by Jana DeLeon
Ida Belle’s cell phone went off and she frowned at the display. “It’s Emmaline.” She answered the phone. “What’s wrong… Good Lord, is he hurt? We’re on our way!”
I clutched the steering wheel. “What happened?”
Ida Belle looked over at me, her eyes wide. “Someone attacked Carter.”
“In the hospital?” Gertie asked. “That’s crazy.”
“Let Gertie out at the tree,” Ida Belle said. “We have to get to the hospital.”
“No!” Gertie protested. “I’m going with you.”
“You can’t,” Ida Belle said. “We’ve drawn enough attention to ourselves already. Come tomorrow morning, I’m sure they’ll turn you loose just to avoid the headache of doing more. But you have to get back in there before Crawford figures out you’re gone.”
Gertie was clearly unhappy when she got out of the Jeep, but she couldn’t argue with logic. Ida Belle glanced back as I pulled away.
“Maybe next time,” Ida Belle said, “she’ll think twice before pulling a fool stunt like that.”
“You mean like the stunt we pulled breaking into Big and Little’s storage facility?”
“That’s different,” Ida Belle said. “Our stunt had a good reason behind it. Gertie was showing her weakness in going after Celia. The woman’s not worth getting into trouble over. Carter is.”
I couldn’t argue with that. I pressed the accelerator down to the floor and the Jeep lurched forward. A million thoughts raced through my mind, none of them making sense. How did someone get to Carter in the hospital? The critical care unit was secure entry only. Why risk exposure by attacking him there?
Which brought me right back around to, what the hell had Carter seen?
Chapter Fourteen
Carter’s room was packed with people when we arrived, all of them talking at once. Dr. Stewart was there along with a nurse, trying to check out Carter, but Carter was busy waving his arms at the state police and trying to dish out orders. Emmaline stood to the side of the fray, her hands clenched together in front of her mouth, her face pale.
I hurried over to her, and she grabbed my hand and squeezed it. Her hand was shaking.
Ida Belle and I huddled close to her. “What happened?” I asked.
“Carter was sleeping,” Emmaline said, “so I went to the lobby to get some coffee. I stopped to chat with Lisa, the young lady at the nurse’s station. She just moved here from Idaho and was asking about the food…and that doesn’t matter.”
“Take your time,” Ida Belle said.
“I was giving her a recipe for gumbo and we heard something crash down the hall. My first thought was that Carter had tried to get out of bed and fallen, so I took off down the hall. I was halfway there when someone ran out of Carter’s room. He shoved me out of the way and ran for the exit. Poor Lisa tried to stop him but he pushed her so hard she flipped over the desk and knocked herself out.”
“Jesus,” I said. “Are you all right?”
Emmaline nodded. “I’ll probably have a bruise or two tomorrow, but I didn’t get the worst of it.”
“Did you get a good look at him?”
“No. He was wearing a ski mask.”
“Height?” I asked. “Build?”
“He was taller than me by several inches,” Emmaline said. “Over six feet. And he was solid.”
“Clothes?”
“Jeans and a black T-shirt. And gloves. He was wearing black gloves.”
I ran one hand over my head. Basically, any man in Sinful who was in good shape. “What did Carter see?”
“He said noise in the room woke him up and he saw a shadowy figure standing next to his bed. I figure he turned the light off in the room before he entered. At first, Carter thought it was the nurse, but when he spoke, he didn’t get an answer. So he reached for his cell phone to turn on that flashlight app thingy and the intruder knocked it out of his hand. Carter grabbed him and they struggled and knocked over the table, which is what Lisa and I heard.”
I glanced at Ida Belle and could tell that Emmaline’s story had her as scared as it did me. “Does Carter have any idea what he was trying to do?”
“Carter didn’t, but the nurse found a syringe that got dropped and kicked under the bed. It had something called pan…pancro…”
“Pancuronium?” I asked.
“Yes, that’s it. You’ve heard of it?”
I nodded.
“Dr. Stewart said it would have killed him,” Emmaline said, her voice cracking. “What is going on? Why does someone want to kill my son? He doesn’t remember anything.”
“I think someone wants to keep it that way,” I said.
“What are we going to do?” Emmaline asked. “Dr. Stewart won’t let Carter leave. The attack has put his blood pressure up so high he refuses to release him, and Carter’s insisting he’s not safe here and neither am I.”
“Give me a minute,” I said and inched over to the bed where Carter, Dr. Stewart, and the state policeman were all engaged in a testosterone fest.
“Quiet!” I yelled.
They all stopped talking and turned to stare at me. “No one gets his man card revoked for not getting his way. Carter, you’re not going anywhere until Dr. Stewart says you’re healthy enough to. I’m sure you don’t want to add any more stress to what your mother is already suffering.”
Carter, who’d been staring at me as if I’d lost my mind, looked slightly guilty at my last statement. His jaw clenched but he didn’t even try to argue.
“Dr. Stewart,” I continued. “I don’t care what the hospital’s rules are about the number of people allowed in critical care or the visitation hours. As many people as we’d like are going to stay here in this room, and if anyone wants to, climb right in bed with him—armed.”
“Wait a minute,” the state policeman started.
“Sssshhhhh!” I waved my hand at him. “Your only responsibility here is to figure out how the intruder got into a locked-down unit of the hospital and to post a guard in the hall. Unless you want the death of a law enforcement officer on your jacket?” I stared at him.
“No ma’am,” the officer said. “I’ll call for backup and a forensics team.”
“Great,” I said, “then it’s all settled. Now, everyone get to their jobs.” they all stared at me and I clapped my hand. “Come on now, hurry.”
The state policeman left the room, clutching his cell phone. Dr. Stewart checked Carter’s vitals and his injuries and told the nurse to get him some medicine to take his blood pressure down. He gave me a wink before heading out of the room with the nurse.
Emmaline looked at me and smiled. “You’re good.”
I waved a hand in dismissal. “I just don’t like wasting time. And it’s late. If I wanted to listen to that drama half the night, I’d be at a sporting event, or hanging out with Celia Arceneaux.”
“Damn straight,” Ida Belle said. “So how do you want to play this?”
“Hey,” Carter said, “I’m the cop here.”
“Not tonight,” I said. “Tonight you’re the patient. Emmaline will stay here in the room. Ida Belle can take the lobby.”
“What about you?” Ida Belle asked.
“I want to do some looking around. The intruder got in somehow. If Lisa says no one came through the front door, then he got in some other way, and I’d like to know how. The state police will put a guard outside the door, but I think one of us should walk the hallway. Ida Belle and I can trade off so each of us gets a rest.”
Ida Belle nodded and pulled her Glock out of her purse to check the magazine.
“You locked and loaded?” she asked.
I nodded.
Carter groaned. “I don’t need to hear any of this. Am I supposed to feel safer knowing you two are roaming the hospital with guns? That’s the way most of my nightmares start.”
I looked over at him. “I suppose you could arrest us…”
“Jesus.” He flopped back on his bed. “For the love of God,
just remember there’s oxygen tanks in here. One misfire and you could send the whole place up in flames.”
“Then our problems will be over, right?” I said and smiled.
He stared at me for a couple seconds, and finally the smile broke through. “You’re impossible.”
“That’s what they tell me,” I said.
“So what happened with Gertie?” he asked.
“She’s still in lockup,” Ida Belle said. “I figure they’ll let her loose tomorrow morning, but that Officer Crawford wasn’t sticking his neck out to let it happen tonight.”
Carter frowned. “I thought she got into a fight with Celia? Why did they cut Celia loose and not Gertie?”
“There was this small incident with Mace and a state policeman,” I said.
Carter stared. “You’re kidding…no, never mind.”
The nurse came back into the room and handed Carter some pills and a glass of water. Ida Belle and I took the opportunity to head out into the hallway.
“What do you think?” Ida Belle said.
“Stupid. Risky. If someone stronger and faster than Emmaline or Lisa had been here, he wouldn’t have gotten away.”
“Or someone armed, like most people around here are.”
I nodded. “He wasn’t counting on Carter waking up.”
“Thank God he did!”
“Yeah.” My chest clenched and I felt a spike of anger and fear rush through me. It had been a close call. Way too close.
“What was in the syringe?” Ida Belle asked. “That thing you knew?”
“It’s an extremely powerful muscle relaxer. It can be used as a paralytic, but at even higher concentrations…”
Ida Belle blew out a breath. “So not something sitting around the average guy’s medicine cabinet.”
“Not even. It’s one of the components used for lethal injection. You can’t pick up a bottle at Walgreens.”
“This isn’t some amateur criminal who panicked that we’re dealing with. To even know about that drug and get access…that’s someone walking the dark side.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I’m going to take a look around, check out the windows in all the rooms on this hallway. If Lisa is still at the front desk, talk to her and see if you can get anything else out of her.”
“You got it. And Fortune?”
“Yeah?”
“Be careful.”
I nodded and set off down the hall in the opposite direction from the lobby. The likelihood of the intruder’s still being in the hospital was slim, but it was still a possibility. He was brazen enough to attempt to kill a man in a critical care unit. A deputy. And his method was advanced. Not just anyone would use something like pancuronium to dispatch their target.
I checked the rooms one by one, making sure the windows hadn’t been breached. Carter was the only patient in the critical care wing at the moment, which made the search a bit easier. No other patients to bother with my inspection. I quickly determined that the patient rooms didn’t contain windows. There was a small window near the ceiling of the janitor’s closet, but it was too narrow for a man the size Emmaline had described to fit through.
The windows in the break room were normal-sized and could have easily allowed a large man passage, but I could see no sign of tampering with the locking mechanism on any of them. I supposed it was possible that someone gained entry during the day and left the window unlatched, but if the intruder had entered this way, I would have expected him to leave the window open for quick escape once he’d administered the drug. He could hardly stroll out through the lobby without Lisa seeing him.
I walked back into the hallway and saw the state policeman sitting in a chair outside Carter’s room. He’d probably been assigned to guard shift until someone could replace him. I checked on Ida Belle, who had taken a seat in a corner of the lobby where she had a clear view of the front door, the hallway, and the front desk. Lisa had been relieved by a night nurse from another unit and sent home, so she hadn’t been able to talk to her. I doubted Lisa would have been able to tell us any more than we already knew, so it was no big deal.
I headed back down the hallway and stepped into Carter’s room. The cop narrowed his eyes at me as I passed, probably putting the blame for this less-than-stellar assignment squarely on my shoulders. He’d get over it. Or not. It didn’t matter to me either way.
Emmaline sat next to the bed, her hands clenched in her lap. I was surprised to see Carter’s eyes closed. “Is he all right?” I asked, worried that things were worse than Dr. Stewart had originally thought.
“He’s fine,” Emmaline said. “The nurse gave him something to sleep along with the med for his blood pressure.” She looked a bit guilty. “We didn’t tell Carter about that part.”
“You’re a good mother, and a smart woman.”
She gave me a weak smile. “Some days I don’t feel like either. I know it’s foolish for me to think I can protect him forever. I couldn’t protect him when he was overseas and I can’t protect him from his job now.”
“I get the desire,” I said. “At least, I think I do. I don’t have children, so I can’t say for sure.”
Emmaline nodded. “A mother’s desire to keep her child safe is an overwhelming one that never goes away, even when they’re adults. But I see your desire to protect him. It’s because you care. You, Ida Belle, and Gertie. You’re all doing everything you can to make sense of this impossible situation. You’re a good friend, Fortune, and an intelligent one.”
I felt a blush start on my neck and before it traveled onto my face, I smiled and backed out of the room. As I walked down the hall, I thought about Emmaline’s words. It was true that I cared about Carter, despite all the risks. My halfhearted attempts to keep my feelings at bay were more revealing to me than the fact that I found myself attracted to Carter in the first place. In so many ways, he was the perfect fit for me. He was strong and capable and didn’t take a moment of my crap. I understood completely why I wanted him. What I didn’t quite get was why I allowed myself to let my guard down in the first place.
Was I not as happy with my old life as I’d thought I was? Had I made attachments in Sinful as some form of passive-aggressive rebellion against the only life I’d ever wanted or known?
You’re a good friend, Fortune…
But was I really? Almost everything Carter thought he knew about me was a lie. If you kept these sort of monumental secrets from someone, were you really their friend? Or were you just taking advantage of what they were offering you based on false assumptions?
I lifted a chair from the break room and stuck it against the wall at the end of the hall. It was a good vantage point. I could see anyone coming through the secure access from the hospital wing or anyone entering the unit through the break room. I checked my pistol at my back waistband and slid down onto the cold, hard metal chair. It was going to be a long night with nothing to do but mull over my own thoughts. Maybe before morning, I’d have a moment of clarity and all of this would make sense.
I sighed. More likely, Gertie would admit she needed new glasses before that happened.
###
It was a long and uneventful night at the hospital. When the full staff started arriving at six, Ida Belle and I let Emmaline know we were taking off. Carter was still sleeping and everyone agreed he should remain that way as long as possible. The swelling on his brain needed rest to diminish. As much as it pained him, Carter had to stay put and relax in order to get what he wanted, which was out of the hospital.
The drive back to Sinful was a somber one. Neither Ida Belle nor I had experienced a burst of clarity, illuminating the answers we so desperately wanted. Things seemed to be advancing around us but we were stuck in place, grasping at straws.
“What now?” I asked.
Ida Belle shook her head. “Shower, food, sleep. Spring Gertie later on this morning, assuming they release her. Beyond that, I don’t know. I hate to admit it, but maybe this one is beyond us. Gertie and I are
good at ferreting out things happening in our town because we know these people and their history, and what we don’t know, we can find someone who does. But this is a federal crime…”
“Which means it might not involve people from Sinful but only Sinful as a drop point.”
“Exactly. And even if we could find it, I don’t know what locating the drop point would do for us.”
“Likely nothing but make us a target if the smugglers saw us. So I guess we hope that Carter wakes up with his memory intact.”
“That seems to be the only viable option remaining.”
I pulled into Ida Belle’s driveway and let her out. She gave me a halfhearted wave as she walked up the sidewalk and let herself inside. I backed out and drove home, feeling more defeated than I ever had before.
Ally was at the café, and I was grateful that she wasn’t off work today. I didn’t feel like trying to address questions I didn’t have answers for, and the more I dwelled on them, the more confused I became. As much as I hated to admit it, I needed rest just as Carter did. My mind wasn’t functioning at full capacity. It needed a break to refresh and get centered again.
Being the typical caretaker, Ally had left me a plate of pigs in a blanket and a tray of blueberry muffins. At least I knew that no matter what happened, I wouldn’t starve while dealing with it. I considered a shower, but decided on breakfast first. If I got upstairs under hot water, I didn’t think I’d manage walking by my bed without climbing in. Then I’d awaken starving and with a headache. Best to top off the stomach, then get some z’s.
I popped two of the sausage rolls and a blueberry muffin into the microwave, hauled out the butter, and poured myself a huge glass of chocolate milk. I must have been starving because I barely took time to appreciate how good everything tasted before washing it down with the milk and heading upstairs.
I could have wept for joy when the hot water hit my aching back. That metal chair from the break room could have doubled as a torture device. The cushioned one in the lobby hadn’t been much better, although I think at that point it was less about the furniture and more about my aching body. After thirty minutes of standing in steam, I donned a T-shirt and underwear and poured myself into bed, not even pausing to close my blinds. At this point, a spotlight directly on my face wouldn’t keep me from sleeping.