The Blonde (23 page)

“Sounds nice,” Kowalski said, edging closer to the bed. His leg brace squeaked. “Somewhere warm?”

“Scorching,” he said.

They were two monsters, sizing each other up. Kowalski saw it in the guy’s eyes, behind the mask of teddy bear features and wispy blond hair. The eyes … yeah, the eyes revealed all. He’d seen some nasty things. Caused them, too.

“Looks like you’re traveling light,” Kowalski said. “Maybe you’d want to borrow my bag.”

“Seems full already.”

“Not much in here, actually. Take a look.” He dropped the gym bag on Kelly’s bed, right between her legs.

The thin-haired man looked behind Kowalski. “Who’s your friend?”

“We’re getting married in April. I always wanted to be a spring bride. Go ahead. Look in the bag.”

“Does he scratch in bed? Your face is an absolute horror.”

“He’s rough, but we’re in love.”

Thinny here wasn’t going to look in the bag. Too smart a monster for that. No chance for a distraction.

Yet, there was.

Kelly’s eyes snapped open. She whipped out her left hand, grasped the Operator’s hand—the one holding the syringe—and forced it down and back. A violent needle jab to the abdomen, many, many inches below the belly button. The man’s mouth made a perfect O shape.

“
Fucker!
” Kelly hissed.

Kowalski moved quickly. He slapped Thinny across his nose with an open palm. But Thinny didn’t seem all that stunned. So Kowalski hit him again with a backslap. Harder this time.

The guy wrenched his hand out from under Kelly’s, grabbed the heart monitor from the rack, and bashed it across Kowalski’s face. Wires whipped behind it like dreadlocks. Kowalski staggered backward. He smashed into a table of steel instruments, which went flying everywhere. He could feel the blood gushing down the side of his face even before he hit the linoleum. His hands trembled uncontrollably. Oh
fuck
.

J
ack watched the violence in front of him with the detachment of someone watching a violent car crash. I’m not part of that. That’s not me. That’s there. I’m here. And I’m still alive.

I’m still alive
.

Jack looked at his watch.

It’s past 7:30 and I’m still alive
.

Luminous toxin my ass.

She lied
.

About everything?

V
anessa tried to find the syringe again so she could plunge it in deeper this time. Rip it across his belly. Drive it right back into his fookin’ spine.

But he moved away too quickly. He said, “You have a loose mouth, don’t you, Vanessa?”

The Operator put his palm to her right cheek. Then he pushed her head back into her pillow, pinning her there. Didn’t take much strength at all. He probably could have held her in place with one finger.

“Fun’s over.”

He pulled the security cord behind her bed.

K
owalski was being dragged across the floor. He could hear his rusty leg brace scraping along the linoleum. The pink-and-purple sutures on his face were popping open. This monster was coming undone. He’d taken too hard a fall this morning. Left him weakened, vulnerable. The bigger monster was in charge. Why had he thought a simple slap could subdue him?

A security alarm was in full roar. Lights flashed in the hall.

The bigger monster was lifting him up now.

The bigger monster was smashing a fist into his face.

The bigger monster vanished when everything went black.

Y
ou.” The man with the thinning hair pointed to the hallway. “Out.”

He followed Jack, who stumbled out into the hallway, and nearly tripped over Kowalski’s bleeding and semiunconscious body. It was bedlam in the hall. Nurses backing away. Worried stares from people in wheelchairs. Two security officers jogging toward them.

The guy who’d decked Kowalski pulled a badge from inside his jacket, barked something about “Defense Department,” and told one of the guards to stand in front of the door. “Do not allow anyone in this room for the next hour.
No one
. Matter of national security.” He was going to call in backup, he said.
No one
gets in the room, understood?”

The guards nodded. Oh, they understood. No one.

Then the guy walked down the hallway, rounded a corner.

Uh-uh, Jack thought. That bastard wasn’t walking out of here. Not after what he’d been through all night.

Jack needed some fucking answers.

D
own the corridor, the Operator snatched a hospital gown from a pile stacked on a metal table. Pressed the down button on the elevator. Held the gown to his lower belly. She’d really nailed him. He could feel the blood trickling down his crotch, pooling in the bottom of his boxer briefs.

But no matter. All he needed was a few stitches.

And by now, Proximity would have done its job, and Vanessa would be dead. He wished he could have watched it happen.

Filmed it, even.

“Wait!” someone called.

The Operator turned. It was the guy from the room, the one who’d come in with the hardman.

“Who are you?” the guy demanded. “And how do you know Kelly White?”

At first, back in the room, the Operator had pegged this guy as a nonentity. He’d presented no threat; he’d made no move whatsoever. His friend had been the one to worry about—though not really, as it turned out. Someone had already put that bastard through a meat grinder. Knocking him down turned out to be surprisingly easy.

This one, though. Who
was
he?

Then again, who the fuck cared? He had a gash to stitch, places to go, a weapon to sell….

“Piss off,” the Operator said.

“No,” the man said, “I’m not going to
piss off
. You know all about the things in Kelly’s blood, don’t you? The Mary Kates?”

Oh, that name.

The Operator sighed, then heaved his knee up into the man’s testicles.

He shouldn’t have to be doing this, you know.

He should be out bringing nations to their knees. Not this nobody.

I
nside her room, Vanessa wondered about two things. First: Why am I still alive? And second: What the fook is in this gym bag?

Then her door crashed open.

T
here had been no time for threats. No time to dazzle two hospital rent-a-cops with nifty holographic eagles. Not with his face bleeding, his right wrist throbbing, and his right leg screaming.

So Kowalski had thrust his palm out to the closest guard’s chest. It was a blow sharp enough to stun, but not enough to chip the bone of the breastplate, driving calcium daggers into the heart. The man jolted, lost control of his limbs. Probably thought he was having a heart attack. Which is what that blow was designed to do.

The other guard caught the flat of Kowalski’s palm in his throat. Again, the blow hadn’t been hard enough to kill; merely
discourage. The man dropped to his knees, put his fingers to his throat, as if he could somehow fix what was wrong there.

Kowalski hobbled past them, threw open the door, limped like a sorry fuck over to the bed, damn near crashed into it. And then he fell. Those two moves had taken more energy than he realized. His body screamed,
Stop it. Stop it. Rest
.

When I’m dead.

Kowalski reached up and clutched sheets. Then a bed rail. Pulled himself up.

“Hi, there,” he said, staggering to his feet. He looked down at Kelly, who had a strangely bemused expression on her face. Farther down the bed was the gym bag containing Ed’s head.

In the exact place Ed had probably hoped he’d end up last night.

There you go, buddy. Mission accomplished.

“I don’t mean to be rude, but I’ve gotta go catch your boyfriend.”

“No worries,” Kelly said, her words grotesquely slurred.
Nuh wurrrree
.

But Kowalski understood. He looked at the table near the sink, saw what he needed. “Hope you two aren’t close.”

He uncapped a sterile syringe, then unzipped the bag. Looked for the right spot—part of the neck stump—and slammed it home. Drew back the plunger.

“I’m going to zip this back up, and I want you to promise me you won’t look. And that you’ll keep this bag right here. Trust me on this.”

Kelly reached up. Her fingertips found his chin. She squinted her eyes, as if to say, Oooh, that looks like it hurts.

“You’re sweet. But I’ll be right back.”

J
ack Eisley was in the exact position he thought he’d be this morning: on his knees, clutching his testicles, feeling the worst pain of his life.

But instead of kneeling before Donovan Piatt, he was standing in front of some beefy, thin-haired jackass. Someone who could tell him what this whole thing was about. The Mary Kates. The fake poison. His eleven-hour nightmare.

And even though Jack considered himself a reasonably nonviolent man, someone who preferred an honest conversation to physical blows—despite the fact that he’d punched a pretty woman in the stomach earlier this morning—he’d come to a philosophical breaking point. Before him was not a man for conversation. He was a man, clearly, who preferred the language of pain.

So Jack made a fist and nailed him in the lower part of his stomach—right where Kelly had stabbed him.

Oh, how he howled.

Jack liked the sound so much, he punched him in the same place again. The man had protected the area with his hands; Jack’s second blow landed on knuckles. Still, it had an appreciable effect. The man cried out, stumbled back, fell on his ass. Jack tried to stand up, but the pain in his balls was too intense, too crippling.

“Nice, Jack,” said a voice behind him. Kowalski. “Score one for the home team.”

Kowalski limped past him down the hall, toward the man with the thinning hair. He had one arm behind his back, syringe in hand, thumb stretched out and on the plunger. In the tube was a dark red fluid.

Jack almost felt sorry for the thin-haired man.

F
irst, Kowalski threw a sloppy chop to the throat. Something the bastard could see coming from around the corner.

As expected, Thinny dropped, kicked, and swept Kowalski’s leg out from under him. Then he was on top of him like a college sophomore.

And Kowalski plunged the needle into Thinny’s neck.

Thumbed the plunger.

Confusion washed over the man’s face. He’d felt the stick, but didn’t know the source. He rolled back. Reached up. Felt the syringe. Widened his eyes.

Kowalski could have said one of a thousand things, but he figured the silence was worse.

Just a smile. A small, quiet smile.

And a look. A telepathic exchange, more accurately: You know what that is, don’t you, big boy?

Thinny yanked the syringe out of his neck. A thin ribbon of blood spurted from his neck. Then he raised the syringe up and behind him. Bared his teeth. Prepared to put every once of his weight behind a blow that would drive the dirty needle into Kowalski’s face, past skin and bone, deep into his brain cavity.

Kowalski anchored himself with his good arm and bad leg.

The needle plunged downward.

Thinny’s descent was blocked by Kowalski’s foot, thrown up at the last moment and stretched back to its limit. He could almost kiss his knee.

Then Kowalski performed the one-legged press of his lifetime.

Thinny was hurled backward.

Shattered the window behind him.

Toppled backward out of the jagged frame.

H
A HA HA HAAAAAAAA
.

Kowalski wanted nothing more than to lie still, catch his breath, give his muscles and bones a moment to adjust to the multiple shocks. Then he heard the laughter. The shrill, mocking laughter of a school bully who’d just made it through puberty but lapsed back every once in awhile.
HA HA HA HAAAAAAAA
. It was coming from outside. Beyond the shattered window.

Was Jackie Boy catching this? Kowalski rolled over and raised his head, and yeah, it looked like Jack heard it, too. He was still cradling his nuts protectively, but he, too, was looking up at the window.

Son of a
…

He crawled to the window. No shattered glass on the tiled floor this side of it, thank God. Heard commotion behind him. Nurses, doctors, security, maybe even priests and nuns and lepers and angels and politicians gathering.

First, one hand up. The good hand. Of all his woes, would you believe his fucking right wrist killed him the worst. The little present from his sweet Kelly.

Up and to his feet. There you go, soldier. Go on, look down. Look down the side of the building from the eighth floor and see what you see.

Ah yes.

The thin-haired bastard, clinging to the sturdy metal frame of an air-conditioning unit two floors down.

He was staring right at Kowalski, sneering. He’d been waiting for him.

“
It’s not going to be that easy
, ” he yelled.

Two floors down. Kowalski verified the distance the best he could, but… yeah. It seemed about right.

“You know what you are?” Kowalski asked.

Confusion on Thinny’s face. Then he winced. Maybe he was starting to realize. Maybe his head was starting to throb.

Kowalski hadn’t injected him with one or two of the Mary Kates. The blood from Ed’s head was positively
teeming
with them. There was no need for hours of gestation, replication. There were plenty in there to do their job.