by Jonas Saul
“I thought you were smart.” There was an intake of breath on the other end of the line. “I forwarded part of the email to your phone. You saw it with your own eyes. If you and Sarah are captured or killed, that doesn’t solve The Cowboy problem, does it? I need Sarah here. Then you get that Cowboy any way you see fit. At no time will I attempt to stop you. It serves no purpose for me.”
“You tried once with The Dealer.”
“So naturally you’d think I’d try again?”
“Naturally.”
“Just bring that girl.”
Frank clicked off the line. He scanned the hospital’s second floor windows. It was more than a half hour before Sarah would arrive. He needed to be inside and ready, which meant he couldn’t be out here watching for the police.
Capelli, you had better not fuck with me.
Soon the world could go on believing Sarah was dead. Then he would wait for the transfer of all the funds. He might even wait a week or two, let Silvio Capelli feel he was safe, untouchable. Allow him to believe that working with The Ghost was a mistake, but glad it was over.
Then he would come out of the shadows one night, and Capelli would feel a soft punch in the back of the head.
Frank smiled as he walked toward the main doors at the front of the hospital.
An ambulance drove by, the lights off. He slowed his pace and watched as the driver angled the vehicle to the side of the building.
Sarah?
Frank stopped and leaned against a tree. The ambulance driver got out and walked around to the back door. Another paramedic emerged from the hospital and helped to pull a stretcher out of the back of the ambulance.
A body was on the stretcher, the entire length covered in a white blanket.
A stiff being delivered to the morgue.
Frank entered the hospital, wondering how many more stiffs would visit the morgue that night.
Sarah Roberts for sure. How could one girl piss off so many people?
There was no way he would kidnap Sarah for Capelli. He didn’t work for Capelli anymore. Sarah dies, then he would take her body to Capelli.
Let’s see what he thinks about our arrangement then.
Or maybe he would just take her head.
He smiled for the second time that night.
Yeah, that’s what I’ll do.
Chapter 53
Sarah waited until the ambulance driver told her it was safe to get up.
She jumped from the stretcher and landed on both feet.
“Room 202?”
He pointed along the corridor. “At the end, take the elevator to the second floor. Your room is beside the stairwell as requested by our mutual friend.”
“Grazie.”
She took the stairs instead of the elevator. Once on the second floor, she went door to door in search of a linen closet of some kind.
Four doors down from room 202, she entered the janitor’s room and almost tripped over the bucket and mop sitting just inside the door.
Once the door was shut, she secured it from the inside and moved back to the far wall to wait. Only twenty minutes left until showtime.
The only setback would be if De Luca sent another hired gun in his place, but Sarah didn’t think he would. Getting to her had become personal for him. Almost killing her in the explosion wouldn’t be enough. He would want to be the one to do it now so he could guarantee it was done right.
He had a name to live up to. He was The Ghost, and Sarah had seen his face. That was enough to make sure he was here tonight.
She could handle him. She only hoped The Cowboy did his part and rallied Interpol to swoop in and pick up Delarusso and Capelli simultaneously just after midnight.
The evidence was too hard to ignore. These men had to answer for what they had done, the lives they had ruined.
Knowing those men were taken care of, Sarah could focus on making sure Frank De Luca answered for what he had done.
She would have it no other way.
Chapter 54
Frank wandered around the main entrance of the hospital, learning its hallways, exit points, and then waited on a bench outside, holding a newspaper in front of his face.
At midnight, the hospital remained quiet. He waited until five minutes after. No ambulance movement and no one being rushed to emergency as far as he could tell.
Did Sarah set me up?
It was a small hospital in a city of 17,000. At this late hour, they were on midnight staff, most patients asleep.
The hospital and surrounding area remained quiet. No cops.
Frank waited a few more minutes, keeping a sharp eye on the grounds. He neatly folded the newspaper, set it down on the bench, and strode inside the hospital.
The clock on the wall said it was eight minutes past midnight. At the admittance desk, he smiled at the woman.
“Can I help you?” she asked in Italian.
“I’m looking for a friend who was admitted earlier.”
“Visiting hours are over.”
Inside, he chastised himself for not thinking this through better. Outside, he appeared calm, understanding.
“Of course,” he offered her a smile. “This friend is more of a girlfriend. She was hurt this evening. Sarah Roberts. Could you look her name up and at least reassure me she’s in your system.”
The woman turned to her computer and typed, then used her mouse.
“Yes, we have her here.” The woman turned back to him. “But you’ll have to come back tomorrow.”
“Of course,” he said.
He adjusted his jacket and walked outside. Once out of her sight, he headed along the side of the building around toward the emergency doors. A quick check of the area, the parking lot, and the streets reassured him his allies weren’t liars. He detected no police presence.
He changed his tactics once inside emerg. One of the ambulance attendants he’d seen earlier was eating a sandwich while typing into his phone.
“Can you help me?” he asked in a panic.
“Sure,” the guy said, his mouth half full.
“Where would they put a gunshot victim? What floor?”
“That depends. They would be brought in and probably head straight to surgery. That’s all on the second floor. Depending on the outcome, they could go to recover on the third or fourth floor, but they may end up in ICU for a while.”
“Thanks, you’re a pal.”
Frank hurried for the stairwell.
When he hit the door, he glanced back and saw the ambulance driver eating again, staring down at his phone.
On the second floor, Frank entered the first room. An old man slept in the near dark, a small light on the end table lit up the corner by the window. The man’s leg, in a cast, suspended from chains in the ceiling.
Frank opened the closet doors quietly and found a hospital gown. He slipped it on over his clothes and tied it so tight that most of his clothes weren’t visible.
His pants could be seen under the gown, but he wanted to hide from patients, not hospital personnel.
He pulled out his gun and placed it against his leg, then slipped out of the room.
A lone woman sat behind a counter in the middle of the hall. The late-shift nurse. He was so close to Sarah he could almost feel it.
As he approached, the nurse looked up. “What are you up so late for? What room are you in?”
“Couldn’t sleep,” he said.
Without losing a step, he walked around the counter and entered from the back.
“Hey, you can’t come back here—”
She pulled away from him, but he grabbed her arm and pulled her close.
“Where’s the morphine?”
She grunted under his grip, trying to fight him, dislodge his hand.
He dropped forehead which connected with the bridge of her nose. She tried to cry out, but he covered her mouth to eclipse any sound. Her eyes watered and she groaned as blood seeped from her nostrils.
He released her mouth so
she could breathe and then asked again, “Where’s the morphine?”
She wiped blood off her mouth and held her nose with both hands.
“You broke my nose,” she said in a nasally voice.
“Morphine?”
She pointed toward the room behind the desk area.
“Show me.”
He grabbed her arm and dragged her toward the room.
“Fill two syringes with enough morphine to knock someone out,” he said. “Do it fast or you’ll need some yourself.”
He aimed the weapon at her chest.
Shaking, the woman used a key to open a cabinet and ripped the packaging off two needles. After filling both needles to the top, she held them out for him.
He took one needle and nodded at her, “Stick yourself in the thigh.”
Her eyes widened as she looked at the needle.
He brought his arm up and looked at his watch. “I’ll give you three seconds to do it, or I shoot you.”
Blood dripped off her chin, landing in tiny splats on the hospital floor in front of her shoes. She looked down at it, then back at him.
“One …”
She got down slowly, and placed her butt on the floor.
“Two …”
She rolled her white uniform up to expose her thigh and brought the needle to the edge of her skin.
“Three …”
She pushed the needle in and plunged the morphine into her blood stream. Then she laid her head back and waited.
He moved backwards, the gun still aimed at her, and shut the door to the back room. He lowered the weapon out of sight in case someone new was in the corridor and watched her through the glass window. After half a minute, she remained motionless.
It was already fifteen minutes after twelve. Sarah Roberts was likely on this floor. According to the email, she had a bullet wound.
So how come there wasn’t any noise? No doctors in surgery scrubs, no one coming or going?
Something about this was wrong on so many levels.
The urge to leave the hospital and go after her at a later date struck him. Was he getting sloppy because of his emotions?
He wondered if Sarah could be that good to have both Delarusso’s and Capelli’s emails and set it up so that he would be forced to come here.
No, he didn’t think so. She was a child playing in an adult’s world. She was here. She was in the hospital. The police weren’t coming. Delarusso wouldn’t risk pissing him off.
With the gun in one hand and the syringe in the other, Frank left the nurse’s station to look for Sarah.
Chapter 55
Sarah placed the janitor’s coat around her shoulders. The jacket was too big, but it wrapped her up well enough to cover her clothes. She transferred the gun into the coat pocket and then pulled her hair into a tight bun and placed a cap on her head to hold the hair in.
Then she wet her hands and applied a touch of dirt to each cheek. Once she was ready, she added water to the bucket.
It was just after midnight. Whoever was coming for her would be here already.
She opened the door, turned around and walked out backwards, pulling the mop and bucket with her. She dipped the mop in the water, twisted it and then wrung it out.
When the mop hit the floor, she nonchalantly gazed toward room 202. The nurse’s station was behind her. Someone was walking her way, their shoes not clanking down, but squeezing softly on the waxed floor.
Frank?
The shoes drew closer. She estimated ten feet in distance. Then six. Then five.
If the person was hospital personnel, she would apologize at her response and explain that she was startled.
The shoes slowed behind her.
She gripped the mop’s wooden handle tight. Then she dropped and spun, swinging the mop in a wide arc, aiming for the feet of the person behind her.
A gun fired, the report extremely loud.
The mop connected with Frank’s left shin. He bent over, but didn’t fall.
Her body surged into panic mode. She spun the mop handle up and swiped at his gun before he could right himself and try to shoot again. The tip of the mop connected with the barrel of the weapon solidly, knocking it from Frank’s grip. The gun already forgotten, he lunged at her with his other hand. She didn’t have time to examine what was in that hand as she let go of the mop and thrust upwards, her fist heading for his groin. He sidestepped, and she missed.
A sharp bee sting hit her side.
They were too close. She was still low to the ground, Frank standing above her. She needed to move away to collect herself.
She tried to dive away, but there was resistance on her side where she had felt the sharp pain.
Frank grunted and slipped on the wet floor where she had just mopped.
Both of them hit the floor four feet from each other. Their eyes met. Without wasting time, Sarah looked down at her side to see what stung her.
A needle.
“What did you—”
She yanked the needle out, a tiny squirt of blood coming with it. The needle had been plunged about a quarter of the way.
When she looked up, he had retrieved his gun.
They both heard the sirens at the same time.
“Hey,” someone from down the hallway said.
Another door opened as patients woke up.
A door opened at the end of the corridor. Frank fired his weapon that way. The door slammed shut.
Sarah frantically reached into the janitor’s pocket and grabbed her gun, but her body felt weak, liquid.
“Don’t,” Frank said.
Darwin’s gun was broken. It was risky pulling out a useless gun, but she had no other play.
The sirens were close.
“Get up,” Frank said.
She let go of the gun, her vision blurring.
He grabbed her arm and yanked her to her feet.
“You just got a small extension on life. You’re going to help me get out of here.”
She felt woozy, but she had to fight him. Her attempt to struggle was futile.
The sirens were so loud she thought police cars had entered the second floor.
Her eyes got heavy.
How could I let this happen?
She had a plan. They had a plan. The authorities were supposed to be waiting until just after midnight to pick up Delarusso and Capelli. Sarah was to handle The Ghost.
She had a mop, a bucket and a will to fight. He was a professional. But so was she. It was supposed to work.
But now she was being dragged down stairs. Someone yelled. A gun went off somewhere.
She barely winced at the sound. Whatever he had pricked her with coursed through her bloodstream.
I’m so sorry, Aaron …
Chapter 56
Frank couldn’t believe Delarusso or Capelli would risk the police coming down on him. The nurse was out cold, possibly dying from an overdose. The gunfire would have woken up people, but the police response was too swift to be because of that.
Someone had double crossed him. If he walked out of the hospital alone, he suspected he’d be shot. Walking out with Sarah was no guarantee of safety, but it was all he had.
At the bottom of the stairs, as he pulled Sarah along the corridor toward the exit, officers ran in through the far doors, guns drawn.
He fired at them. They didn’t return fire. He held a hospital employee in his arms. Sarah in the janitor’s jacket gave him an edge.
He turned toward the emergency doors.
Someone shouted commands from outside.
The same paramedic who had been eating a sandwich earlier stood outside watching all the police cars and officers form a perimeter around the building. Frank yanked Sarah along with him until he was behind the paramedic.
Startled, the kid spun around and jumped back.
“Open the ambulance’s back door,” Frank ordered, waving his gun impatiently.
The kid rushed to do as he was told.
