Critical Condition

by CJ Lyons

  “Who hired you?”

  “Harris. He hired four of us, said we just had to watch over some folks while his men made the score. Ten grand each for a few hours of work—easy money. But he’s working for someone else, someone I’ve never met.”

  “What are they looking for?”

  “Never said. I figured it was drugs, ripping off the pharmacy here. But then they started talking about finding this Lydia person, and things started getting freaky-deaky, but what could we do? Accomplice to a felony is still a felony.” His words sped up, jumping into a self-pitying whine.

  “How many are there?”

  “The four of us, plus Harris and his guys: some South African dude who is serious trouble, you do not want to cross him; a guy named Marcus who seems in charge of all the tech stuff, and two more, I didn’t get their names.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Me and my guys, we were guarding the hostages with the South African, rotating between inside the auditorium, watching the lobby, and patrolling.”

  “How many hostages, where are they in the auditorium?” She crouched down to his level, not needing the knife any longer—the guard was eager to please her now.

  “There’s about a hundred hostages,” he said. “They’re on the stage and in front of it. We’re in the back by the doors. Two inside the auditorium, one outside the doors, one watching the lobby.”

  “And you on patrol?”

  “Yeah. Look, you gotta put in a good word for me. Tell them I helped you, get me a deal.”

  “No problem.” What did he think this was? An episode of Law & Order? Couldn’t he see she was making it up as she went?

  Of course, Lydia always said that was the secret to emergency medicine. Improvisation.

  Amanda stood, accidentally kicking the can of Sterno. It skidded past the man’s feet and landed at the base of the wall between them and the auditorium. She walked over to retrieve it. There were no shelves here; the wall was bare. Instead, two gray plastic junction boxes jutted out from the wall.

  That wall was the shared wall with the auditorium’s stage. And those wires—they weren’t electrical, too thick for phone lines . . .

  She rushed past the man, eager to ask Lucas about her discovery.

  “Hey, you’re going to help me, right?” he pleaded, sounding like a dog left out in the cold without his dinner.

  “No worries,” she said. “I’ve got a plan to help everyone.”

  LYDIA’S FIRST THOUGHT WAS: HAD TREY BEEN HURT? In that split second, terror that he might be hurt and need her combined with rage that anyone would harm him, and she almost reacted without worrying about consequences, without thinking, and with violence.

  Before she met Trey, that was exactly what she would have done. She even knew the moves she’d need to take down the man with the gun: a quick pivot, use her cast as a club to the man’s head or face, followed by a lightning strike to his throat. She could do it. She would have done it, except the worry that Trey was at the mercy of someone else paralyzed her.

  “Is Trey okay?” Somehow she managed to grit out the words between jaws clamped tight with anger and fear. He had to be okay; he was a big man, she would have heard something if he had fallen.

  “He is for now,” a voice from inside the carport called out.

  “What do you want?” Lydia asked.

  The man behind her hadn’t moved or spoken. His gun gouged her skin but she didn’t protest—barely noticed it, her senses too focused on what was going on in the carport behind the light that blinded her.

  “You have something of mine. It’s time to collect.”

  EIGHTEEN

  AS SHE CREPT THROUGH THE DARK TUNNELS, Gina was glad for her layers of clothing. Despite the turtleneck, cardigan, and lab coat, she was shivering, and the air was growing colder by the moment.

  Other than the moans of overhead pipes cooling, she saw and heard nothing. Not to say that she still didn’t jerk to a stop to listen every few steps. Her pulse was pounding so fast, it sounded like running footsteps trying to catch up with the rest of her body. But there was never anyone there.

  She’d turned the radio off—couldn’t risk exposing her position—and held the Maglite in her hand pressed against the wall, her finger on the switch, ready to turn it back on if she needed it. The scalpel was in her other fist, handle hidden by her sleeve.

  One last intersection to cross. The areas of open space unnerved Gina the most—dark bottomless chasms. Every direction harbored the threat of someone waiting to pounce.

  She stood with her back to the cold concrete wall, trying to muster the courage for that first step into the black void. Her mouth was so dry her tongue grated against her teeth like sandpaper. And she couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching her, toying with her, like Jodie Foster in Silence of the Lambs. After all, Harris could have night-vision goggles. Maybe that was why they’d turned the power off? The question kept niggling at her. Even with night vision, it couldn’t make their hunt for Lydia any easier, although the darkness did put everyone else at a disadvantage.

  But still . . . all those patients dependent on electricity—she tried not to imagine what it must be like in the ICUs, everyone scrambling to manually ventilate and care for patients. Thank goodness they had plenty of staff up there. It was harder not to think what would have happened if the power had gone off weeks ago when Jerry had been in a coma, or worse, while the neurosurgeons were operating, removing the blood clot and bullet from his brain.

  Anger at Harris and his men, who were playing with lives so carelessly, fueled Gina’s courage. She stepped into the intersection. This was the underground corridor leading to the research tower, so it was wider than most of the tunnels. As she shuffled across, her arms outstretched in case she veered off course and hit a wall, wind whistled against the side of her face, coming from the tower.

  That was their best way out. She could get LaRose, wheel her through the tunnel, get her to the far side of the tower, then wait for Janet and the SWAT team to arrive. The SWAT team that Gina hoped dearly didn’t exist only in her imagination. Everything depended on Janet tearing herself away from her duties long enough to check her voice mail. What kind of lousy plan was that?

  It was the only one she had left. Another small problem: the whole get-LaRose part. Her mother and Ken were being watched over by at least one armed guard, maybe more.

  Her foot brushed against something. A linen cart? Rows of metal shelves stacked as high as her head and covered by a drape. The morgue wasn’t far—the next door would be the pathology offices, followed by the lab, and then the morgue. But if she went through the labs, she could get access to the morgue from the back door, maybe get a better idea of where Ken and LaRose were being held and how many men she was up against.

  She felt her way around the cart and found the first door, followed the wall to the next door—the lab—and felt for the handle. Please let it be open, she prayed as she pressed down on the lever. It opened with a soft click. Amen.

  This was the public area of the lab, cluttered with desks and office equipment, so she had to risk using a light. Swapping the Maglite for the more discreet penlight, she looked around. No signs that anyone had been in here. Good.

  Gina navigated around the desks to the rear door, the one that led into the actual laboratory areas. This one had an electronic key lock; would it work with the power off? She turned the doorknob, and it opened easily.

  Maybe that was why they’d shut the power off, to open locks? Gina wondered as she began down the corridor, passing hematology on one side, chemistry on the other. No, that didn’t make sense, not if all Harris was after was Lydia—unless the evidence he thought she had was hidden here at the hospital?

  No more time to think about it; she’d reached the door to the tissue lab that connected to the morgue. She entered, cautiously shielding her penlight so that it wouldn’t be visible through the window in the morgue’s door. The fumes of antiseptic and tissu
e preservatives made her nose twitch.

  The lab was pretty basic: three rows of benches with microscopes, microtomes, and bottles of stains arrayed alongside them. The larger equipment and storage cabinets lined the walls.

  Once she got her bearings and was started on a path to the morgue’s door, she turned her penlight off and made her way by feel. Just as she estimated that she was close to the door, she stumbled into a metal container, about the size of a fire extinguisher, almost toppling it from its rack. The clang of metal against metal was louder than church bells.

  Damn! She bent down and used both hands to steady the can and silence the noise. The can was cold, freezing in fact. Probably liquid nitrogen, used to transport specimens. She crouched beside the rack, listening hard. There was no sound coming from the morgue, no response to the clatter she’d unleashed.

  Gathering her strength, she peered through the window in the door to the morgue. It was a wide-open space designed for flexibility. Storage refrigerator, decomp room, and a freezer were accessed on the wall to her left; the wall to the right was equipment storage and the staff locker rooms, which exited back into the main tunnel; and straight ahead were double doors leading out to the garage where bodies were transferred to mortuary vehicles.

  The place seemed deserted. Had she misheard? The guard had said he’d be bringing LaRose and Ken here, hadn’t he?

  Horror struck her as she realized that he could have easily locked them into one of the body storage areas. Would the guard have abandoned them to die?

  Gina opened the door and crossed into the morgue, intent on checking the freezer and refrigerator, when she spotted light. Crossing the empty room, she peered through the double doors into the morgue’s garage. To her left, up three steps, sat the small, glass-walled cubicle that security used while waiting for body transfers.

  One of Harris’s men sat there, his back to the door, feet up on the desk, drinking from a thermos flask—some poor guard’s dinner, no doubt. He had his jacket off; his breath wasn’t steaming the windows at all. A glow filled the tiny guard shack, probably from a kerosene heater.

  It took her a minute to spot LaRose and Ken in the dim light. Ken stood beside LaRose’s wheelchair. Silver strips of duct tape circled their bodies, securing them—and the wheelchair—to a metal pole to the left of the cubicle’s window—directly in the guard’s sight line. Wisps of snow that had blown beneath the garage door swirled around their feet.

  While the guard sat safe and snug in his office, they were freezing to death.

  FIRST OFF, SHE HAD TO FIND SOMETHING TO MASK the taste, Nora thought. Water wouldn’t do—ah, the cafeteria workers had brought some single-serving plastic bottles of orange juice. Perfect.

  Next, slip the drugs into the bottles. She slid down behind the stainless steel cafeteria cart so that she was hidden from the guards’ sight. Straining to see in the dim light, she carefully worked the needle under the rim of each bottle’s cap, aiming it up through the plastic below the seal. She injected half of the ketamine/Versed mix into each bottle, then inspected her work. Even knowing it was there, she couldn’t find the puncture—hopefully it would be just as difficult to see once the caps were removed and the bottles opened.

  Now she needed a diversion. She looked over at the floor in front of the stage where Emma Grey was reading Deon’s books to the kids.

  Harris and the South African were both gone; Tillman as well. Good. She couldn’t trust Tillman, and the other two were the ones with the no-nonsense trigger fingers. In their place were two men dressed in hospital security guard uniforms, leaning against the wall between the two sets of doors and talking quietly to each other, barely glancing in the direction of the hostages. They looked bored, not deadly.

  There might never be a better time.

  “Deon,” she called quietly to the boy sitting Indian-style on the carpet, listening to his grandmother’s story. He jerked his head over his shoulder and pointed a thumb at himself as if he were unsure who she wanted. “Yes, come here.”

  Smart kid that he was, he craned his head to see over the seats and look for the guards. Then he scooted on his behind backward to where Nora sat.

  “I need you to do something for me,” she said. He nodded eagerly. “Do you still have your camera?”

  “Yes.” He pulled it out of his pants pocket, some rubber bands, a few coins, a pencil stub, and a rock cascading out along with it. “Right here.”

  “Do you know how to work the flash on it?”

  “Oh yes—it has a flash, and a zoom lens, and the book says the flash is the fastest—”

  “Here’s what I need you to do.”

  “ARE YOU OKAY?” LUCAS ASKED AS AMANDA RAN out of the pantry and into the kitchen. “Did he hurt you?”

  “No. I’m fine, I’m great!” She clasped his arms and stood on tiptoe to kiss him. “I think I know how we can save them.”

  “How?”

  “First, we need to make sure that he”—she indicated their prisoner with a jerk of her head—“can’t give us away. Can you put the tape back over his mouth and move him somewhere else? Somewhere we can lock him in and not worry about him.”

  Jerry spoke up, his voice holding a trace of his old spark. The few minutes sitting alone in quiet seemed to have revitalized him. “Fridge.”

  “No, we don’t want him to freeze.”

  “There’s room in the storage closet where they keep the catering supplies,” Lucas said. “That’s where I found the Sterno. And there’s a lock on the door.”

  “Perfect.”

  Lucas went to sort out their prisoner’s accommodations and move him. Jerry touched Amanda’s arm, hesitantly as if he weren’t sure he really wanted to hear what she had to say.

  She didn’t have the heart to remind him that they had no idea where Gina was, so she tried her best to reassure him. “If Gina’s in there, we’ll get her out. Don’t worry, Jerry.”

  He nodded gratefully. Lucas returned, out of breath, his face exhilarated. “What’s the plan?”

  “Do you remember two years ago when the hospital renovated the auditorium? Added all that computer equipment and the new projector and all that?”

  “Sure. Why?”

  “They had to gain access for all that wiring, right?”

  He nodded. Jerry was watching Lucas and nodded as well.

  She carried the Sterno into the pantry. “This is where they did it. The stage is right behind that wall. And under the stage—”

  “Is access to the rest of the auditorium,” Lucas finished for her. “The drapes on the front of the stage will hide any movement.”

  “And the dark will help as well.”

  Jerry left while they were talking and returned with a chef’s knife and a wooden mallet. He squatted in front of the drywall and plunged the knife into the wall. He swung the mallet, missed the knife but still made a nice hole in the wall and began tugging at the edges with his fingers. It didn’t make as much noise as Amanda feared it would, just a dull thud. “Gina, I’m coming!”

  Lucas and Amanda ran back out to the kitchen to get supplies. By the time they returned, Jerry had made a fist-sized hole by tearing the drywall back with his hands.

  “Wait,” Lucas said as he pulled on a pair of dishwashing gloves. “Don’t go higher than the stage floor; we don’t want to risk them seeing our light.”

  Jerry pulled back while Lucas drew a horizontal line about thirty inches off the floor. “The stage is three feet high, so that should be low enough.”

  He and Amanda joined Jerry in widening the hole. Soon they had all the drywall off, exposing the studs. A metal conduit ran horizontally across the studs about eighteen inches off the floor.

  “It’s small.” Lucas measured the space between the studs with his hands. “Maybe fourteen inches.”

  “Tight fit,” Jerry said, lying on the floor and trying to squirm through the gap. He couldn’t twist his body through it, not with the metal conduit blocking the way. He came up cough
ing, drywall dust flying from his body. “Cut this?”

  “No.” Lucas examined the conduit. “It’s carrying electrical wires, if the power comes back on—”

  “Saw through one of the studs,” Amanda said. “We can use serrated knives, they’re pretty much like saw blades.”

  “That’s going to take a while.”

  “I’ll go on ahead; you guys enlarge the opening.”

  Lucas shook his head, frowning. “No.” He pushed at the two-by-four, his muscles bulging with the strain. “No, I’m not risking you. I’ll go.”

  “Lucas, I’ll be fine.” Amanda loved that her fiancé was protective of her; he knew he couldn’t budge the block of wood by hand, never would have done something so illogical if emotion hadn’t blinded him to reality. He also knew she had a little thing about confined spaces, ever since her brothers had locked her in a trunk in the attic when she was a kid. It was nothing as bad as his own phobias about dirt and germs, so even the fact that he was willing to offer to go in her stead was proof of how much he cared for her—not that she needed proof. “I’ll scout the path, get everyone ready. I promise, I won’t even get anywhere near the bad guys.”

  Still Lucas hesitated. Jerry started sawing the base of the two-by-four, using a large bread knife grasped in both of his hands.

  Finally, Lucas kicked at a piece of drywall lying on the floor and gave a grudging nod. He handed her the Smith & Wesson. “Here. You’d better take this. Just in case.”

  She secured the gun in her sash and took his otoscope for light.

  “Be careful.” He punctuated his words with a kiss that made her toes tingle.

  “I will.” Amanda knelt and shone the light through the opening. Dust and grime and darkness greeted her. Getting on her belly, she had to shift so that she was on her side, crawling between the studs, Lucas helping to propel her until her body was the entire way through. She craned her head up and waved at him that she was okay, then rolled onto her belly and continued into the darkness.