by Mike Dagons
“Is he back in the City?” She draped her bag over her shoulder.
“Yeah,” he double checked the load on his guns, and then he picked up his saddle bag, and tossed it over his shoulder. He took her hand, and they walked out the room together.
They were walking through the lot and were halfway to the van when Valow saw the Mustang. He dove into her and knocked her to the ground. In an instant, he had a Glock in each hand, and was returning fire as he got to his feet.
Cynthia didn’t need to be coached. She got up with him, and stayed closed behind him as he moved counterclockwise in measured steps towards the van.
Men seemed to be coming at them from every direction. “RUN!” he shouted, when he thought she was close enough to make it to the cover of the van without getting shot.
Cynthia didn’t hesitate, she took off running. When she reached the van, she stopped and looked back, and saw him go down.
He had killed six men, but they were still coming at him so he didn’t waste the second it would have taken him to get back on his feet. He made himself a moving target by rolling like a cylinder in a revolver while he fired shot after shot, and he hit everything he aimed at until he was out of bullets. He dropped one gun and dropped a clip in the other to reload, and caught a bullet in his shoulder. His gun dropped out his hand, and when he reached for it with his other hand, a bullet drilled a hole in it.
Valow dropped back down on his back and waited for it. He couldn’t help thinking about all the years he had cheated death, and during those years he hadn’t even cared about living. Now that he finally had a woman who loved him and something good to live for. His ticket was up. He looked at the man standing less than ten feet in front of him and laughed. “Life is a bitch,” he spoke his thoughts.
“I’m going down in history as the man who killed the phantom killer,” he boasted, and then took aim.
The van hit him broadside and knocked him five feet in the air. Cynthia was out the van before he landed. She grabbed the gun he had dropped and shot him in the head with it, and then she ran to Valow. His chest was bloody, and the sight of it frightened her more than the gunfight.
She gathered up his things, and then helped him into the van as fast as she could move. She got in behind the wheel and pulled out the lot onto the highway and drove them away from there hoping nobody had seen which way they went.
“We need to change vehicles,” he panted against the pain in his chest.
“You’re shot. I need to get you to a hospital,” she shouted.
“Baby,” he called her in a voice that was so calm it was surreal. “I can’t go to a hospital,” he said, and then passed out.
Chapter 20
I walked into Stroger Hospital five minutes after Anakin. Ceylon went to the roof to secure a helicopter for our exit, and Anakin went to the resident’s lockers to grab a smock and nametag so he could pretend to be an emergency transport doctor.
I walked up to the information desk and asked for Dr. Nicole Warren by name.
“You want me to page her?” the man behind the desk asked.
“No, I want to know if she’s working today,” I smiled at him, and tried to look friendly.
He lowered his eyes and typed something in the computer. “She’s been in surgery all morning. Her schedule says she’ll be in her office this afternoon.”
“Where is it?” I asked.
“She’s a cardiologist, so she sees patients by appointment only,” he advised.
I was in a hurry, and not in the mood to pile up a list of unanswered questions. I placed my elbows on the counter and leaned in close to him, so he’d know I wasn’t fucking around. “I got a heart problem that I believe she can fix. If you stop jerking me around and tell me where her office is located, I’ll go up there and make an appointment to see her,” I mean mugged him.
“Okay, sir,” he smiled brightly, and then stood up and walked around from behind the desk. “You go down this hall to the second group of elevators on the left,” he pointed down the hallway. “Take it up to the third floor, and then follow the signs to the outpatient clinics. The office you need is at the end of the hall. You can’t miss it.”
“Thank you,” I said, actually impressed that he had changed his attitude, and was being polite and helpful.
I followed his directions and ended up standing in front of a door with a list of proctologist’s names on it. The dude was deliberately fucking with me, but the irony made me laugh. “He sent me to the Proctology Department,” I reported in my walkie.
“Well you were acting like you had something up your ass that needed to be removed,” Ceylon laughed, and we both laughed with him.
I went inside the office and asked the girl at the desk how to find Cardiology, and she pointed me in the right direction.
I walked into the large office, and was glad to see that only one patient was waiting. “Is Dr. Warren in yet?” I asked at the desk.
“She just got out of surgery. Do you have an appointment?”
“No, I was hoping she could squeeze me in for a consultation.”
She looked at the computer. “I had to reschedule most of her patients because of the surgery, so she’s got a lot of openings. I can squeeze you in right now. She only has one patient ahead of you.”
“I’ll wait,” I said, knowing Ceylon and Anakin could hear us.
“Can I have your name, and the name of your insurance company, please,” she asked.
“Trevor Brown and I don’t have health insurance.”
“Do you have a clinic card?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Go downstairs to the first floor to patient registration. They’ll give you a number, and you can wait and see someone to do a financial check. You bring the card back up here, and the visit will be billed at a reduced rate. It may even be free.”
“Damn, ain’t no way you can bypass all the red tape and just pay for the visit?” Ceylon’s voice was in my walkie.
I cleared my throat and then asked, “Is there a way I can bypass all the red tape?”
“You can pay the three hundred dollars for a private consultation, cash or credit card?” she eyeballed me.
“Reckless eyeballing,” I mumbled, and the men listening to me laughed.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing, how long you think I’ll have to wait?” I went in my pocket and counted out three hundred dollars and gave it to her.
“She’ll be up any minute,” she counted it, and then held each bill up and checked it carefully. “Fill these out, front and back,” she handed me a clipboard with a stack of forms and a pen.
I took it, and then sat down and started answering the questions. I was on the second page when the door opened, and the woman sitting in the waiting room with me said, “Hello Dr. Warren.”
“Emma, how you feeling today?” she walked over to her. “Thanks for waiting, come on back,” she took the elderly woman’s arm and helped her out of her seat. “Good evening. I’ll be with you shortly,” she said to me as they shuffled by.
I gave her a head nod in reply, and dropped my eyes back down to the form in my lap. I knew that Tyler Basin had only been married twice. He had Mark with his first wife, and Jeff with his second wife, Shirley.
Bender reported that Nicole was the product of one of his many affairs. She was a few years older than Jeff and clearly very smart because she never used her father’s last name.
Nicole wasn’t an unattractive woman, but she didn’t look like a woman who devoted much time to her looks. She was tall with light brown skin. She was wearing her hair in a ponytail that was so short. It looked like a blush brush stuck to the back of her head.
I waited patiently for the ten minutes it took her to finish seeing the old lady. “You can come with me, Mr. Brown,” she said when she walked out and helped the lady back into her seat. “Call the transport for Emma,” she said as she picked up my file. She glanced at it briefly, and then turned and walked back
down the narrow corridor to her office.
“I’m in,” I reported quietly as I followed in her footsteps.
She stepped in the office first, and I stepped in behind her and put my Sig at the base of her skull. “Please, I don’t have any narcotics in the office,” she turned around swiftly, and then backed away from me.
“You think this is about drugs?” I snorted.
“Isn’t it?”
“Is Tyler Basin your father?”
“Yes.”
“Your brother, Jeffrey, owes me a debt.”
“Please, I have nothing to do with whatever my father and his awful sons have done to you. I was shipped off to boarding school when he married Shirley. He never wanted a daughter, and when she and her son moved in to the Basin Plantation. I was sent away. Jeffrey has never even seen me. I doubt that he knows I even exist.”
“Oh, he knows you exist. Tyler paid for your Ivy League schools, and Jeffrey handles all of his money,” I said.
“He has never made contact with me, and I haven’t seen my father since I was six. I get a check in the mail once a month for living expenses, and my tuition was always paid directly to whatever school I was attending at the time. Please, you can’t hurt them by killing me,” she begged. “They don’t care if I’m dead.”
“Let’s put a move on it,” Anakin said.
Her confession knocked me off my square. “I killed your father,” I said to see what kind of reaction I would get from her.
“He was not a good person. He killed my mother, and he probably killed Mark’s mother too. I would never wish him dead because he’s my father, but I don’t care if he is,” she held my gaze, and I believed her.
“Sit down,” I said to her when my cell rang, and she obeyed. I heard Cynthia’s panicked voice when I answered. I talked to her for a second, and then I spoke to Ceylon and Anakin. “We have a change of plans. We’re taking the doctor with us. Get your medical bag. I need you to remove a bullet.”
“It’s illegal for me to do that.”
“Bitch, please,” I huffed. “If he dies, you die. And if you don’t walk out of here looking like you’re happy about leaving with me. I’m going to kill you, and then I’ll kill your pretty little receptionist. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” she got up and picked up her medical bag, and stuffed it with a few other things. “Do you know his blood type?” she asked as she gathered up blankets and sheets.
“AB positive,” I replied.
She picked up the phone and told someone she needed AB plasma and platelets. “We taking the medevac?” she asked.
I nodded yes, and she relayed the information. “He’s going to meet us on the helipad,” she said, and led the way out. “I have an emergency, Sharon. I’ll be right back. Mr. Brown will call to schedule another consultation appointment next week,” she said in a rush of words as she hurried out the door.
I followed her up to the roof, and the person she had been talking to on the phone was waiting with a cooler in his hand.
“Thank you,” she said to him, and motioned for me to take it from him.
I did, and we got on the helicopter with Ceylon and Anakin. Ceylon lifted off, and we headed for Orland Park Mall.
Chapter 21
Choc walked out the building and discovered he was on LaGrange Road, not far from the Orland mall. He started walking and got that familiar danger warning tingle at the back of his neck when he saw a man approaching him with his head down. Choc moved his hand around to his back, and fastened it around the grip of his Glock as the man got closer to him.
Dude was walking a straight line, and he never took his eyes off the ground in passing. It was slick, but Choc felt the hand in his pocket, and knew the man had put something in it rather than take something out, so he kept it moving.
He walked until he got to the mall, and then he went into one of the major department stores and selected new clothes, shoes, and underwear. After he paid for his purchases, he went inside the dressing room, and took the note out his pocket and read it. Lose the clothes, and check your electronics. This address will be useful.
Choc memorized the address, and then tore the note up and discarded it. He checked his gun and phone and removed two tracer chips. He changed into his new clothes, and then left the old ones in the dressing room.
As soon as he was outside the store, he called Bender and Melvin. “Is the communications problem solved?” he asked as soon as he heard Melvin’s voice.
“Yes, we were praying you were going to check in. Severe reported that Kenyah ran off with Desmond Fox. Your brother is in a bad way as expected.”
“She’s dead, Ryan. Luther made me watch him kill her,” he lied for Trent’s benefit. He would tell Melvin the true story later.
“Damn man, I’m sorry. You want me to tell Trent, or wait and let you do it?”
“Tell him. No need to make him suffer by wondering what is being done to her. Tell him it was quick. She wasn’t tortured, two in the chest, one in the head. They told me that we lost Rayce, too,” he said.
“No, we didn’t. She’s here with us.”
“Thank God,” he sighed, and Melvin could hear the smile in his voice. “Basin led me to believe that she was dead,” he said. “I don’t know what he’s on, Ryan, but he tried to make me believe that he’s no longer in alliance with Luther.”
“You get the impression that he doesn’t want Ice dead?”
“Oh no, he wants him dead, but he claims to want a man to man. He asked me to give Ice that message and a phone number to reach him.” He recited the number to him. “Tell Bender to check it out. How did Rayce get back?”
“A man identifying himself as Leon Turner left her tied up on our doorstep.”
“Are we talking about Monique’s friend?”
“It’s the only Leon Turner that I know, but whoever this guy is. He is definitely more than a dance promoter,” Ryan replied. “The place that we were held up was completely off grid. The only people besides me, who knew that it existed, were Anakin and Ice, or so I thought. Somehow Mr. Turner knew that we would be there. He told Rayce that Luther ordered him to kill her and Gladstone, and to bring you to him,” he reported. “She’s been worried sick. We all were.”
Bender joined in. “He claimed to have moved Gladstone to a safe place, but he refused to tell her where. Said not knowing was safer for both of them. He told her he was keeping her gun as proof that he had killed her, and he instructed her to stay off the street. He advised us to do the same. I relocated us right away, but not knowing how the man was able to track us is a bug up my ass.”
“Basin had her gun, and he claimed not to have wanted her dead. He gave it to me before he released me,” Choc said. “On my way out, I passed a dude who slipped me a note informing me that I was tagged. The note included an address he said we might be interested in checking out.”
“Give it to me,” Bender said.
Choc told him the address. “You think it was Turner?”
“It would definitely be my guess,” he replied.
“I’m going to get off the street. I’ll give you a full report on my incarceration with Jeff Basin, and Luther Scott later.”
“Choc, I just got a transmission from Ice saying Valow has been shot. He’s with Cynthia, and they are in the area. Can you lend them a hand?” Bender said.
“Send me his coordinates, and I’ll go to them,” he ended the call. The transmission with the information came through immediately, and he was happy to learn they were in the same mall.
Chapter 22
Ceylon had gone to ditch the helicopter, and Anakin was sitting on Valow’s bike outside the van waiting for the doctor to finish working on him. He had lost a lot of blood by the time they arrived, and she didn’t want to chance moving him before he was stabilized.
She had to remove a bullet from his chest, and one from his shoulder. He also had a through and through in his right hand. Cynthia refused to leave his side, so the doctor us
ed her to assist in the surgery. Ice was standing guard over them, and he made it clear to Nicole that her life was tied to her patient. They had been there over an hour.
Cynthia had pulled the van into the mall parking lot. It was busy, so there were hundreds of cars for them to hide among. Valow had been unresponsive, and she had gone into his pocket and got his cell. She called the number he’d received the text from, and Ice had answered.
She’d told him about Valow’s condition, and he had instructed her to apply pressure to his wounds, and wait for him to get to them.
Ten minutes after she ended the call with him. He showed up with a surgeon, and she got to work on Valow right away. Don’t you die on me, Valow, she thought as she watched the doctor work on removing the bullet from his chest.
Choc spotted Anakin parked behind the van on Valow’s bike. “How’s he doing?” he asked when he walked up.
“The doc is still working on him, so we don’t know. We’re going to need another van when she’s finished. This one is hot.”
“I’ll go and get it,” Choc volunteered.
“I have one. I’ll be there in twenty,” Ceylon’s voice was in Anakin’s ear.
“Roger that,” he answered. “We have the transportation covered,” he said to Choc.
While they waited, they exchanged stories of what had transpired the last forty eight hours and brought each other up to date.
“Ceylon returned with a motorhome, and then he took position on a nearby roof with a sniper rifle to lookout while they waited for Dr. Nicole to finish the surgery.
It took her three hours to finish removing the bullets and patching him up, and luckily nobody came looking for them. When Valow was ready to travel, they moved everything into the motorhome, and then got on the road.
Since Basin was having a pretty easy time tracking Genesis locations, Ceylon drove them to a Viper safe house in Morris. It took him almost two hours to make the journey because he had to watch his speed with Valow onboard.