Concierge

by Stella Barcelona

Continuing down the block, past a flatbread truck with stereo speakers the size of refrigerators cranked up, Gabe couldn’t hear what his brother was saying even if he tried. Which he didn’t. He reached Esplanade, and stepped into the back of Marvin’s SUV and relative quiet. Both Marvin and his son, Billy, who had his father’s full, dark hair and eyes, glanced at him expectantly.

  “Anything?” Marvin asked.

  Gabe shook his head and pointed to his ear. “No,” he mouthed, “I’m on a call.”

  “Your display with Richie, from what I heard—and yes, I was damn well listening to every second of it,” Zeus continued, “—has me worried.

  “Where to?” Marvin asked.

  “Home.”

  “What the hell, Gabe,” Zeus said. “Did you just say that?”

  “Um, Angel. Did you hear what you just said?” His brother’s worry had crept into Ragno’s tone.

  “Yeah.” Sinking into the seat, his gut twisted. Not because he’d used the H word. That he was building his dream house near Last Resort, outside of Atlanta, Georgia, no longer mattered, because his dreams had drastically changed. His greatest desire now resided far from there. Home for him, for now, and for as long as he could imagine, was with Andi.

  His gut pained him because he was now heading home and was going to have to report to Andi that they had nothing. Nothing. And each time he had to say ‘I’ll find him’, without anything solid to go on, his heart ached for her. For Pic.

  People don’t simply disappear. Not unless there’s big trouble. Not when Black Raven is looking for them.

  “Home? You’re on a job, Gabe. Do not make me sorry I trusted that you could handle the screw-up with this client,” Zeus said, “even though you’re now balls-deep in the job.”

  Eyes on trees from which glittering Mardi Gras beads hung, Gabe thought about his brother’s recent history. “You’re one to talk. I can think of two jobs when you were balls-deep.”

  With a whoosh, his brother let out a deep breath. “Okay. You’ve got me on that. Which means you should damn well listen, because I know what I’m—”

  “Message received. I’ve got more important things to do now than swallow a sour-tasting spoonful of brotherly love. So shut the fu—”

  “Before you two devolve further into a pissing contest, Gabe, please listen to Zeus. Even if Richie’s lying—” Ragno paused for a moment. “—your human punching-bag demonstration suggests that a bit of perspective is warranted.”

  “Which begs the question,” Zeus said. “Just how serious is this?”

  As goddamn serious as she’ll let me be.

  “You told me that with Samantha, you just knew. I never understood it, till now, okay? So butt out, brother. Message received. I’m treading carefully.”

  “She’s thinking the same as you?”

  Fuck me to hell. Would you just let up?

  “We’re not quite on the same wavelength.” Gabe tried to keep his voice low, so that his personal drama didn’t reach Marvin and Billy.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “It’s complicated.” They crossed Rampart Street, and traveled down Esplanade, along the border of the French Quarter.

  “Open line,” Ragno interrupted. “Brandon’s calling Code Blue.”

  Gabe immediately sat up, alert, his eyes scanning the traffic, the pedestrians, counting the minutes and seconds it would take to get home. Code Blue meant client in peril. Since Brandon was the agent in charge at Andi’s house, that meant she was in trouble.

  “Medical emergency. One minute in.” Brandon’s voice was calm. Low, yet conveying urgency. “Andi’s passed out. Not waking up. Emergency—”

  Seven blocks. Esplanade to Royal and I’m there. Two stoplights. Traffic’s crawling.

  “…are on their way. Agents, get cars. Stat.”

  I can run faster.

  Gabe opened the door, his feet hitting the ground before the SUV fully stopped. Over his shoulder, he yelled to Marvin. “Medical emergency. Andi. Head there.”

  Running hard, Gabe dodged pedestrians. One block down. In his mic, with open audio to Brandon and all teams listening in, he said, “I’m four minutes out. Talk to me.”

  “Juliette—”

  “Who?”

  “Spa service provider.”

  Gabe dodged a family of two adults, two toddlers, and two rottweilers. One dog lunged, with a growl, as Gabe remembered the detail from the client file. “Got it.” He leapt away from the open jaws. “Saturday’s her regular morning.”

  Juliette. One of the few people Andi felt comfortable touching her. The esthetician had been a regular at her home for a year and a half, and had been referred by Taylor Morrissey.

  “Continue mouth to mouth,” Brandon instructed someone, presumably an agent at Andi’s side.

  Holy shit! “She’s not breathing on her own?”

  Silence.

  Hell! Hell! Hell! No! This can’t be happening.

  “Agents Stevens and Williams—mobilize vehicles.” Brandon’s words, efficient and terse, conveyed frustration. “As best you can.”

  Gabe knew it would be an exercise in futility to get to the Black Raven cars that were garaged two blocks away from Andi’s house. When more agents had arrived, they had expanded their vehicle coverage. But it did little good now, with traffic and blockades. Even with permission from officials, driving on French Quarter streets meant that barricades needed to be moved on each corner.

  A crowd spilling out of a busy restaurant filled the sidewalk. Gabe ran into the street, between parked cars and moving traffic. A large truck, turning at a corner, missed his left knee by an inch.

  “Brandon—pulse?” He’d been a field agent long enough to know the moment that life came down to a simple number, when someone’s existence hung in the balance between this world and the next.

  Because Brandon was willing to relinquish control over her to medical staff, he knew they were at that moment.

  “Checking.”

  Pain ripped through his midsection as he waited for a response. Three and a half blocks down. More than halfway there. In the silence that met his mic, he heard sirens. Gabe dodged a trio of musicians, instruments slung over their shoulders. As fear-fueled adrenaline surged through his body, he fought for calmness.

  This will work out. It will. It will.

  “Gabe, she’s fading. Stay with me, honey.” The concern in Brandon’s voice, apparent through the mic system, turned Gabe’s blood to an icy, turbulent river. “Come on, Andi.”

  Feeling like a part of him died with each step that he took, Gabe turned right on Royal Street. With the shift in direction, the sirens grew louder. He was momentarily grateful he was on a street that was closed to vehicular traffic, because the street gave pedestrians more room to spread out. He sprinted down the middle. Rather than go around a decorative barricade that was designed to keep cars out, he leapt over it.

  “Brandon?”

  “Pulse is now steady at fifty-two. Before we instituted mouth to mouth, it was dropping below fifty BPM—”

  “Hell! Heart failure?”

  “Don’t know. Gabe, Ragno, teams—EMS has arrived. Our vehicles have not. Given condition, EMS control is best option. You copy?”

  Which meant Brandon was overriding a basic Black Raven rule on a security detail—never relinquish physical control of a client, unless life is in peril. As the severity of Andi’s condition became as much a reality for him as each breath of air that he took, Gabe found strength to run faster.

  “Copy,” Ragno said.

  “Gabe? You copy?”

  “Copy.”

  Two blocks left.

  “Andi’s healthy. Fit. Young.” Jogging around a group of men who wore tight red shorts and were holding beer cans, he continued, “No medical illness. This makes no sense.”

  “EMS is wasting no time. She’s on a stretcher. They’ve got oxygen, loading her in. I’ll accompany her to the hospital, Gabe, if you’re not here.”

&
nbsp; Through Brandon’s mic, Gabe heard the paramedic say, “No, sir. No ride along. Follow us.”

  “Ochsner,” Brandon said. “Main Campus.”

  “No, sir,” the EMT said in a firm voice. “With the patient in this state, we need to get to the nearest level one trauma center. That would be University Hospital.”

  Turning down the side street, Gabe saw the ambulance, red light flashing, siren wailing. The back door remained open. A blue-clad EMT was inside, leaning over the stretcher.

  “Twenty steps away,” Gabe said. “I’ll go with her.”

  Desperate for a sight of her, Gabe kept running, weaving through a crowd of on-looking pedestrians as two EMTs stepped inside and started shutting the door. From ten feet away, he watched them push Brandon away.

  Through the last few inches of the open door, Gabe heard the EMT say, “Please follow us to University Hospital, sir.”

  The tires screeched, leaving Gabe in the middle of the street. He sucked in air, trying to regain his breath from the sprint. Four other Black Raven agents, including Brandon, looked at him with eyes filled with worry and concern as the ambulance drove away. Pedestrians made way for the screeching vehicle, then filtered back into the street as it disappeared.

  “Drivers?” Brandon asked.

  “At garage,” an agent reported. “Talking to the NOPD. Traffic cops have the street barricaded. They’re not giving us clearance for driving. We’re telling them it’s a medical emergency, and they’re telling us they need verification, if you can believe that. They’re saying that’s the reason emergency medical support is staged throughout the Quarter.”

  “Ragno,” Gabe said, his eyes glued to his last vision of the departing ambulance. “Can you get a satellite read on the ambulance? We’ve lost sight of the ambulance. I repeat. We lost sight of her.”

  “Copy,” Ragno said. “All agents. Marking zero hour. Client out of our control at nine fifty a.m., Central Time.”

  “Ambulance turned right on Bourbon.” Gabe ran, his eyes glued to the ambulance as it made its way down the street. “At last sight, it was heading toward Esplanade.”

  “Marvin?” Brandon, running in step with Gabe, pulled his phone out of his pocket. He grabbed Gabe’s arm, as the ambulance disappeared across Esplanade, two blocks ahead of them. “Follow me. He’s four blocks away. He’ll get us there ASAP.”

  Because Andi’s life being on the line was too difficult to bear, Gabe promised himself that next year, they would not be in New Orleans for Mardi Gras. For others, it might be the best party in the world. To him, it would always be a logistical nightmare. Through his mic, he talked to Brandon as they weaved their way through meandering pedestrians. “This isn’t making sense. Just like Richie’s story about Pic makes no sense. Andi’s healthy. Fighting fit. She’s been a great workout partner for me. All week.”

  “Stress?”

  “Yeah.” Gabe side-stepped a group of three men dressed in pink polka-dot dresses, carrying white poodles, “But she’s certainly faced that before. Ragno, you listening?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I’ll contribute when I have something. Accessing satellite imagery. Cloud cover remains a problem. Also having my agents utilize cameras that we accessed previously in the search for Pic. I’m following you, though. Agree with where you’re going, Gabe.”

  “Andi passed out when she was with Juliette, correct?”

  “Correct,” Brandon answered.

  “Sir?” A voice broke into their mic system.

  “Yes?” Brandon said.

  “A second ambulance has arrived. Same company. Crescent EMTs.”

  Brandon and Gabe glanced at each other. A sliver of uneasiness trickled down Gabe’s spine.

  “Communicate with their home base. Figure out the source of the confusion.”

  “Who dialed 9-1-1?” Gabe asked.

  “Juliette initiated the call as she yelled for us,” Brandon said, glancing at Gabe as he ran. “I ran up the stairs as she provided information. I took the phone from her, assessed Andi, responded to the operator’s questions, and completed the call. Then called Code Blue, alerting you.”

  He’d followed proper procedure. “No one else was there when Andi passed out?”

  Gabe saw Marvin’s SUV in the distance, doors open for them.

  “Correct.”

  Another voice broke into their mic system. “Sir?”

  Brandon responded. “Copy.”

  “Juliette is attempting to depart the premises.”

  “No!” Gabe, Brandon, and Ragno answered at the same time.

  “Roger.”

  “Let her know medical personnel will have questions,” Gabe said, his eyes on Brandon, who gave him a nod. “Or make up something else. Under no circumstances can she leave. I don’t care if you have to cuff her to the dining room table.”

  Brandon and Gabe jumped into Marvin’s car. Seventeen excruciating minutes later, Marvin pulled into University Hospital, where the triage nurse looked at Gabe and Brandon as if they were spouting gibberish.

  “One at a time. What name was that again?”

  “Andi Hutchenson,” Gabe said.

  Checking her desktop computer, she shook her head. Again. Cast them an uneasy look. “And when do you believe she was admitted?”

  “I know she was admitted within the last fifteen minutes. EMT’s brought her here. White female,” Gabe said. “Picked up at her residence in the French Quarter. Unconscious, unless she awakened on the way here. Twenty-seven years old. Petite. Dark hair.”

  The dark-haired, dark-eyed nurse’s stern expression shifted towards something a little more sympathetic as she listened to Gabe. “Only thing we’ve gotten via EMT in the last half hour was a 45-year old black man who’d been stabbed.” She glanced at her computer monitor. Clicked a few keypad strokes, narrowed her eyes, and studied the screen. “I’ve now checked our records for the last two hours. Nothing. She’s not here.”

  “I requested Ochsner,” Brandon said. “The EMT’s were emphatic they were bringing her here, saying they needed to get her to the nearest Level One Trauma Center.”

  “Well, from the Quarter, that would be us.”

  Gabe glanced behind her as double doors opened and a tall man with brown hair and green eyes came out. He sat at the desk next to the other nurse, glanced over their shoulders into the crowded waiting room, and sighed, as he muttered under his breath, “I fucking hate Mardi Gras.”

  Makes two of us.

  Through the open doors that revealed the inner workings of the ER, Gabe saw people clad in scrubs, two patients lying on stretchers in the hallway, and a buzz of activity around a central station. All the activity of a busy ER in a crowded city. No sight of Andi. As icicles of fear pierced his chest, Gabe said, “This isn’t possible.”

  The nurse arched an eyebrow. “Trust me, this kind of mistake happens. Let’s check Ochsner. And East Jefferson.”

  “Name on the ambulance was Crescent EMT. A fleur de lis for the T.”

  The nurse nodded. “There are others, but Crescent seems to be the exclusive outfit for Mardi Gras staging in the Quarter. We’ll call them.” Eyes shifting from Brandon, to Gabe, then back to Brandon, she added, “Don’t worry. We’ll find her.”

  “Ragno,” Gabe said, feeling like he had officially entered an upside-down universe where nothing made sense. “Any luck with satellite feeds?”

  “Cloud cover’s a problem. I’m operating with a twenty-minute lag. We were able to trace the ambulance as it turned onto Bourbon. It crossed Esplanade, presumably to avoid gridlock there. Then the clouds got in the way. I’ll keep looking.”

  In the longest minutes of Gabe’s life, Black Raven learned that Crescent EMTs had no record of the first ambulance that had appeared at the townhome. As he discovered that no hospitals in the nearby vicinity had admitted Andi, cold calmness settled into every molecule of Gabe’s body. Mind. Gut. Extremities.

  “Brandon, what are Louisiana EMT rules for transporting a patient who d
ies en route to the hospital?” The question came from Zeus, who was now remotely monitoring New Orleans area emergency room intake.

  Gabe, stunned by the hard logic behind the question, had to go outside.

  “Likely scenario is EMT’s will engage in resuscitation procedure.” Brandon slipped into lawyer mode as he answered Zeus’s question. Voice calm. Authoritative. “ER physician would make the call whether to continue that effort. Louisiana does not have direct delivery to coroner’s office by EMTs.”

  “Okay,” Zeus said. “So she’ll arrive at an area emergency room, alive or…

  Not going there.

  Clipped commands from Zeus and Ragno sent Black Raven into crisis mode. Agents were immediately dispatched to University Hospital, awaiting Andi’s arrival.

  Likelihood? Slim to none.

  There was no logical reason why it would take an ambulance this long to reach its destination. None. Zip. Zero.

  His heart thudded in his ears as he tried to suppress his overactive imagination from coming up with crazy, wild scenarios for Andi's disappearance. The other question circling his brain like acid was—had Andi been alive when they'd loaded her onto that ambulance? Or had they—whoever the hell “they” were—killed her and then whisked away her body?

  But why? This makes no sense.

  Zeus’s team of cyber agents, operating at Ragno’s side in Denver, were monitoring patient intake at other area hospitals.

  Drawing deep gulps of fresh air, Gabe slid into the back seat of Marvin’s car. As Brandon, in communication with Zeus and Ragno, discussed the logistics behind assembling a crisis support team at the New Orleans Lakefront Airport, Gabe focused on where things had stopped making sense. Upon arriving back at the townhouse, he stalked into the library, where Juliette sat on the couch, tapping her foot in irritation. Her face became a study of concern as she got to her feet. “How is she?”

  “Maybe you’d like to tell us,” Gabe said, approaching her from the doorway.

  Her perky damned ponytail swished over her shoulder. Her eyes widened. “How would I know?”

  “Gabe,” Zeus growled into his mic. “Remain calm. At this point, all we know is that Andi became ill while this woman was giving her a manicure and pedicure.”