What can I do? What if they see me? he thought to himself.
Through his veins his blood rushed hard, but it did his brain no good. What does a man do when someone is lurched over his sleeping wife? He had no idea who it was or what she wanted. There was not a thing around that Paddy could use to create alarm and lure out the absent nurses doing their rounds. Now that Williams was on his way, this tremendous hold-up could not have come at a worse time. With nobody around Patrick Smith, agent with balls of steel, had to deter the strange shape by Cassie’s bed, or that was how he imagined it.
Paddy gathered his courage to simply walk in, hoping he would come across as medical staff and so the intruder would be spooked. The other problem was that he had no idea how the black figure would react in case he was attacked. Paddy had no weapons whatsoever for once and it made him feel utterly helpless. He could not chase the person or run away from him. His plan was crazy, but this was his wife he had to protect. At least then she would know that he did do something to assure her security.
“May I help you?” he said as he entered the room. The tall slender shape was a doctor, to his dismay.
“The question is if I could help you,” she said smoothly, keeping her voice soft.
“I’m so sorry, doctor,” Paddy apologized, not only feeling downright stupid, but facing a jolt of adrenaline for being busted slipping out. He thought well to turn and walk away, but it was too late.
“Excuse me, sir, may I ask what you were doing in Mrs. Smith’s room, and at this time of the night, I might add?” she asked sternly.
He turned in the hallway, trying to explain to her, “I am Patrick Smith, her husband. I was just checking in on her.”
“You are a patient here too?” she asked, gripping him by the wrist and using two fingers to check his vitals. “How come? Were you two in a car accident?”
“Yes, but we are very close, so I wanted to check in on her,” he made excuses like a bewildered high school boy caught smoking. All he could think of was getting to Williams outside and the flask that he would ask the detective inspector to send to MI6 headquarters in Glasgow. There was no way they would let Williams come in this late either. It would look suspicious, so Paddy had now carved himself into a corner.
“Come, Mr. Smith,” the doctor said, “let’s go upstairs and I’ll make sure you get tucked in.”
He went up the stairs with her, playing along so that he could escape again in a few minutes after she had left. The wards were quiet. Here and there nurses were whispering or giggling. But where Paddy and the doctor ascended the wide staircase at the end of the hallway, nobody could hear them. He did not want to come across are obnoxious or improper, but her face intrigued him and he was dying to ask her what had happened to her eye. She was a stunning young woman, but one eye was hidden under a permanent patch and from under it a mighty scar streaked like maroon lightning.
“Say, did Dr. Harrison tell you to change my wife’s medication from 10mg to 30mg?” he asked her. “I am just so worried about her.”
“Yes, Dr. Harrison passed Cassandra over to my care, so that I can keep better track of her leg wound,” she smiled. “Now come, bedtime for you.”
She followed Paddy into his room and drew the curtain behind them. He turned and sat on the bed to face her. Paddy reached for the nurse call button tucked under his stack of pillows while the doctor adjusted his bedclothes. He saw her fiddling in the deep coat of her jacket, which propelled him to action.
“You know, doctor,” he said, “my wife’s doctor is not Harrison, it’s Burns.”
She looked at him for a split second. Her hand moved in her pocket.
Paddy flung the cord of the call button around her neck and pulled it taut, ripping the thin girl off her feet. With all his strength Paddy held her madly struggling body tight against him, pulling the noose hard against his painful abdominal wound. His one arm had locked hers, preventing her from getting her hand in her pocket. But she was no flimsy fool. Hilda used her hand to dig into his leg wound.
Paddy growled in pain and rage as quietly as he could manage.
“You are the bitch who tried to kill my wife!” he hissed through teeth and spit and exertion while the charlatan kicked like a horse in all directions to get loose. She employed combat skills unlike the amateur he encountered on the jet, and swiftly broke his arm with a consummate combination of wrist manipulative locks. Paddy screamed this time and he did not care who heard it.
“Where is the generator, Patrick?” she asked sharply, pinning his injured leg under her knee. “Tell me! Or I will rip your wife’s fucking head off!”
“You will never see my wife again, you Nazi bitch!” he roared and delivered a head butt the envy of soccer hooligans and martial arts cheaters, connecting so hard with her that he blacked out momentarily. She collapsed. Male medical staff came running to her aid, thinking her a doctor, but Paddy flashed his wallet.
“Special Agent Patrick Smith, British Secret Intelligence Service!” he shouted with authority while his injuries pulsed and bled. “This is an imposter trying to kill my wife and me. Detain her until I get back!”
“Mr. Smith,” the night nurse warned with concern, “you cannot walk on that leg!”
“That’s all right, Nurse Fran, you are going to get my wife and me out of here now. Wheelchairs! Now!” he barked. Two nurses hastened with him down to Cassie’s room in a wheelchair and collected her limp, slumbering body in another. They rushed out with the Smiths, under the impression that Paddy was armed.
Outside Williams had just arrived a few minutes ago, trying to call Paddy’s cell phone to find out what kept him.
“What the fuck is this about?” the detective inspector gawked at the circus headed his way. He got out of the car and opened the passenger doors as Patrick Smith enjoined.
“Williams! Thanks God! You have to get us home immediately, please!” Paddy bellowed. “The woman who attacked Cassie is in the hospital. She just tried to kill us and what she is looking for is at home. Go! Go! Go!”
Williams did as he was instructed, speeding away as fast as he could throw the car into gear. Leaving the two nurses standing in the desolate parking area with empty wheelchairs, the car raced onto the main road in the dead of night.
“I’m calling this incident in,” Williams said. “Is Cassie going to be all right back there?”
Paddy looked at his beautiful wife’s flaccid body bent sideways, heavily drugged on Valium by the looks of it. “She’ll be okay. They gave her something to sleep. Good thing I came down to meet you when I did or that bitch would have killed her. She is the culprit who broke into our house the first time, Williams, you have to put her far away.
“What did she want? God, I’ve been wracking my brain trying to figure out what would earn you two this kind of attention,” Williams exclaimed while he chased the timer to Paddy’s house.
“It is a generator, reputedly created by… you won’t believe me,” Paddy decided.
On their way to the Smith household, Paddy explained the whole acquisition and subsequent trouble, the reason for the assassin and archeologist thief being after the contraption and the whole affair on the jet a week before. By the time Detective Inspector Williams’ Toyota charged into the driveway in Blackford he was much the wiser, gratefully. Not only was his investigation of the less-than-common burglaries and assaults obstructed by dead leads, but personally he was going crazy with not knowing how to connect the dots.