Deeper Evil (The Evil Secrets Trilogy Book 2)
Page 36
He stepped inside momentarily to pull out the red emergency stop button so the doors wouldn’t close. He took the time to place a kiss on the baby’s forehead. Gently, he put the sleeping Sarah on the floor still wrapped in his shirt. Trevor hated letting her go, but time was not on his side. He pulled a gold cowboy from his jacket pocket and slipped it into the front pocket of the Oxford shirt. Reluctantly, he re-engaged the emergency lever and stepped outside the elevator, watched as the door closed and baby Sarah disappeared.
By the time Dylan reached ground level, a crowd had gathered around the bank of elevators leading to the parking garage. Five police officers converged on the scene about the same time Dylan waded into the throng of people.
A man yelled, “Look at that, there’s a baby with blood on her in the elevator.”
Dylan’s heart sank. A sickening feeling washed over him as he maneuvered his way to the front of the crowd, pushing and shoving for space. Then he heard Sarah start to fuss. The sound was the most wonderful sound he’d ever heard in his life. Before he ever laid eyes on her, he knew she was at least alive. By the time he inched his way through the crowd, he watched as a police officer reached down and scooped her up off the floor.
Specks of blood smeared her face. The shirt that wrapped around her little body bore red stains as well.
Sarah started to cry for real.
It was music to Dylan’s ears. Knees weak, he reached out his hands to take the baby and told the officer, “Oh God. She’s mine. She’s hurt. Give her to me.”
“Now wait a minute…I can’t just…do that…who’s to say… We don’t even know whose blood this is. This is a crime scene.”
Dylan didn’t give a shit about a crime scene. He wanted to get Sarah back to her mother. With shaky hands, he reached around to his back pocket and pulled out his wallet with his driver’s license, flashed it to the officer. “I’m the one who called you guys. I’m Dylan Burke. This is Sarah Burke. She’s mine. Now give her to me.” He reached out his hands again, and when Sarah saw him, she held up her little arms and babbled something that sounded very much like a long drawn out, “Daaaaaaaaaa.”
“Well, okay then,” the officer said as he handed Sarah into the waiting arms of her father. “You lead the way. I’ll need to follow you upstairs and get your statement.”
The minute Dylan clutched her to his chest, Sarah laid her head on his shoulder and stopped crying. With the cop in tow, Dylan raced toward the elevator to head back upstairs, holding on to Sarah for dear life. He had to wait for an available car, and while waiting he began to unwrap the shirt from around Sarah’s body, trying to examine her for injuries, trying to figure out why she was wearing it in the first place and why it had so much blood on it.
But while loosening the shirt, a small gold cowboy slipped out of the pocket and hit the tile floor with a ping.
Bending to pick it up, he had a sick feeling what that meant. Their mysterious stranger had obviously, once again, shown up out of the blue and rode to the rescue. Dylan didn’t know why and didn’t care. If he ever came face to face with the man, he’d kiss him on the mouth right before he bought him a round of beers.
But right this minute, he needed to make sure the baby wasn’t hurt. He handed the bloody shirt to the officer and took turns examining her arms and legs for anything that looked like a cut or a scrape. Even though she’d stopped crying, he checked her as best he could for any outward signs of trauma. Relieved to find she didn’t have so much as a cut or a bruise on her anywhere, he clutched her to his chest.
When the elevator finally opened he didn’t realize tears were streaming down his face until he saw his reflection in the mirrored glass inside the car’s sidewall.
As it rumbled upward to the twelfth floor, he leaned his weight up against the opposite wall and cried like a baby right in front of the cop.
The minute the elevator doors slid open, he looked up through teary eyes and saw Baylee standing at the nurses’ station wringing her hands with a swollen face and puffy lip, bruised and battered, her heart ripped out waiting for any word about their daughter.
Their daughter, thought Dylan, relief and joy running through him.
As soon as she spotted Dylan holding Sarah, she threw herself into his body. “Oh, my God, you found her. She’s safe. Oh, thank God. You brought her back to me. Thank you, Dylan. I love you.”
“Is that for me or for Sarah?” he asked in wonder.
“It’s for both of you. You did it, Dylan. You found her and brought her back to me.”
As she plucked the baby from his arms, Dylan wrapped both of them up. Kissing the top of Baylee’s head, he told her, “We’ve found each other. I love you, Baylee. I love Sarah. And I’m not letting either one of you go.”
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Ending Evil
Book Three of the Evil Secrets Trilogy
ENDING EVIL
Darkness descended and caused shadows to fall around him, helping to conceal his movements. He quickened his pace as cop cars passed him on the street on their way to the Medical Center.
It seemed to him the LAPD was moving into the area in record time from every direction. From the corner of his eye, Trevor Dane watched as uniformed cops blocked off the main entrance and scurried to get the hospital in lockdown mode in a matter of minutes.
At least he had made it off campus before that had happened, he thought, as he kept his head down and continued putting one foot in front of the other toward his Chevy, which he’d parked several streets over in a residential section of the neighborhood.
He wasn’t far enough away though, not by a long shot. He kept his pace brisk as he dared not steal a glance behind him. He didn’t have time to worry about security cameras and what surveillance images he’d left behind. Too late for that, he thought, wearily.
He’d worn gloves though, and he had another name to check off his list.
That list was getting shorter by the day. He’d taken care of the viper, Alana Stevens, right out of the box, driving a knife through her black heart and enjoyed every second of it.
From there he’d moved on to Jessica Geller Boyd, where he’d taken a 9 mm Glock and put it to her temple. He’d ended those soulless dark eyes once and for all. Her sister, Eva Geller Gatz, had met a similar fate except he’d used a .38. With Sumner Boyd he’d stayed with that same trusty .38 caliber although he had switched weapons, wouldn’t do to use the same gun.
But with sleazy Frank Geller, he’d gone with the standard suicide gun, a .22 caliber Smith & Wesson.
Now, the boot knife that went wherever he did had taken care of Connor Boyd.
That left two brothers still standing. He’d missed taking out Collin Boyd once before. He didn’t intend to miss a second time.
Because he wore no shirt beneath his jacket dusk made the June gloom marine layer cooler than it had been just an hour earlier. He’d left his shirt behind, the shirt he’d used to wrap up little baby Sarah, which obviously had Connor Boyd’s DNA all over it. But it couldn’t be helped could it, he reminded himself.
And the baby was safe now and for all time, back in the arms of her mother, Baylee Scott, away from the violent and unstable man who’d fathered her.
The baby.
It had been a
long time since he’d held an infant, especially one so young, so dependent on the adults around her. He remembered her smell, her little face, her little puckered mouth, the hiccupping, and her eyes brimming with so many tears.
Tears she should never have been forced to shed.
Not twenty minutes earlier, he’d slit the throat of the baby’s father and left him on the dirty concrete of the fifth floor parking structure to bleed out. He would not soon forget Connor Boyd’s cold eyes as he died beneath his feet.
Nor would he forget the man’s attack on the young mother. He had used his fists to bring her to her knees. If he’d let the man escape with Sarah, he wouldn’t have been able to live with himself.
Trevor heard even more sirens grow closer. He needed to put as much distance between this place and the crime scene as quickly as he could. Even a professional, he reminded himself, with his years of experience, sometimes had to take risks.
He sighed. No sense beating himself up. Not every kill could be as meticulously carried out as one could hope or plan, he thought bitterly. Even though there was no chill in the air, he pulled his jacket collar up around his ears. He hurried on.
From the moment Connor had kidnapped Sarah, ripped the baby out of her mother’s arms, he had left Trevor few options. As he saw it, he’d been fortunate Connor had made his escape route via the parking garage. The place had been deserted enough that he had been able to take the man down without bringing much attention to himself or to the area.
When his rented Chevy came into view, Trevor pressed the remote key lock. Good thing he hadn’t parked near the hospital. He hadn’t spent years working as a hit man for nothing. He thought of his bumbling counterpart, Uri Jankovic, and wondered if the Pacific Ocean had yet to give up his body to the land. Probably not, he decided, as he slid neatly behind the wheel of his car, quickly threw the vehicle in gear, and took off down the quiet, residential side street.
As he drove toward the 101, he contemplated his next move.
He could simply leave L.A. now, wad up his list, discard it in the nearest trash can at LAX and be on the next flight to Buenos Aires. He could find the first available warm body and spend the next two months fucking anything with a heartbeat.
Or, he could finish what he’d started, put an end to the evil, once and for all. He still had two more names on his to-do list. He was certain Cade and Collin Boyd weren’t yet finished. He didn’t know what their next move might be, but he knew for certain there would be one.
He pressed the accelerator, shot into the lane to access the 101, and made his decision.
Ending the evil, once and for all, was the only thing that made any sense.
Noah Parker wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.
Two months into her first year of residency, Quinn Tyler realized chaos was about to erupt inside the ER.
Having just finished stitching up a thirteen year old skateboarder’s sidewalk meet lip mishap, she quickly shed her pair of latex gloves and stepped back out into the common area of the ER.
She caught the triage nurse taking the call from the paramedics and knew they were bringing in a White male in his late-thirties who’d had his throat slit. He’d been found bleeding out on the fifth floor of the hospital parking garage.
Quinn heard the overhead pager repeat the same alert several times. “Code Trauma Now!”
The litany brought every available shift resident on the first floor running, along with the respiratory nurse and most of the ER staff including, Harold Mendenhall, chief of emergency surgery.
They all hovered near the ER doors—waiting.
Minutes later the doors whooshed open and paramedics wheeled an injured man inside. Quinn grabbed another pair of gloves, slipped them on and prepared to go to work. It wasn’t until the man had been transferred from the gurney to the table that Quinn recognized him as Connor Boyd.
But he didn’t look anything like the dark brooding man she remembered from her youth. This man was white as the sheets around him. And dark blood already congealed around the six inch long slice to his neck.
As the paramedic reported on his vitals and what up to now they had done for him, Quinn listened, keenly aware the man looked more dead than alive. “He had a faint pulse when we first got him loaded.” He shook his head. “But I think we lost him on the way inside.”
Dr. Mendenhall went to work, sizing up the man’s condition and snapping out orders. “Jesus, this man’s carotid artery has been severed. He’s lost too much blood. But we’ll give it our best shot. Lopez, get me a blood workup. Stat! He’s not breathing. Angie, intubate him. Ms. Tyler, don’t just stand there. Once Sullivan has the tube in, try to put pressure on the wound and get that bleeding stopped.” To him it pretty much looked like a lost cause, but they might get lucky.
Quinn watched with a certain amount of envy as Angie Sullivan, third year resident and Mendenhall’s favorite underling, manually intubated Connor trying to get him to breathe. Together they worked the airbag compressing air into his lungs.
Even though she’d been ready and willing to apply pressure to the wound the minute he began to show any signs of life, Quinn waited for the signal that never came. Despite the fact that Angie and Quinn and Mendenhall worked frantically to get the man to breathe, after a long twenty minutes, even a brand new resident like Quinn, knew it was too late. He’d lost too much blood.
Connor Boyd was gone.
He had more than likely bled out in a matter of minutes. Whoever had done this to him had known what they were doing, at least in Quinn’s mind they had. After another several long minutes, Mendenhall simply said, “I’m calling time of death at,” he glanced up at the clock, “8:25, even though it was more like twenty minutes ago. By any chance, is there any next of kin around?”
“You goddamned right there is. Don’t you dare stop working on him. Do something. You can’t let him die.”
Quinn whirled around at the sound of Cade Boyd’s voice and saw a disheveled man, standing holding the curtain that separated the attending rooms. He gripped the fabric like a drowning sailor held onto a life raft. Unlike his brother, Cade wasn’t pale but stood defiant and red-faced.
A pair of cold, black stormy eyes met hers.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Vickie McKeehan is the author of fifteen novels and makes her home in
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