The Select (44 page)

She stepped back from the patient to
make sure she was in the right spot. Yes. This was it. This was
where she'd seen—

Wait. She flashed her light along his
body. This patient was short and heavy. The one who'd signaled her
had been long and lean.

Like Tim.

As she turned to survey the darkened
ward, she saw a shadow appear at the window in the door. Quinn
dropped to the floor. A heartbeat later the door swung open and the
overhead lights went on.

*

Kurt stood blinking in the glare of
the lights.

"Jesus, Lou. I was sound
asleep."

Verran envied him. He could have used
a few solid hours of sleep himself.

"Enjoy the memory. That's the last
you're going to have for a while. Our friend Cleary's on the
loose."

"What's that supposed to
mean?"

"Don't ask me how, but she suspects
we've got Brown. I heard her on the phone. She's on her way
here—may be here already."

"Fuck damn!" Kurt said. "I knew we
should've taken her out with the Brown kid."

"That's not our decision.
Besides, the situation is still salvageable. From what I gathered,
she doesn't
know
Brown's here. If we intercept her, send her back to the dorm,
then move Brown out, we can make her look like a nut case and kick
her ass back to Connecticut."

"Why go to all the trouble?" Kurt
said. "Let me handle it. I'll see to it she's found in the woods
fifty miles from here—a rape-murder victim. Our worries'll be
over."

Verran stared at the big blond man.
Sometimes Kurt really frightened him.

"Just do as you're told. She's not in
her room. I called Fifth and they're checking Ward C. She didn't
get by the security desk in the lobby, so she's probably on her
way."

"What about the side door?" Kurt said,
turning to his console. "The bitch pulled a fast one like that on
me once before." He tapped away at his keyboard, then pointed to
the screen. "There she is: the west door, ten minutes
ago."

Christ, no!

"Get upstairs! Stop her! If she gets
into the ward and finds him our asses will be in a
sling!"

*

Tim watched the whole sequence of
events, and could do nothing. Real life was reduced to television,
and he was a passive, helpless viewer. Couldn't even change the
damn channel.

His tingling hands had
awakened him but he'd wished they hadn't. He'd been too depressed
over the day's events—
non
events, rather—to work his fingers in much more
than a desultory fashion. No hope, no future—what difference did it
make how well he could move his fingers? Even when the tingling
reached his elbows, the highest yet, so what?

So he lay there in the darkness,
staring at the blinking lights around the hall window, but from a
different angle this time. They'd moved his bed at the end of the
day shift, rotating him to the side of the room farthest from the
door. The current shift had propped him up on his right side
again.

When he saw a familiar
blond head bob past the hall window, he thought he'd fallen back to
sleep and was dreaming. But when he saw her slip through the door
and begin flashing a penlight, he prayed it was real. It
had
to be
real.

He wanted to laugh, he wanted to cry,
he wanted to shout with booming joy. There was a God, there was a
Santa Claus. Quinn was here! She'd seen! She believed!

Then he wanted to scream at her when
she approached the wrong bed.

Over here! Over here! They
moved me over here!

He watched her flash her light in the
other patient's face, saw her flinch back when she realized it
wasn't him. Silently he begged her not to think she'd been seeing
things this afternoon and give up. When she started looking around
again, he knew there was still hope, but he was bewildered when she
suddenly dropped into a crouch.

Then the lights came on and he
understood.

Squinting, Tim watched the nurse
called Doris step inside the door. She appeared wary as she stood
with her hands on her hips, surveying the ward. Tim couldn't
remember a night when the overheads had been turned on like this.
Had she heard something? Was she looking for Quinn?

Maybe it was his own cardiac monitor
that had brought her in. His heart was tripping along at a
breakneck pace.

He could see Quinn crouched beside
Number Four's bed, statue still, barely breathing.

Jesus, she had guts. How
many women—how many
men
—would brave this place at night to search for
him?

Apparently satisfied, Doris turned off
the lights and closed the door behind her.

Quinn's shadow popped up almost
immediately and she began to flash her penlight at the patients
around her.

Over here,
dammit!

Maybe she caught the thought. Or maybe
she spotted the madly flashing rate light on his cardiac monitor.
Whatever the reason, she came directly toward him and shone the
light in his face.

She didn't have to pull at his
bandages. She seemed to know as soon as she saw his
eyes.

"Oh, Tim!" It was a whisper encased in
a moan.

She bent and clutched his shoulders
and buried her face against his neck, sobbing.

"Oh, Tim, it's you, it's you, I knew
you'd never leave me like that."

He felt his own sobs welling up in his
chest with nowhere to go, searching for a voice, an exit. His
vision blurred and he was startled to feel the wetness of tears on
his cheeks. Sensation was returning to his face.

If only he could speak. Because as
wonderful as this was, she had to go now.

Okay. You've found me. Now
get out of here, get somewhere safe and call the cops, the FBI, the
CIA, the Pentagon, just make sure you're safe first!

And then over Quinn's shoulder,
through the blur of tears, he saw the other nurse, the one called
Ellie, walking past the window in the hallway. She stopped abruptly
and stared into the ward. She leaned closer to the window and
cupped her hands around her eyes for a second or two, then she
jerked away from the window and darted back the way she had
come.

But Quinn hadn't seen a
thing.

She had to get out of here, had to
run! He had to let her know! Tim tried his voice again, knowing he
couldn't make a sound, yet he had to try.

"Go."

The word shocked him. His
voice sounded like a tree limb scraping against a stucco wall, but
it
was
his
voice.

Quinn straightened and stared at him.
"Tim! Can you speak?"

He tried to tell her that a nurse had
seen her but his lips and tongue wouldn't cooperate. He had to keep
it simple.

"Go!"

"Not without you. I'm
never—"

Then the overheads came on.

*

Quinn whirled in the sudden burst of
light and saw two nurses—one heavy and blonde, the other thin and
brunette— standing inside the door, gaping at her.

"
Now
do you believe me?" the thin one
said.

"Who are you?" said the heavy one.
"And what are you doing here? Do you realize how you're endangering
these patients?"

Quinn was tongue tied for an instant.
She'd had a story set to use had she been intercepted before she
reached Ward C, but nothing for why she was actually in the ward.
She realized that they didn't know who she was. Why should they?
The only times she'd ever been on Five Science were in the
afternoon. She could be anybody. So she blurted the first thing
that came to mind.

"I thought they might be lonely," she
said as lamely as she could. She tried to look dazed, out of it as
she shuffled toward the nurses...toward the door. "But no one will
talk to me."

The nurses glanced at each other, then
the heavy one spoke again. She seemed to be the head nurse for the
two-woman shift.

"You could have brought an infection
in here."

"Oh, no," Quinn said with intense
sincerity as she continued her approach. "I wash my hands every
day. But they still wouldn't talk to me. Will you talk to
me?"

Another glance flashed between the
nurses, then the thin one spoke.

"Of course we'll talk to you." She
pulled open the door to the nursing station. "Come on out here.
We've got coffee and donuts and we'll talk as long as you
like."

Quinn gave a sleepy smile as she
walked between them and out the door...and kept walking. She turned
to her right toward the hallway.

Someone grabbed her shoulder. "Not
that way." It was the heavy nurse. "The lounge is over
here."

"That's okay," Quinn said, shrugging
off the hand. "I don't feel like talking anymore."

"Wait—!"

Quinn pulled away and began running
down the hall, ignoring the shouts behind her as she headed for the
exit stairs. She could see the door was still propped open by her
coat and she complimented herself on her foresight. She was scared,
but her adrenalin was flowing now and she knew she could
outdistance either of the nurses here in the hall. Before they
could phone the lobby and get security moving, she ought to be down
the stairs, out into the snow, and pelting across campus toward the
dorm. Once back in her room, she'd barricade the door and call the
sheriff's office. She'd blow the lid off Ward C and expose
everybody involved in this horror and then Tim would be free and
they'd be together once more and she wouldn't care if she never saw
The Ingraham again.

She was half way there when the door
opened the rest of the way and a blond man stepped over her coat
and into the hall. Quinn recognized him immediately as someone from
campus security—the one she and Tim had seen in the parking lot
before leaving for Atlantic City last month.

His sudden grin had a nasty twist to
it. "Well, well, well. I've been looking for you,
sweetheart."

Quinn's sneakers squeaked as she
skidded into a turn and ran the other way. The heavyset nurse had
been close behind her but Quinn's sudden change in direction took
her by surprise and she slipped and fell. Quinn dodged around her
and headed back the way she had come.

Panic was beginning to crowd her now,
nipping at her heels. She wouldn't make it into the stairwell at
the other end of the hall. She'd have to use her card to unlock it
and the blond guy would be all over her while she was trying to get
it into the slot. Maybe the lab—

As she passed Ward C again she spotted
the little lounge behind the nurses station. Maybe she could lock
herself in there, and if they had a phone...

But the thin, dark-haired nurse was at
the station, on the phone, undoubtedly to security. When she saw
Quinn coming, she dropped the receiver and moved to intercept her.
Quinn didn't think she could duck around the nurse so she barreled
right into her, sending her flying backward into the meds cart,
knocking it over. She had a brief glimpse of the bottles and
syringes flying off the top, smashing on the floor, the drawers
below falling open, spilling their contents, adding more liquid and
broken glass to the mess, then she ducked into the lounge, slammed
the door behind her, and locked it.

She whirled, found the phone, lifted
the receiver, hit 9, then dialed 4-1-1. If only she'd thought to
memorize the number of the sheriff's office.

She got a busy signal. How could
Information be busy at this hour?

As fists began pounding on the door,
she hung up and tried again, only this time she listened after she
hit the 9 for an outside line: busy signal. Someone in security had
blocked phone access to the outside.

A heavy weight slammed against the
door. The molding by the doorknob cracked.

Quinn began to shake. Her stomach
hurt. She was trapped. And she was going to end up like Tim, she
knew it.

Another slam against the door, a
bigger crack in the molding. Desperate now, ready to try anything,
she jumped up, twisted the lock switch in the doorknob to the off
position, turned the knob ever so slightly to free the latch, then
stepped aside, flattening herself against the wall just to the
right of the knob.

The door slammed open with a violence
that almost ripped it off its hinges as the blond man hurtled into
the room, out of control, stumbling wildly.

Quinn was on her way out the door
immediately. She didn't see him land, but heard the crash of
tumbling furniture, then groans and angry curses behind her as she
dashed once more into the hall. The two nurses were there, blocking
her way, their eyes wide with surprise at the sight of her. They
clutched at her arms but she shook them off and darted behind the
station counter, taking the longer, flanking route to the hall. She
would have made it, too, if her sneaker hadn't slipped on the wet
floor. She prevented a fall by grabbing the counter, but the delay
gave the heavy nurse a chance to reach the other end of the station
and cut her off.