Dalton is stood there.
‘Holy fuckola!’ She puts a hand to her heart. ‘I thought you Brits were supposed to have real good manners.’
He knows there’s no kind way to break the news. ‘I’m afraid your daughter Amber’s been shot. She’s in surgery fighting for her life.’
Mitzi doesn’t take it in. ‘No, that can’t be. I spoke to her. I called her on your phone. That’s not—’
‘The man who abducted her went into the hospital and shot her. He killed a nurse, too.’
Her legs turn to jelly. She puts a hand on the wall but her knees fold and she collapses against the side of the bed.
Dalton rushes to her side. Tries to pick her up.
She pushes him off. She’s on her knees and she can hear herself praying to a God she’s not sure even exists.
He stands patiently next to her. Waits for the moment when she’s ready for him to help her up and then hurt her some more by telling all the details.
168
Fresh alarm bells sound as Chris Wilkins hits the horizontal metal bar on the red door and kicks open the Emergency Exit.
He’d hoped to catch the kid clean. A quick kill in a quiet corner of the hospital, then slip out while people were still in shock. Now he’s leaving in a hail of alarms and he’s not sure he’s done enough to finish her. Even worse, he’s noticed a security camera on the way out that he didn’t see on the way in.
By his reckoning, unless he’s away from the hospital grounds and out of sight within the next ten minutes he’s going to end up in a police body bag. He walks briskly around the building and turns sharp right. At least his sense of direction is good. The staff parking lot is straight ahead. Within five strides he sees the Ford he’s broken into and left ready.
He skids down a short grass bank, clatters into a green Chevy and clambers around the back of it. When he gets to the blue Ford he yanks open the driver’s door, tumbles in and pulls it shut. He sits and drips sweat while checking the windshield and rear-view mirror.
So far so good.
He wipes his brow with his forearm and jams the cables together. The engine growls. Before driving off, he takes another beat to compose himself. This isn’t the time to make stupid mistakes. He has to appear just like any other driver. Law-abiding. Careful. Maybe shocked by all the noise and activity around him.
He pulls on his safety belt and adjusts the rear-view. People are spilling out of the building. The panic is starting. He stays calm. Drives slowly around the lot and onto one of the hospital’s service roads. Coming up to the exit he sees a police cruiser screaming towards him. Its rooftop blues are flashing disco crazy.
Wilkins coolly indicates. He pulls over and gives the squad car maximum room to blast past. Other drivers in front and behind follow suit. He’s lost in the crowd.
Once the cruiser has gone he tags behind the car in front and leaves by the main exit.
Now he has to think.
For the next half-hour, the cops will be glued up gathering details. It’ll be all about the nurse and the Fallon girl. Gradually, they’ll get their shit together and pull pictures of him from the CCTV and wire them to patrol cars across the county. Soon after that, someone at the hospital is going to report their car missing and then the Ford will be useless.
A red Chrysler Crossfire with police lights strobing its grille flashes past him.
Wilkins has a bad feeling. Local cops don’t drive cars like that.
It must be Feds. It means it’s no longer safe to catch the flight Tess has booked him on. He’ll have to try another airport, or find a new way out of the country.
169
Tess Wilkins puts the jerry can in the RV and returns to the shack. Her hands stink of gasoline. She goes to the sink, soaps and scrubs.
She dries on a hand towel, tosses it on the floor and walks to the grubby sofa. She picks up a stained cushion and wraps it around the muzzle of her pistol.
Less than two feet from her, Jade Fallon is curled up against the other arm of the furniture. The kid’s hands are still tied behind her back, her mouth taped and head hooded. She’s so motionless that Tess guesses she’s asleep.
Or dead.
Maybe she suffocated. Tess watches the youngster’s chest and sees it slowly rise and fall.
Pity.
If the girl had been dead, she’d just burn the place and be gone. In the last few minutes, she’s been growing squeamish. Even gotten to wondering if she could let the kid live. The proposal still appeals to her conscience. But not her sense of self-survival. And Tess Wilkins is ruled by self-preservation.
She swallows hard, lifts the muffled gun and looks away as she shoots Jade in the head. It’s louder than she expected. Like an echo. The recoil more powerful than she’d imagined.
Then the pain and realization kick in. She’s not only fired a shot, she’s been shot.
Fire spreads through her chest and back. Tess stumbles and sees a small, thin woman in the doorway, hands outstretched and a gun clasped between them.
She must have got a round off at the same time.
Tess Wilkins coughs blood as she hits the floor. At least she killed the kid. It’s one less witness against Chris.
170
Eleonora Fracci follows the screams.
She finds two lone cops in X-ray playing King Canute with a tidal wave of panicking patients. She flashes her shield at the older police. ‘I’m looking for Amber Fallon, a teenage girl, daughter of a colleague.’
He shakes his head. ‘She’s in ER — they’re operating.’
‘What happened?’
‘Guy busts into here, shoots a nurse, chases the girl down the corridor and pops her before he cracks a fire exit and disappears.’
‘How badly hurt is she?’
He shrugs. ‘I dunno. Bad, I guess.’
Eleonora notices blood pooled in the doorway to the X-ray room. As she gets closer she sees the body of the nurse. It’s been turned. There are smears on the floor where someone tried to save her. Bloody footprints lead away. They’re small. A woman’s, not a man’s. No doubt made by someone professional enough to have known that once death was certain the body would have to be left in situ for the cops and ME.
Eleonora looks at the gunshot wound. It’s left of chest and looks like it was made from no more than three feet away. It takes a special kind of animal to kill like that. One that’s killed before. One that feels nothing when he looks into the eyes of another human being and takes their life.
She makes the sign of the cross and says a quick and silent prayer for the dead woman’s soul, then she heads back to the cop. ‘Did anyone get a description of the gunman?’
He points to a camera above the reception desk. ‘We’re searching the tapes. That little baby should have a clean shot of him.’
‘That’s what I want,’ says Eleonora. ‘A clean shot at this bastard.’
‘There’s a queue,’ says a tall, dark-haired man who has appeared just a few yards from her.
She looks at him suspiciously.
‘I’m Ross Green and I guess you’re Agent Fracci.’ He jabs a thumb over his shoulder to the corridor. ‘Can we talk outside?’
171
SSOA agent Eve Garrett drags the woman’s body off the sofa so she can get to the girl.
Blood seeps from the black hood pulled tight over Jade’s head. She grabs the drawstring, unties it and carefully pulls off the cloth.