He dry-mopped his way up the hallway, working the baseboards and keeping his face turned away from the camera. The open door to his target was less than twenty yards away.
Timber could feel the hard flat blade of the ceramic knife against his skin where his sock held it to his right ankle. He’d learned in Rawlins to always be aware of his hidden shiv and to practice pulling it out as swiftly as possible, but at the same time to never look down at it, even instinctively.
—
ONCE, he’d had a confrontation with a beaner who’d just arrived in the general population and didn’t know enough to show Timber the deference he deserved. The two had squared off in the corner of the yard. Words were exchanged, and Timber held his ground. Then the man had glanced down toward his shoe right in the middle of the stare-down.
The beaner hadn’t gone for it, but he didn’t need to. He’d all but told Timber that, yes, he had a knife.
Timber hadn’t hesitated. He’d pulled his own shiv and slashed the beaner’s throat with one swift move, then discarded his knife through the chain-link fence. The beaner went down. Timber stood back and saw the guards pull a sharpened toothbrush from the beaner’s sock.
They’d suspected Timber for the attack but couldn’t prove it. And the beaner knew if he talked to them he’d never talk again.
—
SO TIMBER NEVER LOOKED down at his right ankle, even as he parked the service cart in front of the hospital room doorway, leaving just enough space for him to enter behind his mop.
She was in bed, of course. Her eyes were closed and she was breathing softly. Her face was slack and bruised, but he recognized her from the photo they’d provided him. She was a hottie, all right.
Dallas, he thought, was a damned fool.
—
TIMBER THOUGHT HE HEARD a door open out in the hallway, the door that was marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY, so even though he was now in the girl’s room, he bent his head down and concentrated on mopping. If the person coming down the hall looked over the cart into the room, all they’d see was the hunched-over back of a janitor.
When he didn’t hear footsteps, he guessed that whoever had opened the door had turned around and gone back down the hall. Probably a woman who’d forgotten something, he thought.
He leaned his mop handle against the foot of the girl’s bed and bent to retrieve the ceramic knife. He fixed his eyes on her exposed white throat.
Timber started to hitch up his pant leg when he sensed a presence behind him. He rose quickly and reached for the mop handle to look the part when he felt a heavy blow on the right side of his head that disoriented him and made him let go of the mop.
Suddenly, roughly, he was physically turned around and shoved into the hallway. He ran into his cart and it rolled away. He tried to turn his head to see who was behind him, but another sharp blow created an explosion of stars in his eyes.
He was stunned and moving fast now—pushed and prodded so quickly he nearly tripped. He instinctively held his hands out in front of his face because he still couldn’t see through the stars and he didn’t want to be slammed into a concrete wall.
Timber felt a strong grip on the back of his belt, shoving him forward and guiding him at the same time. He shouted, “Hey! Who are you?”
His forearms thumped into a glass door, but he protected his face. It didn’t matter, though, because the door gave way and it was cold and fresh-smelling, and whoever had him by the belt suddenly lifted him up just as his abdomen struck a metal rail of some kind.
The railing didn’t stop his momentum and he was lifted up and over it, and he couldn’t see or feel a thing for several seconds as he dropped through the air.
Then he did.
32
Joe winced as the emergency room doctor looped another stitch through his scalp to close the bullet wound. He kept his eyes averted and on Marybeth, who had marched him directly to the ER when he arrived at two in the morning. The doctor was a young South Asian man with a starter mustache and hipster glasses.
“Tell the financial people to put this on our tab,” Marybeth said to the doctor, who smiled but indicated with a shrug he had nothing to do with billing.
“Don’t worry,” she said, sounding exasperated. “I’ll tell them.”
It was clear to Joe by the way she said it that the insurance coverage was still a mess. He tried not to worry about it now.
—
AFTER THE DOCTOR CONFIRMED that Joe hadn’t had a concussion, he peeled off his gloves and said, “You look like you’ll make it, but you’ll probably have a pretty good scar.”
Joe nodded.
“We’re required to report bullet wounds.”
“Go ahead,” Joe said, “but I think they’ve got that part covered back in Wyoming.”
“You people shoot each other a lot, don’t you?” the doctor said with disdain.
“Not really.”
“Don’t you all have guns?”
“Yup. So do you folks in Montana.”
“I’m from Islamabad, Pakistan,” the doctor said.
“Ah, that peaceful place.”
“I’ll leave you two now,” the doctor said haughtily. “There will be somebody in here in a few minutes to dress that injury.”
“Thank you,” Joe said. “You probably did a better job than I did in a truck mirror.”
“Obviously, yes,” the doctor said, rolling his eyes, as he turned and walked out the door.
“Pleasant fellow,” Joe said to Marybeth.
“I have to say I like the doctors upstairs much better,” she stated.
—
“I’M SO GLAD you made it here,” Marybeth said, sitting on the raised vinyl half-bed with him. “April could regain consciousness any minute. She’s coming out of the coma quicker than they thought she would. I called the girls and they’re getting a ride here on the hotel shuttle.”
She said, “It’s been a crazy night here. Some hospital janitor jumped off the balcony on our floor—the same balcony Sheridan and Lucy were standing on earlier. It happened while the three of us were at dinner. They found him dead on the pavement five stories below. The local cops and hospital security were all over the place for a couple of hours.”
“Did you know him?” Joe asked.
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I’ve gotten to know quite a few of the employees here, but his description doesn’t fit anyone I’ve met. They’ve been really hush-hush about the whole thing: no names or anything. Apparently, the security camera in the hall wasn’t working for some reason, so they can’t tell how it happened. But I did hear one of the night nurses say that he might have been a fraud—that he might have gotten into the hospital using a false credential. That’s a scary thing to think about.”
Joe had no idea what to make of it.
“Nothing like your night, though,” she said, putting her head on his arm.
He’d told her what had happened when they talked on the phone as he drove to Billings. Her immediate concern was for him and the bullet wound and for Olivia Brannan’s mental health. She was also worried that Joe might get investigated for running over Dallas.
He’d said, “I’d do it again.”
She’d sighed and said, “I’m sure you would, too.”
—
MARYBETH SLID OFF the bed when the door handle turned, but instead of the nurse they were expecting for Joe’s stitches, it was one of the neurosurgeons she knew from the fifth floor.
“There you are,” he said to Marybeth. He nodded a greeting to Joe and said, “We think she’s coming out of it. She’s not conscious yet, but there’s a marked increase in eye movement.”