by Scott Blade
CHAPTER 33
WIDOW LISTENED hard to the silence in Lucy’s room. There was the low hum and the beeps from a machine near the bed. He saw that there was a heart rate monitor, but it was off.
The bed was disheveled. The comforter was on the floor. The hospital bed’s arm rail was down. And Lucy’s IV was detached and leaking fluid on the floor. But she was gone.
Next to the bed on a nightstand was a framed photo of Jemma. So Widow knew he had the right room.
He turned and walked out of the room. He breathed in and breathed out. Fury and fear filled him at the same time. He feared he was too late. The fury was in case he wasn’t.
He turned left, looked back the way he came. He turned right, stared down a longer corridor. There was a corner at the end and a right-hand turn that disappeared.
Where did she go?
A door opened in front of him, and a nurse in blue scrubs backed out.
Widow said, “Excuse me.”
She turned and asked, “Can I help you?”
“Where’s Lucy Hood?”
The nurse was a short, twenty-something with thick red hair piled up in a bun. She said, “She should be in her bed there.”
The nurse pointed to the room that Widow had just come from.
“She’s not.”
“That can’t be!” the nurse said. She pushed past him and looked for herself. She came back out and said, “She’s gone.”
“I know,” Widow said. He didn’t know what the killer looked like, but he did know what Lucy looked like. He had seen that photo of her. He took away her healthy, happy demeanor and tried to picture a sicklier version of the same woman. Hispanic. Hair possibly fallen out. And she’d be very thin.
She hadn’t passed him in the halls, not so far. He was certain of it.
He asked, “What’s that way?”
He pointed straight ahead at the turn.
“That way’s a dead end.”
“Where does it lead?”
“I told you it’s a dead end.”
“Listen, I’m a cop, and this is a matter of life or death. Now where?”
“It leads to a closed-off section of this floor. We’ve been under renovations there.”
Widow looked back at the corner and asked, “Is anyone down there?”
“Not after that corner. It’s closed. I told you.”
Widow said nothing and started to run to the corner. He heard the nurse call behind him. She said, “What should I do?”
He didn’t care.
AROUND THE CORNER, Widow found himself staring down a long, dark hallway. There was a makeshift plastic covering that was hung as a deterrent. It flapped open and closed, and Widow felt a draft. The lights stopped about ten feet in front of the flap. There were no warning signs or keep out signs and no tape blocking the entrance—just the plastic flap.
Widow pulled out the Glock 17, shoved his finger into the trigger housing, pressed firmly on the trigger because the Glock had the internal safety system, which meant that the trigger had to be squeezed all the way down in order to fire. He didn’t want even the tiniest fraction of a second stopping him from putting a bullet in the last guy.
He kept his muzzle straight forward, none of that pointing at the floor crap. He wasn’t worried about safety. He wanted to save Lucy. He was in a shoot first mood.
He moved to the left side of the wall because that was where the windows were. There were no doors on that side for him to worry about. It was the edge of the building.
Widow moved, slowly, through the flap. He had no light but the city lights from outside. A neon sign flashed somewhere nearby because a red light blinked from the farthest corner of the hall. It was every two seconds. Flash. Dark. Flash. Dark.
Several window frames were missing glass, and the wind blew in hard. Long sheets of plastic were draped down the walls and across the floor. Some of the rooms were missing doors. The others were wide open, and none of them had knobs.
The same square pillars were on the left side of the hall. Here only three sides were exposed. The other side was inside the wall. There was a ladder left behind by the construction crew. It stood in the far center of the hallway. Loose wires hung from the ceiling. He saw a red painted sprinkler system. Steel spigots protruded downward like stalactites.
Widow looked down at the floor. The plastic was mostly smooth but bumpy in certain places. The thing he noticed most, the part that jumped out at his cop brain, was the trail of grooves that ran from the tile onto the plastic. It looked like tire tracks or wheels.
He stayed back against the wall and let his eyes follow the tracks. They led down the hall, turned into the last room on the right. No door.
The trail was promising and probably legitimate, but he wasn’t a complete idiot. If he had noticed them, it was likely that they had been placed there for him to notice, to follow. Maybe or maybe not. It depended on how good this last guy was. His friends hadn’t proven to be very good. At least not the man and woman back in Uvalde.
Widow walked toward the first room, keeping one eye on the last doorway. He stopped and jumped in, ready to fire. No one was there, which was what he had expected. He wasn’t sure what room the last guy was in, but he was sure it wasn’t the first. He would’ve checked the first and then headed to the last, briefly checking the others. The last guy was in one of the rooms between the last and the first.
Widow checked it thoroughly. Plastic covered furniture and an empty bathroom with a toilet and no sink.
Widow stood in front of the toilet. It had a lid, which was good for what he planned to do.
Jack Widow was a tall guy, six feet four inches, but the ceilings in a hospital are high. This one was ten feet, at least. He couldn’t reach it on his feet, but he could by standing on the toilet.
He lifted his foot and stomped on the toilet seat, testing it to see if it would take his full weight, and it did. He stood up on it and looked at a single fire sprinkler spigot that came out of the ceiling. He reached up and grabbed the end of the spigot.
Most people think sprinklers are programmed to only go off in case of fire. Not true. In the movies, actors always light a cigarette lighter and press the flame up to the spigot. And the spigot goes off. This would work, but Widow didn’t have a lighter. And he didn’t need one.
Fire sprinklers are designed to go off if pressure is applied to them as well. He grabbed the end of the spigot and jerked it down as hard as he could. Water rumbled through the pipes and burst out of the spigots all across the seventh floor.
Widow had to listen carefully. He knew that he only had seconds after to hear what he needed to hear. And he did. He heard the last guy grunt and shuffle from out of the way of the spraying water. He was in the next room over. The second room, which had been his guess. And it was a good thing Widow heard him because five seconds later, the fire alarm sounded—loud and blaring.
Widow jumped down from the toilet, ignored the water spraying violently against his face. He was a trained Navy SEAL. For him, water was no big deal, but he doubted the last guy had the same advantage.
He leaped through the next doorway, Glock muzzle pointed out. Normally, he would’ve checked his corners, fast, but there was no need. The last guy stood in the middle of the room. He was dressed in green scrubs, like an orderly. He rubbed his eyes, trying to see. The water was everywhere. It came down like a torrential downpour. It leaked across Widow’s face in avalanches, but he kept his eyes open and his gun steady.
“Drop the gun!” he shouted.
The last guy didn’t even fight back. He dropped a gun, which splashed in a puddle of water so fast that Widow couldn’t tell what kind of gun it was.
“Hands up! Don’t move them!”
The last guy opened his hands and shoved them toward the ceiling. He was grunting and squinting. Water was clogging his eyes and his nose too, because he was spitting and trying to breathe.
Widow said, “You going to shoot her? Is that it? Sounds sloppy.�
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“No,” the guy said. He didn’t say anything else. No protests. No pleading. He was caught, and he knew it. That part he got right. The next thing he said, he got dead wrong. He asked, “You FBI? Going to get a big promotion over this?”
Widow ignored the accusation and said, “How were you going to kill her?”
“I’m not speaking until I get my lawyer.”
Widow entered the room. The water swelled against him and bounced off.
The last guy opened one eye. The other was paralyzed from the water. Some people are no good at opening their eyes underwater. He watched Widow enter the room. The red neon light flashed and lit him up every two seconds. Widow looked like something out of a Stephen King novel more than an FBI agent. As Widow got closer, the guy realized he might not be FBI. And he asked, “FBI, right? Where’s your backup?”
Widow shot him in the kneecap. The bone shield at the front of his knee shattered and splintered. The red mist that Widow had seen many, many times before exploded out more like a thick smoke because of the water.
The guy screamed in a watery agony as he half gurgled water. He stumbled over and grabbed at his missing kneecap.
Widow bunched up the guy’s collar and lifted him back up, almost completely off the ground.
“I’m not a cop.”
The last guy opened both eyes and stared into Widow’s, only seeing it every two seconds and in red. He said nothing for a long moment, and then a flicker of recognition came across his face. He had never seen Widow before, but he knew who he was.
He said, “You? You’re that guy. The one Glock went after.”
Widow stared at him but didn’t respond.
“You killed him.”
It wasn’t a question as much as a realization.
The guy moved quickly, lifted his left hand, and came out of his pocket with a syringe. He stabbed it at Widow. Even though the guy was fast, he was badly injured and had already lost blood. Plus, he was having a tough time with the water beating down on his face.
Widow caught his hand by the wrist. He jerked it out, hard to the left, extended his arm all the way, then dropped and broke the arm over his knee.
The guy screamed again in pain that Widow hoped hurt worse than anything he’d ever felt before.
Widow reached down with his free hand and picked up the syringe before it got lost in the water. He held the needle in his hand with the Glock, pinched it between the hilt and his thumb. He lifted the guy up and held him, one-handed.
Widow asked, “Lucy is in the last room?”
The guy nodded, said, “She’s in a wheelchair.”
Something Widow already knew. He said, “I assume she’s alive. The plunger on this syringe is still out.”
The guy nodded.
Widow said, “Tell me about Sheridan.”
“He’s a senator. Texas.”
“Go on.”
The guy’s working hand grabbed onto Widow’s wrist, a natural reaction. His other hand dangled at the end of a broken arm.
“It’s about building the wall. The border wall.”
“I got that. Tell me more.”
“Government contracts are worth more today than the drug business. Sheridan and Glock are trying to get the bulk of the contracts for the Texas border. The money is in the billions.”
Silence fell between them, and the water from the sprinklers hammered down. The fire alarm sounded and blared and echoed through the halls.
“Where is he now?”
“He’s at his home.”
“Where is that exactly?”
“He’s got a house in Lake Hills. It’s the biggest one. It’s on the lake. But you’ll never get to him.”
Widow asked, “Everyone can be gotten to.”
“Not Sheridan.”
“Why do you say that?”
“He’s a US senator. It’s an election year. He’s got Secret Service around him.”
Widow stayed quiet.
The guy said, “I didn’t want to kill her. It was going to be quick. She’s not going to make it anyway. I was doing her a favor.”
Widow stayed quiet.
“Putting her out of her misery.”
Widow didn’t respond.
“It would’ve been quick.”
Widow lowered the gun, stuffed it into his pocket, but kept the syringe in his hand. The guy sighed in relief at first, but then Widow plunged the needle into his neck and released whatever the hell was in it into the guy’s bloodstream.
He said, “Let’s see.”
The guy let go of Widow’s wrist and grabbed at the syringe, but it was too late. The entire contents were in his neck and veins now. He started to struggle and slap at Widow’s face. It did no good. He was dead, and fast. Whatever was in the needle had been fast-acting.
Widow released the guy and let him fall. His head landed in the water. If he had still been alive, he would’ve eventually drowned if the water level had been high enough, which it wasn’t, not yet. Widow didn’t know much about sprinkler systems or how long they sprayed water. The one thing he’d learned from this experience was that the water in the systems was not necessarily clean water. It probably needed to be flushed in order to stay clean. He figured this one had not been flushed out in a long time because it smelled horrible.
Widow reached down and searched the guy’s pockets. He found his burner phone and pocketed it.
He looked one last time at the guy. Then he turned, face down to keep the water out of his mouth and eyes. He dropped the syringe into the water and ran to the last room, where he found Lucy Hood.
CHAPTER 34
WIDOW COULDN’T imagine what he must’ve looked like to the hospital staff when he came out of the gloom and pouring water, carrying Lucy like a monster carrying a woman he’d abducted from a nearby village.
Members of the staff ran over to him, one of them the security guard without the windbreaker. He asked, “Did you do that?”
Widow said, “No. I found this woman back there.” He handed her over to an orderly and said, “Take her.”
“Did you find the guy you were looking for?”
“No.”
“Maybe he pulled the fire alarm, trying to escape.”
Widow said, “You might be right. I gotta go after him. Come with me back to the chopper. I need to ask something else of you.”
The security guard without the windbreaker nodded and started to head toward the staircase.
Widow said, “Let’s take the elevator. There’s no fire.”
“We can’t. It locks down during a fire alarm. We gotta take the stairs.”
Widow didn’t argue. He followed the security guard into the stairwell. He was glad to not have the water beating down on him anymore, but now his clothes were soaked. They climbed the stairs, fast.
The burst out onto the roof.
Widow looked at the pilot and twirled his arm, hand toward the sky, index finger pointed up—the signal to prepare for takeoff. The pilot had been sitting next to Jemma, explaining the parts of the chopper to her. He nodded at Widow and returned to the cockpit, strapping in and gearing the Bell 206 for takeoff. The rotors started spinning and whipping up gusts of wind.
“I need you to take this girl. Her mother is the woman I found.”
The security guard asked, “How’s that? I thought you found her by accident?”
“I know. I lied to you. Sorry. I can’t explain. Take the girl. Bring her to her mother.”
The guard started to protest, but in the end, he decided there was no point. As far as he knew, Widow was some kind of agent with the Navy. How was he supposed to argue?
Widow went to Jemma and said, “Come out of the chopper, Pip.”
She got out of her seat, scrambled over to Widow and hugged him.
“What’s this for?”
“You’re a good guy.”
“How do you know that?”
“You’ve brought me to my mommy.”
She didn’t
say anything about her dad, which made Widow wonder if she knew anything about what had happened to him. He hoped she didn’t, but something told him she knew.
She pulled away from him and said, “You’re all wet. And you stink.”
He smiled and said, “I stink a lot.”
“Am I gonna see my mommy now?”
“Go with this nice man. He’ll take you to your mommy.”
“What about you?”
“Pip, I’ll see you later. I gotta take care of something.”
She let go and hopped out of the chopper. Widow jumped in and waved at her. He said to the pilot, “Lift off.”
“Where we headed?”
“Just lift off. I’ll tell you in the air.”
The pilot didn’t question him. He hit buttons and flipped switches and grabbed the flight stick. The rotors spun and whirred. In seconds, they were in the air over the hospital. Widow didn’t strap in. He stayed at the open door and watched Jemma for a long time. She stayed on the roof, waving at him.
He watched until she was a tiny speck.
He turned to the pilot and told him where to go.
CHAPTER 35
OVER THE HEADSET, the pilot said, “I’m not authorized to land anywhere else for you. If you need me to land, I’ll have to radio it in.”
“Don’t worry about it. You don’t have to land,” Widow said into his headset.
The pilot said nothing to that. He looked out over the sky. The sun had gone down, and now it was full dark.
Widow got out of his seat in the back and leaned into the cockpit. They were five thousand feet up, which was good. It kept the houses below from hearing the chopper. He craned his head and looked out the windshield, down at the landscape at Lake Hills. They had circled it a couple of times until they found the right house.
Widow asked, “Where’s the escape package?”
The pilot turned his head and looked up at Widow.
“You can’t use that.”
“Why not?”
“It’s meant for emergencies.”
“Where is it?”
The pilot didn’t respond for a moment and then looked at the copilot seat. “There’s an extra one under the seat. Look under the back.”
