Critical Condition (28 page)

She steadied the footstool so that Emma could plant her feet on it and hop down. Another woman immediately took her place, squirming through the hole backward on her belly, not needing the stool for the short drop.

“Everyone gather right outside the door,” Amanda directed them. Lucas and Jerry finished with the last child, and now adults were scrambling through both openings.

Amanda took a moment to seek out Emma, pulling her away from the children for a private word. “We heard a shot earlier.”

Emma patted her shoulder, not making eye contact. “I’m sorry, sweetie. It was Jim Lazarov.”

Jim? A thrill of relief, immediately followed by a stab of guilt, swept through Amanda. She’d never liked Jim—no one had—but still, he shouldn’t have died. She’d been so worried that it was someone she cared about, like Nora or Mark Cohen or even Jason. She’d never dreamed it would be Jim . . .

“Okay. Thanks for telling me. Okay.” The surrealism of the day disoriented her. Amanda wandered back to the pantry and huddled with the two men. “Someone needs to lead them through the atrium to the tower, where we can get them as far away as possible.”

“You do it,” Lucas said. “Wait there in the stairwell with them. Jerry and I can finish here.”

“No. We still have the lobby guards to contend with. Someone has to be able to provide cover fire if they’re seen.”

“A group this big, you
will
be seen.”

Jerry said nothing, frowning as more and more people crowded past them from the auditorium. Already at least twenty people were gathered in the kitchen.

“We need a diversion,” Lucas said. “Something to keep the guards away from both the auditorium and the atrium.”

“Me,” Jerry said.

“No,” Amanda argued. “You can’t move fast enough. You lead the way to the tower. I’ll stand guard with the gun at this end of the atrium and cover your flank. Maybe we can start another fire, draw their attention?”

Jerry shook his head.

“They’ll never fall for it again. If you and Jerry are taking them to safety, that leaves me as a diversion.” Lucas stripped the long black gloves from his arms and brushed off his lab coat. “How about my absentminded professor routine?”

Amanda didn’t like that, not one bit. Lucas was no actor. He couldn’t lie to save his soul. But absentminded? It was a natural fit. “They’ll catch you—”

“No, they won’t. I’ll act a bit crazy, wander across the lobby, grab their attention, then disappear into radiology. That place is a maze, there are thousands of places to hide. As long as they don’t think I’m a threat, they won’t shoot.”

“I don’t know. It’s too risky.”

“Like you crawling into that auditorium wasn’t?” Anger threaded his tone. Lucas never got angry. Irritated, oblivious, pigheaded, yes, but not angry.

“Wow, we’ve set a record,” she said, throwing him off balance. “Two arguments in one day.”

Jason came in from the kitchen, interrupting. “I don’t see any guards out there right now. I’m taking this bunch to the tower before they come back. Even if we can’t leave because of the weather, we can put some distance between ourselves and them.”

“Wait.” Amanda rushed after him, Jerry following. She pulled the gun from her sash. “Let me cover you. Just in case.”

She and Jerry pushed through the rear cafeteria doors and peered around the corner to the auditorium entrance. Jason was right. No guards in sight. None in the lobby either.

“Okay,” she told him and the group of women and children waiting behind him. “Move as fast and quiet as you can.”

All the children were being carried by adults except Deon, because he was the oldest. Jerry held the door open for them while Amanda kept watch. Their footsteps rang out on the slate floor of the atrium but were quickly muffled by the snow insulating the windows.

It was easier for them than it had been for Amanda, Jerry, and Lucas earlier. All of the lights were out now, leaving them the shelter of darkness as they crossed the atrium.

Once they were sure the first group was safely inside the tower, Amanda and Jerry returned to inside the cafeteria, where Lucas had another group, this time all adults, waiting for them. Amanda lined them up and gave them their instructions to follow Jerry to the tower and move to the farthest stairwell. “Okay, let’s go.”

Again they made it safely through to the tower. Amanda was just beginning to relax, to think that this would all be over soon, when she heard Jerry’s footsteps returning across the atrium.

Two lights appeared in the lobby. One of them arced through the air, as if the person carrying it had pivoted abruptly, and then it spiked through the darkness, dancing through the atrium.

“Who’s there?” a heavily accented voice called. The light found Jerry, hopelessly exposed, still a dozen feet to go before reaching the cafeteria entrance. He froze, holding his hands up in the universal sign of surrender.

But that didn’t stop the man from shooting.

 

 

GINA KNEW THAT KEN’S PLAN WASN’T PERFECT, especially the part about him dying with the bad guys. But in order for him to do that, there was still the little feat of finding the bad guys, not getting shot and killed herself, leading them back to Ken, then putting up some kind of barricade—what could she use to keep the guards locked in long enough for Ken to . . . Gina’s mind stuttered, unwilling to visualize exactly what Ken was about to do.

She didn’t have time to prowl through every door, so she ran back to the laundry where she’d left LaRose, searching for something to use as a barricade. Not a linen cart; they were too difficult to maneuver quickly. She needed something heavy but easily moved into position once she shut the door behind the gunmen.

Her light beam hit upon a low-slung trolley, the kind she’d seen at home improvement stores, piled high with bags of soiled linens. Disengaging the hand brake, she gave it an experimental tug. It glided readily despite its weight. Perfect.

Gina steered the trolley back to the chemical storage room, positioning it at the far side of the door. She’d lead the gunmen here, pull the door open so they’d think she’d gone into the room, and hide behind the trolley; then, once they followed her trail into the room, she’d push the trolley into place.

And then Ken could . . . finish his plan.

Gina couldn’t resist one last good-bye. After parking the trolley, she pulled the door open. Ken was where she left him, his eyes closed, chest heaving in and out with each breath.

“I’m ready,” she said. “I’m going to get them now.”

He opened his eyes to a slit, waggled one finger in acknowledgment, and tightened his grip on the cup of water. The open jar of natrium was ready and waiting.

“Hurry.” His voice was like sand, dispersing in the air between them, only a few harsh grains left by the time it reached her.

“I—” Gina stopped. There were no words. And they were out of time.

She ran back out into the hallway and headed toward the tunnel where they’d last seen the gunmen. She didn’t try to be stealthy. Instead she turned on the Maglite, not worrying about being seen—that was the idea—and hoisted the machine gun. She had no idea how many bullets, if any, were left in it.

She felt silly running through the tunnels, trying to get caught. Surely Harris’s men would see right through her, not take the bait. But, as she rounded a corner and saw the two men a mere twenty feet ahead, facing her, it didn’t feel silly anymore. Not with their guns aimed at her.

She turned and ran. Something must have changed; Harris no longer seemed to want Gina alive, because their aim seemed to be right at her instead of over her head like before. She careened through the tunnels, only taking the time to stop and fire back at them when she feared they would go the wrong way.

Then the machine gun died. She threw it away, letting it clatter across the cement floor. Stopped twice to fire the pistol at the men until she emptied that as well. She shoved it into her coat pocket and ran faster—past the laundry where LaRose hid, past the door to the lab where Ken was, pausing only to wrench it open and then crouch down behind her trolley laden with its load of dirty sheets, and waited in the dark. She tortured herself with a thousand alternative scenarios: staying with Ken, hauling him out of there, throwing the water inside just as soon as the bad guys arrived. . . .

She knew it was hopeless. It had to be done this way. And she hated that. Hated that she hadn’t been able to return Ken’s love, that it sometimes felt like maybe she couldn’t love anyone, hated even more that he was able to perform this act of courage and self-sacrifice for her . . . and she had no idea what to do to make it right, to earn it.

Because she didn’t deserve it. Ken was a much better person than she was or would ever be. If there was any justice in the world, he should live through this night.

Justice. Her lawyer father would scoff at the idea, say that concepts like justice, truth, and right and wrong were meaningless fantasies. Moses embraced the certainty of the law. His law. The law was about winning arguments, persuasion, being the last man standing.

Moses would see Ken’s sacrifice as weakness—just as he didn’t consider the consequences of his actions, the lawsuit that led to the death of Ken’s family, as having had anything to do with him. Moses was like a duck: He quacked loud, got the attention he craved, and anything he didn’t want to acknowledge or that was inconvenient simply slid out of his life like water.

But Gina was here. A witness to one man’s courage. And she couldn’t deny it. Couldn’t ignore it. All she could hope to do was to someday deserve it.

Now her tears came, shaking her body. She braced herself against the trolley’s handle, was about to forget about all their plans and lead the men away, let them take her, shoot her, when they pounded down the hall, just as the door to the storage room was swinging shut.

Two lights immediately targeted the door and before Gina could do anything, the men had yanked it open, brandishing their guns. She shoved her trolley into place, blocking the door from opening again. In her mind, she was counting. Four, three, two . . . She ran, heart tugging as if she might leave it behind . . .

One.

“WHAT DO YOU WANT?” LYDIA ASKED THE stranger—her father, but no less strange to her.

“Your mother stole something from me. Something I need to protect my future.” Black leveled his gun at Trey. “And I’m not leaving without it.”

Lydia frowned. How the hell was she supposed to give him something she didn’t have, something she’d never known existed? “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Maria didn’t have anything. We lived off the streets. She never had anything worth killing for.”

“Maria?” He rolled the name on his tongue, tasting it. “Is that what she was calling herself? You know that’s not her real name. Maria.” He chuckled. “So exotic—she always dreamed of being someone else. A gypsy princess, a lost descendant of Anastasia and the czars, a ballerina chosen by a prince to become his queen.”

Lydia tried hard not to let him know how close to home he’d hit. Maria had often posed as a gypsy while running her fake-psychic scams, and she’d claimed to have once studied ballet in San Francisco. Even had a pair of battered toe shoes for a while, until they’d gotten lost during one of their many evictions. They’d spent a lot of time sheltering in public libraries, and Maria would pore over books about the San Francisco ballet. Used to show Lydia pictures of famous ballerinas, tell her the stories behind the ballets. In fact, one of the charms on Lydia’s bracelet was a pair of toe shoes.

“Who was she, really?” Lydia dared to ask, not at all certain that she wanted the answer. As far as she knew, her mother had been only seventeen when she’d gotten pregnant and run away from this man, who looked like he had to have been at least a decade older.

“Martha,”
Black said, stressing the name, “was a silly girl from a dirt-poor Indian reservation, not even pure-blood Indian. Only her paternal grandmother was Plumas. But she was pretty—when she didn’t hit the needle too hard—and she did what I told her to do, which made her useful.”

“You never loved her.”

He scoffed at that. “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course not. Is that what she told you? That I was some obsessed Don Juan chasing his lost love to the end of the world? Sounds like the kind of fantasy Martha would spin. Anything to hide from her reality.”

“What was the reality? What was she hiding from?”

“How about the fact that she got her own father killed?”

Trey’s inhalation was audible as he pulled closer to her. Lydia felt his fingers slide the gun from the holster at the small of her back while his hand across her lap gripped hers and squeezed encouragement.

“What happened?” Lydia asked, her voice small, child-like. The man—she couldn’t bring herself to think of him as her father—seemed to enjoy instructing her, correcting her idea of her family history, so she indulged him. The longer he talked, the longer they might live.

“The only reason I hooked up with Martha was her dad. He was head of security at the Plumas casino.”

“You killed her father to rob a casino?”

“I encouraged him to give me the security codes and safe combo. Went a little too far with my knife—we’d snorted some meth to rev up for the evening.” His voice lost its cultured quality, revealing a Mexican accent. “Wasn’t counting on sweet Martha double-crossing me.”

“If you think Maria—Martha—took your money, you’re wrong.” All this, nearly thirty years of pain and fear, and it all boiled down to money?

“No. I’d never trust her with the cash. But she was smarter than I gave her credit for.”

“What did she take?”

“She stole my future.” Black paused for effect, the fire making his teeth gleam as he bared them. He wasn’t smiling. “Bitch took the security video that showed me and my guys torturing and killing her father. I didn’t even know she had it until we were long gone and she realized I was going to cut her loose, then she sang me a sob story about how she was pregnant and loved me and trusted me but after seeing what I did to her old man, she was leaving me and keeping the tape for protection. All she wanted from me was to leave her and her child alone, she whined, so she tried to blackmail me—after everything I’d done for her!”