“I think Hannah should stay in the car,” Rafe told Lucy as she parked.
As expected, the dog trainer had other ideas. “No way.”
He shook his head. “Your grandmother and I can do this without you and the dog. You can’t leave him locked in the car alone. He’ll get scared. You should stay with him.”
“I intend to stay with him,” Hannah shot back. “All the way to Andy’s room and back.”
“Security won’t let him in.” At least Rafe hoped not.
“They will once I put a training vest on him. Gram, pop the trunk and let me grab my hoodie and the special harness.”
“I take it I’m outnumbered,” he muttered as he straightened beside the car to tuck the gun into the back of his belt.
Lucy huffed and smiled while Hannah dressed herself and Thor, then faced Rafe, hands on her hips. “You betcha.”
“That’s what I was afraid of.” Turning, he led the way toward the side entrance portico. Unless someone in the hospital intervened and stopped them he was going to have to put up with his unwanted entourage. Well, so be it. He’d dealt with plenty of uncomfortable situations in the past. Compared to most of them, this was not so bad. What bothered him most was providing adequate protection for them all while they were out in public. Risking his own life was one thing. Letting civilians do the same was entirely different.
Except for signs warning of contagion and portable sanitation stations, the small lobby leading to the emergency room was essentially empty. Someone pushing a patient in a wheelchair passed them as they entered the double swinging doors, and he could see nurses ducking in and out of Emergency room cubicles but that was all.
“Third floor, rear,” he said, ushering the others to an elevator and pushing the call button. Panting, Thor was seated politely on Hannah’s left. Lucy flanked her on the right. The older woman was obviously well trained and aware of the chances they were all taking. That helped Rafe relax a bit. So did the obedience of the K-9. He’d liked that dog the minute he’d laid eyes on him and nothing had happened since to change his mind.
Crossing the threshold into the elevator was new to Thor. He cringed and stopped. Hannah’s gentle encouragement brought him through and once inside he seemed calmer, although Rafe could see him trembling.
“I told you to leave him in the car,” he said.
“He’ll be fine,” she countered. “This would be part of his regular orientation, anyway.”
“I guess getting shot at would be too, right?”
“I hope you mean like what happened when we were in the car. You haven’t seen any threats here, have you?”
“I’d have told you if I had.”
Lucy agreed. “So would I.”
Everyone fell back behind Rafe as he led the way onto the third floor and headed for Andy’s room. The so-called patient in the second bed was actually an armed officer. The task force had chosen to protect their injured member that way to avoid making a guard evident. In truth, the powers that be were using Andy as bait, hoping Fleming’s gang would try to finish the job and leave themselves open to capture in the process. Secrecy was paramount, meaning Rafe was not about to inform his present companions. Not unless he absolutely had to.
He pushed open the door. Andy was sitting up in bed, eating with the hand not hampered by a sling. The second bed had privacy curtains drawn around it.
Grinning, Rafe greeted him. “Good to see you looking so well, buddy.” As he spoke he cast a telling glance toward the other bed, wondering why the officer sent to guard Andy hadn’t stopped them. “Everything okay?”
Andy pushed away the tray table and scowled at Rafe, then looked past him at the women and dog. “Yeah, yeah. What’s going on? Why did you abandon your assignment?”
“I didn’t.” Approaching the bed he gestured. “This is Hannah Lassiter, the dog trainer from Lyell. Fleming coerced her into helping him escape. I went along to keep an eye on him.”
“So, where is he?”
Shrugging, Rafe shook his head. “We don’t know. We believe that members of his gang have him and are taking his orders because they’ve been trying to get even with us for botching his escape. We should be able to get a line on him soon.” He paused. “Providing they don’t kill us first.”
“That’s a comforting plan. Is that the best you can do?”
“For the present,” Rafe said. “Hannah and Lucy, her grandmother here, have a target on their backs so we’re sticking together in this. I brought them to see you to prove I’m on the up-and-up. We’ve all had to do things we didn’t like and it’s my goal to get back in Fleming’s good graces as soon as possible.”
“By hanging out with them?” There was barely disguised anger in the wounded man’s words.
Rafe understood. “It just worked out this way, buddy. Once they were involved I couldn’t abandon them. Deuce would have killed them in a heartbeat.”
“What about Kristy?” Andy was almost shouting. “What about my daughter?”
“I’m not giving up,” Rafe promised. “Lucy has experience with human trafficking operations and may actually be of help to us.”
“And the dog lady?”
“She’s the reason Deuce escaped, yes, but she wants to make amends, and Thor has already been useful.”
“I take it Thor is the dog and you’re not hiding a Viking bodybuilder out in the hall.”
“Right.” He chanced a smile. “We will do this. I promise we will. I’m not sure why I ended up saddled with this posse but here we are.”
From behind him Rafe heard Hannah’s indignant “Hey...” before Lucy silenced her with “Hush.”
Seated between the women, Thor stood and began to growl. Rafe tensed. Looked to Hannah. “What’s wrong with him?”
“The mood in this room is probably affecting him.” She laid a hand on the shepherd’s broad head. His whole body had started to shake worse than it had in the elevator.
Rafe drew the gun Lucy had given him and stood with his back to Andy’s bed. Thor was still growling and staring at the closed-off area containing the second bed.
“Give him some slack,” Rafe told her. “Just enough to tell us what he senses.”
Andy piped up. “It’s probably the guy in the other bed. He’s okay.”
“Do you know his name?”
“Brad, something.”
“Okay, Brad,” Rafe said. “Hands in the air and open the curtains.”
Long seconds passed. Rafe tensed more when he saw Lucy draw her own gun and push Hannah to the side. Thor resisted, remaining focused on who or what was behind the heavy privacy curtains.
A shot echoed in the small room, skimmed over Andy’s bed and left a round hole in the window.
Hannah shrieked and ducked to protect her K-9. Lucy took a two-handed shooter’s stance. Rafe jerked back the curtain. “Freeze. Police.”
A black-clad figure bolted out the opposite side and through the exit.
“Are you all okay?” Rafe shouted, hesitating momentarily to check for himself.
Satisfied at the answers, he yelled, “Hold the dog,” ran for the door and burst into the hallway, aiming at the ceiling for safety. Except for a nurse standing there, frozen in shock, it was empty.
Gripping Thor’s leash with both hands Hannah was barely able to keep him from giving chase. Control by the handler was essential, of course, particularly since neither she nor Rafe knew what the dog might do inside a busy hospital. Moreover, if Thor was triggered by the sight of a running man, he might go after Rafe, himself, instead of the man he was chasing.
She watched her grandmother begin to relax, then move to check on Andy as soon as Rafe reentered the room. Instead of going to his former partner, however, he swept back the curtains to reveal the empty bed. Correction. It wasn’t empty. There was a young-looking man lying in it, moaning.
“Is that Brad?” she asked, hardly needing an answer.
Andy confirmed it with a nod. “Is he okay?”
“I think so.” Rafe pushed a call button to summon a nurse, although Hannah figured they’d have plenty of company in the room soon, thanks to the gunshot.
“Did the shooter get away?” Again, an unnecessary question. Making eye contact with Rafe Hannah said, “We can probably use Thor to track him if we hurry. Otherwise, we’ll be stuck here explaining to Security who we are and why we came.”
Wheeling, he grabbed her elbow and called to Lucy. “She’s right. Let’s go.”
There was no way for Hannah to command Thor to track since she hadn’t trained him yet so she simply let him lead her out of the room and down the hallway. He stopped at the elevator they’d used to get there. Whether that meant the shooter had left that way or the dog was merely retracing his own steps was anybody’s guess.
The door slid open immediately. Thor leaped over the threshold and Hannah followed.
“Is this how he got away?” Rafe asked her.
“It may be. Or the dog may just want to leave. It’s impossible to tell until we get back to the lobby or parking lot and see which way he goes from there.”
“Better than nothing,” Lucy said flatly, pushing the door close control, then ground floor. “I wasn’t looking forward to explaining how we got these guns into the hospital and why we need to keep them.”
“Yeah.”
Hannah could tell Rafe was upset, probably more at himself than anyone else, although she supposed there was enough disappointment to go around. He’d made a tactical error by not checking the other bed space himself rather than just taking Andy’s word for it. Desire to be in and out of the hospital as quickly as possible did explain it, although she figured poor Rafe had to be beating himself up over the lapse in judgment.
Thor pushed his way past Lucy and Rafe to lead Hannah out of the elevator. Because he immediately turned toward the main exit she assumed he was merely taking her back to the parking lot.
She ordered him to stop at the curb outside by giving the leash an abrupt tug. “Sit.”
Rafe joined her on the side opposite the canine while Lucy flanked her on the other. Sirens in the distance were getting louder fast. Feeling his hand at her elbow again Hannah looked up at him. “You could leave me and Gram here and take her car.”
“Not unless you have a death wish,” he countered. “Whoever was up there with Andy now knows for sure that we’re working together. That blows my chances to convince Deuce I was acting on his behalf when I went with you.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.” Hannah peered over at Lucy. “Is he right?”
“We’d have to make a lot of assumptions to be sure. Probably.”
“So, now what?”
“We find a safe place to talk it over and regroup,” Rafe said.
Letting the leash slacken, Hannah was surprised to have Thor pull to the side. “Hold on. Our car is over there.” She pointed. “He wants to go the other way. Maybe he is actually tracking and doesn’t know how to tell us.”
“Okay,” Rafe said. “As long as we get away from the building we should be okay for a few more minutes. They’ll have us on camera and once they check their videos we’ll be IDed.”
“How long?” Hannah asked.
“If they’re efficient, maybe ten minutes. We can’t count on any longer.”
“All right.” Hannah stepped off the curb and began to follow Thor’s lead. He put his nose to the ground a few times, apparently relying mostly on airborne scents. There was no wavering, no hesitation to his mission and she was beyond thrilled. This K-9 was even more special than she’d thought when she’d pulled him from the shelter in spite of a sign on the kennel door warning that he was vicious. Maybe he had snapped at somebody in the past. Frightened animals with no other recourse or a viable escape route often used their teeth and claws for defense. That didn’t make them bad, it merely meant they had been mishandled.
At the end of a row of parked cars, Thor paused, then began to pick up the pace. Hannah kept up by giving him more lead when she fell behind. She could sense the others following her and the thrill of the chase was making her heart pound. Things were about to turn around for them. Thor was going to help apprehend an armed thug and solve Rafe’s problems without anybody else being harmed.
Thor strained against his harness. Elated, she started to follow him across the street to an auxiliary parking lot.
An engine roared. Tires squealed. Hannah was jerked backwards in the nick of time to avoid being run over by a speeding SUV.
The leash came out of her grip. She screamed. “Thor!”
Rafe held her tightly by one arm, Lucy by the other.
A sob choked her. She covered her face, afraid to look. Afraid to imagine. “Thor?”