by Ladew, Lisa
“What was up with the doctor?”
Blaise spoke, his voice weak, and scratchy from the tubes they had put down his trachea while he was under. “It was weird. When I woke up in the recovery room he asked me again and again if I had any clotting disorders or if I was a fast healer. It was like he was stuck on those two questions. When I told him no to both of them he asked me if anyone in my family did. I told him I didn’t think so but he kept insisting that there must be. Finally he admitted that when he pulled the bullet out of my lung he watched the hole in the lung knit itself up before his eyes. He was saying the words to me, that it had happened, but I could tell he didn’t believe it - or didn’t want to believe it. The nurses were all acting strange too.”
West smiled, his thoughts buzzing. “That is strange,” was all he said. Thank you Katerina, he thought, looking back at her, still sleeping in the chair.
Blaise looked too. “How is she?”
“She’s tired. She’s had a pretty rough day.”
They both turned towards the doorway as a woman’s raised voice drifted in from the hallway.
“I have to see him!” the female voice said. “Look, you can take my purse, frisk me, you can come in with me. I’ll even go in naked. I’m a tiny little woman, what am I going to do to him?”
“Is that Jordan?” Blaise whispered, his face hopeful.
West hurried to the door and pulled it open. Jordan stood there on her tiptoes, nose-to-nose with the FBI agent, challenging him.
She looked at West. “Oh thank God, West, where have you been? Tell this mountain that I can come in.”
West looked placatingly at the FBI agent. “This is Jordan Jones. She is with us, is it OK if she comes in?”
The FBI agent took a step back and nodded. Jordan walked past him, throwing him a look that could have frozen the sun.
As West turned back to the room, he saw that Katerina had finally woken up. She looked mostly back to her normal self. The food and rest had done her good.
Jordan rushed into the room, directly to Blaise’s bedside. She grasped his hand, her face a patina of misery. “I’m so sorry, Blaise. You were right. I was wrong. I forgive you for everything. As soon as I saw your picture on the news, I knew how wrong I had been. Please give me another chance. Please give us another chance.”
Blaise wound his fingers through Jordan’s and winked at her. “Looks like we’re all forgiven in here,” he said in his quiet, scratchy voice.
Jordan cried out and tears fell down her face. She bent over the bed rail and pressed her mouth to Blaise’s cheek, but Blaise had other ideas. He moved to the right and caught her lips in a gentle kiss.
West walked past the bed, towards a smiling Katerina, trying to give Jordan and Blaise as much privacy as he could in the tiny room, a warm glow lighting his chest.
Chapter 12
Jordan sat next to Blaise’s bed, her face a study in contentment. Occasionally she tried to feed him a few ice chips or fluff his pillows for him, but mostly she sat still, holding his hand, and speaking quietly with Katerina and West.
Katerina stood and stretched, then gave Jordan a hug. “I’m so glad you came,” she whispered into Jordan’s ear. She touched Blaise on the arm and asked him how the pain was.
“I don’t have any pain right now,” he said.
Katerina nodded, but actually she was listening to what his body was saying more than the words coming out of his mouth. Good, it said. Healing well, it said. She smiled, thrilled to know it, while at the same time fending off the sharp guilt that shot through her every time she looked at him. It was her fault he was shot. Fixing him couldn’t change that.
A single knock sounded at the door and Agent Masterson walked in, his sharp eyes taking in Jordan, then turning to Blaise. “Officer Cornwall, it’s good to see that you are doing well,” he said quickly, nodding once to Jordan and then turning to Katerina and West. “Say your goodbyes please, you won’t be coming back here until Kane is caught.”
West stood up quickly, his face concerned. He crossed the room and shook Blaise’s hand gently. “That’s enough bullets inside you for a while,” he told Blaise with a smile on his face.
“Yes sir,” Blaise said, smiling back weakly.
Katerina hugged Blaise and said her goodbyes to him and Jordan. She looked expectantly at Agent Masterson and he led them out into the hallway, then stopped in the waiting room to face them.
“We need to talk for a few moments and then I’m going to take you down to the front door where I have an agent waiting to drive you to a safe house. It will be safer for Officer Cornwall if you two are not here in the hospital.”
West nodded. “Agent Masterson, will your agents stay here to protect Blaise?”
“Call me Craig. And yes.” He turned to Katerina. “Before I take you to the driver, tell me exactly how you knew what had happened to Deputy Director Ronan. I’ve heard a few different stories but I’m not sure exactly what to believe.”
Katerina blushed, then looked at West. He gave her a nod of encouragement and grasped her hand, giving her the strength to go on. “I saw it in my head when I touched him. It’s a, uh, ability that I have.”
Katerina watched Craig closely as she spoke. His lips tightened and his eyes bore into her. She didn’t have to touch him to see he didn’t believe her.
West broke in. “It’s true. She caught two serial killers that way. She can touch anyone and see what they are most upset about or happy about. Anything that has a lot of emotion behind it.”
Craig held up his hands. “It doesn’t really matter if I believe you or not. No matter what, that information is not prosecutable. There is no way I can go up in front of a judge and a jury and tell them what you just said. I’d be laughed out of the courtroom. When we catch Kane, and we will, we’re going to have to get him to confess somehow. Obviously he did it, or he wouldn’t be shooting so many people now, but I can’t work with what you just told me.”
Katerina scuffed her shoe against the tiled floor and pulled back slightly behind West. She hated this ability, as she had called it, but to be labeled a liar or a crackpot was even worse. She should have made something up.
West took a step forward and she felt hostility in the tension of his spine. She looked at his face where pure anger was written. He stared at Craig, then opened his mouth to say something. Katerina plucked at his shirt weakly, scared he would alienate the FBI agent.
A radio on Craig’s belt crackled, interrupting whatever West was about to say. Craig plucked the radio off his belt and held it to his ear. West caught a few of the words. “Shooting at us … Basement … Three of them …”
West pulled Katerina close and looked around the waiting room and down the hallway as if expecting more gunmen to come after them on this floor. Craig’s entire demeanor changed from one of relaxed authority to tense, subdued action.
“10-4, I’ll be down in two minutes after I get the subjects to their destination. Break. Barnes, you copy? Your station still clear?”
“10-4, I copy. I’m clear and ready.”
“Finch and Drew, report.”
“Clear here.”
“Clear.”
“Andrews, is your location clear?”
“Yes copy, clear here.”
“I’m sending them to you right now. Be ready.”
Craig turned his attention back to West and Katerina. He spoke quickly. “I have to head to the basement, there’s been a breach down there. You two meet my agent at the front door and he’ll take you to the safe house. Follow me into the stairwell and go directly to the first floor.”
He took off at a run not waiting to see their acknowledgment. West nodded anyway and pulled Katerina after him.
The three of them pushed through the stairwell door and pounded down the stairs. Craig moved faster than West and Katerina and when he reached the first floor they were still on the third. He pushed the first floor door open and looked around, then turned back to them and yelled, �
�It’s clear, just run through the lobby to the front door, quickly!” Then he pounded down one more flight of stairs and exploded into the basement. Before the door swung shut behind him West could hear yelling and crackling, like fireworks or maybe an actual fire, or possibly worse, gunshots.
As Katerina and West passed the doorway to the second floor, almost to the first, the door flew open and a young girl ran in, running directly to the opposite wall and hiding her face in her hands. Great wracking sobs shook her body. Katerina pulled West to a stop, not letting him continue to the first floor. The girl appeared about five or six, with baby-fine blonde hair pulled inexpertly back into a ponytail. Her clothes looked rumpled and dirty, as if she had slept in them for a few days.
Katerina walked behind her, trying to think of what to say. The girl was so young, too young to be alone in a hospital, and so obviously in great misery, that Katerina couldn’t keep heading to her own safety. “Sweetie? What’s wrong?” she asked, her hands hovering over the girls shoulders.
The girl’s sobs intensified and a great wailing came out of her throat. She would not look away from the wall. Katerina touched her gently and tried to turn her away from the concrete wall to hug her. The girl resisted and Katerina felt like crying. She was so young. She shouldn’t have tragedy in her life already.
The door the girl had come through opened again and a man appeared, calling out a name. “Amelia?” When he saw Katerina and the little girl he skidded to a stop. “Amelia, baby, please, you have to come back.”
The girl looked backwards at the man Katerina assumed was her father once and then screamed into the wall again. “I hate him! I don’t want to see him!”
“Baby, he’s your little brother,” the man said.
“But Mom might die! If she dies, he killed her!”
The man’s face collapsed and tears dropped from his eyes. Katerina stepped back as he moved towards his girl and tried to hug her. Katerina held a hand out to West who took it and tried to pull her down the stairs, but she stopped him, heading towards the second floor doorway instead.
Katerina pushed open the door and walked down the hospital hallway a few feet, looking left and right. West tried to pull her back. “Kat, we have to go. It’s not safe for us to be here.”
Katerina looked at him, her eyes beseeching. “I don’t care! That little girl’s mom is dying.” Her voice grew quiet and she leaned close to West, whispering. “She just gave birth to the girl’s little brother and the doctors say she lost too much blood and they can’t help her. They’ve given up on her completely.”
West’s face twisted. “Do you think you can fix her?”
“I have to try! I won’t do what that man in the parking lot did to us.”
West nodded. He understood, even if he hated it.
Katerina pulled him down the hallway and through the heavy double doors that led into the obstetrics ward. She took a left past the nurse’s station as if she belonged there, trusting West to follow her. She pushed open a door that looked like every other door in the place. Inside, there was only one woman on a hospital bed, wires attached to her body and then attached to multiple machines, crisscrossed and running every which way. One slow blip thudded across the heart monitor, confirming that she was still alive. For now.
The woman looked young, certainly no older than thirty. Her thick black hair cascaded across the pillow, the picture of health. Her eyes were closed and a tube protruded from her mouth, where a machine was pushing air into her lungs for her, keeping her alive. For now. Until everyone had said goodbye to her and they decided to pull it.
Katerina crossed the room quickly and touched the woman’s wrist. She asked her special sense what was going on with the woman and got an answer immediately. Bleeding in a secret place in the brain from a tiny aneurysm that sprung an infinitesimal leak during her hard labor.
Not sure exactly what to do, Katerina grazed her index fingers lightly at the woman’s temples. Yes, right in there.
Heal, she thought. Stop the bleeding, she commanded. Heal the vessel wall. Absorb the blood. Her hands grew hot immediately, and she pressed them to the side of the woman’s head. On the monitor, the woman’s heartbeat sped up. Katerina glanced at it but did not pull her hands back. The nurses would be coming at a run soon. Hopefully she would be done before they arrived. She couldn’t stop now. The raging hunger spread through her body like a wildfire again. She ignored it. But weakness came with it and she didn’t know how long she could hold on. Her knees gave way slightly. West came up behind her and braced her and she smiled gratefully.
“Katerina, are you hurting yourself?”
Katerina shook her head and concentrated.
The woman’s eyes flew open and she shared a knowing, terrified look with Katerina, then she lost it. She gagged. Her hands fluttered up and pulled at the tube coming from her mouth.
Katerina felt the heat in her hands recede. She moved them down the woman’s face to her neck and then pulled away. “You have to relax, then it won’t be so bad. You won’t be able to pull it out. I will have a nurse remove it,” she told the woman.
The door to the room slammed open and two nurses rushed in. “What’s going on here?” one of them yelled, both of their gazes on the bed.
“Oh my God she’s awake,” the other nurse said, her face disbelieving.
“Get that tube out of her before she pulls it out,” Katerina told them.
The first nurse rushed to the head of the bed and quickly pulled a syringe out of her pocket, then bled the air that was keeping the tube locked in place in the woman’s trachea out of its bubble-like compartment. In one smooth motion, she removed the tube from the woman’s mouth and the woman coughed violently. The other nurse, her eyes wide, turned and fled the room. “I’ll call the doctor!” she yelled over her shoulder.
Katerina backed away, wanting suddenly only to leave. She knew the woman would be OK. West pulled her towards the door, thinking if they were still there when the doctor arrived, there would be questions to answer. The woman spoke from the bed. “My baby?” she said, in a searching voice.
The nurse patted her arm. “He’s just fine. Big and healthy. I’ll bring him to you after the doctor says it’s OK.”
“I had a boy?” the woman said, tears in her voice, and Katerina smiled. It had been worth it, no matter what happened now.
The door opened again and the father from the stairwell came in, holding his little girl’s hands. Her eyes were downcast, red, and puffy. Katerina could feel grief coming off of him in waves.
Katerina and West pushed past them, tiptoeing out the door behind them, but not before they heard a word from the bed. “Amelia?”
“Mommy!” The girl cried, joy and wonder in her voice. She ran to the bed and climbed onto it and as the door swung shut behind Katerina, she saw Amelia’s smile and her father’s grateful tears. They would be OK.
Katerina felt her burden lighten just a little bit, before dizziness overcame her and she fell to the ground.
Chapter 13
“Katerina, Katerina wake up. Are you OK?”
Katerina blinked and opened her eyes. “Hungry,” she whispered.
“I’ll get you some food,” West said. “Just as soon as we get out of this hospital, I’ll have the FBI agent stop and get you food. I promise.”
Katerina looked around. She was being carried down the stairwell by West. She felt more hungry and more tired than she’d ever been in her life. These sensations made what had happened to her earlier seem like nothing. She was convinced her body was eating itself from the inside out.
West reached the first floor and pushed through the doorway, heading for the main entrance and exit doors. “We’re almost there,” he whispered to Katerina, looking left and right. “I think I see the FBI agent. He looks pissed.”
Katerina turned her head and saw him too. A man in tactical pants and a gray shirt in front of a large black SUV, talking animatedly into a radio.
“West, I t
hink I can walk,” she whispered, seeing the strange looks they were getting from random people in the large open waiting room they were crossing.
West put her down gently and held onto her waist. She took one tentative step in the direction they had been heading when a woman screamed to her right. Katerina whipped her head that way and immediately saw Kurt Kane, a gun in his hand, not three feet from her. He closed the distance in an instant and jabbed the gun painfully against her ribs, then dislodged West’s arm from around her waist. On the other side of them, a man did the same thing to West, disrupting any plans of action he might have had. Katerina felt Kane grab her arm, then propel her across the waiting area.
“Just keep moving, and no one will get hurt,” Kane commanded into her ear, but his eyes were on West.
Katerina looked at West and saw murder in his face. She flashed him a warning with her eyes. She was getting a low level of emotion from Kane, from his hand on her arm. He would kill them in an instant. Shoot Katerina through the heart, then shoot West in the head, then shoot his way out of the hospital, not really caring how many people he killed or if he lost his own life in the aftermath. He was doing a job, and he didn’t care about anyone, not even himself. His soul had died long ago. You couldn’t reason with a man like that. You could only do what he said, or fight him. And they were in no position to fight right now.
The four of them walked quickly across the hospital lobby and out the door. The FBI agent saw them coming, and his eyes widened. He dropped his radio and went for his gun. Kane’s voice rang across the concrete. “Touch it and the woman dies. I’ll be able to shoot her five times before you even get it out of your holster,” he said, the truth in his words obvious to anyone who heard them.
The FBI agent froze, his hands splayed out in front of him. “Smart man,” Kane said, his gun still digging into Katerina’s ribs.
The two men propelled them towards a full-size white van that was idling at the curb, a dark-haired man behind the wheel, watching them intently. Katerina and West were thrust into the van, Katerina in the very backseat with Kane, and West in the second seat with the other man.