Ghosts of Culloden Moor 23 - Brodrick

by L. L. Muir

  She punched the call button and stepped up close, praying while she watched, feeling like a little girl who just wanted to shut her eyes until it was over. But there would be reports to fill out. Someone would want to know how it had all gone south, and since it was all her fault, the least she could do was keep her eyes open.

  The prisoner would be shot, probably killed. And it was all on her.

  Without weapons to defend himself, the guy unbuckled one of the belts from his shoulder and stretched it between his hands. Tommy lunged to the far left, his arms straight, two hands on his weapon. But he suddenly twisted when the long leather loop caught on his hands and pulled him to the side, turning his gun on Justice, who had to jump back when he saw the danger. The gun went off. The bullet hit the corner of the wall with a snap.

  The loop rolled out again, catching Justice’s weapons and turning them in the opposite direction, toward Tommy. The end of the taser flew out at him, catching the deputy in the chest.

  A bell dinged over Larkin’s head. The doors slid apart. The Scotsman spun in a wide circle, his kilt flying out around him like a little girl’s bell skirt. But Justice ignored Tommy’s convulsing body and aimed his gun at the prisoner, trying to keep him in his sights while he spun away.

  A shot rang out, deafening in the short hallway. The Scotsman stiffened, stumbled, then righted himself again.

  She was given no time to think, no time to panic. No time to enjoy the numbing bliss of shock as she was shoved inside the elevator. The door closed just as Justice came into view. There was no time for eye contact, which she was grateful for. He looked furious.

  Her captor pressed a button. There was no hitch in his movements. No blood dripping. No pain on his face. She guessed the shot hadn’t hit him after all.

  Her years of study kicked in like a backup generator and she felt herself slipping into comfortable skin. She was the doctor. He was the patient.

  “Don’t do this,” she said carefully, hoping he could understand her intent, if not her words. “Let me help you.”

  He looked surprised. Then he smirked. “Nay, lassie. Allow me to help ye.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “I’ll ask ye to step away from the doors, lass.”

  It wasn’t the brogue that got her to move to the back of the elevator. It wasn’t the charming way he held his hand up to his face and wiggled his finger, insisting she do what he asked. And it wasn’t the size of his massive muscles that peeked out of his animal-skin vest.

  Okay, maybe it was the brogue.

  But in any case, she did as she was told and stepped to the back of the box, hoping he would relax a little if he thought she wouldn’t resist. She could totally believe he was dangerous, but she had a hard time believing he was a danger to her. Yes, he’d used her as a shield to get through the Crisis Unit, but in the hallway, she’d sensed he was protecting her, that his little twirl had been meant to draw fire away from her where she cowered against the elevator doors.

  Of course, she would be a fool to trust her senses, especially when his size and form were clearly affecting her. She had to be smart or she was dead. Simple as that. She had to get some blood back to her brain. Think clearly. Think of him as a patient. A dangerous patient. Stay objective.

  Mental notebook.

  Patient #1.

  Name—she’d have to leave that blank for the moment.

  Age—late twenties or early thirties, maybe. Hard to tell. Lots of scars, but smooth skin. Hard life is obvious. Must reserve pity. Pity could be dangerous here.

  Nationality—Scotland. Probably.

  Languages—Gaelic and English for sure. If she had a pen and paper, she would underline that one about ten times and add a handful of large, angry exclamation points.

  Eye color—hazel. He’s careful not to make eye contact. Guilt? Worried I will learn his vulnerability? He obviously doesn’t trust me any more than he trusted those guards.

  Danger to himself—not likely. Reckless, yes.

  Danger to others—oh boy.

  The most important thing now was to keep him from losing his temper, or from triggering whatever incited his violence. She wasn’t about to ask what had happened earlier. Her number one job was to keep herself safe so she could live to see another day, live to help a different patient. Helping this one probably wasn’t going to happen now. And if he was caught again by morning, and survived, Rentmeister would be around the handle the particulars.

  Number one job…

  Number one job…

  “I’ll not harm ye, lass. I swear it on my good name.”

  She forced a little smile, but she couldn’t meet his gaze for more than a second or she worried he might see just how terrified she was. Being locked in a tiny room with Thor—a Thor that had already proven he had no respect for human life—well, it would have been tough for anyone.

  Oh, sure. He looked like the stuff of romance novels and superhero movies with incredible casting, but there was a huge difference between romance in the air and blood in the water. The guy was a beast—sexy as hell, but still a beast.

  Number one job…

  His brows slammed together and he leaned close, forcing her to look at him. She had to bite her lip to keep it from trembling, but she gave him her attention.

  “I. Will nae. Harm ye.”

  “I guess we’ll see.” She hadn’t intended to say something so stupid, but it was too late now. He was already offended. The first time her life was truly in danger and she’d let her mouth do her thinking!

  He hovered in her face, his brows still slammed together like he thought she would take it back if he scowled at her long enough. But her pride wouldn’t let her do it. And to her relief, he snorted and straightened away.

  Six foot four? Maybe five? There wasn’t much room between the ceiling panels and his head.

  The elevator dinged. Sixth floor. Why had they gone up?

  He grabbed her wrist and kind of stutter-stepped to the edge, then jumped out like a kid reaching the bottom of the escalator for the first time. So of course, she was yanked out too. He pulled her closer and wrapped his arm around her while he rubbed the offended wrist.

  “Forgive me,” he said. But then he grabbed her upper arm and started dragging her along again. His hand was so large his fingers touched his thumb, and it made her reconsider her workout program—or rather, her lack of a workout program.

  He paused in front of fire-escape map on the wall, then took her to the stairs. She let out a breath when he started down the steps instead of up to the roof. Lots of violence sprees ended in suicide, or cop-assisted suicide. And the second she’d seen they’d gone to the top floor, she’d worried he might have planned something dramatic, like splattering himself on the pavement. She would have quickly changed her “danger to self” assessment had he not started down the steps.

  He’d promised not to harm her. She repeated it in her head a couple of times each floor. He’d been offended when she hadn’t believed him. So she chose to believe him.

  It had nothing to do with that brogue…

  Possibly.

  Either way, she was relieved for him too, that he hadn’t intended to go out in a blaze of glory in front of TV cameras. But then again, a few dozen cops were surely waiting for them as soon as they set foot on the first floor. With a cop-killer on the loose, they’d probably be itching for a shootout.

  Would they negotiate for her sake? Justice had never said if he was a good shot or a poor one. Would he be able to hit the Scotsman and miss her?

  But wait! She didn’t want her patient shot either!

  They had just passed the door to the second floor when she dug her feet in to stop him. “Hang on.”

  There was that frown again, but she pressed on. “They’ll be waiting for you down there. But on the second floor,” she hoped she remembered right, “there is a fire escape at the back of the building.”

  He nodded and returned to the door. She looked through the window first, but s
aw no one. Then together, they hurried inside. He released her arm, and when she looked back to find out why, he gestured for her to go on ahead.

  “I’ll be right on yer heels, lass. Lead on, and quickly.”

  She was free. She could do anything at all to thwart him, but she didn’t want to see anyone shot to pieces all because she’d opened that observation room door. And she was sure she’d feel the same about any patient who might or might not be guilty of murdering someone, even if they weren’t wearing a kilt and flexing every muscle when they moved, like a sleek mountain lion…

  Surely.

  She slowed down when she heard voices ahead. They were on the surgical floor, which was pretty much shut down for the night except for emergencies. But the lights were low. No people rushing around, no alarms going off.

  Larkin pressed herself against the wall and peeked around the corner. A couple of interns were making out against the wall about twenty feet away. She knew no other route to the exit she remembered, and getting lost in the circling halls might cost them everything.

  She looked back at her captor and shook her head. “Two people,” she whispered. “They’re not going anywhere.”

  He frowned and motioned her away, slouched against the wall, and took a peek. After he did, he turned back with a grin on his face. “Not long now, I reckon.”

  She didn’t understand, and moved close for another look. The couple had stopped talking altogether and their kissing had turned frantic and passionate. She was embarrassed to be watching and stepped back from the corner to find herself holding onto the sash draped across the chest of the Scottish god. He glanced at her lips. His grin slipped away. And when he leaned forward and pressed his mouth to hers, she was strangely…relieved, like a tension between them had fallen away.

  When she opened her eyes, however, she noticed a small black camera above the Scotsman’s head. Luckily, it was turned toward the intersection they hadn’t yet entered. She glanced around. No other cameras.

  She tapped the man on the chest—a thrill unto itself—and pointed up. He seemed to understand the problem, moved a gurney beneath the camera, and slowly rotated it away from their path. She watched the couple as they slid along the wall and pushed their way through a doorway.

  “They’re gone,” she whispered.

  “Pity,” he said. “We might have been forced to remain here for hours.” He glanced at her lips again, licked his own, then gave her a wink that made Justice’s winks seem like frosty kisses in comparison. There was a playfulness in his eyes that Justice lacked, and a heat that made her think about the couple down the hall. “Extract yer mind from the gutter, lass. We’ve an escape to manage still.”

  She chuckled lightly, then headed down the corridor, desperately hoping that things would look familiar. After all, she’d only been there once before. And another worry she kept to herself—that the fire-escape she remembered might actually have been in another hospital…

  CHAPTER SIX

  It was a year ago, give or take a month, when Larkin accompanied Rent to Landry Medical Center on a call. They’d driven up from St. Paul to see a cocaine addict who had relapsed and tried to kill himself in the middle of a binge. As was often the case, he’d gotten his hands on a large quantity of powder and developed a state of complete psychosis where he couldn’t connect with reality. He believed Larkin was there to harm him, so she’d had to withdraw from the room.

  It was while she waited for Rent that she was asked to consult with a woman whose eleven-year-old son was in surgery. She’d been working herself up for a couple of hours, so a nurse asked Larkin to go to the surgical waiting room and see what she could do. That story had ended much better than the one Rent had been dealing with, though Larkin hadn’t made much of a difference. But looking back, she wondered if Fate had sent her to the woman just so she would know where the fire escape was.

  She remembered turning left…

  A sign on the wall pointed the rest of the way, and with every step, she became more confident that the fire escape was there. She remembered staring at that emergency exit for over an hour while the little boy’s mother had shared her soul, confessing every little mistake she’d made in raising her child. Little, stupid details that haunted the woman, like forgetting to put money under the kid’s pillow one night because she’d fallen asleep—and just like that, her son had stopped believing in the tooth fairy. As if belief in fairy tales was the most important part of his childhood.

  Fairy tales, Larkin believed, should be reserved for fairies. The sooner kids realized there was no magic in the world, the sooner they’d be able to deal with reality—and fewer little girls would waste their time waiting for fairy godmothers and heroic princes to fix their little worlds. They could fix their worlds themselves.

  Like she’d done.

  And one day, she was going to make a difference in someone else’s world too. One day. One patient. Then she’d know that all her sacrifices weren’t in vain.

  She stopped in front of the door she’d been looking for and glanced back at the Scotsman. Too bad she couldn’t have made a difference for him. The best she could do now was to give him a fighting chance, to keep him from walking into a hailstorm of bullets. But that was all she could do. Her one day, one patient plan would have to wait for another day and another patient.

  “Here. This is it.” She pushed the door open and led him inside, shut the door behind them, and moved to a door in the far wall where the exit sign glowed green. “Here’s your way out.”

  He read the warning written along the bar. “But the alarm will sound, will it not?”

  “Not if you climb out through the window.”

  The second floor wasn’t far enough off the ground that someone could jump to their death, so the windows opened wide enough for a body to fit through.

  “Ye’ll go first, lass. Normally, I would make certain the way is safe, but if I did, ye’d not follow, aye? And I have need of ye for a wee while longer.”

  “And what if I refused?”

  He shook his head slowly. “I’d not advise it. The bastards seem to have no qualms about shooting in yer direction if it might bring me down. If ye make a hue and cry, ye put yerself in danger, aye?” He was suddenly standing within inches of her, leaning over her like a large, hungry bird. “But dinna fash over yer options, lass. Ye have only the two. Either ye come along on yer feet, or ye come along over my back.” He tilted his head to one side, and then the other, sizing her up. “And I warrant ye’ll be no burden.”

  She might have scoffed at that, had she not been so terrified by the possibility of being slung over his back like a Santa sack. She might not be tall, but she was far from light. Was he blind? Her black pants bulged just enough to prove they weren’t a recent purchase. The jacket looked more hand-me-down than her usual hand-me-downs, and it was tight enough in the pits to make her arms bow out a little instead of hanging down at her sides. Under his close scrutiny, she felt ridiculous in her Retro-Chic.

  Heck, she didn’t even know what Retro-Chic was. Old and cool, she supposed. Or maybe not old enough to be cool—like stuff a mom wears when she stops shopping for her own clothes because she spends too much time shopping for her kids. And the only thing worse than Retro-Chic that wasn’t retro enough to be chic was having it all half a size too small.

  “After ye,” he murmured, then took a step back and pointed to the window. “And just in case…” He slipped his long leather strap through the back of her belt, slid the buckle to the end, and gave it a tug to make sure it would hold. “And remember, time is against us both. I’d hate to see ye shot with that taser—”

  That was all she needed to hear to get moving. If anyone was watching the footage from the second floor cameras, they would soon realize that something wasn’t right. And the possibility of Justice coming down the hall with a newly charged taser gun made her sick to her stomach—it was only slightly worse than the twist in her gut when she’d found out that a sheriff was w
aiting for her.

  Larkin cleared the window and found her footing on a wide ledge outside. In the expanse of visible hospital grounds, she saw no officers, no flashing lights. Apparently there weren’t enough of them to surround the entire building and search for them too. But it was only a matter of time.

  She held tight to the leather strap to ensure the guy didn’t pull her off balance as he climbed out the window. But he didn’t so much as take up the slack, and it took him about three seconds to get through the opening.

  The ladder from the third floor was only a foot to the left of him. A stretch of grass ran straight out from the building between two parking lots with a smattering of cars, and ended at the base of a hill. Beyond that was a mountain covered in shrubbery fit to hide a Scotsman. A place where he could hide for years if he liked. A place where no one could find him. No one could lock him up.

  No one could prevent him from killing again.

  Did she really want him to escape? If he killed again, the blood would be on her hands.

  “I’m sorry, she said. “You’re on your own, now.” And as soon as he was down the ladder and there was a good twenty yards between them, she’d start screaming.

  He rolled the ladder extension until it hit the ground, then faced her with an outstretched hand. “Come with me, lass.” He acted like he hadn’t heard a word.

  She shook her head. “No.” The ledge wasn’t wide enough to handle a struggle. She could only pray he would let her stand her ground.

  “I didna kill that man,” he said, his hand still waiting for her to take it.

  “I never asked—”

  “Yer sheriff killed him.”

  What?! No! Even if the man was just trying to trick her into trusting him, the idea of Justice being corrupt filled her stomach with liquid revulsion, like a hose had been turned on full force. “How dare you!”

  He sighed. “Whether or nay ye believe me, I canna leave ye here in such danger. Who kens how many lives he and his men will destroy to conceal their sins?”