Critical Condition (18 page)

“Hey, yourself,” she said, turning to face him. “Come closer, I want to show you why Eskimos rub noses.”

He took the box from her hand and set it down inside Bessie. She grabbed his sleeve and pulled him to her, the second bird nestled between them.

“You smell,” he said, his eyes crinkled with mischief. He rubbed his nose against hers, then kissed her.

“Now you do, too.” They parted and she released the second bird into the front of the rescue vehicle. Trey carefully shut the door. “Two down, ten to go.”

Zimmerman came running up, waving his arms. “I found them. They’re all huddled together over here in this snowbank.”

Trey chuckled as they followed Zimmerman. “Wait till I write this run report up.”

“You mean thirteen reports—one for Zimmerman and one for each penguin. Hmmm”—she bumped his hip with hers—“you might just have to stay home writing reports for the rest of the night.”

He took her hand in his, ignoring the sticky feathers covering her palm. “Wouldn’t that be nice?”

NORA STARED AT THE GUN AIMED BETWEEN HER eyes. She was certain she was supposed to feel something: terror, panic, bravado, regret, sorrow, hope . . . something. Instead, her body felt absolutely frozen, unable to think, breathe, move, feel.

Her vision collapsed to take in the very large, very black gun and Harris’s finger on the trigger. The rest of the world faded into a distant blur of color. The auditorium had gone silent, so silent that Nora’s ears felt like they were trying to pop.

The clatter of something metal hitting the floor broke the spell. Nora’s hearing returned with a thunderclap. Harris’s hand jerked, his aim jumping up over Nora’s head, although he never squeezed the trigger.

“Leave her alone!” It was Mark Cohen’s voice. Nora dared to look over her shoulder. Mark had gotten off his bed and was leaning heavily on Jason as he hobbled across the stage. “If you want something, talk to me. I’m in charge here.”

Harris simply smiled and nodded to the guard next to him. The burly man leaped onto the stage with grace that defied gravity given his bulk, and with a swift flick of his foot he swept Mark’s leg out from under him, toppling both him and Jason to the ground. Mark cried out in pain.

“I think you’ll find that I’m in charge here,” Harris said calmly, bringing his gun to bear on Nora again. “Now, Ms. Halloran, you’re the ER head nurse. Where’s Dr. Fiore?”

Ignoring the sudden chill that had settled in her bones, Nora edged forward. It was amazing how much effort it took to shuffle her feet; they felt encased in cement. She angled herself to block Harris’s view of the others. Shielding them from his sight—and aim—was the only way she could protect them.

“I don’t know where Dr. Fiore is,” she said, her voice as loud and clear as it was during the chaos of a trauma code. And as certain. She hoped.

Harris narrowed his eyes, lips pinched in disbelief. Nora counted to five, holding her breath, watching his finger on the trigger. He slowly released the trigger, gave her a nod as if they were equals coming to terms, and lowered the gun.

“I believe you. But”—he waved the gun toward the rest of the auditorium—“she’s somewhere in this hospital and I’m going to find her. And if that doesn’t happen quickly, we may need to take alternative and more drastic”—he holstered the gun with a dramatic flourish—“methods.”

 

 

GINA LAID THE OXYGEN TANK ON THE EXAM TABLE and connected the plastic tubing Ken had found to its nozzle. “Thanksgiving, we had this lady come into the ER,” she said as she checked the gauge. Nearly full; good. “Her cigarette had burned through the plastic tubing of her home oxygen tank and started a fire.”

“Too dangerous—if you use an open flame to light it, it could flash over you.”

“Ah, but I have a time-delayed fuse.” She took her cigarettes and matches from her sweater pocket. “Saw it in a movie once.”

Ken frowned. “That’s the movies. It might not work in real life.”

“You got a better idea?”

“Yeah. I’ll do it. That way even if it fails, you can still get LaRose out of here.”

He tried to grab the cigarettes from her, but she yanked them out of his reach. “No way. It’s my plan and if anything goes wrong, you can protect LaRose better than I can.”

Gina wished she felt half as brave as she sounded. One look at Ken’s face and she knew he knew she was full of shit. She hefted the oxygen tank and held it under her arm like a football. Tried to ignore the fluttering in her stomach. She’d spent most of her life faking being smart, being confident, being brave. Time to see if she really had what it took.

To her relief Ken said nothing, just gave her a nod. If he had said something, she might have surrendered to her fear, so she was glad for once that he was living up to his taciturn man-of-mystery reputation.

She carried the oxygen and tubing out to the main doors and glanced through the windows. The guard was pacing a pattern at the far end of the lobby, the side that faced the auditorium and elevator banks. The wall with the elevators blocked his view of the radiology entrance for a few seconds on each leg of his journey. That would be her window of opportunity.

“You’ll need something to catch fire to make a big enough flame to pull him away,” Ken whispered as he wheeled LaRose into position beside her.

“The gift shop?”

“It’s closed today.”

Gina craned her neck, trying to spot a likely spot to hide her IED. “The rack of pamphlets between the gift shop and the main doors. I can hide the tank under it and once the fire starts they should go fast—they’re just bus schedules and Pennysavers and stuff.”

“Should work.” Ken pressed his face beside hers, their breath steaming the glass. “Once you cross the lobby, you’ll be out of his sight.”

“I think we’ll have around three minutes from the time I light the cigarette until the fire starts. That should give me time to get back here, and once the guard moves out of the way, we’ll go to the rear elevator bank, out of sight from the lobby.” She hoisted the tank, watching the guard, waiting for the right moment to make her move. “If I’m not back in time—”

“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of LaRose. You just worry about yourself.”

“Okay, here goes.”

The guard pivoted and stepped out of sight. Ken pulled the door open for her and Gina dashed through it. Some instinct made her crouch low as if under fire, probably the result of watching too many movies when she was a kid. Funny, the thoughts that raced through your mind when you may have only seconds to live. Her gaze was zeroed in on the corner of the gift shop—once she made it there, she’d be safely out of the guard’s line of sight.

It felt that no matter how fast her feet pounded the lobby’s slate floor, her goal didn’t get any closer. The back of her neck prickled, and she was tempted to stop and look over her shoulder, see where the guard was, even though the countdown in her head told her she had a few seconds yet. Gina didn’t look—maybe something good had come of all that movie watching, because she knew it was always the guy who turned to look who got shot.

Instead she drove onward and suddenly found herself skidding around the corner. She had to pull up fast; she couldn’t risk getting too close to the automatic eye that opened the entrance’s sliding glass doors—that would alert the guard for sure.

Clutching her O
₂
tank to her chest as if it were a newborn baby, she leaned against the wall and caught her breath. Then she risked a peek around the corner and saw Ken watching her from the radiology doors across the lobby. He gave her a thumbs-up and she mirrored a response, hoping he couldn’t see her hand shaking.

Okay, time to make a flamethrower. She crouched down and gently set the oxygen tank on the floor. Turning the valve on to release the gas—two liters should be about right, she thought—she slid it beneath the wire rack brimming with brochures and pamphlets. She checked the end of the tubing. The oxygen was flowing nicely.

Not wanting to risk any flames—at least not yet—she pinched the tubing, cutting off the flow of O
₂
, and pinned it beneath the leg of the display rack before striking a match and lighting a cigarette. She took only one puff, although as soon as her lips touched the cigarette she was consumed with the desire to sit back and inhale the entire thing. She folded the book of matches around the filter of the cigarette and carefully placed the matchbook under the end of the tubing.

Now the countdown began. She edged a glance around the corner, then pulled back immediately. The guard was coming her way, varying his pattern by circling out into the lobby. Shit.

Her head rocked against the wall. She glanced at the cigarette—about a quarter of the way burned. Should she pull it out, wait?

The guard’s radio squawked. Gina jumped, both arms jerking up as if in surrender. The sound was louder than a flock of seagulls at feeding time. And it was close—the guard must already be right around the corner at the gift shop window.

Did he smell the cigarette burning? Had he heard her? Her breath came in short, quick gasps as her gaze jumped from the cigarette—a third gone—to the corner she huddled against.

“What’s your twenty? I don’t see you,” the radio voice said.

“I’m coming, I’m coming.” The guard moved away at a rush. “You guys got food in there? I’m starving.”

“Nelson’s bringing it.”

Gina dared a look. The guard disappeared as he returned to the auditorium entrance. Now or never. She pushed off and dashed across the lobby to the door where Ken waited. Ken’s face was smashed against the glass as he watched, his eyes wide.

She was still ten feet shy of the door when flames burst out behind her.

THERE WAS NO WAY AMANDA WAS GOING TO allow Jerry to sacrifice himself as a diversion. Apparently Lucas felt the same, springing ahead as they made their way down the stairs to the ground floor. By the time Jerry and Amanda pushed through the door to the lobby, Lucas was crouched against the wall below the picture window, waving them down.

He pointed toward the auditorium and held up two fingers. Jerry and Amanda crawled over to join him.

“There’re two guards there now,” Lucas whispered. “With machine guns. What do we do?”

The obvious choice was to run away and hide in the farthest corner of the tower, praying the storm died down and they could make their escape before the gunmen took drastic action, like burning down the hospital. Amanda still found it hard to believe that anyone would go to such lengths, but she’d encountered enough cases of abuse and other horrible, unbelievable things that she knew it could happen.

She duckwalked past Lucas and craned her head around the corner, getting a look for herself. One man stood at the doors, his gun aimed in their direction, while the other paced back and forth, focused in the other direction, toward the elevators and main hospital lobby.

The atrium was usually Amanda’s second-favorite place in the hospital, after the pediatric floor’s playroom. It was designed as a sanctuary of peace and nature, so there were no straight paths through it. People had no choice but to slow down, listen to the fountains burble, sit on the benches or tall rocks, or look at the planters with their miniature trees, evergreens, ferns, and flowering plants.

But now, despite the continued merry bubbling of the solar-powered water fountains, the atrium was shrouded in shadows and had a potential of becoming a killing ground.

“Run and hide?” she asked the men. “Or try to rescue the people trapped in the auditorium?”

Both men stared at her, neither making a move toward the stairwell and safety. Answer enough for her.

Scrutinizing the atrium, she tried to mentally devise a path through it that would give them maximum cover, but there was no way they could reach the cafeteria without crossing space where they’d be hopelessly exposed. Jerry was right. They needed a diversion.

The guard covering the lobby moved out of sight. Amanda watched, motioning to the men to get ready. But then the second guard spoke into his walkie-talkie and the first man returned.

Her attention was still riveted on the guards when Jerry suddenly broke past her, crawling, cane in hand, to the shelter of the first planter.

“Jerry, wait,” she whispered, but he waved her back. His head injury may have left him with no patience and little impulse control, but this was suicide.

Just as Jerry was about to cross into open ground, the first guard suddenly yelled and ran for the lobby. There was shouting back and forth between the guards. The second pulled a fire extinguisher from the wall and raced after the first.

Amanda grabbed Lucas and they sprinted across the atrium. Jerry struggled to his feet and followed behind. Lucas stopped at the sound of Jerry’s cane hitting the ground and ran back to help him. Amanda risked a glance over her shoulder; Jerry had slipped on the slate floor and was struggling to get back up.