The Essential Sam Jameson / Peter Kittredge Box Set: SEVEN bestsellers from international sensation Lars Emmerich

by Lars Emmerich

  Robert went first. His wiry frame slipped through the opening with little hassle.

  The same could not be said for Nero. His bulk fought every attempt to sneak through. “Help,” he exhorted Robert.

  Robert grabbed his hand, braced his feet against the seat, and pulled.

  Nero felt glass shards dig into his side as he squeezed through the narrow opening, first his torso, then his waist, then his legs.

  Then he was through. He gathered himself on the front seat, picking glass from his clothing. “Thanks, bro,” he said.

  “Don’t mention it.”

  The front of the van was crumpled by the impact, and there was no getting out the passenger door. It was bent and twisted, held fast in place.

  Nero looked at the bloody driver, the way his arm was twisted and broken, like there was an extra elbow. His stomach turned.

  But there was no choice. They were going to have to climb over the comatose man.

  “You first,” he told Robert.

  The younger man crawled gingerly over the mangled driver. He found the door latch, pulled the lever, then pushed the door open. He crawled the rest of the way over the driver, then tumbled out onto gravel and scrub.

  “Help me move him,” Robert said.

  Nero shook his head. “His arm’s wrapped up in the steering wheel.”

  “Then climb your big ass over,” Robert said.

  Nero grunted and strained with effort. He held his breath and winced as he let his weight settle momentarily on the wounded driver. He heard bone grind against bone in the man’s arm. Nero felt dizzy and nauseous.

  “Come on, man,” Robert said. “Get off him.”

  Nero leaned forward and reached for Robert. The young man did his best to lift Nero’s weight from the stricken driver. Robert pulled. Nero felt his body slide over something slick and gooey. He shuddered, then abandoned caution, suddenly frantic to be free of the bloody mess beneath him.

  “Chill!” Robert yelled, straining under Nero’s weight. “Stop fighting.”

  But Nero had edged beyond reason. He clawed and kicked, trying to outrun panic and revulsion. He finally disentangled himself from the van and the steering wheel and the mangled driver. He fell in a heap on top of Robert, then sprang to his feet, wiping nondescript gore from his torso, his breath coming in gasps.

  “Help me,” Robert said. “His pulse is fading.”

  Nero turned to see the younger man reaching back inside the van, struggling with the comatose driver’s heft.

  “He needs an airway,” Robert said. “I need something to keep his head up.”

  Nero looked in the door, his stomach turning again. He felt bile creeping upward.

  But he had an idea. He took off his shirt. It was bloodied from his recent entanglement with the gravely injured driver. He rolled it into a ball, gritted his teeth, and wedged the shirt between the driver’s chin and chest.

  He steeled himself again. He grabbed the driver’s bloody head and pulled it backward. The man’s mouth fell open. Nero wedged the keychain between the driver’s teeth, then let go.

  “It worked,” Robert said, palm of his hand next to the injured man’s mouth. “His breathing is stronger.”

  Nero nodded. The driver’s face was a bloody pulp and his arm would never be the same, but at least he had a fighting chance at survival.

  Nero suddenly found tears coming from his eyes. He had no idea why. Exhaustion, shock, fear, revulsion, relief. Maybe all of them. He caught Robert looking at him, and he wiped his eyes. “Don’t know what got into me, man,” he said.

  Tire noise brought things back into focus. There was a car coming. It was heading west out of Pueblo, the way they had come.

  “Get down!” Nero commanded. “Behind the van!”

  They scrambled around to the far side of the van and flattened themselves against the earth. Nero held his breath as the noise grew louder.

  What if they stopped? They would surely call the cops.

  What if it was the cops? Nero’s heart pounded.

  The car grew louder, the tire noise growing harsher, meaner, more vicious, until it felt deafening. Nero was surprised by how loud and frightening it seemed.

  Then it blew past. Nero listened, breathless, for the telltale signs of slowing. But there were none. The driver continued west, as if there were no accident, as if nothing at all had happened by the roadside.

  “We have to get away from this road,” Nero said unnecessarily.

  “No argument here,” Robert said. “Closest town looks to be that way.” He pointed to the west. Toward Florence.

  Nero shook his head. “Prison town,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, no sane resident is going to help a hitchhiker. Not with a federal supermax nearby.”

  Robert nodded. He turned to the east.

  “We gotta split up,” Nero said.

  Robert’s eyes narrowed, as if he had been insulted. Then realization dawned. “They’ll be looking for the pair of us.”

  Nero nodded. “And no matter what else, we gotta get away from this highway,” he said. “It’s too busy. We’ll be caught in a minute.”

  More tire noise grew from the distant silence.

  “We gotta get out of here,” Nero said. He began walking south, away from the road and the wrecked prison van.

  Robert followed him.

  “Bro, you have to go the other way,” Nero said. “We’re sitting ducks otherwise.”

  Robert looked at him. “I guess this is it, then.”

  Nero returned his gaze. “I guess it is. May the force be with you, or whatever they say in the mosque,” he said, a wry smile on his lips, his hand extended.

  Robert shook Nero’s hand. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” the young man said, “but I hope I never see you again.”

  Nero gave Robert a closed-fisted, two-pat man-hug, turned on his heel, put the rising sun on his left, and trudged into the wilderness.

  16

  “Are you one hundred percent certain?” Sam asked.

  “Yes,” the hospital nurse said in thickly accented English. “I check the paperwork two time.”

  “It’s not him,” Sam said, shaking her head. “It’s not Mark Severn.”

  “Yes, it is,” the nurse said. “It say so, right here, on death paper.”

  Sam held out her hand. The nurse handed over the paperwork. It was written in Hungarian. She had no idea whether it was a death certificate, but it had Mark Severn’s name all over it.

  “How do you know this is him?” Sam asked.

  “His identification cards.” The nurse produced another folded piece of paper, this one with photocopies of Severn’s identification. The real Mark Severn’s face smiled back at her from the page.

  The ID looked authentic.

  Sam pointed to the dead man on the slab. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said. “This guy looks nothing like the ID.”

  The nurse snatched the paper from Sam’s hand, examined the photocopied identification, and studied the face staring up from the morgue drawer. She shrugged.

  “Are you serious?” Sam asked. “You didn’t even check to make sure the picture matched the face?”

  The nurse shrugged again. “Somebody signed.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Somebody was here, to look at the body,” the nurse said. “He signed papers.”

  Sonuvabitch. “Let me guess,” Sam said. “Tall man, blue backpack.”

  “Yes. You know him?”

  Sam shook her head, disgust on her face. “I’m getting to know him better by the minute.”

  She looked more closely at the body. “May I unzip the bag a little further?”

  The nurse shook her head. “Nobody may touch the bodies,” she said.

  Sam smiled with exaggerated sweetness. “Then would you please unzip the damned bag?”

  The nurse did as she was asked. Sam examined the dead man’s exposed torso. There were
no evident injuries of any sort.

  There was no bruising, as might be expected from a fatal automobile accident.

  There was certainly no butchery, as might have been made by a long blade, long enough to fling blood on the walls at high velocity, like in Mark Severn’s hotel room.

  The dead man was in his fifties if he was a day old. He didn’t look like he had taken great care of himself. Sam figured he could have died by natural causes. Maybe a heart attack. Maybe he had engaged in sexual activity without his doctor’s permission. Impossible to say.

  But he certainly wasn’t run over by a car, and he certainly wasn’t murdered with a knife.

  “Thank you,” Sam said. She stepped away from the morgue drawer. “Did he have any belongings with him?”

  The nurse shook her head.

  “Nothing at all?”

  “Nothing. Just identification.”

  Sam nodded, lips pursed. Obviously a red herring, meant to throw her off the trail. She wondered where they had found the dead man. She wondered maybe if they hadn’t killed him themselves. Poison, maybe. Or asphyxiation.

  She wondered where the hell Mark Severn was.

  “You said there was a man here earlier to identify the body. Did he sign any paperwork?”

  The nurse nodded, and motioned for Sam to follow. The nurse trudged back toward the front desk, found a file cabinet, opened a drawer, hummed softly while she leafed through papers, and pulled a single sheet from the drawer.

  Sam couldn’t make heads or tails of the signature, but the printed name was clearly legible.

  John Q. Public.

  How clever.

  “Were there any other fatalities around the same time? Any stabbings?”

  The nurse flipped through a folder on the admissions desk. “No. Not here. But Budapest is big city. Maybe ten hospitals.”

  Sam nodded grimly. It would take a team of detectives all day to canvas the hospitals. She didn’t have a team, and she didn’t have a day. Because she had someone chasing her.

  She reflected on the situation. Yesterday’s play to force their hand had certainly stirred things up. But it had not worked nearly the way she had hoped. She had undoubtedly changed the rules of engagement for her pursuers. No professional organization in the world took kindly to losing one of their own. The remaining members were bound to prosecute any and all opportunities with vigor and enthusiasm.

  Sam felt exposed.

  John Q. Public. Someone was toying with her.

  She wondered for a moment how they had such perfect intelligence, how they knew with such precision where she would be, and when she would be there.

  Then she realized that her move had been completely obvious. Anyone investigating Mark Severn’s death in an official capacity would eventually have to identify the body. So it wasn’t a question of whether Sam would make an appearance at the hospital. It was only a question of when.

  And she had walked right into it.

  Dread. Fear. Adrenaline. Her pulse quickened.

  Sam took a few steps toward the front door of the hospital, pausing to peer through the windows and glass doors. The sun blazed brilliantly outside, and Sam shielded her eyes. She scanned the front of the building methodically, from left to right.

  Her vigilance was rewarded. She spotted a watcher. A woman this time. She couldn’t tell whether it was the same woman from the airport, 32A’s cohort, but the odds seemed better than even.

  Sam felt vulnerable. The sun angle meant the woman watching the hospital entrance couldn’t see into the building. That was helpful. But the woman was undoubtedly accompanied by one or more additional agents.

  And it was entirely possible they were already inside the building.

  Sam fought the desire to run, to hide. She needed to keep her head about her.

  But she needed to get the hell away.

  She walked back to the reception desk. “Thank you for your help today, ma’am,” she said to the nurse. “Is there a restroom nearby?”

  The nurse pointed down the long hallway. “On the left,” she said.

  Sam nodded her thanks and walked briskly down the corridor, surreptitiously checking for open doors along the way.

  She found an unlocked lounge. She ducked inside. It smelled of smoke. Evidently, the worldwide ban on smoking had not made it yet to Hungary. Either that, or enforcement was not quite what it might have been.

  She glanced around, looking for anything useful. She found a bank of lockers along the far wall. She padded over to them, being careful not to cross in front of the window in the hallway door.

  There were locks on only about a third of the lockers. It was usually best to try things the easy way first. She began opening unlocked locker doors.

  The first five were empty. She hit pay dirt on the sixth. A leather jacket, a pair of sweats, a wallet, a set of car keys. BMW. Nice.

  She donned the jacket. She peeled off the denim skirt and threw it in an unused locker, and pulled on the sweats in their place. She had to cinch the ties tightly to keep them from dropping to her ankles.

  She stuffed the car keys in the jacket pocket, and left some money on the shelf in the locker she had just pilfered, for karma’s sake. And she’d claim it as an expense on her travel voucher when she got back home.

  If she got back home.

  She snuck back to the hallway door and peered out the window into the long corridor.

  The early hour worked to her advantage. The hospital wasn’t yet crowded with employees and patients. Sam craned her neck as far as possible in either direction, looking for an opportunity to leave unseen.

  Seeing no one, she pulled the door open a smidgen and peered through the opening.

  A nurse emerged from an adjacent room, a preoccupied look on her face.

  Sam held her breath and slowly closed the door to the lounge. She felt her heart thumping in her chest.

  The nurse scurried past, lost in her thoughts. Sam exhaled, reopened the door, and made her way toward the restroom.

  She had a hunch, and sincerely hoped it proved correct. It was an old building. Old buildings usually used old ventilation technology. Windows.

  Above the far stall in the women’s bathroom, Sam found her escape plan.

  She worked the window latch, applied a little force, and was rewarded with nothing but recalcitrance. The window didn’t move.

  She used a little more leverage. The window creaked open an inch.

  Sam curled her fingers around the edge, braced her foot against the wall, and pulled. Her wounded side protested angrily, and she stifled a gasp.

  She tried again. The window broke free of friction and slammed open, banging loudly into the frame. Sam cursed the pain and the noise.

  She listened for anyone coming. Only the sounds and smells of early morning greeted her through the open window.

  Sam stood up on the throne and checked in both directions beyond the window. Finding no one, she punched out the window screen. It clattered to the pavement below.

  She adjusted her stance on the toilet seat, gritted her teeth, placed both hands on the window frame, and counted to three in her head.

  She leaped on three.

  The pain in her abdomen was amazing. Her eyes instantly teared. She wondered if she hadn’t ripped the stitches out. A little howl escaped her lips, and a small sob. It sounded pathetic. She felt grateful no one was around to hear it, especially not anyone she knew.

  Her body was balanced on the window ledge. There was no turning back now. It would hurt just as much to climb back into the bathroom as to climb through to the outside. She set her jaw and twisted onto her right hip to protect the left side of her abdomen, where 32A’s twin brother had plowed a steel rod through her insides. Then she half rolled, half fell to the pavement below.

  The pain was extreme. She stood with her hands on her knees for the better part of a minute, composing herself, breathing into the pain, clearing the tears from her eyes, fishing the painkillers from her p
urse, doing her best not to cry out.

  She stood slowly. The pain subsided. Walking wasn’t a picnic, but it wasn’t unbearable.

  She got her bearings. The bathroom window had let her out into a small paved alleyway between wings of the hospital. To her right was a dead-end. Trash had accumulated in the corners of the building.

  She looked left. The small alleyway opened up. A walkway intersected the mouth of the alley, forming a T. She crept forward, keeping her body against the far wall, ducking to avoid windows as she advanced toward the alley exit.

  She peered around the corner. A small smile crept across her face. She saw a parking lot.

  She fetched the stolen car keys from the pocket of the stolen jacket. She thumbed the key fob. Nothing happened.

  Sam steeled herself. She was going to have to walk through the lot to find the right car. She had a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach.

  She put the hideous paisley scarf over her head and tucked her flaming red hair inside. Details mattered. Hiding her hair might buy her a few seconds. A few seconds might make a live-or-die difference.

  She walked deliberately through the rows of cars, doing her best to look as though she belonged, trying not to limp or dawdle. She pressed the unlock button on the key fob every few seconds, searching for the telltale flash of parking lights.

  She grew increasingly uncomfortable as the seconds passed. She began to wonder whether the car wasn’t parked somewhere else. The thought gave her a panicked feeling in her stomach. She was on borrowed time. They knew she was going to show up at the hospital, and she had obliged them by waltzing in the front door, alone, half-drugged, and wounded.

  What had she told Brock? No more unnecessary risks?

  She figured that necessary was in the eye of the beholder, but Brock would likely see that argument as quibbling. And he would be right.

  She rounded the third row of cars, and her blood froze.

  She saw a man sitting in the driver’s seat of a small sedan. The motor was off. He wasn’t playing with a cell phone, or listening to the radio, or smoking a cigarette.