Sleight of Hand (Outbreak Task Force)

by Julie Rowe

  As soon as she answered, he explained their situation at the treatment facility and kept talking fast enough to prevent her from asking anything until he was done. He ended with, “We need backup.”

  “You’re supposed to be on a plane back to Atlanta.” Rodrigues’s voice was an angry growl.

  Joy gestured at him with an urgent hand and pointed down one of the hallways.

  Faintly, from a distance, someone screamed. A shot cut the scream off abruptly.

  “Shots fired,” Gunner said into the phone.

  “Get out of there,” Rodrigues said, each word enunciated with careful precision.

  Gunner partially covered the receiving end of the phone. “What was that, ma’am? I’m afraid I didn’t hear you over the scream of someone in distress somewhere in this building. Send medical help.” He ended the call and put his phone on silent. There would be hell to pay, but better getting yelled at than doing nothing.

  Joy had a weapon, but he didn’t. He looked around for something he could use to combat a couple of murderous mass poisoners and saw a mid-size fire extinguisher strapped to the wall. It will have to do. He grabbed it then nodded at Joy to take the lead.

  Her expression was grim, but she lifted her handgun in a two-handed grip, looking like she belonged in one of those cop shows on TV. Only this was real life, and at least one person had already been murdered here.

  They crept down the hallway using a measured pace. They didn’t see or hear anyone, until they heard shouts.

  The voices sounded odd, from a distance with a bit of an echo, which didn’t make sense given the standard office building hallway they were in. There wasn’t enough space to create an echo.

  They reached a corner, and Joy paused before looking very cautiously around it. She pulled back and held her breath.

  She looked at Gunner and leaned closer. He put his ear next to her lips.

  “One man with a gun,” she said. “It looks like an M-16. One person on the ground and another two with their hands up. There’s a beer keg on the floor next to some kind of moving dolly. Would one keg of beer be enough to poison the water?”

  “No.” Gunner considered it further. “But if they grew a concentrated batch of the bacteria in a liquid medium and transported it inside a keg, it would be.”

  “Shit,” Joy said. “I guess we can’t just ask them.”

  “I doubt we’d get the answer we’re looking for.”

  She glanced around the corner again. “That keg is bigger than the ones we saw in the brewery.”

  “Hard to keep your rifle trained on someone and move something that heavy at the same time,” Gunner said. “What’s our game plan?”

  “Distract and destroy?”

  “How would that work?” He fixed her with a hard stare. “The police will be here soon.”

  “I’m the distraction. I think I can lure the gunman away to other parts of the building if I make lots of noise. Get him to leave the hostages and the keg for a short period of time. Once he’s taken the bait, you can get the hostages away.” She glanced at the fire extinguisher. “Hopefully, you won’t have to put out any fires.”

  At the word distraction and the phrase lure the gunman, his whole body froze solid, turning him into a fear-filled iceberg of jagged-edged memories. They weighed him down and threatened to flip him ass over end.

  He managed to defrost his mouth and throat enough to say, “You won’t give the nutcase with the rifle a clear shot at you. This isn’t the OK Corral. There won’t be a shootout.” He stared into her gaze and leaned closer to her. “Agreed?”

  “Agreed,” she said with a confidence he hoped was real.

  “I’m serious, Joy. If you get hurt, I will never let you forget it.”

  “Right back at you, partner.” She gave him a hard stare then hustled back down the hallway and disappeared.

  “Roll the keg onto the dolly,” someone shouted. “Do it now.”

  Gunner glanced around the corner and saw the gunman pointing his weapon at a balding, overweight man whose belly hung over the edge of his pants.

  “I can’t,” the man said. He spoke fast, his voice vibrating with fear. “I have a bad back. My doctor put me on a modified work schedule—”

  “Shut up and do as you’re told, or the next thing your doctor will be doing is putting a toe tag on your foot.”

  Gunner tried to judge how far away he was from the gunman. With his limp, he couldn’t move as fast as normal, so he’d need longer to get the remaining hostages out of there. Another quick look around the corner revealed a couple of doorways he might be able to hide in as he moved closer to the action.

  He just needed a moment when the gunman’s attention was elsewhere.

  “Move, lady.” Someone barked loud enough to turn the gunman’s head one hundred and eighty degrees.

  Gunner’s, too. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  Joy came into view, her hands up, a second armed man shoving her forward with the muzzle of another nasty-looking rifle.

  The sight of her, her hands in the air, a weapon pointed at her head, stopped him dead, his gut disappearing into a black hole beneath his feet. Shit. Shit. Shit.

  “Where did she come from?” the first gunman asked.

  “She was sneaking up the hallway behind you.”

  “She’s a cop?” He looked her scrubs up and down.

  “Her ID says CDC.”

  Gunner’s heart pounded out a funeral dirge in his ears. No, no, no. They would kill her. She was a witness, an expert one. They would kill her.

  “Fuck.” The first man paced back and forth a couple of times. “Is she alone?”

  “I haven’t seen anyone else. No cops, either.” A pause. “I’ve got her phone. It’s hooked into the CDC’s internal system. It has real time lab results and communications from other CDC team members.” He laughed. “A fucking gold mine.”

  He had to get her out of there, but how?

  “There are a dozen officers surrounding this area,” Joy said, lifting her chin and making strong eye contact.

  Good, if you’re going to lie, make them believe it.

  “Do yourselves a favor and turn yourselves in now,” she continued saying.

  The second man barked out a laugh. “Everyone else in the building is dead. If the cops were here, we’d know about it already.” He looked at his buddy. “She’s full of shit.”

  The other man didn’t look convinced. “Maybe, but she might have a partner or small team with her. Let’s get this finished and get out of here before anyone else shows up.” He turned and shot the overweight man in the heart then in the head.

  The other hostage, a woman, screamed and covered her face with her hands. And kept screaming.

  “Shut up,” the murderer said, pointing his gun at her. “Or you’re next.”

  She covered her mouth, muffling the noises of terror she continued to make despite the threat.

  “You,” the second gunman said to Joy, giving her another shove with the tip of his rifle. “Get over there and help get that keg on the dolly.”

  She walked, slowly and with caution, keeping her hands where everyone could see them.

  Good, good. Play nice with the armed idiots and maybe, maybe they wouldn’t shoot her.

  She tried to roll the keg and was able to move it up to the dolly, but she couldn’t lift it the necessary inch, so it sat upright on the dolly’s platform.

  Joy looked at the other woman. “A little help?”

  When the first gunman yelled, “Hurry up!” the terrified woman tried to help Joy lift the keg, but even together they weren’t able to move it.

  She was going to get shot, and he wasn’t going to be able to do anything about it.

  He couldn’t watch another person he loved die in front of him. No, not on his watch. He needed to execute the plan, give her an opportunity to get herself out of there. But, since there were two armed men, any attempt Gunner could make at distraction would turn it into a deadly impossibility.r />
  What else could he do?

  A bolt of frozen lightning ripped down his spine as the faint wail of police sirens reached him. If he could hear them, so could the two gunmen.

  They both jerked, looked at each other, then the second one said, “Out of time.”

  “There’s enough to finish this.”

  Gunner didn’t like the way the first one said “finish,” like it was the end of the world. Maybe to him it was.

  Were they prepared to die to get the pathogen into the outgoing water?

  Dumb question—they’d already killed to do it. They wouldn’t want to be captured by the police. They’d kill any witnesses as matter of course. These two spoke like men who’d bet their last nickel and had nothing to lose.

  More sirens outside, louder now. The police would be charging down the hallway soon, guns drawn, demanding the surrender of men who were cornered, with only one way out.

  Gunner closed his eyes and pictured the space. Open, but surrounded on all sides by equipment, hallways leading to other parts of the building, and large tanks of water below. There were four hallways like spokes on a wheel or a compass.

  If he could get to the hallway opposite his current position, let the police become the distraction, he might be able to do some good.

  He hurried back down the hallway until he came to the fork and then another. After a few more turns, he came to the corner and looked around it quickly.

  One gunman was facing the hallway filtering the noise of sirens loudest, the other was trying to get the keg loaded on the dolly, yelling at Joy and the other woman to lift, damn you, lift.

  They got the barrel upright, and the gunman began shifting it toward the dolly using the bottom rim.

  Across the space, someone shouted, “Police, drop your weapons.”

  The armed gunman grabbed the hysterical woman, yanking her in front of him, and yelled, “Back away or I shoot her.”

  The second man almost had the keg on the dolly.

  It was now or never.

  Gunner slipped around the corner and moved as fast as he could toward the cluster of people. The second man turned his head and stared at Gunner blankly for a second.

  He let go of the keg, and his hands shot to his rear waistband as he sucked in a breath and opened his mouth.

  Joy tackled him from behind, knocking him to the floor.

  Gunner moved faster.

  The first gunman turned, the gun in his hand, and fired.

  The shot went wide.

  The woman the gunman was using as a shield lost her shit, screaming, kicking, and punching wildly. She managed to elbow her captor in the face, and he stumbled back, letting go of her.

  She dashed away, still screaming. The gunman shot her in the back.

  As soon as she went down, the cops started shooting at the gunman. His body jerked several times before he fell facedown.

  The asshole Joy had rammed managed to shove her off him. He whipped his hands around to the front of his body and aimed his gun. At Gunner.

  Gunner pulled the pin on the fire extinguisher, pointed the nozzle at the second guy’s face, then squeezed the trigger.

  The gun went off, and something pushed Gunner back a step like he’d been poked hard in the ribs with a couple of fingers. He braced himself and kept spraying the man. Another hard poke rocked him back. The pressure from the stream of fire retardant finally forced the gun out of bad guy’s hand.

  Gunner’s arms trembled with the effort to hold onto the extinguisher. He was so fucking tired, and the canister had gotten heavy in a hurry.

  Joy lunged upward, snarling, grabbed the extinguisher from Gunner’s loose grip, and smacked the gunman in the side of the head with it. He wilted like week-old lettuce.

  Joy looked at Gunner. Her eyes grew wide. “Gunner?”

  His knees buckled, and he went down. Damned leg.

  “Gunner,” she screamed, dropping the extinguisher and jumping at him. “Man down, man down,” she yelled over her shoulder.

  Who was she talking about?

  Gunner glanced at his torso and saw white puffs of retardant mixed with blood. The red stain got darker and darker, spreading across and down his torso.

  Joy shoved him onto his back, yanked his shirt open, then pressed her hands against his chest.

  He’d been shot?

  Huh. It didn’t hurt as much as he thought it would.

  “Hey,” he said, trying to reassure her, but the word came out in a voiceless whisper.

  Tears were running down Joy’s face.

  He lifted a hand and tried to wipe the moisture away. “Are you okay?” he asked, forcing the words out through a throat that got narrower and narrower with every second.

  “I’m fine.” She let out a sob. “Why did you do it? He had a gun. You had to know he’d shoot you.”

  “I couldn’t let them hurt you.” Gunner stroked his thumb across her cheek, wiping away more tears. His arm seemed to weigh a hundred pounds, and it fell back to earth.

  Behind Joy, several men in police uniforms, guns in their hands, arrived. Some shouted questions and orders, others left his field of vision.

  His whole body felt heavy and cold.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Wednesday 5:56 p.m.

  Joy pressed her weight against the hole in Gunner’s chest and tried to stop crying. She needed to be able to speak to the police.

  She managed to get her tears under control when one of them came to a stop in front of her and said, “Hands in the air.”

  Of all the moronic things to say…

  Disbelief surprised her so much she was able to speak. “I’m with the CDC,” she said. “And so is this man. He’s been shot in the chest. I need an ambulance here yesterday.”

  Someone else yelled, “Move away from the victim, ma’am.”

  Like hell she would. “I’m the only thing keeping him from bleeding out,” she said in her best don’t fuck with me tone. “Get me an ambulance.”

  The man in front of her slowly lowered his gun and took a step closer. “She’s right, this guy is wounded.”

  The next few minutes passed in a blur as two paramedics arrived. They got Gunner onto the stretcher and rolled it into the ambulance with her still on top of him, putting pressure on the wound.

  She focused on Gunner and spoke to him, whispering in his ear that she loved him and he couldn’t leave her. If he left, if he died, something inside her would break. Shatter. Perish.

  He didn’t respond. His eyes were closed, his lashes dark against ashen skin. He’d lost a lot of blood. Too much blood?

  Why had he tried to stop two armed men with a fire extinguisher? He had to have known she was unarmed, and with the cops rushing in, the situation had been too fluid, too confusing.

  A scream hovered at the back of her throat. Why?

  A team waited for them at the hospital. They took Gunner directly to an OR. She was ordered off of him right outside the operating room, and they took him in.

  There were a couple of chairs along the hallway in front of the doors to the OR. She stumbled over and lowered herself onto one as a strange painful numbness smothered her body.

  What if he died? She couldn’t imagine her life without him in it. They were partners. They balanced each other. He’d promised not to leave her without talking to her first.

  He’d promised.

  Joy let herself cry until there weren’t any tears left. She couldn’t do this. Not alone. Not again.

  Henry found her there. He crouched in front of her, close, but not touching. “Hey.”

  She blinked at him and found it difficult to focus on his face. She wiped her eyes, but that didn’t help much. Her hands and clothing were covered in dried blood.

  “You okay?” Henry asked.

  She snorted. “No.” She glanced at herself and winced. “I’m not even sure how long I’ve been sitting here.”

  “One hour and forty-two minutes.”

  “Oh. How do you—
”

  “The staff noted what time they took him into surgery.” Henry stood up. “Come on.”

  She didn’t move. “I want to wait.” She had to know he was still alive.

  “You can wait, but it’s going to be a while before they’re done. Several hours, at least. Time enough for you to get cleaned up and eat.”

  She hesitated.

  “He’s not going anywhere,” Henry said. “I promise.”

  She nodded and stood. Her whole body ached, and her feet seemed to weigh three times what they normally did. “Maybe a nap, too.”

  Henry smiled, and she flinched. She’d smiled that smile to family members of patients whose outcome was in doubt. A smile conveying sympathy, pity, and support.

  “Don’t look at me like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like you’re afraid I’m going to start babbling and pull all my hair out. I’m tired and sad, nothing more.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She rolled her eyes. Henry might not have served as a soldier in the last ten years, but he still acted like he was in and deployed.

  They started walking, his limp reminding her of Gunner.

  She’d heard Henry had lost his leg in an incident that left several of his unit dead. He seemed on top of his shit. “How did you do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “Keep all your marbles in your head after…”

  His face lost all trace of amusement. “You’re assuming I’ve still got them all.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “I don’t know.” He sounded surprised. Then he continued in his normal tone, “Keep busy. Have a purpose. That’s been my strategy.”

  He walked her to the female staff change room. “There’s some clothing waiting for you inside. Grab a shower. We’ll get you something to eat, then, depending on the word from the OR, you might even have time for that nap.”

  She scrubbed her entire body three times, afraid of missing any of the blood that had soaked her clothing and covered her skin. The heat from the water didn’t just wash away the evidence of how badly Gunner had been injured, it dissolved most of the adrenaline keeping her on her feet. By the time she was dressed in a clean set of clothes from her own go-bag, her eyes were sagging shut despite all the effort she put into keep them open.