by Holly Hart
Ding!
The elevator doors rolled open, revealing two men in ill-fitting black overcoats. My eyes immediately focused on the tell tale bulges under their shoulders. They were operators. It was as plain as day, at least, it was to a man like me. They looked almost identical to each other, and I pegged them for Russians. Graying black hair, overweight, and the slightly dull look of men who never graduated high school? Yep, they were definitely Russian mobsters.
"In or out," one grunted, and his accent confirmed my suspicions.
Shit.
I'd hoped to avoid other hitmen until the way out at least, but it looked like today wasn't my lucky day.
It sure as hell wasn't theirs.
One of the big Russians stared at me with a look of incomprehension as I, at least in his eyes, seemed to hesitate. The truth was, I was always three steps ahead of chumps like these, usually more. Before the rusted, stuck gears that composed their minds had a chance to cough into action, my mind was already whirring.
"Sorry guys." I said, and pushed the cart forward hard.
The two men looked at it in unison. That was their first mistake. Their last, too. It dulled their reaction times, and by the time the big brute on the left had managed to knock it out of the way, I had my pistol in my hands and pointed at his chest. He looked with all the terror of a trout stranded on a riverbank, and desperately tried to unbutton his unseasonably heavy coat to reach his gun.
I shot him in the chest. The second the silenced gunshot went off in the confined elevator, his companion stopped dead, his hand marooned inside his jacket.
"Listen to me very carefully," I said in a measured, calm tone of voice. "If you go for that gun, I'm going to have to shoot you. Understand?"
The brutish Russian gangster stared at me with terror in his eyes and dropped his hand to his side. It was trembling, like Hitler's did in his bunker towards the end of the war. I kinda felt sorry for the guy. At least, I did before I remembered that the only reason he was here at all was to kill Ellie.
I don't want to kill you, I thought. I can't face adding another name to the list of men I've killed. But I will if I have to.
I reached over, finished unbuttoning his coat for him, and tossed his gun over my shoulder and down the corridor. "Now, what the hell am I going to do with you?" I mused out loud.
"Please," he said in accented, clearly broken English. "Just let me go."
"Now, now," I chided. "I can't just let you go, can I Boris?"
"Not Boris," he said, his face wrinkling with confusion.
I waved the barrel of the gun over to the left-hand corner of the elevator, next to Boris's companion's slowly cooling body. "Doesn't matter. Sit over there, let me think."
He thought about complaining, then thought better of it, and lowered himself to his friend's prone body with a disgusted, terrified frown on his face.
What's in the cart?
I rifled through the top drawer, only to find a collection of bandages, surgical tape and syringes. Nothing useful. The second drawer down, though, was locked.
That seems promising.
I checked that Boris was safe, sound and quiet, reversed the gun in my hands so that I was holding it by its barrel, and brought the butt down heavily. The lock splintered into a dozen twisted fragments of metal, and I pulled the drawer out greedily.
Jackpot!
I pulled out a little vial and read the label. "How do you feel about epinephrine, Boris?"
He looked at me uncomprehendingly, and repeated, "not Boris."
"I know, I know. No, maybe epinephrine's not the best call. I don't want your heart attack on my conscience, you know?" I pulled out another vial. "Now we're talking."
Boris looked up nervously. "Don't worry, buddy," I joked. "It won't hurt."
But it's going to be a hell of a trip.
I injected the needle into the foil seal, and emptied the vial, filling the syringe to the top.
"Please…" Boris protested. "What's that?"
I kept the gun trained on him as I leaned forward. I injected the clear liquid directly into his carotid artery, and then smashed my handgun against his forehead, knocking him out cold for good measure. I tucked the little medicine vial in between his fingers, just in case anyone wanted to know why a two hundred pound Russian mobster was lying unconscious in the elevator.
I laughed to myself as I enabled the security override to lock the elevator doors. It wouldn't keep the bodies hidden long, but hopefully long enough for me to do what I needed to do. "A hundred milligrams of diazepam. Boris, that's going to be one hell of a dream…"
9
Ellie
I heard a knock at the door, and it was accompanied by a familiar voice that brought a smile to my lips. "Miss Francis?"
"Alice, you can call me Ellie, you know that!" I laughed, swinging my legs over the side of the bed.
"Sorry, Ellie," the friendly, plump nurse chuckled. "I know, it's just we don't get many patients like you…"
"Patients like me?" I asked, surprised by her almost reverential tone.
"Yeah. I shouldn't tell you this really…" Alice trailed off.
I shot her a piercing glare. "Come on, you can't start a sentence like that and not finish it!"
The nurse leaned in close, almost conspiratorially and spoke quietly. "We're not really supposed to tell patients while they're in rehab, because it can mess with the motivation to keep going, but a recovery like yours… It's almost unheard of. But I guess, with you, nothing's impossible."
"What do you mean, with me?" I repeated, at a loss to know what she was talking about. "I just woke up, is that so unusual?"
"From a coma like that? After all those months?" Alice cried, her voice rising and falling in a crescendo of excitement. It was almost as if she was recounting a miracle. "And besides, it wasn't the waking –."
"The waking what?" I pressed. I'd endured weeks of coddling, and every single nurse and doctor in this joint seemed to be afraid to startle me, as if they might say something that would set my recovery back.
I wanted to scream, I'm a big girl! But I figured I shouldn't. Whatever was going on today, I guessed I was about to get some answers. I hoped so, at any rate.
Alice's eyes were wide open, with a caught in a cookie jar grimace plastered across her face. She couldn't have looked any guiltier if she'd actually tried. "No, it's definitely not my place to say. Doctor Mullen will go through everything."
I cocked my head and stared at her, trying to figure out why the hell she was being so opaque, and then shrugged. Whatever it was, I'd find out in due course. Being in hospital was a lot like being in the Army, I thought. There was a whole lot of hurry up and wait…
"Ready?" Alice said, offering me her arm.
"Um, do you mind if I, I dunno, have a crack at doing it myself?" I asked, stumbling over my tongue. "I've been practicing in my room, and I think I'll be okay…"
"Ellie," Alice chided. "You know the physio told you not to overdo it!"
"No," I said. "Honestly, it's fine. I've felt so much stronger this week."
"Well," Alice said, looking me up and down doubtfully. "If you think you can handle it…"
I lent over and squeezed her tight.
It's crazy, I thought. A few months ago I was an investigative journalist for the Herald, now I'm happy just to be allowed to walk down the corridor…
"Hey!" Alice exclaimed. "That was pretty strong!"
I stuck out my tongue cheekily. "Told you…"
"I guess with you, Eleanor Francis, I should get used to expecting miracles." Alice said obscurely.
Again with this miracle talk.
Every nurse on the ward waved and smiled at me the second I came into sight as I walked, unassisted, down the corridor. I'd been doing it in my room every night for days now, pacing up and down, but this was a whole new ballgame. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Alice hovering a stone's throw from my arm, ready to catch me if I fell. "Alice," I whispered. "Why's eve
ryone staring at me?"
The nurse who I'd come to see as my friend over the past few weeks, ever since I woke up from a nine-month coma, looked at me like she was holding something back from me. "Oh, you'll find out soon enough," she said secretively.
"You know, Alice," I said, turning to face her. "Sometimes I feel like kicking you, you know that?"
The middle-aged nurse held her hands up and frowned with mock irritation. "Hey, I'm just the messenger, all right?"
"A messenger without a message," I grumped. "What good is that?" I sidled up to her. "Come on," I pleaded, "you can trust me, can't you?"
Alice smiled warmly, pushing the treatment room door open and gesturing me inside. "Of course I can, dear. But honestly, it's really not my place to say. I'll have to leave that up to the doctor."
"Fine," I muttered, a sullen look on my face. “But this better be good…”
“Oh,” Alice grinned, “it will be. I’ll be around, once you’re done. I’ve got a feeling you’ll want to talk. The doctor will be along soon.”
I wish, I grumbled in the peace and quiet of my own head as the door swung closed. That people would stop treating me like a damn child.
If I’d known what I was asking for, I might have reconsidered that thought…
10
Roman
She screamed.
I wasn't worried about anyone hearing her, because it seemed as though the rest of the hospital was screaming now, too.
They've found the bodies.
"Who the hell are you?" Ellie squeaked, putting her hands up above her head, like she thought she was in a movie. "And why've you got a gun?" Then, looking shocked at her own stupidity, or temerity at confronting an armed man, or both, she clamped her hand across her mouth. She fell silent, quivering in her chair and watching my every movement through terrified eyes.
"You don't know who I am, do you?" I remarked, unable to prevent a quick, almost disappointed frown from scouring my face. I'd thought she would at least remember my face, if nothing else but it was like her mind had simply been wiped clean.
It's true, then.
"Should I?" She asked. Her nose wrinkled with confusion as I stared at her, gun still clenched in my right hand. I dropped it to my side. I needed her calm, not startled, and the last thing I wanted was for her to try and run off. Neither of us would last a moment if I had to chase her down.
"No, I guess not," I lied. "Come on, it doesn't matter anyway. We've got to go, fast."
"No," she moaned. "No, they're supposed to be releasing me today. That's why I'm here, isn't it? Please, just leave, I won't tell anyone I even saw you."
"Lady, you think I'm here to rob the place?" I asked with disbelief. "You think I'd risk going down for armed robbery to rob a god damn hospital?"
"Um, I guess not," she stammered before stopping half way through her sentence and clamping her hands to her forehead. It looked like a sudden, intense migraine had flashed through her skull. I began to worry. The papers hadn't lied about her condition – that jackass ex really had done a number on her. What the hell do I do if she collapses?
I realized I didn't have a choice. Either I got her out of here now, or the men making their way up the stairs would – and that was a risk I knew I couldn’t take.
I pulled a black rucksack off my shoulders and swept every single scrap of paper from the doctor’s desk into it. I decided to take it all, and worry about what was hers. I quickly ransacked the doctor's desk, and stuffed a brown document folder into the bag as well.
I heard sirens in the distance, and far more worryingly, the sound of booted feet running up a nearby flight of stairs. They're coming.
"Come on," I grunted. I wasn't in any mood to get into a philosophical argument, and besides, I didn't know how many more of Victor's men might be close behind.
"I'm not going anywhere with you," she squealed. "I don't have any money, if this is about that.
11
Ellie
I woke up with my eyes still closed, and panicked. I didn't have the faintest idea where I was, what time of day it was, or even the month. I felt like my brain was operating through a thick, heavy fog. Worse still, I was even afraid to open my eyelids, in case I didn't like what I saw.
My brain kicked into gear, screaming to through a series of mental checklists the like of which I'd never experienced before, almost as if the adrenaline pumping through my system was activating parts of my mind that normally lay dormant. Parts of the brain that had to do with survival.
Where are you?
How did you get here?
Are you being threatened?
How are you going to escape?
The circumstances of my newfound situation were still a mystery to me, but one thing was absolutely clear – wherever I was, I hadn't arrived under my own steam. And that was all kinds of concerning. I began to scan the room, but with my eyes still firmly clenched shut with the same cold, terrified distrust that a child has of the dark, I had to use the only senses left available to me – sound, touch and smell. Taste was out, unless I wanted to lick the sheets for information…
I was alone, in the room at least – as for the rest of the building, I couldn't say. Or, if I wasn't, then the other person must have been almost statuesque in their silence, unbreathing, unmoving, and barely alive. The prospect was terrifying.
The craziness of the past few hours began to come back to me in the form of a cold, chilling realization that gripped my gut in an iron fist of fear. I'd been at the hospital. I'd been about to find out… something. An alarm had gone off, the sound of bodies hitting the floor, and then the doctor stepped out mid-sentence. And then he came in. And now I was here, somewhere, but wherever it was, it sure as hell wasn't Alexandria General Hospital. In short, I realized that I'd been kidnapped.
My eyes finally sprang open. I glanced around the room, not looking for details at first, just to check that I was alone. I was. Everything seemed a blur, my heartbeat was racing in my ears and my lungs were blowing in and out ten times harder than they'd ever done before, and getting faster. I felt as if I was running a race, a greyhound down at the track, and the mechanical rabbit was just getting faster and faster, and my legs were pounding away faster and faster in turn just to stay in place.
Panic.
It was rising inside me, gripping my stomach in its grasp, causing every neuron in my brain to fire a hundred times a second, my breath to speed up and my senses to close in.
Get a grip, Ellie. I begged myself. I searched around for something, anything to hold onto, like a tree trunk in the midst of a raging, swelling river. And then it struck me – the four questions my brain had already asked…
Where are you?
A bedroom.
How did you get here?
I was taken.
Are you being threatened?
Not right now.
That left just one question: How are you going to escape? And that was the most telling one, because I knew that escape was the one thing I positively had to do. Whoever the crazy bastard was that had kidnapped me, he was obviously unhinged. After all, why the hell else would anyone kidnap a recovering coma patient? Especially a recovering coma patient who was also a broke ass investigative journalist who hadn't worked in months.
An idiot, I thought. Or worse, and my blood ran cold. A psychopath…
I leapt into action, grateful for the physical therapist's constant hounding over the past month, as well as my own extracurricular pacing. My legs still didn't feel as powerful as they had before my accident, whatever the hell it was, but they were strong enough that I could move around. I didn't understand why the doctors couldn't just have told me how I ended up in hospital in the first place. Alice's constant refrain echoed in my ear – "we’re afraid you're just a bit too fragile right now." I snorted under my breath with disbelief. Fragile!
The bedroom was pleasant enough, if bland – identikit dark gray IKEA furniture, gray sheets, cream carpet, cream walls. It
had a hotel's business like sterility, but no en suite bathroom, which indicated that it must've been an apartment. Whoever owned the apartment, I thought, had less personality than the worst office drone. There wasn't a single personal item in sight, and the tops of the bedside tables were bare and sparkling clean, not even adorned with something as trifling as an alarm clock.
I padded quietly over to the built in wall-closet, grateful for the fact that I was clothed, but somewhat drowned in a sea of cloth. I was still wearing the Alexandria General jogging bottoms, complete with the white snake on a cross logo, but someone had carefully placed me into a black T-shirt. A man's black T-shirt, and it was half a dozen sizes too big. As I closed the short distance between the bed and the closet, I felt the unfamiliar feeling of a tiny weight of hair on the top of my skull, and realized that someone had caringly pulled it into a ponytail. I hadn't done that in years.
What the hell's going on?
I pulled the closet door open, only letting my arm move an inch at a time so I didn't make a noise, but I needn't have. The hinges were well oiled, and it barely made a sound. I was more and more confused, if this was a prison, it was a five-star prison, and one that had hired someone to tie up my hair…
The closet was dark, and I began to curse under my breath. I didn't want to turn on a light switch, in case my captor somehow realized that I was awake, but equally, I didn't want to miss finding something that I could use as a weapon.
A baseball bat sure would come in handy right now…
Just as I began to consider whether I would be able to open the window's shutters an inch or two to let in some, but not too much, illumination, I heard the familiar electronic hum of a pair of incandescent lighting tubes springing into life. The contents of the mirror-backed cupboard quickly came into view. Far from revealing anything useful, the revelation simply plunged my situation ever deeper into mystery. On the left-hand side of the closet hung six identical charcoal gray men's suits. On the right-hand side hung six crisp, pressed white shirts. There was a chest of drawers in the bottom of the closet, but no baseball bats, that was for damn sure.
