Gone Duck

by L. L. Muir

  “Clean her. Cauterize the bleeding. Then bring her to the basement.”

  The man nodded once.

  The elevator opened and she was dragged out of it before she thought to check which floor they were on. She struggled to think clearly as she was hustled down a hall. She dug in and tried to pull away from her escort, but fire exploded up her side like forked lightning and she cried out. The man holding her didn’t spare her a glance, just pulled her along. After two doorways, he unloaded her against a ceramic wall. She tried to put her feet firmly beneath her, but ended up sliding to the floor with a smack. But at least she didn’t hit her head like she had at the Davenport.

  Water groaned through a pipe and she was suddenly and violently thrown back against the tile wall by the force of water shooting directly at her from a hose. The man in white held onto that hose and looked at her with no emotion. A fireman putting out a fire. But the fire was on the inside and all his water did was cause the lightning to spread.

  She wanted to scream, but the pain and the cold water stole her breath. The force of it nailed her head to the wall and drilled painfully into her ear. She turned to take the brunt of it against her back, to spare her chance of ever hearing again, but the powerful torrent ground her forehead into the wall. She slipped a hand between her skull and the tile for a reprieve.

  The water stopped, though it still felt as if it was pounding into her. She thought the cease-fire was a trick to get her to turn, but after a moment, there was only silence. She left her hand where it was, to keep from being knocked unconscious if the guy started up again, then she turned her body to the side.

  Nothing happened.

  She turned again. The man was gone. She leaned back against the wall and watched through her dripping bangs, waiting for some small movement to warn her what would come next.

  Clean her. Cauterize the bleeding…

  Water trickled away from her toward a drain in the floor just left of her foot. Pink tinged the little rivulet pouring away from her soaked jeans. Then streaks of red. She was bleeding much faster than she had before.

  Somebody should get somebody.

  She wondered what the chances were that Dorothy Jean would show up with an Emergency Kit, but then remembered Dorothy Jean had already been saved. Shawn was causing trouble, saving his friends and family list.

  She laughed at how silly her thoughts banged around while her second heart poured into the drain.

  Her ear popped and still-cool liquid leaked from her ear. She could hear someone talking. A phone conversation. An unfamiliar voice.

  “Yes. We may need to trade her for Lyman… Forget what he said. The old woman is the only priority. The rest is gravy.”

  Shawn said it often enough. The rest is gravy. She was beginning to think that life, in general, was gravy. Especially now that she wasn’t going to see much more of it. The fireman would be collecting her soon to cauterize her wound and take her to the basement where Lacrosse would be waiting like a temperamental furnace.

  Footsteps clicked along a hallway and through the door. Splash, splash, splash. Cowboy boots. Fancy ones. They were going to be ruined.

  “Macey, you’re going to be all right. We’re going to take you to have your wound cared for. Can you hear me?”

  She nodded. She could hear him, but she didn’t want to lift her head. The back of it would hit the tile, and it was already bruised. The pain really wanted her attention, but she just couldn’t keep paying it.

  Funny, how you fall asleep…

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Macey woke in a hospital room, or at least it looked like one.

  She smirked at Lacrosse’s mistake. He should have never allowed her to rest up.

  She turned off the monitors before unplugging herself from them. Alarms wouldn’t help her at the moment. She braced herself and pulled out her IV. Still shuddering, she reached inside the gown and ripped off the stickers the wires were attached to. Heart monitor maybe? It had been a long time since she sat in a hospital room with her grandpa, and then her mother. Science had changed a little. But not hospital gowns.

  She climbed off the end of the bed, bypassing the side rails. There was a small closet and she said a little prayer before opening the door. Her clothes hung inside. Clean, pressed. Shoes and socks were there as well. She pulled the shirt from the hanger. The bullet holes, front and back, had been sewn shut.

  She dressed carefully, resting in chair of cold orange leather each time she started to feel dizzy. Then it struck her, as she was tying her last shoe, that Lacrosse had expected her to get dressed. He’d left her to wake on her own and enjoy a few minutes of hope just so he could steal them away again.

  She stopped hurrying. He wasn’t going to allow her to escape, so she wasn’t going to waste her energy trying. She lifted the tail of her shirt to look at her side. She’d been stitched up. The dark little threads showed through the sheer bandage that was little more than tape against her skin. She pressed it, but the wound didn’t hurt nearly as much as she expected it to. Even if she’d been asleep an entire day, it couldn’t have healed so quickly.

  “Hello.” A man in scrubs walked into the room not at all surprised to find her out of bed. “Mr. De Vos would like to see you.”

  “In the basement?”

  The man’s brows rose. “No. Why do you ask?”

  “What’s in the basement?”

  He looked uncomfortable to be questioned. “The morgue, among other things.”

  “Oh.” Well, at least she knew what to expect when they took her there.

  “Do you feel stable on your feet?”

  “Yes.” She pushed up on the arms of the chair and though it hurt her to stand, she wasn’t about to let anyone know it.

  The guy frowned at her, doubtful. “If you’re sure. We don’t keep Mr. De Vos waiting.”

  “Of course not.”

  She followed him through half a floor of hospital rooms, all with closed doors, to an elevator. Once she was inside, he leaned around the opening and pressed the number two.

  “You’re not coming?”

  He rolled his eyes. “No.” And the doors closed.

  A large building. Ten floors. B for basement. Three levels that went even lower. At least he hadn’t pressed any of those. There was time, however, if she wanted to get off one of the other floors before the elevator reached number two.

  She reached for the buttons, but a sound stopped her.

  “Please come directly to the second floor, Miss McDaniels,” a man’s voice said from a speaker in the panel. “We wouldn’t want you to harm yourself.”

  The implied threat reminded her of Lacrosse’s words at the airfield. It would be a shame for Dorothy Jean to be harmed…but harmed she would be if Macey didn’t toe the line. Now there was no one else to threaten, other than her. If she remembered right, Lacrosse had misplaced Dorothy Jean.

  She leaned back and waited. When the doors opened, a stern gentleman waited for her.

  “This way,” he said. His voice had been the one in the elevator.

  She was led through two sets of contemporary, but serious-looking doors before they entered a waiting room. He pointed toward an office door and gave her back a light push.

  She opened the door without hesitation, expecting Lacrosse to be there too, somewhere. She was ready to get the show on the road. She was well rested and ready for whatever he had planned. But there was only one man in the room. He stood behind a sleek metal table and indicated the chair opposite him. She sat, simply because the little hike had cost her some energy and she needed her battery full when Lacrosse showed up.

  “I am De Vos,” he said. “And you are the famous Mortimer Coffee.” He sat and folded his hands in his lap. There wasn’t a fingerprint on the metal table and she wondered if that was because he never touched it.

  “De Vos. What kind of name is that?”

  “Belgian.”

  That explained why she couldn’t place his accent. She didn’t k
now of anyone from Belgium except Yul Brynner.

  “Ah. Will Lacrosse be joining us?”

  A small laugh escaped him. “No. No, no. Mr. Lacrosse has been retired, partly in thanks to you and your little…publicity stunt.” He grinned. It was only slightly more pleasant than Lacrosse’s smile.

  “Retired? Like, he’s now able to kill people freelance?”

  Once again, the man laughed almost accidentally, which made Macey think there was nothing accidental about it.

  “No.” He put the backs of two fingers against his lips. “Mmm. No, no. He hasn’t retired, he has been retired. Like…” He searched the ceiling for the right word. “Like an airplane. No longer in service. Retired to—”

  “The boneyard?”

  “Bah! The boneyard. Just so.”

  “He’s dead?”

  “Yes. Um-hmm. Exactly. You made that Spanish Beetle…an embarrassment.” He frowned. “I trust you aren’t…disappointed?”

  It was her turn to laugh, but she cut it short. “That depends. Who’s going to take his place?”

  “Oh, I have.” He looked pretty pleased about it, too.

  “And so…what are you going to do with me? Am I headed…” She swallowed. “To the boneyard?”

  The man grinned again. “I am sending you home.”

  “Yeah?” She wasn’t about to believe it.

  “Probably.”

  She snorted. She knew it was too good to believe. “Just probably?”

  “It depends. Why don’t you tell me about this book you thought to release in the spring?”

  She laughed, then sat forward to look the man in the eye so he would believe she was serious. “I’m not really sold on the plot. I’m going to have to rethink it.”

  His brows bobbed up. “I would be grateful.”

  “It’s the least I can do, really, since the villain doesn’t…come to life for me anymore.”

  They laughed together at her poor joke, and she suddenly realized how insane it was to be playing around with the new head of “We Own the World.”

  “It is very simple, Miss McDaniels. We are going to trust you with our little secrets only because it might prove inconvenient for us to do otherwise. But I suggest you do not make a habit of embarrassing us.” His head tilted to one side while he watched to see if she understood his meaning.

  She nodded, as serious as a bullet wound. But then she couldn’t help pressing her luck.

  “Forgive me for asking, but have you heard anything about Dorothy Jean? Mrs. Lyman?”

  He looked pretty excited. “Oh, yes. She came back to us. She chose to come back to us. The brave woman insists on participating. She wants the research to succeed.”

  Macey was a little shocked, though she shouldn’t have been. Other than what movies Dorothy Jean wanted to watch, the woman wasn’t selfish in the least. It probably bothered her to imagine keeping her medical luck to herself. Of course she would want the research to succeed.

  “Don’t we all?” Macey murmured.

  De Vos tilted his head again. “I don’t know. Do we?”

  Macey straightened. “Yes, actually. You might want to tell the doctors that she seemed to get better after she’d had a lot of excitement.”

  The man gave her a look of disappointment. “I believe they have concluded the opposite.”

  Macey shrugged and listed all the excitement they’d endured before they reached the Davenport. “After that, we settled in and got comfortable. She stopped having episodes late at night, and she started recalling things. It’s like the excitement kick-started the chip.”

  “Interesting.” He nodded. “I will pass it along.”

  A yawn suddenly overtook her and she put a hand up to cover her mouth. “So now what?”

  “Now, you will go home and try to forget this.” He gestured to the building around them. “And…you will publish another book by spring so those people do not come looking for you here.”

  She chuckled. “Oh, I’ll do that.” She then asked the question she dreaded the answer to. “And Shawn Parker?”

  He stared for a moment, unblinking. “Has resigned. Long ago.”

  He said has resigned, not he has been resigned!

  “And…and Dave Wells?”

  “Has also resigned.”

  “And by resigned you mean…”

  “They quit.”

  “No boneyard?”

  He shook his head once. “Not necessary. Besides, we wouldn’t dream of dealing with them as harshly as we’ve needed to deal with Lacrosse.”

  “Because…?”

  “Because you, Mortimer Coffee, would find a way to punish us.”

  Her mouth insisted on smiling wide. “It’s McDaniels. And yes, I probably would.”

  “So.” He stood. “You’ll go home. We’ll be watching—and reading.”

  “And maybe one day you’ll share your research with the other ninety-nine-point-nine- nine-nine percent?”

  He accidentally laughed again. “One day. I am certain.”

  She was only certain he was lying.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Her stern escort waited for her and led her back the way she had come. In the silence, she tried to convince herself that De Vos hadn’t been lying about getting her life back. She prayed he’d been telling the truth about Shawn being alive, and surely, after she was home again, he’d find a way to contact her.

  Just the thought of seeing him again did crazy things to her painfully empty stomach. In fact, she was going to be sick.

  “Restroom?” she said, glancing up and down the hallway.

  “There.” The man pointed to their right and she ran for it.

  As she puked, she wondered if Shawn would believe that she’d actually gone and done it. She washed her hands and looked into the mirror, not recognizing the woman staring back at her. Her hair hadn’t changed. She hadn’t lost weight, but she looked…harder. Older. Tired. She was going to have to start going to a gym.

  She shivered at the idea that someone would always be watching her, even if she was gasping and sweaty. Even if she was within the privacy of her own home. It was no different than the last six months had been, but for those six months, she’d been blissfully unaware.

  Yeah. She was going to get her life back all right, but it would be a strange version of her life under a microscope. After a while, would she be able to forget about De Vos? And did it really matter? After all, the rest of her life would all be gravy. Why should she be picky about the days she might never have seen otherwise?

  Alive and under a microscope was still alive.

  With her mind and stomach both a little settled, she exited the restroom. She used the flat of her forearm to push the door open to avoid germs and saw a familiar man standing in the hallway talking to her escort.

  Lacrosse! He was supposed to be dead!

  She let the door close then pressed her ear against the gap, hoping the other man wouldn’t tell him where she was. Her heart raced and she had to take deep breaths to get it to calm if only to be able to hear.

  “If she sees you, sir, De Vos won’t be happy.”

  “I don’t care for his plan.”

  “Which you will ruin if she sees you,” the man all but whined.

  “What makes him think she won’t be able to land the plane on her own?”

  “We’ve taken precautions. No one will be able to land it. You’d better go while you still can, sir.”

  “If Parker and that duck aren’t on board—”

  “They already are. Snuck on board as catering staff and didn’t come off with the others.”

  “Well, if those files surface later, I will retire De Vos myself.”

  The conversation ended and after a few frighteningly silent seconds, Macey made her way back to the sink to splash cold water on her face. It had been a lovely dream, believing life might be somewhat normal again, that the world would go on spinning without flinging her off it.

  But it had only been a drea
m.

  And if Shawn really was on board, how could she be happy to see him when it meant they were both on a plane doomed to crash?

  Knuckles rapped smartly on the restroom door. The sound amplified against the cold, clean walls.

  “Miss McDaniels? Are you all right?”

  She looked in the mirror again, but this time, she was glad for the hardness she saw there. Macey McDaniels wasn’t going down without a fight.

  “I think I’m all right now. I just haven’t eaten anything.”

  “Well, let’s get you to the airport. There will be food on the plane.”

  The guy couldn’t get rid of her soon enough, and now she understood why. Lacrosse was in the building and the sooner the guy got her out of it, the sooner he could stop fretting over her and the supposedly dead man running into each other.

  Someone met them at the next set of doors with a wheelchair. Apparently it didn’t matter that she could walk if she wasn’t walking fast enough for him.

  “Standard hospital policy,” he said cheerfully, but his face pinched, unused to being cheerful, she guessed.

  He hurried alongside her and finally relaxed a little when she climbed into the town car. Unfortunately, he joined her—she would have no chance to jump out of the car at some stoplight. But she hadn’t truly planned to. She needed to make sure Shawn didn’t get on that plane. It was the only goal she had left.

  The man pointed to a gift sack in the seat between them. “You’ll find a phone in there, in case you want to contact anyone to let them know you’re on your way home. Perhaps your fans are waiting to know you’re all right.”

  She nodded and opened the sack, if only to look at something besides her escort. There wasn’t anything pleasant about him, even when he was trying to be polite. She hadn’t missed the sneer in his voice when he’d mentioned her fans. But maybe she was just a little leery of anyone who called Lacrosse “sir”…and helped his boss lead people to their deaths.

  The trip to the airport was brief, and it was an airport, not just an airfield. They were stopped at the gate and her escort produced some kind of document that satisfied the officer. From there, they drove directly to a small hangar and pulled inside where another personal jet was waiting.