Only the one man spoke the whole time. He was the hostile one, the vocal one, the one in charge. Nina could judge that he was not about to go soft on her just because she was already injured from the fall earlier that day. As her sight sharpened, she noticed that every word the man spoke was like a breath of fire and smoke. To elevate his frightening presence, Nina observed his smoky breath just as the latest freight train growled along the screeching rails, giving him a most fearsome image.
“Kill her,” he told the others, and turned to leave.
“N-no, no, n-n,” Nina forced her mouth to make words. “I’m up. I’m up-p, awake.”
He turned, smiling. “That’s what I suspected, Dr. Gould.”
The other men stood still, as if nothing was going on around them. Nina was petrified at the violence of their leader. He stood over her in the shadow of the lamp where she could only determine his frame and the fact that he had wild, shoulder-length hair, much like Sam’s.
“Where are the bodies of our brothers?” he asked her. His voice was deep, yet it split her skull with its intensity as he spoke in her rattled ears. Nina’s head was spinning, sore and heavy on her neck, but she knew she dared not make him wait.
“Th-they,” she slurred, lifting but an index finger with much effort to point out the door, but her motor skills failed her. “There,” she pushed the word, if only to appear coherent. They all turned their heads, remaining absolutely still otherwise. Their uniform movements reminded her of soldiers in formation, though they wore contemporary street clothes, with hoodies to cover their heads and faces. As a matter of fact, Nina may otherwise have judged them as common London thugs, or gangsters.
“Take us to our family, Nina, or else you can pick your own little fridge there next to the other recent deliveries,” he said firmly, but void of his previous force. It was then that Nina realized that she knew his voice. Her eyes adjusted to the weak light and she stared at the commander of the unit around her. His dark, hateful eyes and the curly tresses convinced her of her suspicion. She had seen and heard him before.
“You!” she whistled as she tried to control her lips. “You are the man on Sam’s video clip!”
17
Magnet for Malice
Sam woke up from what he thought was certain death. Almost immediately he could feel the burning sting in his hand where he had last grasped the weapon he took from the thug that had tried to kill him in the restroom.
“Ow, geezuss,” he moaned inadvertently. From inside the thick of his lightheaded head, his voice sounded like it was not his own. Sam’s nose burned from the stark stench of medical cleaning agents and fresh ointment.
“Try not to move, Mr. Cleave,” he heard Dr. Lindemann say. Sam didn’t want to open his eyes, but he needed to make sure that he was in fact alive. “You have suffered a substantial concussion, and I could barely save your hand, but you should bounce back,” the doctor eased him, but as Sam tried to sit up, Dr. Lindemann raised his voice, “if you do not move!”
“Aye, I heard you the first time,” Sam winced in pain.
“Then maybe I should blame your direct disobedience on language obstacles?” the stern doctor patronized. He was holding up a hypodermic as Sam pried his eyelids apart. To his surprise, the journalist was in one of the King George examination rooms, away from any danger.
“At least you followed my cryptic warning, which is some sign of intelligence,” the doctor rubbed it in.
“At first,” Sam struggled to articulate under the influence of mild barbiturates, “I thought you were just being a right prick…”
“That is the general outlook of most idiots who stroll through here,” Dr. Lindemann replied as he prepared Sam’s arm for the injection.
“Aye, I’m sure,” Sam spoke freely, “but then I started catching on when I started seeing suspicious behavior.” He stopped abruptly as all the puzzle pieces returned to the table. “What happened to the man who attacked me?”
“Well, when I directed our security people to where I directed you, they were just in time to stop the party, so to speak. Your hand had exploded…”
Sam looked down at his heavily bandaged and bleeding hand.
“…don’t look down, Mr. Cleave…”
“Oh my God!” Sam panicked. “Do I still have my fingers?”
“Yes, we managed to treat your injuries on time. Anyway, the man escaped through the same door I advised you to go, but we apprehended his partner after she stabbed our staff manager after her boyfriend had fled without her,” Dr. Lindemann reported, hardly taking a breath in between sentences. “She committed suicide in police custody about an hour ago.”
“What?” Sam gulped at the same time that the doctor pushed the plunger to administer his next dose, slowly weaning his tolerance down to a prescription painkiller. “I’ve been out that long? I have to find out what happened to…uh…Patient #1408!”
Amused, the doctor gave Sam a glare. “You mean, Patient #1312?”
“Aye!” Sam yelled, misjudging the volume of his voice as the new wave of mother’s milk kicked in to ease his pain. “There are people looking for her, just like the characters who chased me down, doc. You have to tell me where she is, please. Before this stuff knocks me out again.”
“Mr. Cleave, she checked herself out mere hours after you left here, and incidentally, the people who tried to kill you also asked about her whereabouts,” the doctor filled Sam in, keeping his voice down.
“She is trouble,” Sam slurred.
“I know,” Dr. Lindemann agreed, “which is precisely why I am telling you as much as I can while I am still drawing breath, Mr. Cleave. Who knows, if they are willing to kill an innocent admin manager who had no idea that anything was amiss, imagine what they would do to someone who knows as much as I have gathered since you brought that woman in.”
Sam understood. Even in the ghostly fog possessing his brain to numb his central nervous system, he made sure that the doctor’s information was burned into his memory banks. The inebriated journalist nodded with a loosely lolling head as the doctor gently laid him down on the hard bed of the examination area.
“Now take some rest. We’ve stitched up the hand, but it needs to be checked one more time in an hour from now. I’ll be back then, alright, Mr. Cleave?” Dr. Lindemann explained. “I’m leaving you here in the locked ER 02, for your own safety, until I return.”
“Aye, daughter,” Sam tried to answer, but he had already gone to sleep minutes before.
Dr. Lindemann chuckled at the poor hero’s toils and how valiantly he had handled them, trying to feel amused enough to forget that he was terrified for his own life now that the sinister hunter with the strange gun had escaped. He closed and locked the door behind him before going to do his rounds just short of evening visiting hours. The long white corridor of Ward 3 looked especially shiny tonight, especially after the blood had been washed off the wall outside the admin office.
When he woke again, the hospital was in utter chaos. Someone was trying the door of the examination room he was in, furiously tugging at it.
“Wh-wha…what? You have the key, not me!” he shouted in a daze of delirium from the medication, thinking it was Dr. Lindemann trying to get in.
A nearby choir of screams from outside the door ripped Sam from his state, and although he was still very dizzy, he sobered up fast. What he heard was not the odd yelp of pain or fright from a patient, but a genuine situation of panic, something serious. Sam sat up to ascertain the nature of the situation, ignoring the thumping, blunt hammering in his skull.
“Mr. Cleave, open the door, please. Dr. Lindemann sent me,” a nurse said from the other side of the door. “We have to get you out of here now.”
Sam pressed his shirtless torso up against the door to better hear the nurse through the madness outside the door. “Where is the doctor?” he shouted, as a rumble of footsteps ran past the room, heading for the exit of the ward. “He’s locked me in. I have no way of opening the door. W
here is he?”
“He is in one of the nursing stations on the fourth floor, Mr. Cleave,” she informed him. “He sent me to come and get you to him so that you’d be safe in the office up there.”
“Then why didn’t he give you the keys?” Sam asked with quite a different tone, having outsmarted the charlatan on the other side of the door.
She said nothing further, which Sam had learned by now, was the prefix to violence. He put distance between himself and the door, and armed himself with scalpel. As he had predicated, a hail of bullets clapped through the door. With every shot, the door sported one more perfect hole of exploded wooden fringes, five in number with a reddish tint. The room had no window from which he could escape, so his only option was to pass the shooter.
When he saw the doorknob deform, Sam knew to ready himself. As the door swung open he charged, slamming his good fist right into the face of the dead nurse he spoke to not a minute before.
“Oh Christ!” he hissed as the assassin hiding behind her dropped her body unceremoniously to aim. Sam saw the same five holes in the woman’s body, realizing at once that the hitman had shot at the door through her body, killing her for not getting Sam to open it for her. Fighting for his life once more, the spry Sam fell to his knees and broke a cardinal rule between gentlemen in combat. He planted a wicked punch right between the shooter’s legs, instantly immobilizing him.
“Thank God you are not a Sumo wrestler,” Sam panted as the man collapsed, trying to lift the barrel to Sam’s face. But the journalist was an opportunist, and he quickly grabbed the gun. He pressed the barrel on the man’s right eye and pulled the trigger. There was no time for gathering intelligence this time, and Sam was not going to compromise his current position for the source of the hit. The back of his attacker’s head exploded from the hollow-point impact, but the ward had already been evacuated, leaving Sam’s act without witness.
The first thing he considered was the security cameras, but then realized that it would show the man shooting the nurse and attacking him. It was a clear-cut case of self-defense this time. “I have to stop doing this shit on camera, for fuck’s sake,” he wheezed, tossing the gun aside and heading out to where the police task force unit had just entered.
Sam raised his hands in surrender. Behind them was Dr. Lindemann, shouting “That is my patient! Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”
“Alright, doctor. We got it,” the sergeant shouted back as he motioned for Sam to move toward them. “How many are there?” he asked Sam.
“I have no idea. As far as I know, there was just this one, and he came for me,” Sam attested. “Until now I was locked in the examination room, sir, so I don’t know if he brought some friends.”
Suspiciously, the sergeant looked at Sam. “Why are they after you, son?”
Sam sighed. “I don’t know, sir.”
“Really,” the sergeant sneered. “I doubt that.” He gestured for his men to fan out and comb the ward and they crept in all directions, passing Sam. The sergeant pulled Sam aside.
“The doctor said that they could have something to do with a woman you brought in here a few days back,” he whispered.
“Aye, I think so, but to tell you the truth, I haven’t a clue how they are connected to her. Maybe they’re looking for her,” Sam pretended to speculate, being quite convinced that the assassins were sent by the man on the screen who insisted Sam deliver the woman.
However, being a delicate matter to Sam’s own guilt in a street murder recently, he was not about to disclose the particulars of the video clip threat. In fact, the fewer people privy to the whole affair, the better for Sam to maneuver along the pointers to find out what was going on. The law had a tendency to strangle and obstruct them with their red tape, tying up the way to truth.
“She has a name?” the sergeant pressed.
“She had amnesia, sir. The doctors just gave her a number, I think.” Sam skillfully changed the subject. “Look, can I go? I have to get this hand checked out or I’m going to lose it permanently.”
“Alright,” the sergeant conceded. “Go on.”
Sam joined up with Dr. Lindemann, waiting for him at the security point.
“My God, Mr. Cleave, you do know how to kick in a hornet’s nest, don’t you?” he told the journalist. “Let me just clean up that hand and you can go. Please. I need you to be away from me and my hospital. Too many people have died since you walked in here.”
Sam felt surprisingly bad at the doctor’s words. “Don’t worry, doc. I already feel like shit about all this. And the clincher is, I don’t even know why I’m the target.”
“Yes, I know. It’s not your fault, I suppose. But you have to be more careful about the choices you make, Mr. Cleave,” the doctor advised as he removed the bandage, revealing Sam’s swollen, purple hand.
“Jesus!” Sam whispered when he saw the condition of his blueish flesh, exacerbated by the neat row of black stitches buried in the swollen mess. “I’m going to lose my hand.”
“No, you won’t,” Dr. Lindemann consoled, “but if you don’t start staying out of other people’s business soon, you might lose your head, my friend.”
Outside, a myriad of reporters flocked to get the lowdown on the incidents that have sporadically grown worse within intervals over the last day at King George Hospital. Sam gave his statement and kept to victim obliviousness before dodging the overzealous news people. The police kept them at a safe distance as the coroner collected the victims to take them down to Upney Lane’s Nirvana Morgue.
18
Unlikely Fellows
“Your doctor has some solid advice for you there, Sam,” a woman said on approach, having broken from the group of shouting journalists. “You really should start minding your own business.”
Sam did not hide his annoyance. He sighed, “You may well think on taking that advice for yourself, Harris. It might get you killed one day.” His dark eyes narrowed at the sight of the woman who could vex him without even uttering a word. “Oh, and I hope it does.”
Jan Harris hastened toward him, looking smug as always. She had somehow bribed her way through the police barricade to address Sam.
“Who the hell is this?” Dr. Lindemann asked Sam under his breath.
“Avoid ever speaking to this bitch, doc. Remember when you thought what you know about Patient Whatever would get you murdered? Well, letting this one even know your name is damning enough, geddit?”
“If you need any more treatment, Mr. Cleave,” the doctor spoke loudly as he rose to leave, “please feel free to come in for a check-up. Good night.” With a nod to Jan Harris, he walked right past her to disappear in the group of police officers.
“So, I see you have an uncanny way of showing up where catastrophes strike, Sam,” she sneered, holding her cell phone up at him. “Or is it that you – cause – them?”
“Fuck off, Harris,” Sam recited the only mantra he deemed worthy of her.
“You had better play really nice from now on,” the conniving harpy sang happily. Her shrill, housewife-like jingle made him want to shove his fist through her teeth, but that could compromise his already teetering reputation for violence. Holding her phone up to his face came across as a juvenile display of mockery. “Why do you not answer your phone, Sam? I’ve been calling you incessantly since last we spoke, to warn you – and make you a deal.”
“I don’t make deals with losers, Harris,” Sam replied. “Knowing that destroying my phone keeps me from hearing your grating little squeak makes everything worthwhile.” He smiled at her, looking decidedly hostile.
“Now see, that attitude is precisely why you never get to the root of your personality problem, pal,” she lectured. “Did it ever occur to you that your general contempt for people, like, say, me, is causing you to miss important information? And that information,” she waved her phone from side to side, “could prove to be lethal enough to kill your career, obliterate any overrated reputation you have, or even cost you the rest of
your life in prison?”
Sam’s heart stopped. His instincts told him that whatever Jan Harris had on him was on her phone and that her so-called proposition entailed blackmail. He was not a renowned investigative journalist for nothing. Years of dealing with snakes, masked demons, and low lives had taught him how to smell out a rotten offer.
He elected to play dumb and go with the flow – for now.
“What do you have there?” he asked plainly. “I guess it has something to do with what you want to strike a deal for.”
She grinned. Sam had to clench his teeth. As she leaned in to whisper, he felt his muscles beg for action, but Sam was smart enough to restrain himself. Her perfume was like the stench of a rapist’s breath as she drew close. “I think you know what I have here. Someone you pissed off sent it to me to expose you. But since I’m such a merciful opponent, I’ll give you a chance to redeem yourself before I run this on my next slot.”
Sam didn’t look her in the eye. He kept his eyes straight ahead into the red and blue flashing lights and the chaos of the crowd. He was afraid that if he gazed upon her repulsive semblance, h’d lose control. “Tell me where the woman is, and I will instead run the clip he sent you and expose him – he gave it to me to prove that you did not comply. Hey? Hey? In turn, I will dispose of the footage where you are involved in the cold-blooded murder of eight Muslim men in an apparent xenophobic attack in Barking.”
His heart slammed like a trapped animal in a cage, but his face remained without change. She had him by the balls. That, he could not deny. Instead of losing his temper at her craven opportunism, Sam simply turned to face her and answered calmly. “Do you know who that bloke is, by the way?”
“I might,” she teased. “Where is the woman?”
The Lost Crown of the Knights Templar (Order of the Black Sun Book 19) Page 10
