Military Man

by Marie Ferrarella

  It was obvious to Lucy that the police were only going through the motions since there’d been no threat to the injured guard’s life so far. Apparently everyone was of the same mind, that Jason was far too smart to attempt anything here at the hospital. Most likely, the man charged with two murders was as far away from Red Rock as was humanly possible in the amount of time he had.

  Carrying the tray with several innocuous-looking little white paper cups that usually contained medication and that she had purloined from the nurses’ station when no one was looking, Lucy flashed a smile at the young policeman and eased herself into the transport guard’s room.

  Once the door was closed, she released the breath she’d been holding. She put the tray down on the closest surface and approached the bed. There were several fewer machines surrounding him than there had been the last time she’d been in the room.

  The transport guard appeared to be asleep. Had he slipped back into a coma? God, she hoped not. Lucy looked at the vital signs for a clue.

  Everything appeared to be normal.

  Her heart slipped up into her throat as Lucy placed her hand on the man’s arm and just barely shook it. “Mr. McGruder?”

  In response, his eyelids flew open and she found herself looking into a pair of almost-clear blue eyes that were staring straight at her.

  It took her a second to find her tongue. “Mr. McGruder, I’m with the medical examiner’s office and I have to ask you some questions.”

  “Why are you disturbing the patient?” a deep voice growled behind her.

  Startled, Lucy swung around toward the door. The somewhat average-looking man was frowning at her as he came forward. The lab coat he had on seemed a size too large for him and it flapped around his legs as he moved.

  “You need to leave,” he told her curtly. “Now.” The word was issued like a royal command.

  He probably thought she was a nurse. And he undoubtedly was one of those doctors who believed he walked on water, she judged, and had no use for anyone who couldn’t do the same thing. Her immediate response was anger, despite the fact that she actually had no business being here.

  It had been that kind of a day.

  Looking back, she would never be able to explain why she hadn’t merely obeyed and left the room, why the man’s tone set something off inside of her, making her not only angry, but more than mildly uneasy.

  She thought of her cover story. “I’m from the M.E.’s office,” she informed him, lightly running her hand over her hanging ID tag. “I need to get a DNA sample from the patient.”

  His expression darkened, but he waved her over to the bed grudgingly. “All right, be quick about it.”

  The hand that had waved at her had dirt under its nails. A quick glance told her that the same was true of the other hand. Alarms went off in her head. No doctor would be seeing patients with hands like that.

  Something was wrong here.

  Lucy suddenly felt the urgency to stall for time. Striving for her friendliest manner, she put out her hand. “Hi, I’m Lucy Gatling.”

  He made no effort to take her hand or to offer his own. “And I’m in a hurry. Do what you have to do and leave,” he ordered.

  She looked at his hands again. “Shouldn’t you be washing your hands?”

  He glanced at his hands, saw his error and cursed roundly. “The hell with this.”

  The next moment Lucy found herself staring down the extended barrel of his weapon. There was a silencer on the end of it.

  Fifteen

  Collin threw his duffel bag into the back seat of the car he’d rented at the airport and drove to the coroner’s office. It probably would have been cheaper in the long run to hail a cab, but he was impatient enough as it was. Sitting in the backseat, leaving the driving to someone else, would have been unbearable.

  At this time of day the traffic was only moderately busy. He maneuvered the subcompact in and out of tight spots, jockeying for position, intent on beating all the lights.

  So far, so good.

  Collin forced himself to relax his grip on the steering wheel. It took conscious effort. He felt as if every nerve inside his body was standing at attention as he reviewed what he was going to say to Lucy. He’d been calmer facing an armed assailant. The only thing that would have made him more nervous was leaving things the way they were until later.

  He’d learned his lesson well. Later would be too late.

  Eagleton had been surprised, to say the least, when he’d talked to him. The C.O. had expected to see him in person. Instead, the call had come in from his cell phone after he’d had the plane turn around. He’d made his case as quickly, as succinctly, as possible

  Because of his spotless record and his dedication, which went above and beyond the call of duty by anyone’s measure, and despite his unorthodox behavior this time around, Collin obtained the leeway he needed.

  “A few hours, sir,” he’d concluded. “I just need a few more hours before reporting in.”

  There was a long pause before Eagleton replied. “This is highly unusual, Collin, but then, so are you.”

  It had taken the colonel five years and a mission behind enemy lines that they weathered together for the informality between them to take hold and grow. And another three years before that for the rapport that they now had to be shared. Collin knew, though the man had only come close to telling him once, when three sniper bullets had sent the colonel to what everyone had thought was his death bed, that Eagleton regarded him as the son he’d never had.

  The feeling was mutual. Collin thought of him as a second, albeit more stern, father.

  “I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important,” Collin had assured him.

  “I know. Which is why I’m granting you the extra time. But no more than a few hours,” Eagleton had warned.

  A time had been set, the connection terminated. And Collin was off and running the second the plane had landed back at the airport.

  A few hours was all Collin felt he needed to make his case with Lucy. To make her agree to see what the future held in store for them. Together.

  The open parking lot directly in front of the building that housed the coroner’s offices was full. He was forced to leave his rented vehicle within the bowels of the parking structure at the other end of the lot. Collin all but sprinted across the lot and into the building.

  Something inside of him felt as if time was slipping through his fingers. He didn’t know why. Maybe because now that he’d finally made up his mind on what course he wanted to take, he was eager to begin.

  Words tripping over one another in his head, he made his way into the medical examiner’s offices, to the area where Lucy generally did her work.

  She wasn’t there.

  A quick search showed him that she wasn’t anywhere in the immediate area. An uneasiness began to weave through him. He kept on looking, walking into one of the autopsy rooms.

  When he saw the doctor who normally worked with her, he felt just a little heartened. The physician, swaddled in blue livery and in the middle of his work, glanced up at him with the look of a man who didn’t like being interrupted.

  “She’s not here,” Harley informed him curtly.

  “Well, where is she?” Collin wanted to know.

  He moved closer to the table where the autopsy was being conducted. The smell coming from the corpse was horrid.

  Had he not been accustomed, in a fashion, to the stench of death, Collin was certain last night’s dinner would have made a reappearance in his throat, possibly the floor.

  Harley’s small brown eyes looked at him over the mask he’d donned to help him filter out the immediate unsettling smell. Collin had the distinct impression that he was being judged and appraised.

  He was all set to repeat his demand, more harshly now because he wasn’t up to playing whatever games the good doctor wanted to play, when the latter told him, “You just missed her by half an hour.” It was obvious that Harley debated telling him any more, we
ighing the pros and cons. The pros won. “She went to find out more information for you. According to what we hear, that transport guard regained consciousness.”

  If he had any more to say, there was no one to say it to. Collin was already gone.

  With one eye on the rearview mirror, watching for approaching police vehicles, Collin drove to the hospital like a man possessed. All the way there he couldn’t really explain why, but he had this uneasy feeling that something was wrong. He told himself that it was probably just that he was nervous over what he wanted to say to Lucy, over the commitment he planned to make, but he couldn’t quite talk himself into a state of calm. The hairs were standing up on the back of his neck the way they did whenever he was about to go head-to-head with an enemy.

  Collin hurried into the hospital, rushing past the admitting desk and toward the bank of elevators in the rear of the building. His adrenaline refused to stop pumping. Every part of him felt as if it was throbbing to a strange rhythm.

  Was this what being in love was like? As if you were preparing to go into battle? If that was the case, he supposed he’d been preparing for this from the first day he’d attended West Point.

  Reaching the floor that housed the intensive care unit assigned to McGruder, he hurried to the left corridor. The last time he’d approached the room, the figure of a young police officer, his feet indolently stretched out in front of him as he slouched in his chair, was evident from the moment he turned the corner.

  The only thing he saw when he turned the corner was an empty chair.

  The hairs on the back of Collin’s neck refused to go down.

  Lucy’s mouth felt dry.

  The last few minutes felt like an eternity. Part of her still wanted to edge her way toward the door, to try to attract the attention of the police officer posted right outside the room. She was torn between that and remaining here to somehow save the man asleep in the bed.

  The thought that she needed to figure out a way to save herself whispered on the edges of her mind, but Lucy refused to view that as her focus. If this man carried out his plans to kill the transport guard, she was as good as dead herself. The man in the ill-fitting white lab coat didn’t look like the type who would leave witnesses standing around.

  She tried to appeal to whatever sense of decency might still reside within the man’s thick chest. “Look, whatever Jamison said he’s paying you to do this, it’s not worth killing someone for.”

  There was contempt in the man’s eyes long before it filtered down to the rest of his face. He sneered at her naïveté. “A couple of extra lives don’t mean anything to me.”

  He wasn’t lying. She could see it in his eyes. They were flat, devoid of any connection, any humanity, however vague. There was no glee there, either. The transport guard’s would-be murderer didn’t seem as if he loved his work. It was just a job to him, nothing better, nothing worse. Some people delivered newspapers for a living, he delivered corpses. It was all one and the same to him.

  She had nothing to appeal to.

  The tray she’d brought in was still sitting on the side table where she’d left it. Lucy thought of making a grab for it and throwing the tray at the man to deflect his aim. It was the only plan she could come up with on such short notice. The fact that the gunman would probably end up shooting at her first couldn’t be factored into her decision.

  She wished she knew how fast this man was. Was he a trained operative who had gone rogue? An expert in his field the way Collin undoubtedly was in his? At which point he’d probably drop her first, then kill the transport guard and go strolling out of the room, all in under a minute, all with a minimum of sound.

  She could feel it in her gut.

  If she cried for help, he’d kill her before anyone could reach her.

  Her one chance, the way she saw it, was to keep a dialogue going until something happened, someone came in. The only trouble was, she had no way of knowing how long that would be. And he didn’t look like someone with an infinite amount of patience.

  “If you leave now, I won’t tell anyone I saw you.” The laugh she got in response sent a chill down her spine. Desperate, she tried another approach. “When you’re done here carrying out his orders, are you going back to Jamison for your money?”

  She sincerely doubted that Jamison had given the money to the man up front. At most, he might have advanced half, the rest to follow on completion.

  The man on the other end of the gun looked unwilling to reveal anything. At the same time, he appeared intrigued by the fact that she wasn’t begging for her life. That she was engaging him in a conversation.

  “Let’s say I am,” he said, leaving the rest of the sentence open.

  “He’ll kill you, you know,” she said simply as her stomach continued experiencing a magnitude 9.0 earthquake. She saw anger in the man’s eyes and pushed on, watching his weapon warily. “Jamison doesn’t like leaving any loose ends, or loose lips.”

  He snorted, unimpressed by her reasoning. “A lot of men have tried to kill me.”

  Her eyes remained steadily on his. “All it’ll take is one.”

  The minutes were ticking away and with it the small amount of patience he laid claim to. “Enough talking, bitch.” He raised his arm, pointing his weapon straight at her. “Sorry about this, but you had your chance to leave.” Nondescript, able to blend in, maybe he’d initially figured she wouldn’t have been able to describe him to anyone. But it had gone beyond that now, she knew. “Your bad luck, being so observant.”

  Her breath stopped as she saw his finger begin to squeeze the trigger.

  Suddenly the door behind him flew open, banging against the wall. Lucy made the most of her opportunity. Lunging for the tray, she sent it flying into the gunman’s arm.

  A slight “ping” was heard as the bullet went wild.

  The next moment Lucy was positive she was hallucinating. She had to be. Why else would she think she saw Collin coming to her rescue?

  She barely remembered screaming out his name in both relief and horror.

  Collin burst into the room, simultaneously hurling himself to the floor, the epitome of a moving target. Rolling, he bounced back up to his feet within inches of the assailant.

  The struggle for the weapon was short-lived. Faced with Collin’s intensive training in self-defense and warfare, the assailant was quite clearly out of his league. Collin had him disarmed, disabled and on the ground within seconds, his knee pressed hard against the man’s square neck as he held the gunman’s arm twisted in the air. The latter was gasping for breath even as he was screaming in pain.

  The only thing Collin was concerned about was Lucy. He looked at her now as he continued to twist the man’s arm up and to the side. “Are you all right?”

  She had to take a deep breath before answering. “Fine now that the cavalry’s here,” she managed to get out. It was next to impossible to talk with her heart pounding in her throat.

  Collin looked around the austere room. “I need something to tie him up with.” The police were on their way, summoned by his 9-1-1 call, but he was taking no chances.

  Lucy hurried to the overhead cabinets, throwing open the doors as she searched for something for him to use. All she came up with was a roll of bandages. She held it up for him to see. “This is all there is.”

  He held his hand out. “That’ll do fine. I don’t need much,” he assured her. He knew how to truss a prisoner up using nothing more than dental floss if need be.

  Lucy handed him the bandages, then watched as he all but gift-wrapped the man on the floor. It was only then that logic slowly returned to her.

  “What are you doing here?” She wanted to know. “I thought you were on your way to Virginia.”

  “I was.” Finishing, he tied off the bandage and tested the strength of his work. It would hold, he decided. “And then I realized that all my conversations were in my head.”

  Confused, Lucy stared at him. She wasn’t following Collin. “What conver
sations?”

  “Conversations I’d had about the future.” He looked at her as he slowly got off the prisoner and watched the man for any false moves. The assailant lay there as if all the air had been siphoned out of him. Collin slanted her a look. “Our future.”

  She had to have slipped into shock. Why else was she hearing what she so desperately wanted to hear? There was this buzzing in her head that conflicted with coherent thought. Still, she heard herself asking, “We have a future?”

  He looked at her meaningfully. “We do if you want us to.”

  Oh, no, he wasn’t going to put this on her shoulders. Her decision, her fault. She wasn’t about to let that happen. “Do you want us to?”

  He grinned at her. Nicely done, he thought. “I’m asking the questions here.”

  But she shook her head, forgetting all about the man in the bed, the man on the floor. It was just the two of them. Forever loomed just beyond, an enticing prize.

  “Sorry, it’s not a one-way street.” Her pragmatic nature took hold. She was still her mother’s daughter. “How’s this going to work with you in Virginia and me here?”

  “Everything’ll work out as long as you want it to.” And then, although he hadn’t put his request to Eagleton, hadn’t begun to wade through the tonnage of paperwork, he told her what was on his mind. She deserved to know. “Besides, I forgot to tell you. I’m putting in for a transfer.”

  “A transfer?” Her eyes widened as she repeated the words. “To where?”

  “Austin.” It was close enough to where she was. A hell of a lot closer than Virginia. Or the Middle East. “As a trainer.”

  Hospital security men entered the room, interrupting them. Collin backed away from his prisoner, placing a protective arm around Lucy. “The police are on their way,” he told them. “There’s an officer in the supply closet you might want someone to see to.” The would-be assassin had apparently dragged the unsuspecting officer there after knocking him out. That was where he’d found the man. “He’s got a nasty gash on his forehead.”