21 Hours

by Dustin Stevens

  "And you kidnapped my niece. I'd say we're even." For the first time since leaving the hospital, I had the upper hand in a situation. The feeling of empowerment was a welcome change.

  Merric continued to stare at Vincent lying prone on the floor. His eyes stared vacant at the ceiling above as a small rose of blood crept outward from the knife handle protruding out of his chest. "You're dead. You're so fucking dead. I've killed men for a lot less than that."

  "Does it look like I care?" I asked. His gaze shifted back to me and studied my face, still stained with blood.

  "What do you want?" he asked.

  "I want my niece."

  "Does it look like I have her here?" Merric asked, fanning his hands out on the desk and looking around. "I'm a business man for Christ's sake!"

  I twisted the angle of the gun and shot a hole through his left hand. The sound of the revolver was nowhere near as loud as I feared in the small office, paling in comparison to Merric's pained screaming as he clutched his hand. Bits of the wooden desk dotted the front of his vest as blood dripped between his fingers. "You crazy son of a bitch, you shot me!"

  "I broke my hand fighting in your little game down there. Again, we're even," I said. "I want my niece."

  He continued to rock back and forth in his desk chair, moaning as he cradled his hand. "I don't have your damn niece you bastard!"

  "But you know who does, and you're going to tell me."

  "I'm not going to tell you anything," Merric, a renewed flash behind his eyes. "What I'm going to do is push the button under my desk and watch as my men come in here and tear you apart."

  I took a hard step forward and thrust the gun out towards him. "I wouldn't recommend that."

  He stared at the barrel of the gun and then at me, his gaze switching from one to another. He continued to cradle his hand in front of him and I could see his tongue slide out over his bottom lip.

  Three full seconds passed before he lunged for the button.

  The first shot caught him in the chest and launched him back into his chair as a look of shock filled his pasty features. "I...I..." he whispered.

  "Shouldn't have messed with my family," I finished. The second shot was three inches removed from the first, slamming into his heart in the same place I stuck the knife in Vincent. He made no more sounds as he settled back into the chair, his eyes focusing on nothing as blood dribbled down the front of his vest.

  I turned and did a quick scan of the cameras to make sure nobody was coming and slid around to the other side of the desk. Merric continued to stare into space as I pushed past him to the computer. With my right hand I reached out and snatched the pocket square from his vest and dropped it over the computer mouse. Holding it there I scanned through the files on his desktop.

  Three minutes of searching turned up nothing of use.

  I left the pocket square where it laid and fished Merric's cell-phone out of his pocket. Thumbing through it, I went for his outgoing calls and saw a list of numbers originating in the 513 area code.

  Cincinnati, just like Troy said.

  I pressed end to clear the phone and started again, this time heading straight for the text messages. There were only three, but that was enough.

  Once more I picked up the pocket square and wiped the snub-nose clean. I dropped it into the trash beneath the desk and retrieved my knife from Vincent’s chest, wiped it clean on his suit and returned it to my sock. Something told me there wouldn't be a full investigation into this, but if there was I couldn't afford to leave a trail of fingerprints behind me.

  I was definitely in the system. It wouldn't take them long to find me.

  I opted for the same stairwell Vincent brought me up just ten minutes before. My feet hit the main floor on the far side of the casino and I moved quickly through the crowd for the front door. Several people stopped and stared at my busted face as I walked by. A few others even tossed token congratulations my way.

  I did my best to mumble thank you's to them as I went, but I'm sure I missed a few.

  The last person to offer congratulations was the steroid infused doorman as I stepped out into the night air. I didn't even pretend to acknowledge him as I made a direct line for my truck and put as much distance between me and Diamore Road as I could.

  Chapter Eleven

  The next thirty minutes passed in a blur. The first half of it was spent tearing through southern Columbus, hell bent on making sure I wasn't followed. By the time I could breathe easy that Merric's clan wasn't following me, I realized I had blown through three red lights and was pushing sixty on city streets.

  On a Saturday night, that's practically asking for the cops to flag you down. I was an ex-con with a broken wrist, blood covering half of my face, a murder weapon stuffed in my sock and a truck full of guns I'd brought across state lines. The last half of the thirty minutes was spent as the slowest car on the freeway, checking every mirror to make sure I wasn't about to go back to jail.

  Lucky for me, there weren't many cops out on the roads. Not so much for me, my trip to Merric's and back cost me almost two hours. It was ten o'clock. Evening had slipped well into night.

  The lights of Sacred Heart Hospital still burned bright as I pulled into the parking lot. For such a late hour the lot was almost full and I parked in the same spot I'd used earlier in the day. I checked my reflection in the rearview mirror and considered trying to scrub the blood from my face, but decided to leave it.

  I bypassed the intensive care unit, followed the signs to the emergency room and prayed for a thin crowd.

  For the second time in twenty minutes, luck was on my side. A small handful of elderly people sat scattered around the waiting room, none of them in any visible trouble. I clutched my hand in front of me and limped up to the front counter where a harried looking woman in her mid-thirties sat pecking at a computer. Lank brown hair hung straight down to her shoulders, framing a thin face that appeared aged far beyond her years. She looked up as I approached and gasped. "Oh my, are you okay, sir?"

  I offered a small smile and said, "Got rear-ended getting off the freeway. Hit my head on the steering wheel, jammed my wrist trying to catch myself. I think it might be broken."

  It wasn't a foolproof story, but it seemed plausible enough. There was no way anybody in there could refute it, and that's all I was concerned with.

  The woman grabbed up two clipboards and shoved them my way, then pulled them back. She leaned in close and whispered. "Tell you what, why don't you follow me and you can fill these out while you wait to see the doctor?"

  "Thank you so much," I whispered back. I even glanced out at the waiting room to let her know I was in on the ruse before following her to the back.

  Two parallel hallways ran straight back from the nursing station, both of them full with patients. Most appeared to be parents there with sick children as the sound of their screaming filled the air. A few of the rooms housed elderly people hooked to breathing machines.

  As we walked by one man was having nails removed from his calf. A doctor leaned in close with a pair of pliers and pulled the long metal daggers out while a pair of orderlies held him down. Blood ran from the open wounds as he threw his head back and howled in pain, thrashing against them.

  Of everybody we passed, it was the only one I would even vaguely classify as an emergency.

  The nurse led me back to the x-ray room and had a tech run a scan of my hand. As soon as they were done she took me to an empty bay and left me with the clipboards and the promise that a doctor would see me soon. I muttered my thanks and started in on the forms.

  Soon turned out to be over half an hour before a middle-aged man with close cropped hair and a heavy beard of the same length burst through the curtain and into the room. He wore a striped tie loosened at the collar and a long white coat, the same as most every other physician in the country. He even had the matching set of dark circles under each eye to really look the part.

  "Good evening, my name is Dr. Niedermeyer," t
he man said, thrusting a hand in my direction. His skin was soft and dry from years of scrubbing, the grip weak.

  "Felix O'Connor," I said, returning the grip.

  "Says here you were in an accident this evening," Niedermeyer said as he consulted the chart.

  "Yeah," I offered, nodding my head. "Rear ended."

  "Oh," he said without looking up. "Get one of those through here every couple of days it seems like. You ought to see what it looks like when there's a little rain out there."

  "I bet," I managed, already wanting the encounter to end.

  Neidermeyer rose, ducked outside the curtain and grabbed the x-rays from the plastic bin along the wall. He tugged out a large film from the envelope and held it up to the light, then tossed the envelope onto the bed beside me. He pulled a pen from his jacket pocket and used it as a pointer. "Yeah, you can see here that the second metacarpal is fractured. Looks like the break doesn't go clear through, which will keep us from having to reset it."

  He fell silent and studied the film for another moment before stuffing it back in its envelope.

  "So that's good news?" I asked.

  "Well, you won't be flipping anybody off with your left hand for awhile, but yes," Neidermeyer said, "that's good news. Far less painful, far less swelling. I'll have one of the nurses put a cast on there for you and you'll be on your way."

  "Thank you," I said to his back as he whisked out of the room.

  I'm pretty sure he didn't actually look at me once the entire minute and a half he was there. If he did, he didn't seem to notice the lattice of blood covering half my face.

  Another fifteen minutes passed in the silence of the small room. I found some gauze in a top drawer and ran some water from the sink. I used them to scrub my face until the gauze no longer came back pink, finishing just as a nurse came in pushing a small cart. Her dark black skin shined beneath the bright overhead lights and a nest of small, tight curls were showing signs of heavy graying. A pair of glasses with thick lenses hung from a chain around her neck as she shuffled in.

  "You the guy with the broken hand?" she asked, her voice fatigued and graveled.

  "Yes ma'am," I said, holding my hand up for her to see. Nearly two hours had passed since the break and my body's natural defenses had taken over. Bone marrow had leaked into the surrounding area and numbed up my entire hand. I knew it wouldn't be long before it hurt like hell again, but for the time being I was alright.

  She nodded and pushed in the cart, piled high with thick strips of plaster and a pan of water, the same as I’d seen used before. It wasn't my first broken bone, odds were it wouldn't be my last.

  Neither one of us said much as she worked. I watched as she wrapped my hand in gauze and began applying the strips of plaster. It started to harden almost instantly, the heavy white wrapping encasing my hand to several inches past the wrist. I wasn't thrilled at the idea of losing mobility, but reasoned that the cast would provide more support than a broken hand ever could.

  When she was done she piled the remnants of her work high on the cart and shuffled out, no doubt headed off to the next poor bastard that had spent his Saturday night fighting. I slid the insurance forms from the clipboards and showed myself out of the ER, but when I got to the front the nurse's station was empty.

  I paused for a moment to wait for the nurse with the thin face to return. The same small cluster of elderly people sat in the holding area and the same children screamed down either hallway. While I stood there, I glanced up at the clock on the wall and realized another hour was already gone. Eleven o'clock, fourteen hours and counting.

  Without a word, I stuffed the forms into my back pocket and disappeared. Nobody so much as glanced my way.

  Chapter Twelve

  Rather than try and find my way through the maze of hospital hallways from the emergency room to the intensive care unit, I walked outside and circled the building. The night air was cool against my skin, touching the open wounds on my face and setting them to tingling. Overhead only a handful of stars dotted the night sky, most of them blotted out by the ambient glow of the city.

  I looked down at the new club attached to my left hand, slowly rotating it. The white plaster of the cast was now completely hardened and stretched from above my knuckles down past my wrist. I flexed the top half of each of my finger, the limited range of motion awkward as my hand tried to curve into a fist.

  A stabbing pain rocked through my palm as I flexed the fingers, forcing me to relax the grip. The numbness was wearing off. I couldn't afford to take any real painkillers, so the next several hours were going to be spent with a lot of gritted teeth.

  My boots clomped against the concrete sidewalk as I swung around to the intensive care unit doors and entered. A young man not much older than twenty was seated at the nurse's station as I approached, his nose buried in a text book on the counter in front of him. "Can I help you?" he asked.

  "Yeah, I was here earlier, I'm here to see Ricky Borden."

  "I'm sorry, general visiting hours ended hours ago," the young man said, his voice pleasant and official. He had short dark hair gelled straight forward and wore light blue scrubs with a nametag that said Skip.

  Definitely a male nurse in the making.

  I took a sharp breath and slowly pushed it out. Skip was going to make me say something I really didn't want to.

  "I'm family."

  He gave me a quick once over, from my clothes to the cast to the bruises I was sure dotted the side of my face, and nodded slowly. "You were here earlier, so you know where they are?"

  "I do," I said, already sliding off to the left. If that was supposed to be some sort of test, it was weak at best.

  I didn't wait for him to say another word as I pushed down the hallway. Everywhere I looked there seemed to be another clock reminding me what time it was. My pace unconsciously picked up, my boots the only sound through the deserted corridor.

  The harsh sterile look and feel of the hospital receded under the dimmed evening lighting. I could see patients sleeping in their rooms as I passed and picked out a few family members sitting quiet beside them. Every one of them wore the same tired expression of worry, the trials of the day etched on their faces.

  I prayed Lex didn't look the same, but knew she probably did. It was the same way we all looked years before.

  The final corner of the hallway came into view and I leaned in against the wall and rounded tight against it. Ahead of me, a flurry of activity was at hand. Several people were grouped together, many of them gesturing frantically. On one side of the hall was Lex and the Borden’s, on the other was Watts and a pair of uniformed police officers. Although all six spoke in hushed tones, urgency was evident in the air.

  I made a direct route for the group and unrolled my shirt sleeves as far as they would go. I snapped the cuffs in place by my wrist to hide the cast the best I could and ran a hand through my shaggy hair, dragging it across my forehead. There was no way I could hide my injuries, but I could at least make them appear less severe.

  All six people looked my way as I approached, my boots again giving me away.

  I really needed to find a pair of stealthier shoes.

  The Borden’s turned right back, dismissing me within seconds. To be fair, it was longer than they usually give me.

  Lex kept her eyes locked on me a bit longer as her gaze did a quick inventory of me. She met my eyes for just a moment, her eyes again rimmed with red, before looking away. Something new was going on.

  Something bad.

  "What the hell happened to you?" Watts snapped in my direction. Beside her the uniforms stopped and looked at me. Both looked to be in their mid-twenties with matching crew cuts and very poor attempts at facial hair. Neither one was even as tall as Watts.

  "Got rear ended," I said. As with the doctor, I offered as few details as possible. My story was flimsy at best. I didn't want to give her any loose strings to tug on.

  "Mhmm," Watts said, her facing relaying disbelief. "Just i
n the last few hours?"

  I made a confused face. "Yeah? The doctor said most accidents happen during storms or on Saturday nights."

  "And they happen during a kidnapped child situation? Involving a concerned uncle?" There was no doubt where she was going with this. I had to cut her off and get the attention back on whatever was going on. I needed details and I needed them fast.

  Otherwise, I was headed to Cincinnati.

  I held the cast up for her to see. "If I was out playing vigilante, would I have gone to the emergency room to get my hand looked at it? I got rear ended making a dinner run. So what's going on?"

  The irony of my excuse wasn’t lost on me, given that I had done that very thing.

  Watts gave me one last look before turning her attention back to Lex. "We'll give you some time to figure out finances. I'll be in the lobby. Come find me as soon as you're ready. I'm going to start putting things in place."

  Lex nodded as Watts stomped away, her lackeys right behind her. Square toed heels reverberated against the tile floor as she stomped off, making my boots sound like slippers by comparison.

  "What's going on?" I asked again, conscious that Watts ignored it the first time.

  "Where the hell have you been?" Jim asked.

  It was my turn to ignore a question. "Lex?"

  Lex looked even smaller inside her grey sweatshirt than she had that afternoon. The sleeves were pulled down over both hands, her left arm folded across her stomach. The right was vertical by her side, a bloody thumbnail protruding as she gnawed at it. She twisted at the waist towards the Borden’s and said, "Can you give us a second?"

  Both of them stared daggers at me as they departed, slowly retreating back into the room.

  "Did Ricky take a turn?" I asked.

  Lex shook her head. "What the hell happened to you?"

  "You don't want to know," I replied. It was true, as was the fact that I really didn't want to retell it.

  Her eyes again ran over each of my injuries. "Was it worth it?"