered finding the vet. Was it just last night or had they
been there for days?

Doctor Engles stared in shock for several
seconds as she inspected the wound. “How can that be?” she
whispered. “There aren’t any scars. It’s as though there wasn’t an
injury.”

That was when it hit Sara. Her blood gave
Dagger’s body the ability to regenerate. She could almost read the
same realization on Engles’ face. Dagger had come in torn and
bloody but it wasn’t until he received Sara’s blood that he had
healed. Engles flicked her gaze to Sara. Maybe out of fear or
preservation instinct, Sara could feel her eyes change, the lens
become spherical, the pupils enlarged. They didn’t change color but
an experienced veterinarian would recognize the eyes of a hawk. It
wasn’t enough of a true shift to place the doctor in danger from
the wolf.

Shocked, Doctor Engles stumbled back against
the sink.

“
It’s okay,” Sara whispered, raising up
on one elbow.

“
Who are you people?”

“
We don’t mean you any harm. I just
want to get him back on the road and out of your hair.”

“
But how? This just isn’t…” The
scientist and researcher in her struggled for logical answers. She
shook her head as though trying to clear the image from her
mind.

Sara slowly rose from the table and tested
her legs. The jumpsuit was gone. Instead she was wearing a pink
sleeveless blouse and plaid shorts. She even had on underwear and
the blood had been cleaned from their bodies.

“
They are my daughter-in-law’s clothes.
You are close to her size.” Engles nodded at Dagger. “Both of you
had so much blood on your clothes.” Her voice was shaky as she
tried to gather her composure. “My son is a little bigger but his
clothes will do.” A clean shirt was hanging on the back of a chair.
Engles held up a roll of tape. “If you can help him sit up, I’ll
tape his ribs. I don’t have an X-ray machine but I think he has a
couple bruised or cracked ribs.”

Dagger groaned as they tried to move him.
“How is his blood pressure?” Sara asked.

“
Better but not as good as yours.” She
wound the tape several times around his sternum. “And to think I
was going to be bored spending my last week in this
house.”

“
You’re leaving so soon?”

“
The van is half packed. I was just
taking my time packing the last few boxes until you two showed up.”
Engles cut the tape with scissors and had Sara help her slip
Dagger’s arms into the shirt. He winced at the effort but they
finally got it on him. “You never did tell me your
names.”

Sara smiled. “No, I didn’t.”

Dagger struggled to open his eyes.
“Where…?”

“
Shhhhh.” Sara pressed a finger to his
lips. “You’re fine.”

He took in his surroundings, settled his eyes
on the stranger, then at Sara. A car rumbled up to the curb
outside. Sara turned toward the window thinking the worst. It was a
black car, mid- sized. Police? Two men climbed out. They were
dressed in camo pants, green tee shirts and sported dark glasses
and baseball caps. She breathed a sigh of relief. After making sure
Doctor Engles could handle Dagger on her own, Sara walked through
the reception area and out to the street.

CHAPTER 34

“
Am I glad to see you two.” Sara hugged
Simon, then Skizzy whose main source of contact was his computer so
he wasn’t quite sure what to do with his arms. “You must have left
the GPS on the Cobalt,” Sara told Skizzy.

“
Hey,” Simon interjected, “when it
comes to Dagger, we can’t trust him not to walk into a pile of
trouble.”

“
The doctor was very helpful.” Sara
leaned in close. “But don’t use any names.”

“
Roger that,” Skizzy said but stopped
abruptly when he saw the sign in the lawn. “You found him a horse
doctor?”