Michelle laughed and held out her hand for Mike. “I’m not a witch. That’s just a silly title. The professor said I have some abilities that can’t be scientifically replicated, or put into categories. No double blind studies on this phenomena. So, since paranormal abilities are not recognized, everyone tucks their head in the sand, pretending they don’t exist.”
Mike took Michelle’s hand. Maybe because he was a scientist, a professor who didn’t believe, it took him a little longer. Then, “Whoa! That’s amazing.”
Heather and Michelle started laughing at his astonished expression.
“Now we have to get you out of here,” Heather said. “Any ideas about how we can get past the nurse? If we leave now they probably won’t know you’re gone ‘till tomorrow if we stuff pillows or something under the blankets. Omar won’t know either.”
Mike now had so much energy even his brain, which was unusually bright normally, seemed on overdrive. “In all the silly comedy movies I’ve seen, when people sneak a patient out of the hospital, they just pop them in a janitor’s cart, cover them with towels, and whisk them away.”
“It might work,” Michelle said. “There’s a supply closet down the hall.”
“I’ll go check,” Mike said.
“I’ll call Rod and Vincent and tell them we found you,” Heather said to Michelle. She reached into her purse, then frowned. “That’s odd. My cell is missing.”
Mike patted his side pocket. He shook his head. “When Omar zonked us, he must have come into the room while we were unconscious and stolen our phones.”
“Gross. The thought of him touching me...” Heather said.
“He probably saw me taking pictures of him across the hall.” Mike shook his head. “I’m really sorry. I thought I was being careful.”
“Not your fault,” Heather said. “Too bad though. I wanted to send those pictures to the police in Hawaii, to prove Omar broke bail and is in Mexico.”
“My phone is backed up on my computer. We still have the evidence,” Mike said.
He was looking out the window. “I see the supply closet. The nurse is doing stuff at her desk. Wish me luck.” He smiled and winked and was out the door fast.
“I should have told him to look for something for me to wear,” Michelle said. “Like those green pajama things, the scrubs interns wear, or the lab coats you two have on. This hospital gown is way too drafty.”
Heather laughed. “Not to mention open in the back.”
While they waited for Mike, Heather gave Michelle a fast version of how they tracked her to Mexico.
“I can’t believe the professor, Vincent Middleton, came with you,” Michelle said. “And Mike. He’s so cute, and he’s totally into you.”
Heather nodded seriously. “I’ll probably screw everything up. And I really like him.”
“You can’t do anything wrong now,” Michelle said. “He’s in the first stage of heavy-duty infatuation. You could fart loudly in his presence, or vomit right on him. It wouldn’t matter.”
“Gosh, how completely reassuring,” Heather said, smiling. “I’m a little worried about my potty mouth. I think he heard me swearing once, when we were surfing.”
“What did he do?” Michelle asked.
Heather shook her head. “Nothing. I just glanced at him and it looked like he heard me, and was trying hard not to laugh.”
“See? Anything you do now is cute and funny. His good sense won’t come back for a while,” Michelle said, smiling at Heather. She was taking several blankets off of the top shelf in the closet and rolling them up to put under the sheets so it would appear like a body was in the bed.
“Speaking of good sense. I thought you’d gone a little peculiar,” Heather said. “Talking about good vibrations, and naming the diamond Abigail.”
Michelle told Heather about how she’d tried to escape and thought she saw phantoms Omar produced to make her come out of hiding. But then she felt footsteps vibrating upward through the steel stairs and wondered if her friends actually had traced her all the way to Mexico.
There was a grinding noise in the hallway and Heather ran to the window. Mike was pushing a low slung trolley. On top of it was an enormous garbage can.
“You’re escaping with the trash,” Heather said, giggling and shaking her head. She opened the door and Mike pushed the trolley with the enormous can inside.
“The nurse watching down the hall thinks I’m a janitor,” Mike said. He looked at Michelle. She was not a small person. Hiding inside the big tin can would mean practically bending her body into a pretzel. “Do you think you can fit in here?”
He was pulling sheets and towels out of the can that he’d taken from the supply closet.
Michelle nodded. “Yes. Can you manage to push it if Heather’s inside too?”
“Don’t forget Lucifer,” Heather said laughing.
“I’m still buzzed from the blast you gave me, Michelle. So yes. I feel strong enough to push you both with ease, if you two can manage to squeeze inside.”
It wasn’t easy. Just climbing inside was a problem for Michelle. She had to hoist herself up with her arms to get her waist on the edge of the can, then get a leg over and inside. But she finally made it. There wasn’t enough room for her to sit down but she rested her back against the wall and squatted. Heather handed Michelle her purse and the cat.
No way Heather could get inside the same way Michelle did because she was so tiny, so Mike stood on the bed, picked her up by the waist, and lowered her into the can.
There was hardly any room inside and Heather was forced to sit on Michelle’s bended knees. “Sharp knees,” Heather commented as Mike covered their heads with sheets and towels.
“Can you two breathe?” Mike asked.
“Barely,” came the muffled reply.
“Here we go. Make sure Lucifer stays quiet,” Mike said. “I’m taking a detour into the restroom on this floor so the nurse will think I’m picking up trash.”
Heather felt the cart vibrate over the tile floors, heard the doors to the bathroom swing open. After a minute inside, Mike started pushing them down the hallway. Heather smiled as she heard him humming, like he was just doing a boring everyday job.
There was a swishing noise and Heather felt the upward movement of the elevator, going up to the top floor, where the lab and bridge to the main hospital was located.
It was obvious when Mike pushed them across the bridge because the cement under them made a grinding sound, the vibration teeth-chattering in the metal enclosure.
A while later Mike whisked the sheets and towels off. Both women stood up. They were in the main hospital laboratory.
“Yay,” Heather said, looking around the darkened office space. “We made it!”
After Mike helped them both out of the garbage can, Michelle picked up a sheet and shook it out. “I’m not walking around in this nightgown. Too noticeable, and way too bare.” She managed to fold it a few times and wrap it around her. She used a twisted towel for a belt
Heather took another sheet and draped it over Michelle’s head and down her back. Then she stood back to survey their handiwork. “You could pass for some kind of nun.”
“It’s a good disguise,” Mike said.
It covered Michelle’s long black hair. No one would guess she was a hospital patient fleeing a manipulative madman.
Chapter 27
Rod and Vincent looked at each other blankly after staring into the vacant hospital room. The nurse went inside. They noted her horrified expression when she found rolled blankets under the sheets instead of a patient, and a detached IV dripping medication on the floor.
She immediately pulled a cell phone from her pocket and spoke into it in rapid Spanish. The nurse hurried out of Michelle’s room, past them, and went into the restroom in the hallway to see if Michelle was there.
“There’s going to be an alert put out about a missing patient,” Rod said ominously.
The nurse came out of the restroom and
shook her head at Vincent. “Papa of Michelle Satinov. Sorry.” She shrugged. “Husband?”
“Ah, yes. Michelle must be with her husband,” Rod said smiling and nodding reassuringly at the nurse. He didn’t want her alerting the hospital to look for a very tall woman with black hair fleeing from their care, but thought he was already too late. The nurse probably alerted her superiors that a patient had mysteriously disappeared.
“Gracias,” Vincent said, with a little polite bow as they walked away.
“Now what?” Rod said. “Michelle’s run away. We’ve got to find her fast because they’ll probably notify Omar, since they believe he’s her husband.”
Vincent nodded. “It’s not like this is a prison. But they’ll be on the lookout for hospital liability. They don’t want to be sued in case she wanders around after surgery and gets hurt. So you bet they will be searching.”
“Now we’ve lost track of three people,” Rod said. “We don’t know what Heather and Mike are doing, or where they are, because they aren’t answering their cells.” He didn’t want to say this could turn into a major disaster, but with Omar on the loose, who knew what would happen?
They decided to double back on the stairs, see if Michelle was headed down to the lobby.
On the way, Rod’s phone buzzed. “Finally,” he said as they hurried along.
When he checked the cell it said Unknown Caller, but he answered it anyway.
“We’ve got her!” It was Heather’s voice. She sounded excited. “I had to use a hospital phone. Omar stole ours. Long story. We’re in the lab at the main hospital.”
“Great!” Rod said. “We’ll meet you up there.”
Heather laughed. “Look for a tall nun.”
There was some commotion Rod could hear in the background. Someone shouted, ‘Damn, he’s here. We gotta hide.’
“What?” Rod asked, but the phone was dead.
***
Omar was deeply asleep but the insistently buzzing phone on the nightstand beside the bed woke him eventually. He was annoyed enough to pick it to see who was calling him in the middle of the night.
He listened to the hospital administrator tell him they lost his wife.
“No, she’s not with me!” Omar shouted. “She was supposed to be sedated. She just had surgery. How could she disappear?”
Omar was now thoroughly awake and angry. He threw on his clothes and hauled ass out the door. He knew there wasn’t any exit other than the one in the lobby of the clinic, so he sped down in the elevator after listening in the stairwell to see if he could hear Michelle moving on the stairs.
When he arrived in the lobby, a man was on the night shift duty at the reception desk. Omar asked if a dark haired woman had left the building and the guy politely denied it.
Omar looked deeply into the man’s eyes, mesmerizing him, and repeated the question. He got the same negative reply. No way the man could be lying. Omar learned an interesting fact, though. There was a way to get into the main hospital from a bridge on the top floor.
Omar ran up the stairs to make sure Michelle wasn’t on her way down. He stopped to check her room the tenth floor.
The nurse came out from behind her desk and followed him down the hallway, speaking to him in rapid Spanish, which he couldn’t understand.
Omar stopped first at Leilanie’s room. She was deeply asleep in her bed, with three of his progeny safely tucked in her tummy. That was the good news. Michelle’s room was empty.
He checked across the hall in the room where he’d left Heather and Mike on the floor unconscious. It was a little shocking they were gone. He’d thought they would be passed out for the rest of the night. He reasoned that Michelle probably left with them.
He’d warned them all nicely, Omar decided, with a deep exasperated sigh. First warning: the stunt in the stairwell, making the banister melt. Then the second warning, just to show them not to mess with him, when he’d zonked Heather and Mike with a little lassitude spell.
No more mister-nice-guy, Omar thought, working up a good steaming rage. This was war. He had no doubt he would win, but these people were messing with his future. Their unmitigated audacity infuriated him.
Omar couldn’t help releasing some of his wrath. Just a trickle. The stupid young nurse had to have been asleep not to notice Michelle and two other people leaving the floor she was supposed to oversee.
The nurse saw Omar’s expression as he turned a fearsome frowning stare at her, and started backing away from him, shaking her head, repeating, “No, No, No...”
The fury came out as a fine red mist. It swirled around Omar and then sped like a mini tornado toward the nurse. She saw it coming, and horrified and scared, tried to run, but it homed in on her like a heat seeking missile, surrounding the woman.
She had been young and pretty moments ago. Now she was unconscious on the floor, her face and arms burned almost beyond recognition.
Omar stood there for a moment, staring at what he’d caused by letting out a small ooze of his emotions. He felt a little sorry for the woman, but not enough to prick his conscience badly. She’d recover in a few years and be almost good as new.
There was a coffee cup on her desk, so Omar poured it over her and dropped the cup on the floor next to her. Just a silly accident. She was burned by scalding coffee. Who would believe anyone had harmed the beautiful young woman?
He decided to check out the other exit from the clinic.
Omar was a little winded from running up the stairs when he finally found the laboratory on the twelfth floor. The bridge was supposed to be locked at night, but Omar found the door had been jammed to stay open.
He started across the bridge.
Chapter 28
Heather checked several phones in the lab before she found one with a live outside line. She wanted to let Rod and Vincent know they finally had Michelle and needed a fast getaway.
“I’m so used to just clicking Rod’s number on my cell phone, I can’t remember it,” Heather said, looking at the receiver blankly.
Mike recited it to her.
Heather smiled at him and punched in the numbers. “Must be useful, having such a great memory. You just have to see something once...”
Michelle, standing next to Heather in her nun sheet-costume, was frowning. “Something strange is happening. Abigail’s getting hot in my hand. She’s vibrating. And Lucifer’s growling.”
As Heather spoke to Rod on the phone, telling him where they were and to come get them, Michelle held out her hand. She saw the giant diamond oscillating in Michelle’s palm. It was sending out multi-colored bright spears of light in the darkness of the building. The overhead lights were all off in the laboratory this late at night and the gem seemed to glow in the dark.
Mike turned, looking down at the diamond, then at Michelle’s alarmed expression. As a pragmatist he’d never believed in magical or paranormal phenomena, but having physically experienced a jolting hum of energy percolate throughout his whole body just from holding Michelle’s hand, he was disposed to take her seriously.
They had been moving toward the front door to the lab, but now Mike turned and hurried to the back to look out the window.
“Damn, Omar’s coming across the bridge,” Mike shouted. He rushed back to the two women, who were glancing around in panic for a place to hide.
Michelle said, “I think the diamond just gave us a danger warning.”
It was was shadowy and a little creepy with all the odd scientific equipment spread around the place, even without knowing a powerful, angry warlock was coming for them.
“Run or hide?” Heather whispered, wide eyed.
“Run,” Mike and Michelle said, almost simultaneously.
They all hunched to make themselves smaller and scuttled around desks and lab benches toward the front door.
Michelle, in her white sheets knew she must be spectacularly visible, even in the shadowy darkness of the building. Lucifer, whom she was holding against her chest, was growlin
g as they ran. She could feel his little body vibrate with the growl, which was turning into an angry high-pitched cat screech.
“Shhh, Lucifer,” Michelle whispered as she wove her way quickly through the desks.
Michelle couldn’t help smiling as she hurried after Heather and Mike. They were holding hands as they ran. It was so cute. They were perfect together. She couldn’t let anything happen to them.
Michelle stopped and took a deep breath. She would have to fight Omar.
It was almost unbelievable and boggled her mind that her friends would go to such lengths to try and rescue her. All the way to Mexico. But she knew Rod and Vincent would be coming over the bridge soon as well. She couldn’t let any of them be hurt or killed. Even if she had to yield to Omar’s wishes, she would do so to save her friends. Omar had no compunction against using lethal force. He’d almost succeeded in killing Heather with a lightning bolt he’d thrown a few weeks ago. He’d tried to kill Rod and Vincent, too.
Michelle knew she was no match for Omar. Even though Vincent said she had impressive witchy powers, she didn’t know how to use them. There might be untapped forces within her mind and body. Too late to figure out how to use them. Omar was coming now.
The diamond, Abigail, had magical properties, and Michelle wished she could communicate with the poor, sad and angry spirit, but she didn’t have any idea how to do so. She believed the life-force locked inside the diamond was willing to help protect her. It had let her know she was in danger by becoming hot in her hand and lighting up.
Lucifer would try to defend her as well. The little cat would fight to the death. He was precious to her, too.
Michelle was scared but she couldn’t let her friends be hurt or killed. It would be cowardly to flee, she decided.
She took a deep breath, turned around, and waited for Omar.
When Heather and Mike reached the door, pulling it open, they saw that Michelle wasn’t behind them anymore. They turned to look back and saw her standing up straight in the middle of the room.
Witchy Woman - Book 2 - The Necromancer Page 19