Twenty-Six

The elevator opened onto chaos. Nurses and doctors running in every direction. Patients shouting. Alarms going off. Instinct pushed Michael’s hand to his hip, had him lifting the Kimber .45 out of its holster. He stepped into the hall, gun held tight against his thigh. Something was wrong, but until he knew what, waving a gun around wasn’t a good idea.

A nurse was cowering under the charge desk a few feet away. “What’s going on?” he said, flashing her the borrowed badge on his hip to speed things along.

“Gunshots. Four of them.”

Shit. Where was Sabrina? The boy—what was his name? “Alex. Alex Kotko. What room?”

The nurse pointed a shaky fingering. “Five-nineteen.”

Turning in the direction she’d indicated, he brought the gun up. “Call the police.” He walked swiftly, the barrel of his gun trained in front of him. The hallways had emptied and patients’ doors were closed, some of them barricaded. He passed the waiting room. The flat screen on the wall showed the midday news to a deserted room.

Five-nineteen. He took a quick look through the small observation window in the door. The room was dark.

“Sabrina,” he said loudly. No response.

He pulled the door open, light fell across the bed. It was empty. “Sabrina.” He said it again as he stepped into the room. Finding the light switch, he flipped it on. She was standing on the other side of the bed, steady-handed, SIG aimed at his face.

She held the gun on him a second longer than necessary before dropping it to her side. “What took you so long, O’Shea?” Her voice trembled just a bit. The sound of if, the fact that she sounded glad to see him slammed his throat closed.

“Traffic,” he said, letting his gaze slide to the man on the floor. The blood-soaked scrubs and lab coat said he was a doctor. The 9mm outfitted with a silencer on the floor next to him said he was something else entirely. Blank eyes, lids at half-mast, looked at the door as if he’d died while waiting for someone.

Michael nudged him roughly with the toe of his shoe before looking up at Sabrina. She was still watching the door. Before he could ask, she said, “He told me he’s not alone. There’s another one out there—”

“There’s no one. I did a sweep.”

Jamming her gun into the holster strapped to her hip, she turned and reached down to haul up the boy. “Then he’s on his way.” Blood matted the back of her hair.

Without thinking, he grabbed her, started running his hands over her arms and back. She tried to push him away, but he ignored her, kept probing. Lifting her hair off her neck, he revealed a thick trail of blood originating from her scalp. The deep furrow at the base of her skull wept red, the edges of it singed black by the heat of the bullet. He stalled out, felt his lungs go tight in his chest. Another half an inch would’ve killed her.

She pushed his hand away with a hissed, “I’m okay.” She looked at the boy. “You have to take him. Get him out of here before more of them show up.”

He almost laughed. “I’m not leaving you here.”

“I can handle it, you have to go—we only have a couple of minutes. The Pip Ben left—”

“What? There’s no one here.” Alarm bells started clanging around in his head.

“Yeah, there is. Crew cut, dark suit, big as a house. I know a Pip when I see one.” She angled her head to look out the window. “He was in the waiting room. I saw him when I got here.”

The fact that she’d just described one of Shaw’s rent-a-thugs to a T disturbed him on about a hundred different levels. “Sabrina, there’s no one here,” he said. Something was wrong. Very wrong. But he didn’t have time to sort through what she was telling him—not right now.

Crouching, he turned toward the boy and spoke to him in Russian. The boy nodded. Michael reached for him and pulled him forward, led him over to the man slumped against the wall. He spoke again. Ben was right—his Russian was a bit rusty, but he got his point across just fine. The boy studied the dead man for a few seconds before he nodded, his answer carried on quavering tones.

“What are you saying?” Sabrina said.

“I’m asking him if he recognizes him.”

“And?”

Dropping a hand on the boy’s shoulder, he spoke to him quietly. The boy looked up at him and nodded again, his face a pale mask, tight with fear.

“He says this piece of shit is one of the men who sold him.” He looked at her before continuing. “The only problem is that our dead friend here doesn’t work for Reyes.”

He expected her to ask him who Reyes was. She didn’t. Further proof of just how deep she’d waded into this whole mess. “Then who does he work for?” she said, her eyes bouncing from the body on the floor between them to find him.

It was commonplace for those within cartels and other criminal organizations to brand themselves. Tattoos were used to tell others who you were: who you worked for, the rank you held. How many people you’d killed.

Michael studied the tattoo that covered the back of the man’s hand. A Fleur-de-lis. He’d killed plenty of men with that same tattoo, and recently. Those alarm bells in his head got a little louder. “A man I killed thirty-six hours ago.”