Critical Condition

by CJ Lyons

  GINA DUCKED INSIDE THE MORGUE AND SAT, BACK to the door, thinking hard and fast. She had to get Ken and LaRose out of there, but no way could she do it without the guard seeing. Okay, so she had to take care of the guard first. How?

  Club him over the head? That would mean climbing up into the guard shack, getting close enough to strike, and taking him out with one blow, all before he could reach for his gun and shoot her. Even though the guard seemed relaxed, she didn’t think he’d ignore someone climbing up three steps and coming into the shack with him.

  Drugs? Maybe nitrous or an anesthesia gas—she would only have to open the door a crack, enough to slip some tubing into, close it, and wait. But the guard shack looked to be around eight feet on each side, which was . . . damn, she couldn’t do the math, her brain was fried . . . sixty-four times eight, call it four-eighty, five hundred cubic feet. How long would it take to work? Shit, there was also the smell—no way to get around that. Plus the fact that if he was running a kerosene heater there might be an open flame, and a few whiffs of anesthesia could turn the shack into a firebomb before she had a chance to free LaRose and Ken.

  Think, think! Gina shoved her hands into her cardigan pockets, trying to stay warm, and found the half cigarette that she’d smoked earlier. Her matches were long gone, but she rolled the cancer stick beneath her nose, inhaling its fragrance. Ahhh . . . as always, anxiety churned up cravings, urges to indulge in both pleasure and punishment. Not tonight.

  Tonight there was no time for her to fight (and lose to) her personal demons. She needed to save lives. God, she wished Jerry were here. Dropping the cigarette, Gina reached for the ring she wore on a chain around her neck instead. Old Jerry, New Jerry, she honestly didn’t care. He’d find some way to cheer her up, motivate her, keep her going. He’d never let her surrender or fail.

  She rocked her head back against the door, eyes squeezed shut, conjuring up Jerry’s face, his goofy smile that made him look like a pushover although he was one of the smartest men she knew—maybe not book-smart, not genius-smart like Ken, but people-smart, street-smart.

  No wonder Jerry and Lydia got along so well; she was like that too. Gina had been jealous of Lydia, the time she and Jerry spent together, but now she realized that it was her own fault for taking Jerry for granted, forcing the relationship—as she did every relationship—to revolve around her instead of them.

  Shit, shit, shit . . . this wasn’t time for a Dr. Phil guilt fest, complete with tears; she had to get moving, before Ken and LaRose froze . . . before they could freeze . . . That was it!

  Gina sprang to her feet, sneaked a peek back out to the garage—nothing had changed—and rushed through the morgue back to the tissue lab. Amanda was starting her dermatology rotation in a few days and had been blathering on about the dangers of the liquid nitrogen used to freeze warts. What had she said? Gina halted inside the lab entrance, straining to remember.

  Amanda had been visiting Jerry, tickling him with some stupid stuffed animal, her pocket guide to dermatology open on the bedside table as she prepared for her next rotation. Gina had just come back from getting coffee and had handed Amanda a cup, when she’d said . . . what . . . wait, yes, she’d said, “It says here you should never carry liquid nitrogen onto an elevator. If the nitrogen gas escapes, it can expand to seven hundred times the volume of the liquid, displace all the oxygen, and asphyxiate everyone inside. Wow, sounds like something out of a murder mystery, doesn’t it?”

  God bless her roommate and her enchantment with the most arcane and useless trivia! If Amanda were here right now, Gina would kiss her.

  All she had to do was take one of the containers of liquid nitrogen, slip it into the guard shack with the cap off, and let physics work its magic.

  NINETEEN

  NORA FILLED HER ARMS WITH BOTTLES OF ORANGE juice, making sure that the two drugged bottles were on top. She turned away from the food cart and started down the aisle toward the front of the auditorium, where Deon had arranged a game of laser tag with the other kids, using penlights and his camera flash.

  As soon as he caught her signal, he and Nicky, the little boy she and Jim had treated earlier in the ER, began yelling and horsing around, the lights strobing through the dimly lit theater as they hurtled toward Nora, blindsiding her and knocking her into the wall.

  “Hey now!” one of the guards yelled. He left his post, brandishing his gun, and approached.

  “Sorry,” Nicky said, scampering back to his mom.

  “Sorry, sir.” Deon stayed near Nora.

  “They’re just bored,” Nora explained to the guard. “You know kids.”

  He almost smiled at her, then blanketed it with a show of machismo. “What’s that, a camera?” He took the small camera from Deon. “You taking pictures of me?”

  “No, sir.”

  “He was just playing with the flash. I don’t think there’s even a memory card in it.”

  The guard examined the camera, opening the bottom. “You’re right, there isn’t.” He pushed a few buttons on it, pushing his gun aside as he tried the zoom. “Still, it’s a nice camera.” He glowered down at Deon. “Too nice for a little boy to play games with.”

  “But—” Deon’s face crinkled with sorrow as the guard pocketed the camera.

  “I’m hanging on to this for safekeeping. All of you kids, settle down. Now!”

  Deon skittered away, joining the others at the open area below the front of the stage where Emma was handing out blankets. Nora turned to walk away, moving slowly, letting the bottles in her arms rattle as she jostled them.

  The guard got the subliminal message—just as she’d also known he would be interested in the camera and stop to chat. Just like Seth would have been. Men and their toys. So predictable.

  “How about a drink?” he asked.

  She turned back. “Okay.”

  Nora leaned forward a little, enough so that the drugged bottle was the one easiest for him to reach. He grabbed it along with the other one on top. “For my buddy.”

  With a nod, he turned and walked back to the front of the auditorium, handing the second bottle to the other guard. Nora kept going, her back to them so they couldn’t see her smile.

  Mission accomplished.

  THE MAN BEHIND HER MARCHED LYDIA THROUGH the snow and into the carport, his gun never moving a millimeter from the base of her skull. Trey was in the carport, where a man holding another gun and the high-beam flashlight also waited. The scowl on Trey’s face, the way his muscles bulged, betrayed the cost of his restraint. Lydia had never seen him look so murderous.

  “He said he’d have you shot,” Trey said. “I couldn’t take the chance.”

  “Let’s take this lovefest inside,” the man with the flashlight said. He was shorter than Trey, dressed in a wool overcoat complete with scarf. She couldn’t make out his features behind the light. His voice was flat, devoid of any accent, as if he came from nowhere—or at least nowhere that he wanted to acknowledge. He nudged Trey with the gun.

  Trey opened the door into the house and stepped inside. A streak of brown followed him, skillfully avoiding his feet. Ginger Cat.

  She and Trey had been in bad spots before, Lydia reminded herself. And they had come out alive. They would this time as well, she vowed as they proceeded inside the dark and chilly house. This time she had even more reason to fight, and she had more to fight with: She had Sandy’s gun.

  But by the time they reached the living room and the second man, obviously the leader, shoved Trey down into the corner of the couch and then bent to turn the gas fire-place on, acting as if he were the one who lived there, she’d decided that maybe counting on one gun and a bum arm wasn’t their best line of defense.

  Because as the fire illuminated the features of the leader, Lydia realized just how much trouble they were in. His eyes were dark, flat, devoid of any emotion. The eyes of a killer.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  He smiled, but just like his eyes it was all show
and no emotion. “Call me Mr. Black. I think you already know my colleague, Mr. Smith.”

  The man behind her gave her a shove forward into the center of the room. Lydia stumbled, twisting to catch herself before she fell, and as she turned she saw his face for the first time.

  It was the face that had stalked her nightmares for eighteen years. The face etched into not just her memories but the very fabric of her DNA. The face that had forever changed her life.

  The face of the man who had killed her mother.

  AS SOON AS SHE WAS A FEW FEET INSIDE THE LOWCEILINGED space beneath the stage, Amanda regretted not taking time to find an apron to wear over the top of the remnants of the ball gown. A jacket or janitor’s jumpsuit would have been even better.

  Stray bits of copper wire, discarded nails, staples, and paper all combined with the dust to abrade her skin, her sweat cementing the mixture so that it clung to her body as she belly-crawled along the floor.

  Not to mention the splinters and the dust bunnies—forget dust bunnies, these were molting silverback gorillas. Cobwebs tickled her face as she broke through them and she itched all over, imagining spiders sprinting down her back, gleefully sliding between the dress and her skin to take up residence.

  Sorry, Gina, but this dress is gonna be burned as soon as we’re out of this mess, Amanda thought.

  Sawdust, plaster dust, drywall dust—every kind of dust there was—stung her nose and eyes. At one point she thought for sure she was going to sneeze and ruin everything. Her eyes watered with the effort of containing the sneeze. Amanda rubbed her nose against her shoulder—her hands were filthy with grime and would only make things worse—until the urge passed. She tried not to shine the light straight ahead for fear it might be seen through the drapes at the end of the stage, so all she could see was the space to the next footer as she wove her way through them.

  She could hear Lucas and Jerry working behind her—they weren’t very noisy, but it was so quiet beneath the stage that even the slightest noise was amplified. Like the rush of her breathing or the sound of her body sliding over the rough floorboards.

  She moved on, ignoring the pain in her arms as yet another splinter gouged her skin. It was harder work than she imagined. Every time she raised her head to check her progress, her hair got tangled in protruding cable ties from above. Finally her finger touched cloth. She had reached the curtain that draped the bottom of the stage floor.

  She turned the penlight off and hauled her body forward, folding her knees under so she could duck her head forward and peek below the curtain. Just a few inches to her right, a pair of legs dangled over the stage above her. Jeans and purple high tops—had to be Jason.

  She tugged on the back of his jeans, hiding her hand with the drape. His leg jerked to a stop. She tugged again. Urgently this time.

  The leg pulled away from her grasp. A few moments later there was a thud as he leaped down from the stage and sat with his back to her.

  “Who’s there?” Jason whispered. Bingo.

  “It’s Amanda. You guys ready to blow this pop stand?”

  GINA CAREFULLY PREPARED A ONE-LITER CONTAINER of liquid nitrogen, transferring the smaller volume from the main container into a vacuum flask. She screwed the cap on but didn’t fasten the safety seal, so that all she’d have to do when she was ready to allow the gas to escape was remove the cap.

  She shuffled through the morgue, feeling each step before committing to it—if she tripped and spilled the liquid nitrogen, she was risking frostbite as well as her own asphyxiation—until she reached the doors to the garage.

  Peering over the rim of the window in the door, she watched the guard. He still sat with his back to the guard shack door, watching his prisoners. Beyond the shack, duct-taped to a support beam, LaRose had slumped forward in her wheelchair, motionless. Gina couldn’t see her face. Ken Rosen was stomping his feet in an effort to stay warm. The rest of the garage was in darkness except for the emergency exit light over the door beside the closed overhead doors. The guard was talking on his radio, but Gina didn’t dare risk turning hers back on to hear what he was saying.

  No better time than now while he was distracted. But if anything went wrong . . . Her insides suddenly felt as cold as if she’d swallowed the freezing nitrogen. Something had already gone wrong, and someone had paid the price with her earlier plan. Who was to say this one would be any better?

  She could still safely hide, or escape through the tower. But her mother obviously didn’t have much time. If she was even still alive.

  Gina squeezed her eyes as tight as she could, fighting to banish the naysaying voices that filled her mind—always her worst enemy. Forcing the hamster wheel of doubt and recrimination to slow and stop, she took a deep breath in from her belly and blew it back out, opening her eyes.

  Now or never.

  She pushed the door open and crept to the shack, staying below the guard’s eye level. Slowly, she climbed the metal steps, placing her weight carefully, ball of her foot first, then the heel, then her entire weight. She knelt on the metal landing outside the door. Reached up and slowly, not even risking an exhalation, turned the doorknob.

  Part of her waited for the guard’s exclamation and the bullet that would quickly follow. The rest of her was primed for action, her nerves stretched so taut that they sent vibrations singing below her skin.

  The knob turned silently. She pulled the door open, just a crack, far enough to spring it free from the latch. Bracing the door against her body so that it wouldn’t continue to open until she was ready, she removed the cap from the liquid nitrogen. A gush of white vapor emerged but quickly dissipated. Wiping her palms against her pants—couldn’t risk slippery palms, not now—she held the container in one hand and let the door fall open a few inches. She slid the container inside, setting it on the floor, and closed the door, turning the knob as it settled into the jamb so that there would be no click. Then she allowed the knob to turn back, the lock catching with the barest sigh.

  Gina held her breath and waited. No noise, no cry of alarm from inside.

  Scuttling back down the steps, she dared a look from the shadows. The guard was still talking. Then he lowered the radio and took another drink from the thermos. He settled into his chair, eyes drooping. The thermos slipped from his hand and fell to the ground. He jerked, started to sit up, but then slumped back, eyes closed.

  Gina waited another few seconds. The guard wasn’t moving, although she saw his chest rising, so he wasn’t dead. Should she risk opening the door, taking his gun and trying to restrain him before he woke? But maybe he’d wake too fast, shoot her, and everything would be for nothing?

  No, she needed to free LaRose and Ken first. Then she’d deal with the guard, hopefully before he asphyxiated. He had maybe three, four minutes, she estimated.

  She ran to Ken and used her scalpel to free him first. The duct tape around his wrists was so tight it had cut into his skin. His hands were white, swollen from the cold and lack of circulation. His teeth were chattering and he could barely stand, but he didn’t waste time with words; instead he immediately helped her with LaRose. Gina sliced the bands of duct tape that held LaRose and her chair against the pole. As soon as she was free, Ken took one handle and Gina took the other, pushing LaRose across the garage and into the morgue, where it was somewhat warmer.

  She knelt and felt for her mother’s pulse. It was there and her breathing was strong. Suddenly Gina’s own pulse and breathing seemed stronger as well.

  “I’ve got to get the guard,” she told Ken.

  “Can I help?”

  He could barely walk, much less use his frozen hands for much. “No, stay here with her; I’ll be right back.”

  She pushed back through the doors to the garage and headed toward the shack. The guard might be a bad guy, but Gina didn’t want another death on her conscience. Besides, he might have knowledge—and weapons—that they could use. She wrenched the door open and closed the nitrogen container. Then she haul
ed the guard, chair and all, out onto the landing.

  His machine gun was lying across his lap, and his pistol was in his holster. She retrieved the pistol first, shoving it into the pocket of her lab coat. Just as she had the machine gun in her hands, the garage’s outside door opened. Two men stomped inside, shining their flashlights about.

  Abandoning the guard, Gina leaped down the stairs, the machine gun clattering against the railing. Suddenly she was impaled by two beams of light.

  Followed quickly by the targeting lasers of two guns—centered on her chest.

  TWENTY

  LYDIA COULDN’T HELP IT. WHEN SHE SAW THE man who had murdered her mother, she froze—just as she had when she was twelve. Fear chilled her veins, she couldn’t move her feet, her mouth opened, but she couldn’t force any sound out. She wanted to scream, wanted to run, wanted to hit, maim, shoot, kill . . . but all she could do was look.

  That was all she could do back then, too.

  Memories flooded over her, bursting through a dam built by eighteen years of willpower and desperation. Now they all came hurtling back: the man’s face, twisted in anger, as he clubbed her mother with a riot baton; Maria’s terror as she tried to scramble away; her pain as he’d grab her hair and haul her back, hitting her again and again.

  His voice asking her two questions over and over: “Where is it?” and “Where is the child?”

  That was when Maria had surrendered, stopped trying to run. She’d looked once in the direction where she knew Lydia hid, her expression one of sorrow too deep for her daughter to comprehend, and she’d never looked at Lydia again. Had instead given up, not made another sound.

  She’d died so that Lydia could live.

  And eighteen years later, the monster had returned. Maria’s sacrifice had been in vain.

  Lydia didn’t think about the gun in Smith’s hand, couldn’t think about the other man and his gun or Trey. If she could have gotten to her own weapon, buried beneath the layers of her parka and sweater, she would have shot Smith without blinking. But she couldn’t reach Sandy’s gun.