by CJ Lyons
He straightened, his forehead creased in concern, and stepped toward her. “What are you talking about? God, it’s all my fault. He told me he was getting help, I never dreamed—” He broke off, his gaze scanning the darkness that surrounded them. “Come with me; we need to go back to my office. We’ll be safe there.”
She was shaking her head. “No, no, I won’t go. I called the police. They’re on their way.”
He held his hands out, palms up, spread wide as if to show that he was no threat. “Good. I want the police to see this as well. It’s okay, Nora. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m here to help you.”
“I trusted you. How could you?”
“I didn’t do anything. Look, we can’t stay here. It’s too dangerous.”
Nora heard the sound she’d been waiting for: footsteps sounded from the stairwell.
“Stay where you are,” she told Tommy.
He stopped about five feet from her in the middle of the corridor, hands still wide. Keeping her back to the wall, she warily circled past him so now she was closer to the exit than he was.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said in a calming voice. “I know you’re scared; it’s all right.”
A sharp laugh ripped through her. “You’re telling me it’s all right to be scared? After what you did?”
The sound of footsteps in the stairwell slowed, as if uncertain where to go. “Here! I’m here!” she called out.
“Nora. Honestly, I’m not the guy. I didn’t do—”
The door to the stairwell opened. Glen Bakker came through it. Nora felt her lungs collapse in relief as she blew out her breath. Glen took her arm and pulled her behind him, putting his body between her and Tommy.
“Nora,” Tommy called out. “Don’t—”
A shot blasted through the air, followed by another one. Tommy took a step forward, arms reaching out. Two more shots. He staggered and fell to the ground.
Tommy’s lifeless body lay facedown on the carpet, blood slowly puddling from beneath him. Nora sank to her knees, unable to keep on her feet another moment.
It was over, it was over.
“You’re safe now,” Glen said, holstering his gun.
Nora didn’t respond; she was too stunned.
“Nora, everything’s going to be okay now. You’re with me.”
She stared at him, uncomprehending.
“Hurry, we don’t have much time.”
He grabbed her arm and hauled her to her feet. Then he pivoted her so her back was pressed against his body, one hand curling around her neck. In it, he held a knife. Long, one edge serrated, the other wickedly sharp.
Pressed against her throat.
Déjà vu overtook her. Everything grew hazy as she struggled to breathe. It was just like three years ago, except that this time she wasn’t blinded. She could see everything with terrifying clarity. Including Tommy’s body.
Glen reached behind them to push open the door to the stairs. He dragged her over the threshold. Awareness slapped back at her, shattering the numbing deep freeze that had gripped her. She spun, clawing at his face but falling short. He laughed and pushed her face forward into the stairwell.
“Don’t do anything you’ll regret,” he whispered. “This is your last chance, Nora.”
55
Gina said nothing, but she knew her expression betrayed her when the gunman laughed.
“Here I was, all worried about how to break Mr. SWAT-man over here,” he said. “He won’t talk, no way, nohow.” He leaned down, grabbing Gina’s bruised jaw in his hand and yanking her gaze to him. “But you will, angel-lady. You will for sure.”
“I said, leave her alone!” Jerry was trying to shout, but his words emerged in a thick muffled cough as he spat blood and mucus out with them.
“Guess I don’t need you after all,” the gunman said, whirling and firing at Jerry.
The shot thundered through the room. Gina shrieked and pushed herself under the desk, colliding with a solid fabric-covered item wedged into the corner. Her bulletproof vest. Ken said he’d kept it.
As she squirmed to put the Kevlar between herself and the gunman, she heard Jerry’s body hit the ground with a thump. Blood oozed beneath the desk. She leveraged herself into the corner, hugging the Kevlar against her body, and ducked her head down.
“I’ll be with you in a minute, angel-lady. Just let me finish this off.” The gunman stepped around to the front of the desk.
Gina’s eye level was low enough that she saw Jerry bending his knee up to his chest. At first she thought he was trying to protect himself or aiming a kick—useless against a gun, but she supposed he was desperate.
Then she remembered his backup gun. In his ankle holster. Before she could finish the thought, two shots blasted through the air. Then two more. One of them punched a hole through the side of the desk; the other thudded into the vest that shielded her head and chest.
She lay there dazed, her ears ringing, head throbbing, disoriented. Thudding footsteps, the bang of a door kicked open, broke through her senses.
“What the hell?” came Ken Rosen’s voice.
About damn time.
56
Amanda returned to the PICU with Narolie. Her vitals were stable, but she still hadn’t woken from her coma. She explained to Narolie’s aunt that the surgery had been successful, but it would take time. She hoped she was reassuring, but secretly she was disappointed that the results hadn’t been more immediate.
As she emerged from Narolie’s room, there was a flurry of activity around Zachary’s bed. Alarms blared as nurses converged on the little boy.
“What’s going on?” she asked. Blood pooled from Zachary’s groin area—near the femoral vessels where the large catheters for the bypass machine were inserted.
“Catheter eroded through his artery,” the ECMO tech said. “We need to crash him off!”
“Hold pressure,” Amanda ordered, surprised at how calm she was. “Get as much volume from the machine into him as possible. Someone call the blood bank, tell them we’re going to need four units of packed cells and a unit of FFP.” She glanced at the monitor. Zachary’s heart rate was bouncing all over the place—no wonder, with a quarter of his blood volume trapped in the ECMO machine and the rest trying hard to escape through his femoral artery.
“Page Terry and surgery. How’s he doing on the vent?” she asked the respiratory tech.
“Not bad, holding his own.” Thank God for small favors. Zachary’s damaged lungs were suddenly being forced to do all the work the ECMO machine had been doing for the past three days. Were they up to the task?
Glen twisted Nora’s arm behind her back, steering them onto the landing. “What do I want?” he finally said, his tone almost wistful. “The same thing I’ve wanted ever since I first laid eyes on you. Do you remember when that was?”
“New Year’s Eve, three years ago.”
He shook his head. “Wrong, Nora. I met you when you first started working here as a nursing assistant. Do you remember? I do. You were so young and gorgeous, bright and eager to learn everything. But you never even knew who I was.”
“I—I never knew. Why didn’t you say something back then?”
“I did. Tried to ask you out a dozen times at least. Even tried to pick you up at a party the EMS guys had. You never noticed me at all. Then my Guard unit got called up and I knew it was my last chance. But you were with that guy. Matt Zersky. I knew instantly the kind of guy he was, able to worm his way into any girl’s pants. No way I was going to let that happen to you. Not to my girl. I decided it was time we got to know each other better.”
“So you kidnapped me?” Good God, he was serious. He truly thought kidnap, rape, and attempted murder were acceptable forms of courtship.
“You don’t understand. When I left you there, in that building, after I got so mad—I thought I’d killed you. I thought I’d lost you forever.” Glen was silent for a long minute, not moving. “I kinda went a little crazy—”
“You killed Matt!”
“He doesn’t matter. We matter, Nora. You can’t imagine my joy when you showed up at work the next week—like an angel, come back to life! Thinking of you kept me alive the whole time I was in Afghanistan. I knew we'd be together forever when I got back. Only,” his voice dropped, “only, I didn’t deserve you, not after the way I’d fouled things up. I had to earn your love—prove myself as a real man.
“I realized I had to be patient, had to get myself fixed up if I wanted to win you back. Even if it meant watching you hang out with losers like Seth Cochran. But now it’s time. Time for us. To be together, forever.”
Nora tried to follow his twisted logic. Her mouth went dry as panic flooded her. Could he have gone after Seth again, while she was in Tommy’s office, finished what he started?
“Is Seth all right?”
“Why are you asking about him?” Glen snapped, turning to throw her a glare. “We’re talking about us. I’m telling you, Nora. This is our last chance. We’re going to finish this together. One way or another.”
57
Gina’s relief at Ken’s arrival didn’t stop her panic. Not with Jerry’s blood seeping under the desk. She tried to call for help, but only a hoarse scratch emerged.
Her arm ached from where the bullet had impacted the vest, her hands were numb from being trapped behind her, her weight pressed against them, and her throat felt bruised. Other than that, she was physically fine. Mentally, she was . . . exhausted.
Kicking the desk chair aside, she rolled free from her hiding place. Ken reached down to pull her free, taking the vest as well.
“Check on Jerry. Is he okay?” Her voice emerged at top volume, shrill with fear, startling even herself.
Ken said nothing, spinning her around so he could slice through the duct tape restraining her wrists with a pair of scissors from the desk. As he worked, she faced the window, with only her and Ken’s reflections visible; Jerry was below the desk. Jerry, oh God, she couldn’t even think, imagine—
“Is he,” her voice faltered, “is he—dead?”
The tape finally parted. Ken left her to check on Jerry as she clawed her hands free and shook the feeling back into them.
“I’ve got a pulse,” Ken said.
Gina rushed to Jerry’s side. Acid scratched at her throat as her stomach convulsed with horror.
Blood stained Jerry’s shirt, not a lot, but enough. His face was swollen, disfigured from the beating. And there was a small hole just behind his left eye. Going into his skull.
The gunman lay beside Jerry—dead. Very completely, obviously dead with a bullet hole through his right eye. Ken had kicked both guns to the corner of the room.
“I need police and security.” Ken’s words were clipped as he spoke into his cell phone with one hand while holding pressure on Jerry’s wound with his other. “I’ve a dead man and a police officer with a gunshot wound who’s going to need to get to the OR.”
Gina quickly assessed Jerry. ABC’s, she told herself, trying hard not to think about how much his wounds resembled the other Officer Boyle’s. The one who had died.
“No,” she interrupted Ken, her brain finally kicking into gear. “Not the OR—it will take two elevator rides to get there from here. We can take him right down to the first floor and straight into OR 13 in the ER. It’s faster.”
He nodded his agreement. “We need a trauma team waiting for us in the ER. We’re on our way.”
Ken ducked into the other room, then reappeared, pushing a wheeled stainless steel table before him. Together, they lifted Jerry onto the table. Gina steered from the top of the table, holding Jerry’s airway open, as Ken raced alongside, keeping pressure on the belly wound. There was nothing else they could do until they got to the ER.
“Sorry about your tissue cultures,” she told Ken during the prolonged agony of the ride down in the elevator. Prattling seemed the only way to keep her sanity. “It was the only thing I could think of—”
“No worries,” he said, squeezing her hand. “Glad you thought to call me.”
“Good thing you’re so obsessed with your research.”
Jerry gurgled as blood filled his throat, but there was nothing Gina could do about it without equipment. Tears threatened to overwhelm her, but she shook them off.
“He’ll be okay, Gina,” Ken said in a low tone, serious and solemn enough to pierce her panic. “Everything will be okay.”
With the gala crowd between her and the research tower, the fastest way to reach it and Nora was to go through the basement tunnels. Lydia ran down the nearest set of stairs and sprinted through the deserted corridors, her footsteps accompanied by the din of overhead steam pipes and the clanking of distant machinery.
As she ran, she tried Jerry again, then Nora. No answer from anyone. Finally, she called 911. The operator didn’t seem to understand the situation. “Ma’am, I’m showing officers already headed to that location.”
“No. They’re here, but not at the right place. Tell them to go to the research tower, fourth floor.”
“Ma’am, there’s already a response called in. Officers en route. There were shots fired, so you need to stay away from the scene, let the officers do their job.”
“Shots fired? Was anyone hurt?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, I don’t have that information. Please stand by, I’ll direct an officer to your location. Do not enter the scene of operations.” The operator seemed peeved by Lydia’s persistence.
Stand by? Hell with that.
She stopped short at the door leading to the research tower’s stairwell. Every rule of emergency response told her to make sure the scene was safe—just as the irritatingly calm 911 operator had reminded her.
But it could be Nora, lying there bleeding. Needing her help.
She edged the door open, listening. Voices came from above her. She entered the stairwell, keeping to the shadows, straining to hear who was speaking.
“Glen, let me go. They’ll find Tommy’s body, know it’s you.”
Nora. She was still alive. And it sounded like Lydia’s instincts about Glen had been right. She drew her gun, debating her next move. Sneak back into the tunnels and tell the police where to find Glen and Nora?
Glen’s next words made up her mind for her. “I don’t care anymore, Nora. After we were together my life hasn’t been the same. I can’t even look at a woman; you did something to me—the docs said it was nerve damage, said it was from the drugs I mixed, trying to satisfy you. I’ve been to all the experts, searching for a cure, but all I found were women who reminded me of you, except they weren’t you, they were laughing, making fun of me because I was no longer a real man.”
“That’s why you raped them, why you killed Karen? Because they knew you were impotent and laughed at you?”
Good girl, Nora. Keep him talking, stall for time. Lydia hugged the shadows, listening carefully.
“Karen, she was the worst of all. A few weeks ago, I had another procedure done here—my last chance, they said. I thought that afterward, we could finally be together. As I woke up, there was Karen laughing at me, making jokes. Saying I’d never be a man again. But I showed her; I watched for my chance, and I took her, made her pay.” His voice trailed away as if he were unable to remember everything that had happened.
“It all happened so fast. After—I realized that was no way to win you back. I didn’t need any doctors or miracle cures. All I needed was you. With you, I could be a man again. A real man. You’d never laugh at me. You’d know how to love me.
“Somehow I can only be right, feel right when we’re together. But you couldn’t see that, no matter how hard I tried to show you that there’s nothing left for you here. Why, Nora? Why can’t you see that this is our last chance?”
Nora gave out a small gasp of pain.
“I figure we either make it out of here alive,” Glen continued, “or we die together.”
58
The elevator doors opened on a cro
wd of elegantly dressed men and women, many holding champagne glasses and sparkling with jewels. Gina had totally forgotten about the gala or that they’d have to go through the atrium to reach OR 13.
“Clear a path!” Ken ordered in a voice that would have made a military drill sergeant proud.
The confused throng obeyed, Gina yanking the makeshift stretcher along, shoving people aside.
“I said move it!” she yelled at two gawking matrons draped in fur.
They sped around the corner into the back of the ER, and then through the doors to OR 13, where the trauma team was gathered.
“Thirty-seven-year-old male,” Gina called out the information, fighting to keep her tone neutral despite the churning anxiety tearing through her insides, “shot at close range through his left upper quadrant and left temporal parietal region. Unresponsive, but pupils equal and reactive. Heart rate one-thirty, good carotid, weak radial pulse. Abdomen distended, airway needs suctioning, respirations around twenty-four.”
Ken helped them move Jerry onto the OR bed, then stood to one side. The nurses and the second-year ER resident swarmed over Jerry’s body, cutting his clothes off and getting him on the monitor. Gina realized she was the senior physician. The command doc.
The one holding Jerry’s life in her hands.
“Someone page surgery, tell them to get their asses down here! Suction his airway and set up for intubation,” Gina ordered. “Give me two large-bore IVs, run them open for now with LR until the blood arrives. I want six units of O neg on the rapid infuser, trauma labs, X-ray of his chest, abdomen, and head, NG and Foley.” The team leaped into action, following her commands.
She pushed the second-year resident out of the way and swiftly intubated Jerry. No way she was trusting a critical procedure to a second-year. She listened intently. It was hard to do with her own pulse thundering through her ears. “Down on the right. We need a chest tube. Where the hell’s X-ray and surgery?”
