The Unlucky (16 page)

Aaron looked away before wiping at a tear. “Oh Sarah. What is going on?”

Parkman flipped the toothpick to the other side of his mouth. “I’m sorry, Aaron, but the harsh reality is that if Sarah makes it out of this alive, she will spend a few decades in jail. With politicians involved, they’ll ask for the longest sentence. It’s one thing to hurt or kill in self defense when dealing with scum. But to attack a councilman,” he paused, swallowed loudly, then added, “that’s something altogether different.”

The toothpick in his mouth snapped in half.

He reached for another, thanking God for life’s little pleasures.

Chapter 19

Sarah ran down the stairwell two at a time. When she hit the second floor, hospital patients exiting that stairwell door slowed her down. She mingled with the crowd and continued to descend the stairs until she was out the side door. A large group had gathered across the back parking lot. Others formed close-knit groups of people talking, probably trying to work out what was going on. Many of the patients were sitting, but some remained standing. For a cancer hospital, it surprised her how many were smoking. They had decided to use this drill as a chance to catch a puff before bed.

Fire trucks, police cars and ambulances were scattered about as everyone tried to make sense of what was going on.

Sarah stayed close to the building after exiting the stairwell door, grateful that she made it out of that man’s private room without being seen.

I hope you know what you’re doing, Sis.

Near the back of the building, she followed a woman in her forties who was pushing a wheelchair out into the rear parking area. As soon as she got two blocks from here, she would hail a cab and get to a hotel. She had to think. She needed direction and Vivian was going to offer it or Sarah would leave Toronto. There would be no more murder, no more killing of sick, defenseless people no matter what they had done.

Vivian, what happened to the morgue?
Sarah asked.
I thought I’d be leaving through the morgue.

What looked like an unmarked cruiser drove by. She froze, hoping he didn’t see her. The car continued, its search light bouncing across the cars, reflecting off windshields.

She stepped out between two cars.

“Freeze,” a man said.

Sarah stopped, raised her hands about a foot away from her waist and turned around slowly.

Detective Timothy Simmons.

He leaned against the side of a van about fifteen feet away, a gun aimed at her.

“I asked myself,” Simmons said. “Was it pure luck or just good fortune when I saw you walking right toward me?”

“Probably luck.”

He pushed off the van and moved a few steps closer.

“Why would you say that?”

“I was going to go the other way to miss the traffic out front.”

“Are you armed?” Simmons asked.

Sarah shook her head, keeping her hands raised slightly at the waist.

“Oh, right, you left my gun at the murder scene in Orillia.”

Sarah frowned. “Interesting, since I’ve been in Toronto all day.” Would he buy the lie?

“You think a jury will believe that? I think not.”

“And you can place me in Orillia, can you?”

“Of course. You left witnesses. The hitchhiker.” He lowered the gun as someone walked by. “Just like you let witnesses watch you shoot my daughter.” The gun was back in place, aimed at her.

“Why did you lower the weapon?” Sarah asked. “You’re a police officer making an arrest in public. People understand the gun in your hand. They get it.”

He shrugged one shoulder, then stepped closer again.

“You lowered it so no one would remember you with a gun pointed at the girl they found dead right here. Am I right?”

He shrugged once more. “Something like that.”

“Is that what you think Vanessa would—”

“Don’t say her name!” he shouted.

In the light from the parking lot’s tall lamps Sarah saw his tears and knew he cried for his daughter and for the decision he had made that tore him apart inside. The decision whether to shoot her or not weighed on him.

“Don’t ever say her name again.”

Sarah swiveled her eyes from Tim’s face to the parking lot and back to Tim in search of the unmarked cruiser that had passed moments before.

Tim moved closer. He cocked the weapon.

Really, Vivian? Is this how it ends?

He was too close to duck down and try to run. She’d get hit. There weren’t many options. As far as she could tell, people were still filing out of the hospital, but no one was nearby. He could shoot her and disappear in the dark at the back of the parking lot and not a single person would see a thing.

Nervous sweat covered her back and her knees hadn’t felt wobbly from fear in a long time, but they shook now.

“Okay, Detective. You got me.” She brought her wrists together. “Cuff me. Take me in. I’ll explain everything.”

“I don’t think so. You’ll never see the inside of a courtroom.” He moved to point-blank range. He couldn’t miss now unless the gun jammed. “I am going to kill you right here, Sarah Roberts. Then it will be over. This gun is unregistered. Serial number’s gone. It’ll never be traced to me.” She noticed his hands were gloved. “Speak to whoever you want to, Sarah, make your peace, ask for forgiveness, but I don’t think anyone or anything will forgive you.”

He raised the gun, aimed it at her forehead.

“Wait!” she yelled. “At least tell me why you’re into she-males.”

He paused, frowning, then lowered the weapon. “What?”

“You know, ladyboys. Why are you so into them?”

“What the hell are you talking about? You’re just wasting time.”

She dropped to the ground in an attempt to roll under the car behind her as the gun fired. The loud report forced a scream from her lips as she rolled. Unfortunately, the car was too low to the ground for her to crawl all the way under it.

“Fuck!” she railed against it, smacking the underside with her open hand.

The gun went off again. She hadn’t felt the impact of the bullet. It could have happened when she had dropped to the pavement. In a panic to escape, she rolled out from under the car and bumped into something on the pavement behind her. Heart thudding in her chest, Sarah looked into the dead eyes of Detective Timothy Simmons.

Disbelief enveloped her as she laid there frozen, the detective’s blood oozing into her shirt and the top of her pants near the belt line.

“What the hell?” she whispered. “He shot himself?”

As soon as she spoke the words, she knew that someone else had shot Tim in the neck and hip area. Tim’s unfired gun was still in his dead hand. His cell phone had popped out of his jacket pocket and tumbled to where it lay under her shoulder now.

Who shot the cop?

Another man stepped out from between two vehicles five down from her. He remained hunched over moving with stealth as he neared her position. She had allowed the panic of the moment to take over and hadn’t gotten up for fear a sniper was out there trying to off people in the parking lot.

“Here,” the man said as he tossed something at her.

She caught it in mid air. A gun, the smell of cordite still issuing from its muzzle.

The weapon that killed Simmons.

The man, shrouded in shadows, turned his face away and started off down the parking lot. Sarah checked the chamber. The gun was empty. A moment ago it had two bullets and both were in Simmons’ body now.

Suddenly the man turned back around and pulled another gun.

“Really?” Sarah asked. “Doesn’t this get old?”

“Freeze!” the man yelled. “Sarah Roberts, you’re under arrest. Drop the weapon or I’ll have to shoot.”

She flung the weapon away, shock settling over her system as she lay with the dead detective.

Get tougher, Sarah. Like the old days. Shake this off and start running.

Sarah sat up, spun on her butt and lay back down beside a pickup truck. Before rolling away, she snatched Simmons’ cell phone off the pavement and gripped it close to her body.

The man fired, the bullet nicking the cement where her face had been a second before. Only a foot had separated her from an entry wound.

“Stay where you are, Sarah,” the man yelled.

His footfalls reached her as he ran toward her position. She rolled under the pickup, waited until he rounded the back of the vehicle, then rolled out the other side. Jumping to her feet, she flung the baseball cap behind her to make a scuffling noise distraction, and ran for the hospital, hoping she didn’t get a bullet in the back for her efforts.

Bobbing and weaving between vehicles, Sarah ran as if a pack of salivating Rottweilers were on her heels. She chanced a look over her shoulder, but the man was gone. No one was chasing her and no one was pointing a weapon at her.

The door she had exited not ten minutes ago was clear of people. She rushed inside and started down the stairs.

The nightmare wasn’t over. It was just beginning.

“Hey!” a hospital security guard shouted from one stair level above her. “You can’t go down there,” he shouted.

His heavy steps echoed down after her.

She descended the stairs toward the morgue—Vivian’s prophecy—knowing that Simmons was dead and the gun that killed him was covered with her fingerprints. Whoever that man was in the parking lot knew she would be there. That person knew Simmons was looking for her. They also had an agenda, and that agenda was to execute Simmons.

What they didn’t count on was Sarah getting away. What they won’t count on is Sarah coming back to continue killing in the name of what was right.

That or die trying.

The guard chased her down the stairs. She slammed a door shut, then shoved a chair behind it before racing down a hallway going deeper into the bowels of the cancer hospital.

Chapter 20

In the quiet basement of the Princess Margaret Hospital, empty of people due to the evacuation, Sarah checked doors along the corridor. The alarm had silenced. Other than the recently deceased, this area was vacant. She was two hallways away from the guard who chased her down the flight of stairs. Whether he got through the blocked door or not, she wasn’t sure. But one thing she was sure of, they were coming. The guard would report her. The man from the parking lot—Simmons’ murderer—would come for her, too. Locating an exit and simply walking out wasn’t looking good. She had to find a place to hide until normal hospital activity resumed.

But where?

A room on the right was bathed in a purple florescent light that reminded her of a nightclub. She had a brief moment where she wondered what that was for but Vivian whispered something to her about sanitization and germs.

Sarah frowned and kept moving down the hallway.

A door banged in a distant corridor. Voices floated through the corridor coming her way. Someone said the word
girl
and
chased her
.

Vivian, a temporary hiding place would help.

Sarah ran another dozen feet and turned into a cavernous room with what looked like three stainless-steel shelves on wheels in the shape of beds.

Autopsy room? Embalming room?

She wasn’t sure, but maybe the embalming happened after the dead left the hospital at a funeral home.

The wall to her left was covered with steel doors, the size of mini fridge doors. They had large numbers on the doors and small circular temperature gauges that upon closer inspection said the inside was about three degrees Celsius, or thirty-seven Fahrenheit.

Cold storage. Dead bodies.

Another door banged in the corridor, closer this time. They were coming and unless she was willing to try to explain everything away, which probably wouldn’t be very effective, she had to hide.

“No way,” Sarah said to the wall of steel doors.

She glanced over her shoulder at the opening to the room. Someone was coming. Many someones. And they were close.

“Shit.”

She opened a door nearest the far wall. A soft smell of death wafted out as the tagged feet of a corpse came into view.

She jammed that door closed and checked another one. Then another, gasping for breath as the smells infused the air with its particular toxins.

Footsteps were closer.

The next door was waist high. When she opened it and discovered it to be empty, the odor of disinfectant hitting her nose, she jammed Simmons’ cell phone in her back pocket and dove inside, head first. Once inside, she used her foot to ease the door closed as far as she could without it locking her in.