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Mac forgot he had a pistol in his ankle holster until he got inside the hospital. Rand shook his head, then flashed a badge at the security guard, and gestured to both him and Mac. The guard nodded, and the two men walked around the security gate. Rand looked at Mac. “You look like we should be checking you in,” he muttered. “When we get up there, you need to clean up.”
Mac shrugged. He was good enough. And this was a hospital. Not like they hadn’t seen a bit of blood before.
“You’ve spent a lot of time here,” Mac said softly. “Often doubling up on the other agents. Why?”
Rand was silent until they got in the elevator. “They came for Nick that first day, right? But we were here, and they couldn’t get past us — not the three stooges. Not Rourke himself. And then they haven’t been back — been a week. So I figure they have to be thinking a different strategy. Hell if I can figure out what. But suborning an FBI agent came to mind.”
“Not Stan,” Mac said thoughtfully. “Not your bureau chief.”
Rand glanced at him at that. “Ran a background check,” Mac admitted. “He’s not as much of a hick as he likes to pretend.”
“No, he’s a good guy,” Rand agreed. “He and Stan are circling warily like junkyard dogs, but they’ll work it out. But we’ve got a couple of other agents in rotation. It just takes one. Just takes a distraction.”
Mac nodded. They got off the elevator. The FBI agent was sitting outside the ICU reading on his phone. Mac glanced at Rand, but Rand had his poker face on. They were within feet of the man when he looked up. He set the phone aside.
“It’s been quiet,” he said.
Mac rolled his eyes, and glanced down the hallway through the windows of the double doors. It was quiet, he conceded. Then an orderly walked down that hallway toward them and started to go into Nick’s room. Mac frowned. He’d spent a fair amount of time in a hospital last spring. He didn’t remember ever seeing an orderly by themselves. He started toward the room.
“Hey!” the agent said, startled. “You can’t go back there.”
Day late there, buddy, Mac thought. He didn’t pause, just pushed through the double doors.
Orderlies, in his experience, came in to do the heavy work under someone else’s guidance. A nurse. Or a doctor. Do this, roll him over. Now, do that. He’d gotten visits from the nurse by herself. Or the doctor. But an orderly? No. He thought that would be even more true with Nick where an ill-advised movement could do a lot of damage.
No, something was off. He followed the orderly into the room.
The orderly had a pillow in his hands. Really? That seemed a bit cliché. Mac rolled his eyes. “Hey!” he said. The orderly whirled. Mac looked at him. He knew him, he thought. Where had he seen him before? Well, his photo was on the wall at the house. Which one?
“What are you doing in here?” the orderly blustered.
Mac snorted. “I was going to ask you the same question,” he said. “What are you doing?”
“I work here,” the orderly said.
Mac shook his head. “No you don’t.” He reached over and pushed the call button. “But we can surely see if you’re supposed to be here, can’t we?”
The orderly glared at him, and then shoved past him. Mac started to go after him, but he stopped to check on Nick first. “Go,” Nick ordered. “I’m fine.”
Mac looked around the room to see if anything was out of place. Nothing. He headed out into the hall. The orderly was headed away from the double doors to the exit he’d come in through. Where did that go? Mac started to follow, then hesitated. Distraction upon distraction?
He pulled out his phone, sent a text to Rand saying ‘come’. He liked these new phones that worked inside the hospital. He hoped he’d be allowed to keep one.
Rand pushed through the doors. “What?” he demanded.
Mac nodded toward where the orderly was disappearing through an emergency exit. “Not an orderly,” he said. “I interrupted him with a pillow.”
“Stay with Nick,” Rand ordered. He pulled his Springfield Custom .45 ACP and headed down the hall after the orderly. Nice gun, Mac thought. He didn’t have one of those.
Mac went back inside Nick’s room, and sat in the chair beside the bed. It would be good just to sit for a moment, he admitted to himself. Not think, just sit.
Nick sniffed a bit, then frowned. “Blood?” he asked. His voice was raspy, and Mac started to give him a sip of water. He stopped, looked at the bottle. It had been sitting there open when the orderly came in. He went to get fresh water in Nick’s bathroom.
As he started back toward Nick, Mac heard the click of the door, and he froze.
“Captain,” Nick said. “Didn’t expect you here.”
“We need to talk,” a man said. Mac thought the voice was familiar. Captain Rourke? Probably. “And you’re not going anywhere.”
“Not for a while at least,” Nick agreed. He didn’t say anything more. There was a pause. “You wanted to talk?”
“If you’d died last Friday night, we could have left it there,” Rourke said. Mac pulled out his phone, and set it to record. He looked at the battery and grimaced. “But your survival complicates things. It dragged in more people. People you care about. Family. Children.”
“Not like I had much say in the matter,” Nick observed.
Rourke snorted with amusement. “No, I guess you didn’t.”
“You going to tell me what this is all about?” Nick asked. “I’m guessing you’re here to finish what your boys started Friday. I’d kind of like to know why.”
“Cops don’t make a lot of money,” Rourke said in that same conversational voice. Just a captain and his lieutenant shooting the breeze. “But, if a captain is easy about things, there are enough intangibles that can flow to his men. Enough to make up the difference.”
“Is that how you justify it?” Nick said. Not much emotion there. But then, Mac was surprised he could even carry on a conversation at all. “You sanctioned swatting. You deliberately screwed an address on a no-knock warrant. You took a kickback so that surveillance teams moved and exposed innocent people to Army of God snipers. You call that being easy about things? I call it being corrupt as hell.”
“Well you would,” Rourke said. “Which is why your own co-workers shun you. And then you went to IA. And that couldn’t be allowed.”
“IA came to me,” Nick said tiredly. “I was troubled about the surveillance teams moving. Didn’t even know about the other stuff. God knows what else you’ve been doing.”
There was a silence. “You have been doing other things, haven’t you?” Nick said, responding to something Mac couldn't see. “Jesus, John. What the hell happened to you?”
“Nothing happened to me,” Rourke said matter-of-factly. “But you can see the country is going to hell, Nick. Even you can see that. We’ve got a man in the White House who isn’t even an American. And people who look like him are taking over. Hell, the head of IA is a Black man. And there are a lot of people, God-fearing people, who aren’t going to stand for that. Eventually we’re going to have to choose whose side we’re on. And I chose. And if the people I chose to side with ask for a few favors? I’m OK with that. And if they cut me some extra gratuity for what I do to keep this country safe? I’m OK with that too.”
“So why are you here?” Nick said tiredly. “You know I’m not going to buy into that. And even if wanted to, your God-fearing people see people like me as much an invader as they see President Obama. Forget that my family has been in this country four generations — probably longer than your family. They see my skin, and they think immigrant. Migrant. Illegal.”
“Probably,” Rourke said. Didn’t sound like it bothered him much. “But if you didn’t have such a stick up your ass, we would have probably left you alone. You and that Dunbar kid. But you both? Always asking questions that are none of your business.”
Nick’s breathing sounded labored. Mac was torn between letting Rourke incriminate himself, and rescuing the man. He glanced at his battery. Rescue it is, he thought. He saved the recording, and shut the phone down. Pulling out his backup Glock 42, he stepped into the room.
“So you decided to have Rodriguez killed?” Mac asked as he leveled the gun at the man. “Shot up the neighbor’s house with a bunch of kids in it? Came after Dunbar? You came after your own men, Rourke? You in on the ‘suicide by cop’ scheme McBride was running as well?”
“Andy Malloy should have killed you a long time ago,” Rourke said. His hand was on what appeared to be a Glock 22, but the flap was buttoned. Stupid, Mac thought.
“Well he tried today,” Mac said. “But it’s the last time he gets the chance.”
“You kill him?”
“Not me,” Mac said, but he didn’t add any details. “So why didn’t the doctor come when I pushed the button?”
Rourke shrugged. “I just use the gizmos they give me,” he said indifferently. He held up a phone. “It blacked out the room. I didn’t know Nick wasn’t alone. I wasn’t supposed to have to do this. Anthony Whalen said he’d get it done. Just come in as an orderly, a pillow over Nick’s face. And boom. A badly injured man dies from his wounds. But he got run out of here, he said, before he could get it done. Was that you?”
“Anthony Whalen? You need a better quality of man to protect, there, Captain,” Mac said.
“His father has the money and the technology,” Rourke said. He shrugged. “And the connections.”
“Valley View Community Church?” Mac asked. “Those connections? Those the God-fearing people you hang with these days?”
Rourke shrugged again. “A lot of well-connected people attend there,” he agreed. “A lot of money. And they appreciate law enforcement. I don’t get spat on there.”
“Well, you probably wouldn’t get spat on elsewhere, if you weren’t hiding police brutality as suicides,” Mac pointed out. “And swatting? You letting people place orders? Isn’t that the same thing as an execution?”
“Streets are safer when we clean house now and then,” Rourke said. He was watching Mac carefully. Mac gestured with his handgun toward the door.
“How about we take this conversation outside?” Mac said. “Let Nick get some rest.”
“And what do you think the hospital security is going to do when you march out there holding a cop at gunpoint?” Rourke asked with amusement.
Mac considered that. “Well, I was going to turn you over to the FBI out there,” he conceded. “Or did you manage to dispose of them?”
“Last I saw, Rand was chasing Whalen,” Rourke observed. “And the other agent? I’m not sure he’s been as well briefed as you thought. He let me walk right in with just a nod of his head. So, you tell me? If we go out there, whose side will he be on? Yours? Or mine?”
“You know? I’ve had a rough day,” Mac said, somewhat lightly, but damn, rough day didn’t begin to cover it. “So let’s make it simple.” Then he shot Rourke in the leg.
Rourke grunted and fell. He clutched his leg, and looked at Mac incredulously. “What the hell?”
Nick didn’t say a word. Mac just hoped he was still conscious. Or maybe not, considering he’d just shot a man in his hospital room.
Mac reached down and took Rourke’s Glock from its holster. He shook his head. “Can’t believe you were stupid enough to leave it fastened,” he muttered. He patted the cop down, found his ankle gun, and took that too. Then he took the phone Rourke had shown him, and popped out the battery. “That should do it.”
Mac looked at Nick. “You got enough energy to push that button again?” he asked.
Nick nodded, and he pushed the button.
A nurse stuck her head in, saw the guns, and started to say something, but no words came out of her mouth. Mac smiled at her, doing his best to be reassuring. He didn’t think it worked.
“If you can find FBI agent Rand Nickerson, he will take over,” Mac said courteously. “You’ll need to page him. He was chasing down a man who tried to kill your patient.”
Rourke started to say something, and Mac shook his head. “No,” he said simply. “You can just sit there until Rand comes.”
“But he’s bleeding,” the nurse protested.
“He’ll live,” Mac said. “But Agent Nickerson would be really helpful right now.”
She nodded and went away. Mac hoped it was to do what he’d asked. He thought about that — would she? Maybe, maybe not. He fished his own phone out of his backpack sitting next to the bed, and called Rand’s number.
“Little busy here,” Rand said curtly.
“Yeah? Me too. I’m holding Captain Rourke at gunpoint in Rodriguez’s room. Think you can come rescue me before the nice nurse calls the wrong cops?” Mac said conversationally. “And, just so you know, I had to shoot him. Just in the calf, but he’s bleeding. That upset the nurse too.”
Rand was silent for a moment. Mac gave him time. It was a lot to absorb.
“That might top my predicament,” Rand said at last. “I’ve got Anthony Whalen in cuffs, but now what?”
“Bring him here?” Mac suggested. “I’ll call Lorde. Tell him to come pick up the trash.”
“I’ll be there in a few,” Rand agreed.