by CJ Petterson
“Why does that not surprise me? If you’re here, Saint John must not be far away.”
Karadzic didn’t answer.
Griebe averted his eyes, trying to define Karadzic’s shape behind the light. “Where is the dear boy?” he asked.
“Chatting with Dr. Campbell.”
“Maybe you should ask her about those notes.”
“We did, but she said someone had removed them. Maybe it was you?”
“Maybe.”
“If you would tell me where they are, we wouldn’t have to waste any more time,” Karadzic said, pulled his gun, and dove to the side. The flashlight blinked out when it hit the floor.
Griebe fired into the darkness at the moving target and missed. The slug ricocheted off a metal beam and headed toward the tin roof. Karadzic’s bullet thudded into Griebe’s upper chest, knocking the breath out of him. The force slammed him against the metal file cabinet. The crash was the last thing he heard on his way down into the waiting blackness.
• • •
Sully had spent less than fifteen minutes searching Mirabel’s house when his cellphone rang. Backlit on his display was Mirabel’s cell number. “Where are you, Mirabel?”
“Good evening, Sully.”
He stiffened when he recognized Saint John’s voice. “Where is she, SinJen?”
“With me, of course. But — ”
“Let her go.”
“I appreciate your concern, but there’s a bit of a problem. She’s uncovered a secret.”
In the background, Sully heard Mirabel. “I haven’t uncovered anything. I don’t know what you want.”
“She’s telling the truth, SinJen.”
“Sadly, that’s not true. She has pieces of the puzzle in hand. She may not know where they fit right now, but it’s only a question of time. Especially now that you’re involved.”
“You need to be more explicit if you expect me to understand. Let her go.”
“You know I can’t do that. I’ve taken a contract, and what would my employer think?”
“Get me a meeting with your employer. I’m sure we can work out an agreement.” Sully was trotting back to the Jeep as he talked. Who wants Mirabel dead? Why?
“Sorry. I was hired to resolve a problem, not to act as intermediary. My employer would assume I am not able to do my job. Very bad for the reputation.”
“I only want to prevent any more unnecessary deaths.”
“Collateral damage, as we say in the business, can be a problem. Interesting you should bring that up. That’s the other reason I’ve called.”
Intuition, a sixth sense — whatever it was, Sully knew what was coming and dread pulled his gut into a knot.
“I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it seems your dear compatriot, Mr. Griebe, has been shot.”
Sully held down the “end” button on the phone and thumbed in Griebe’s speed dial number. He hung up before the third ring and dialed the sheriff’s office.
Jonas, the sheriff’s part-time duty officer, answered. “Sheriff’s office,”
“A man’s been shot at the warehouse complex on the west side of town. Third building on the right. Send an ambulance.”
“Your name, sir?”
“The warehouse complex. Mirabel Campbell’s lab.”
Sully ended the call and tossed the phone on the seat. The back tires sprayed dust and stones into the air as he spun the Jeep into a one-eighty. He picked up the phone again and punched Ridley’s speed dial. “Frank’s been shot … SinJen’s goon at Mirabel’s lab … Don’t know yet. I’m headed over there … SinJen will keep Mirabel alive as long as he doesn’t have what he’s looking for. My asset said only that he’s somewhere close, maybe near her house, maybe her lab. Get on it. I’ll catch up with you.” Sully dropped the phone and focused on the road.
He drove up in front of the lab just as emergency medical technicians were rolling Griebe out the front door. The Jeep skidded as all four wheels locked, then it stalled and rocked to a stop when Sully exited without turning off the engine or shutting the door. He pushed his way through a clog of ambulance chasers and gawkers and ran toward a little parade of paramedics headed for the ambulance parked with all doors open, its diesel engine idling. Sully exhaled audibly, relieved to see the sheet tucked under Griebe’s chin instead of draped over the face of a corpse. He scanned the blood-spattered beard and face. “How is he?” he asked the EMTs maneuvering the gurney.
The uniform in the lead swung her thick, blonde ponytail around. “Who are you?”
“I’m his brother. How is he?”
“He’s alive. He’s got a hole in his chest. It wasn’t a through and through. The bullet’s still lodged inside. You need to move out of the way.”
Sully clenched his jaw and stepped back.
The team of paramedics lifted the gurney into the rear of the ambulance and locked it down.
“Where are you taking him?”
The blond slammed both rear doors and jogged around to the front. Sully was right behind her.
He grabbed hold of her arm. “I need to know where — ”
She jerked her arm away then her bedside manner kicked in, and her voice softened. “We’ll have your brother in the ER at Mira Linda in Placerville in about twenty minutes,” she said as she slid behind the wheel. She pulled the shift into drive and flipped a paddle switch on the dash. As she gunned the white van onto the blacktop, the two-toned siren started to yelp, and blue, yellow, and red rotating strobe lights lit up the night in a race to save Griebe’s life.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Mirabel lay stretched out on a cold concrete floor in a metal building where words repeated themselves in decreasing echoes. White plastic strips encircled her ankles and held her arms behind her back. Her body jerked when the air conditioner clicked on with a boom that rattled the corrugated steel walls. The sound was followed by the whoosh of the compressor that sent a blast of cold, moldy-smelling air across her back. She shivered and struggled against the ties. She stopped moving when she heard footsteps then saw a pair of black-trousered legs.
Saint John dropped into a crouch beside her. “Can I get you something, Dr. Campbell?”
“Hamburger, fries, an aspirin, and a large water with no ice would be nice.”
She tried to move her head away when she saw him reach toward her. He rolled a clump of her hair between his forefinger and thumb and then arranged a strand behind her ear. She turned away. “Your hair is quite beautiful,” he said. He wove his fingers through her auburn curls and yanked her head up. “Where are the photographs?” he snarled.
Use anger to overcome fear, she thought. “I told you before. They don’t have anything to do with my research, but if you have to have them, they’re in the lab. Your goon obviously can’t find his rear end with both hands,” she snapped.
Saint John dropped her face to the floor.
Pain sent slivers of light through her brain. That didn’t go well. “They’re not the originals, you know.”
“I do know. The originals are buried so deeply at Mount Palomar, it’ll take months to re-discover them, and by then it’ll be too late.” Through the fringe of her eyelashes, she watched him straighten up. “It’s time I complete this contract,” he said, “and those pictures are a loose end I can’t leave behind. Don’t go anywhere.”
She had bitten the edge of her tongue, and the taste of blood soured her stomach. When she heard his footsteps fade into the distance, she rolled onto her side and twisted her head around. She knew she would remain alive only as long as it took for Saint John to find what he wanted.
She tried again to pull her hands through the notched plastic cuffs. The strips drew tighter. She groaned and began looking for another way to get free. She was surrounded by cardboard cartons and plasti
c-covered couches and chairs. About ten feet away two wooden pallets held neat stacks of flattened cardboard boxes. They flattened them with something. Where was it?
She rolled onto her side, pulled her knees into her chest, and brought her bound wrists down behind her thighs. She took several deep breaths and exhaled hard, curled into a tight ball, and worked her bound wrists under her feet until her hands were in front of her. The hours she’d spent practicing yoga had just paid off.
She pressed her cheek to the concrete and scanned the surface of the floor. Under the pallet closest to her, she spotted an aluminum cylinder — a box cutter. She inched her body across the floor, ignoring the vague ache in her thigh. She squeezed her hands into the narrow space under the pallet and pulled the box cutter from its hiding place.
She sawed the blade’s edge against the cuffs on her wrists, ignoring the nicks. When she’d slashed through the plastic around her ankles, she lurched to her feet and ran to a spot beside a tall china cabinet. A hand slipped from behind and immobilized her hand on the box cutter in a tight grip. A cupped fist clamped over her mouth and pulled her head back.
The man’s hand covered her mouth and nose. She clawed at his long, slender fingers, desperate for a breath.
“Shhh. It’s okay, doc. I’m a friend. Don’t scream,” he whispered. “Nod your head if you understand, and I’ll let you go.”
Mirabel nodded frantically and then gulped air when he freed her. “Are you trying to suffocate me, you jerk?” she hissed as she spun around and rammed both hands hard against the man’s chest, pushing him back.
If she ignored the creases in his frown, he had an unlined, narrow face under coffee-colored hair. His nose was pushed crookedly to one side, and he had gray eyes that drooped at the corners.
“Sorry, but I had to keep you from yelling,” he murmured in a sotto voice. “I’m Pete Ridley. Sully sent me to find you.”
“Okay, you’ve found me,” she whispered. “Now what?” she asked and looked him up and down.
He reminded her of a caricature of some detective out of a 1950s novel — the name escaped her right then. A black vinyl belt, about an inch wide, pinched small gathers into the waistband of dark blue gabardine pants. She saw two inches of white sock and scuffed black wingtips below his pants cuffs.
His sad eyes crinkled when he smiled. “Now, we get out of here.” Perspiration ran down his cheeks, and a tooled-leather shoulder holster encircled the black T-shirt that clung wetly to his narrow chest. The leather made a soft brushing noise when Ridley lifted his gun out of its holster. He led her to a narrow doorway where he leaned a shoulder against the steel door and shoved. It pushed open without a sound. He grabbed her hand and took off running toward a dark car on the far side of the road, Mirabel in tow, taking two steps to his one.
“You’re the Camaro parked outside my house,” she wheezed.
Ridley pushed her toward the passenger door then slid in behind the steering wheel and cranked the engine. Before she could slam her door, he popped the clutch, and took off at a speed that pinned her to the seatback. Ridley’s old car had a souped-up engine that belied its age. “Buckle up!” he yelled.
Ridley was driving over a stretch of dirt road scored by washboard ruts. The tires hit the tops and the bottoms of the ridges, bouncing up into the springs like flags popping in a high wind. The Chevy fishtailed from one side of the road to the other as Ridley strong-armed the steering wheel with both hands.
“What happens if you break a spring?” she shouted.
“Don’t know. Never done that.”
A stab of irritation tightened her jaw when he glanced at her with surprised amusement in his eyes. “Yeah, I know. Girls aren’t supposed to know about car springs. I spent a lot of time with my daddy at his gas station.”
He worked a cellphone out of his shirt pocket and touched in a speed dial number. “Yeah, Sully, I got her … Frank?” Ridley slid the phone across the seat at her. “Here, talk to him while I get us out of here.”
“Sully?” she said. The rough ride caused her voice to quaver, and she was certain she was about to chip a tooth. She touched a tickle on her face then looked at the blood on her fingers where she’d cut her cheek on the concrete floor. The phone jostled painfully over the curve of her ear, and she heard Sully’s words in bits and pieces.
“Meet you … ”
“I’m fine. Thank you for asking,” she stammered. When she couldn’t stabilize the phone against her ear, she pushed the speaker button and yelled. “I hid the pictures at the house.”
“Good thinking. I’ll bring them with me.”
“You don’t know where I hid them.”
“Between the stove and the counter,” he said and clicked off.
The tires thudded over the edge of the blacktop, and the road evened out.
She dropped the phone on the seat. “I hate that! He knows what I’m going to do before I do it.”
“He is good at that,” Ridley said.
“I’m way too predictable and that’s going to change.”
“Where’re we going?” Ridley asked over the noise of the road.
“He said he’d meet us in an hour where I do my stargazing. It’s — ”
“Know it,” Ridley said. He braked hard; the tires squealed and laid rubber on the asphalt. Before he stopped, he spun the Camaro into a U-turn that sent pebble-filled roostertails flying out of the dirt shoulder and headed back the way they had just come.
“Does everybody know everything about me?” Her words bounced out of her mouth like champagne bubbles popping with each bump.
He grinned without looking at her. “Right down to the colors of those cute little bikini panties you like to wear.”
She stared straight ahead at the black ribbon of roadway disappearing under the tires. The blacktop changed places with dirt again, and they were almost there.
“That’s one nice thing about a small town,” she said when Ridley pulled off the road. He glanced her way without comment and waited for the punch line. “It doesn’t take long to get from where you are to where you want to go.” When she was sure the Camaro had stopped, she opened the door and tumbled out.
She dropped her head back and peered at the sky. The moonless night was not at all dark. Pinpoints of light sparkled in the midnight blue sky like rhinestones sprinkled across a black velvet evening dress. “Perfect night,” she murmured.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Sully trotted into the hospital’s emergency room lobby and headed for the admitting desk. Between answering questions about Griebe’s personal information, he countered with questions of his own. “Is he alive? When can I see him? Where is he?”
“Yes. The doctor will let you know. In surgery.” The clerk answered his questions in the order received and directed him to the waiting room.
He stood in the doorway and checked out the other occupants. In one corner, a white-haired man leaned on the arm of a chair and dozed with his cheek propped against his fist. A middle-aged couple sat together, fingers entwined, under an aluminum-framed floral print in shades of blue and green. Sully paced the room’s square footage and finally settled in a dusty blue vinyl and steel chair and focused on the TV’s talking head.
When the double doors of the intensive care unit whined open, a doctor wearing bloody green surgical scrubs exited. He checked the faces of those waiting then headed toward Sully. “Are you with Frank Griebe?” he asked.
Sully nodded. “How’s he doing?”
“I’m Jamie Zimmerman. The man is one tough old bird,” he said with a tired smile.
Sully felt his shoulders relax.
Zimmerman held a kidney-shaped stainless steel pan; a deformed cartridge rattled around in the bottom. He picked it up with a gloved hand. “He’s also a lucky one. The bullet entered the chest just below the ste
rnum, snapping a rib. That diverted the metal to the right of the superior vena cava, missing his heart. We found this piece lodged proximal to the T-6 vertebra, almost exactly in the middle of his back.”
“Paralyzed?” Sully verbalized his first thought.
“Right now, there’s too much swelling both from the injury and the surgery to determine if there’s going to be any permanent damage to the spinal cord. We’ll know more after the swelling recedes,” Zimmerman said. “Twenty-four to forty-eight hours,” he added when Sully’s mouth opened again.
Sully reached for the bullet, but the doctor dropped it back into the pan with a clang. “When the sheriff comes to take a statement, he’ll get the bullet.”
Sully kept his eyes on the slug. It was a 95-grain, full-metal jacketed 9mm. Karadzic’s ammo. At such close range, it would have shattered the rib cage of a smaller man and passed completely through the body.
Sully pushed a breath through pursed lips. “Can I see him?” When Zimmerman hesitated, Sully added, “I’m family.”
The doctor nodded even though the look in his eyes said he knew better. “Give the nurse a few minutes to get him settled. He’ll be heavily sedated, so he’ll fade in and out.” Zimmerman pushed a square plate on the wall and waited for the doors to swing open. “No more than fifteen minutes,” he said.
Sully’s phone chirped. He checked the display and turned his back to the double doors. “Talk to me, Pete.”
A couple of seconds later, Sully nodded and smiled briefly. When the conversation ended, he tapped a number on his cellphone and spoke quietly for less than two minutes. He checked his watch — he’d been at the hospital for two hours — pushed the steel plate on the wall that opened the doors, and walked into the intensive care unit’s recovery area.
The tang of antiseptics permeated the ICU where five beds attended by electronic machines fanned out like a semi-circle of spokes with the nursing desk as the hub and Griebe the only patient. Machines beeped, blinked colored numbers, and scribed colored peaks and valleys across the monitor that tracked Griebe’s life signs. The ICU nurse moved around the bed. Her white clogs padded dully against the vinyl floor. Pudgy fingers pressed her patient’s wrist for a pulse then she probed IV connections and tested the leads monitoring the steady, rhythmic heartbeat.