Sean hopped out of the driver’s seat and opened the back door, careful not to let Coop fall out. “Coop, can you hear me?” He gently smacked the man’s face repeatedly to make sure he was still conscious.
Coop’s eyes were closed, but he opened them slightly. “Dizzy,” he mouthed through pursed lips.
Adriana ran through the hospital’s sliding doors and vanished inside.
Charlie leaned over and spoke loudly. “Coop, you’re gonna be all right. Just hang in there, buddy.”
It was the first time Sean had ever seen anything closely resembling worry or caring in his old friend’s face.
“What do you know?” Coop said just above a whisper, then coughed a sickly laugh.
Adriana reappeared through the glass doors, followed closely by a nurse with a gurney.
The woman saw and assessed the situation instantly. She yelled back through the sliding doors for two more people to come out; they were names that Sean didn’t recognize and wouldn’t remember anyway. A male nurse and an orderly jogged through the opening and ran over to where Sean and the nurse were helping Coop onto the rolling stretcher.
“We’ll take it from here,” the woman in the pale-blue scrubs said. “Are you related?”
“No,” Sean said bluntly.
The two men wheeled the gurney into the hospital while the nurse lingered behind. Sean caught her eyeing the damage to the SUV with a suspicious gaze. “What in the world have you all been up to?”
“It’s a long story,” Sean answered as coolly as possible. He watched out of the side of his eye as Charlie followed Coop into the hospital. “We drove through a bad part of town.” He hoped the lie would render her less paranoid. “He’s been shot. Not sure if any vitals were hit though.”
“It's a long story,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to make sure your friend doesn’t die. It looks like he’s lost a lot of blood. We may need the cops here to make sure whoever did this doesn’t come to finish the job.”
The woman nodded and removed her cell phone from a front pocket. She hurried through the doors and disappeared inside.
The police would be there within a few minutes, which was good for Coop and Charlie. Possibly not so good if they showed up and found Sean’s Audi looking like Swiss cheese.
“Get back in the car,” he directed Adriana under his breath. “We have to hide the car.”
Adriana didn’t need to be told twice. She skipped around the SUV’s hood and jumped back into the passenger seat. Sean quickly got back in, leaving the back door open as he did so. The engine revved to life again, and before the nurse could completely turn around, he stepped on the gas and squealed the tires.
Sean looked back and saw her start to take a few running steps in their direction. The phone was pressed to her ear, and she was yelling something. A moment later, Sean zipped the SUV around the corner of the building and disappeared from sight.
“What now?” Adriana asked. “There will be police surrounding the place in less than two minutes.”
Funny. He’d thought the same thing.
“We need to ditch the car,” he said with a hint of regret. “They’ll be looking for this. And there’s no way that nurse didn’t just give the cops my plate info.”
“Where then?”
He slowed the vehicle down a little and then suddenly jerked the wheel to the right, turning into the parking garage.
Adriana saw where he was going and raised a questioning eyebrow as she turned her head toward him. “In there?”
“Sometimes the last place people will look is right under their noses.”
He spun the wheel to the left, driving the SUV up a ramp and then around a curve onto the second deck of the parking garage. He leaned forward, checking the ceilings and corners for any cameras. Some hospitals had installed security cameras to prevent crime. So far, he hadn’t noticed any, but he kept his eyes peeled as the vehicle rolled to the end of the row of cars and ascended the second ramp.
“What about Charlie and Coop?” Adriana asked quietly as if someone would hear her.
“We’re not just leaving them. I just want to ditch the car so it doesn’t draw too much attention. Although Coop’s in good hands. He’s going to be fine.” Sean didn’t tell her that he had some doubts about that. At the moment, it didn’t seem prudent to be completely honest. “Charlie will watch after him. Truthfully, it’s probably safest if they stay here. If those gunmen know where we’re going, I’d rather not have the two of them around if things get crazy again. I already feel a little guilty about Coop getting shot.” Sean turned the SUV up another ramp toward the fourth floor. So far, they’d not seen anyone except a large woman in purple scrubs waddling her way into an elevator. She’d not paid them any attention, instead focusing all her attention on the smartphone in her hands.
“You think your friend, Charlie, is going to be okay with staying here at the hospital?” She didn’t sound like she was sure that was the best course of action.
Right now wasn’t the time to get into a disagreement. He also knew that Adriana was a woman that appreciated certainty.
“A hospital is a much safer place for them than riding with us. Besides, he’ll probably want to stay with Coop.”
Sean found an empty parking spot and swung the SUV around in a dramatic arc before backing it in against the concrete wall. The two got out of the vehicle and ran the hundred feet to the stairwell.
Once they’d made their way back down to the main level, Sean led the way to the emergency room. Hospitals had always been confusing places to him. There were so many narrow halls and corridors, all leading to different, seemingly random areas. As a boy, he’d got lost for half an hour in a hospital when he was visiting his grandfather. Fortunately, the hallways at Emory were well marked with locations and directions. Getting from the parking garage to the ER took less than two minutes.
Sean burst through the door and found himself staring face to face with a large woman in pink scrubs.
She was momentarily caught off guard, but quickly regained her composure. “Are you the one who dropped off the guy with the gunshot wound?” Her heavy Southern accent reminded him of childhood trips to the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Georgia.
He hesitated for a second before answering. “Yeah. Is he okay?”
The young nurse nodded, but her face looked grim. “He’s lost a lot of blood. If you hadn’t got him here when you did, it might have been a lot worse. They rushed him into surgery. The other man you dropped off is in the waiting area if you want to join him.”
Sean nodded appreciatively. “Thank you.”
They found Charlie sitting on the edge of a fake-leather chair in the surgery waiting room. He had his elbows on his knees and rocked back and forth in a short, quick rhythm. Sean had never seen his friend so distraught, not even when he’d been staring down the barrel of a gun the previous day.
“Charlie,” Sean said as he and Adriana approached. The older man looked up with a worried expression.
“I wondered if you left or not.”
“No, buddy,” Sean said, shaking his head. “We just wanted to put the car somewhere it wouldn’t draw as much attention, you know, with it being shot up and all.”
His friend snorted a laugh. Then his face grew grave again. “Coop’s in surgery.”
“We know,” Adriana touched the old man’s arm. “He’s going to be fine, Charlie.”
So much had changed in such a short amount of time, Sean thought. Forty minutes ago, they were finishing breakfast and coffee, talking to Tommy about a strange, ancient treasure. Now everything had gone the way it always seemed to in Sean’s life. Guns, bullets, and blood every time it seemed like things were calming down.