‘Because she was a woman?’
Lock looked straight into Carrie’s eyes. ‘Because she was pregnant. I was aiming dead centre.’
Carrie smoothed her hands across his face, and kissed him softly on the lips. ‘You did the right thing.’
‘But if I’d taken the shot everyone inside the car would have been OK. Have you had any word on how they are yet?’
‘Shaken up real bad, but OK. No word yet on the daughter.’ She hesitated. ‘We’ve also had a report of a multiple homicide over in Oakland. Mom, Dad, two kids. All with their throats cut. Think that had anything to do with Reaper and his daughter?’
‘Sounds like their work.’ Lock took a deep breath and turned towards Ty. ‘Let’s keep looking.’
As he leaned in to kiss Carrie, he swayed, his legs almost folding beneath him. Carrie and Ty caught him between them.
‘I’m fine,’ he said, brushing off their help.
Carrie pointed behind them where an EMS ambulance was parked, the two-man crew taking a brief water break.
‘I got it,’ said Ty, jogging towards them.
‘You need to take care of yourself, Ryan,’ Carrie said. ‘Please, for my sake?’
‘OK,’ Lock said, sighing. ‘But if they give me the all-clear we keep looking for Chance. We’re not safe yet.’
One of the paramedics headed back over with Ty. ‘Sit down on the kerb for me, sir.’
Lock sat, his head in his hands. He was dog-tired.
The paramedic began to run through the usual checks.
‘We’re looking for someone who got lost in the crowd,’ Lock said.
‘Open your eyes for me,’ said the paramedic, checking out Lock’s pupil dilation.
‘White woman. Mid twenties. Blonde hair. She was wearing jeans and a white T-shirt, sneakers. They were white as well.’
‘Could you look up for me?’ the paramedic said.
‘And she was pregnant. Maybe, I dunno, about four months. Not huge, but enough of a bump to be noticeable.’
‘Couple of tattoos? Kind of messed-up ones?’
Lock made eye contact. ‘Yeah. Where’d you see her?’
‘See her? We just dropped her off at St Francis. She said she was having a miscarriage. I tried to take a look at her, but she freaked out. I think she might have just been in shock. But better safe than sorry with someone in that condition, right?’
Elbowing the paramedic aside, Lock jumped to his feet. Carrie was standing by the mini-van, Ty at her side. Exhaustion forgotten, he ran over to them. ‘Quick, where’d they take the President and his family?’
Carrie thought for a moment. ‘St Francis. Why?’
‘Because we have to get over there — now!’
69
The hospital was chaotic. Cops, doctors, nurses and the walking wounded from the blast filled the waiting area. Chance had been handed a stack of forms then left to her own devices. No one gave her a second look.
She flagged down a passing nurse. ‘Is there a ladies’ room?’
‘Down there, honey,’ the nurse said, gesturing further down a corridor that led towards the treatment rooms.
Chance had dumped her backpack back at the scene. All she had now were the clothes she was standing in, and her knife. But that was hidden. Which was why she’d freaked out when the paramedic had tried to examine her.
She slipped into the relative cool of the ladies’ room and locked herself in one of the stalls. With the knife retrieved, she walked back out, using the pretext of getting cleaned up to wait at the sinks without arousing suspicion.
She didn’t have long to wait for what she needed. A harassed-looking resident ran towards a stall, firing a ‘Can’t even get the time to have a pee in this place’ before stepping inside.
With three quick steps, Chance was at the stall door before the woman could lock it.
‘What the-’
Chance pushed her back and held the knife to her throat. ‘One more word and you die. Nod if you understand me. Now, get undressed.’
The resident stripped out of her scrubs. Chance took off her own jeans and T-shirt and donned the scrubs. Then she slashed a strip from the jeans, and did the same with the T-shirt. She jammed a piece of T-shirt into the resident’s mouth and tied the young woman’s hands behind her back with the denim strip.
‘OK, turn round.’
The resident banged her shins against the toilet bowl as she did so, her cry of pain and then her screams muffled as Chance reached round and slashed her throat, making sure to slice the carotid artery.
One good thing about what she was wearing, Chance thought as she left the ladies’ room: no one was going to notice a little blood.
70
St Francis Hospital was four blocks away and the roads were crammed with bumper-to-bumper traffic. Lock and Ty ran, as best they could, towards it, as Carrie tried to get word to the hospital — a task complicated by the fact that the cell phone network was seriously overloaded, as was the hospital’s switchboard.
There was no sign of the civil unrest or the race war Reaper had been aiming for. From what Carrie had gleaned, the country was still in shock. But, so far at least, people were being drawn together by their collective fear rather than divided by it. Lock, however, knew that this might not hold if Chance got to finish her mission.
He was forced to stop to catch his breath, hands on knees. He could see the entrance to the hospital up ahead.
‘We’re gonna have to clear people out of the way,’ he told Ty. ‘If she’s in there and about to make a move, she’s going to be relying on hiding in the crowd.’
‘OK, I’ll see you up there,’ said Ty, moving off, his long legs carrying him faster than Lock could manage.
Lock straightened up and broke into a semi-run, pushing himself through the pain. He turned left on to Pine Street, the doors of the emergency room in plain view.
It was chaos, far beyond a normal big-city emergency room. Triage had spilled out on to the sidewalk. Lock managed to walk straight in, past Ty, who was engaged in a heated argument with a couple of security guards. In the main foyer he spotted a couple of Secret Service agents having a vehement discussion of their own with a guy in a suit and a St Francis Hospital badge that identified him as some sort of manager.
‘We need this whole front area clear,’ they were yelling. ‘The President’s going to make a statement.’
‘Then book a goddamn hotel,’ the manager yelled back. ‘This is a hospital.’
Lock left them to it, walking on, up a long corridor with rooms off it. Ten doors ahead he saw a phalanx of Secret Service personnel, some in suits, some in T-shirts or windbreakers. He jogged towards them.
Chance stood in a private room, her back pressed against the door. The patient occupying the room was too far gone to offer any resistance. Rather than stab him, she had cut his oxygen line and let nature take its course.
Further down the corridor was where she guessed the President was holding vigil with his family. There were too many people there, so she’d waited. There was chatter about a press conference out front — she had heard a couple of yuppie types talking about it just before she elected to duck in here. All she had to do now was bide her time.
The President held his youngest daughter’s hand, watched her heart monitor and prayed. Right here, right now, the weight of parenthood was making him feel like the most impotent man in the world rather than the most powerful.
The door opened. A staffer tiptoed in and bent down next to him. ‘Sir, they’re ready for you out front.’
He nodded and got to his feet. ‘Give me a second here, Rob. Then I’ll be right out.’
‘Yes, Mr President.’
He bent down and softly kissed his daughter’s forehead. ‘I’ll be right back, sweetheart. OK? And I still haven’t forgotten about that sundae I owe you and your sister.’
He straightened up, sliding on his game-face at the same time as the door opened again and the head of his personal escort section walked in.