by Judi Lind
Opening a supply cupboard filled with the implements needed to change surgical dressings, she grabbed a roll of gauze and adhesive tape. “Get back on the bed. Quick!”
“But—”
“Don’t argue. Just do it!”
Gil stared at her for a second, then complied wordlessly. Valerie put the dangling intravenous tubes into his hand and tucked the sheets up under his chin. “Hold on to those tubes so it looks like the IVs are connected.”
She ripped open the protective plastic covering from the gauze roll and quickly swathed Gil’s face, leaving small openings for his eyes, nose and mouth. She plastered the makeshift mask into place with the adhesive strips and smeared Betadine on his bandaged temple. At a distance the red antiseptic solution would pass for blood.
“Okay, if you hear me speak to anyone, just groan like you’re in labor. Got it?”
He grunted. “Don’t know much about being in labor, Doc, but I imagine I can do a fair imitation of a man in pain.”
Valerie cringed. He’d been acting so...normal the past half hour that she’d completely forgotten the savage beating he’d sustained only hours before. Since he’d disconnected the IV pain-relief medication, no doubt Gil was feeling the effects of his injuries. She couldn’t allow herself the luxury of counting on him to help if they were stopped by the gunman.
They probably only had another minute or so before the entire floor was emptied. It was now or never.
Gritting her teeth, she set the pneumatic latch over the door so it would remain open and wheeled Gil into the corridor. She started to the right, toward the elevators, then stopped abruptly. The elevators were programmed not to run during a fire. Only a single elevator was kept operational to aid in evacuating patients who weren’t ambulatory. It would be jammed with people, and no doubt the killer would be scanning every individual who entered.
Abruptly she reversed her direction and headed toward the emergency stairwell. “Hope you can manage the stairs,” she muttered.
Gil groaned a response. She wondered if he was acting or if his pain was worsening. She wheeled the narrow bed around the corner and paused at the entrance to the stairs. Glancing over her shoulder to make certain they hadn’t been spotted, she whipped back the sheet and helped Gil to his feet.
With the sounds of the evacuation fading with each passing second, they hadn’t a moment to spare. She slipped a steadying arm around Gil’s back and draped his arm across her shoulder. He stiffened. “I can walk,” he muttered.
“Not very well. Whose help do you want? Mine or the killer’s?” She knew she sounded snappish and authoritarian, but precious seconds were being sacrificed to Gil’s male ego.
As if he understood, he nodded mutely behind the haphazard gauze mask and they started forward.
Valerie couldn’t count the times she’d taken this route as a shortcut between the floors as she hurried from the delivery room to the nursery or to the patients’ ward. Often, she’d whistle or hum, then laugh at the way the sounds echoed through the cavernous space. Tonight, though, there was nothing friendly about the forlorn concrete enclosure. An image flitted through her mind of two small mice trapped in a concrete maze as a hungry cat stalked their progress.
They rounded the landing and passed the third floor.
She wasn’t sure how much of the hospital would be affected by the alarm she’d raised and figured the lobby, or even the basement, might be their best hope of escaping unnoticed.
Second floor. Gil’s breathing quickened with each step. Valerie recalled the X ray results: two hairline fractures on his ribs. Still, he didn’t utter a word of protest, nor did he slow his pace.
First floor. Lobby.
“Is this our stop?” he asked hopefully.
She hesitated. “I...I’m not sure. He could still be upstairs. Or he could have been sent down to the lobby with everyone else. What do you think?”
Gil leaned over the steel railing. “Did you know there are twenty-six stairs between each floor?”
She gave him a sharp glance. The bandages had come loose near his mouth and she saw the moisture pooling above his upper lip. This was too much exertion for a man in his condition. She reached for the lobby door and his warm hand enveloped hers.
“Let’s play it safe, Doc. The basement’s only twenty-six steps away.”
“Are you sure?”
Suddenly a steel fire door clanged somewhere above them.
They both glanced up. The killer? Probably a fireman or another hospital employee taking a shortcut. But they couldn’t take the chance. Wordlessly she eased the lobby door closed and they started down. More slowly this time, as if they’d made a silent pact to make as little noise as possible.
Valerie smiled ruefully. They’d always been in tune with each other—mentally, emotionally and physically. Until Gil had unceremoniously dumped her.
She opened the basement-level door and they emerged into a deserted hallway deep in the bowels of the vast hospital. Another sharp sound in the stairwell. Whoever was behind them was still clomping down the steps. They had to find a place to hide. Fast.
Unlike most of the hospital, there were no public facilities in the basement. No unlocked doors. Supply rooms, laundry facilities and laboratories hid behind numbered but unmarked panels. The first three had standard key lock mechanisms, denoting nonmedical use. Any room a physician might want to enter was fitted with an electronic lock for which a computer card and access code were required. Valerie had such a card, but no keys for the other rooms that were not within her normal realm.
Again a loud clang overhead hurried their pace. Fortunately the fourth door they tried had an electronic lock.
Fumbling in her pocket, Valerie jammed the card into the slot and keyed in her numerical sequence. She had no idea if she was cleared for access to this room and held her breath until the green light flashed and the door swung open.
She grabbed Gil around the waist and ushered him inside ahead of her. Behind them another crash of a steel door slamming in the hallway—this time louder. Closer.
The room was dark and she didn’t dare risk turning on the overhead light for fear a sliver would show beneath the door and give away their location. Her hip bumped an empty gurney and she gratefully eased her arm from beneath Gil’s and lowered him onto the portable bed.
“Are you okay?” she whispered.
“Hunky-dory,” he said with only a hint of breathlessness. “Look, Doc, I’ll be fine here. Why don’t you go on back upstairs with the others?”
“Where it’s safe?”
“Whatever. This is my problem, Doc. There’s no need for you to get involved.”
“I’m already involved. And stop calling me Doc.” She rummaged in her backpack for her penlight. “Makes me sound like I ought to have sideburns and suspenders.”
“Sorry, Ms. Doc.”
Recognizing his feeble attempt to lighten their situation with a bit of humor, she smiled slightly and flicked on the flashlight. They were in a small anteroom, with a few filing cabinets, two desks and a pair of uncomfortable-looking armchairs. The gurney was against a bare wall. From the numerous gouges and marks on the pale green surface, she knew gurneys were often parked in this spot. The room seemed vaguely familiar.
Then the flickering beam caught a double door behind the desks. Valerie darted across the room and was surprised to discover she needed her key card to open this second door. Still, it would be another barrier between them and the killer.
She punched in her access code and opened the security door. Her flashlight beam played across the room, exposing shiny steel tables, a concrete floor, banks of large filing cabinets and several deep porcelain sinks. Now she knew why the anteroom looked familiar. They were in the pathology department.
More commonly known as the morgue.
GIL COULD TELL from her crestfallen expression that she was disappointed by whatever was on the other side of those double doors. Her shoulders slumped and when she turned aroun
d, she sagged against the wall.
“What’s wrong?”
She slapped the penlight rhythmically in her palm, causing the beam to flash drunkenly across the ceiling. “Dead end. No way out.”
Gil rubbed his side, where behind the constricting bandages his ribs throbbed painfully. “So we wait him out here.”
Even as he spoke, the noises in the stairwell grew in intensity. Whoever was following them was apparently testing every door on his way down, clearing each floor before continuing his inexorable search. The man was patient and methodical, as well as armed. They were trapped like canaries in a cage. And the “puddy-tat” was slinking ever closer.
Gil’s jaw clenched. He was the worst kind of jackass. This wasn’t Valerie Murphy’s fight, and he should have sent her back to the safety of the lobby while she had the chance. Now, judging by the escalating noise level, the killer was between them and the first floor. There was truly no way out.
“What’s behind those doors?” he asked.
“The autopsy room.”
Although he had no specific memory of ever watching an autopsy, Gil knew he must have at some point in his law-enforcement career. In his mind’s eye, he could picture the layout: widely spaced tables of gleaming stainless steel, hoses, knives, saws and other evil-looking equipment neatly stacked on metal shelves. Drawers for cadaver storage and sometimes—
The final steel door separating the basement from the staircase crashed open. The killer was in the basement.
“Get that door open again,” Gil whispered urgently, then outlined his rudimentary plan while Valerie manipulated the electronic lock.
She propped the door open with her foot, and Gil painfully wheeled the empty gurney through the opening. When they were safely in the autopsy suite, she flicked on the overhead lights long enough for them to get their bearings.
As he’d hoped, a wide stainless-steel door was set in the wall on the opposite end of the room. A walk-in cooler where bodies could be stored until the pathologist finished his procedures. He hoped they didn’t already have a full house.
With Valerie’s help, he wheeled the gurney to the cooler and grabbed a couple of folded sheets from a stack on a shelf near the door. The gurney barely fit inside and Gil clambered onto it while she ran back to turn off the lights. His heart pounding, he could hear the faint sounds of the gunman trying to get in the outer door.
Valerie’s breath frosted in the air when she swung open the cooler door. An instant later, they were plunged into frigid darkness.
And the killer was in the morgue’s reception room.
Chapter Four
Gil’s heart crashed like thunder.
Fear was a powerful emotion, he acknowledged, but it wasn’t fear of the unseen gunman that convulsed his breath from his lungs. It was Valerie’s body crushed against his that forced him to inhale with exquisite slowness.
He didn’t understand this woman. The emotion that flashed so clearly in her blue eyes vacillated from cold and distant—even venomous—to a superheated fire that singed his very soul.
If only he could remember what had happened during his previous stay in Phoenix. That he and the lovely Dr. Murphy shared a history of some kind was indisputable; but his damnable memory with its gaping holes left him with more questions than answers. Who, exactly, was Valerie Murphy? What was her role in this puzzle that had nearly cost him his life?
He had to admit her resourcefulness was something. After slamming the door to the walk-in cooler, she had jockeyed his gurney between several other carts loaded with draped bodies. Parking Gil at the very rear of the refrigerated space, she yanked his shoes and socks from his feet and tied a cardboard tag around his big toe. Then, tucking his Reeboks between his ankles, she clambered atop his prone body and tugged a sheet over their heads, leaving his bare feet exposed.
With any luck their pursuer would glance at their lumpy silhouette and mistake them for a very fat, very dead, person. But Gil’s luck had run out four months ago; he wasn’t counting on a miracle now.
A slight noise infiltrated their chilly cell. Was the assassin even now inching across the morgue toward them? Despite their hazardous situation, he had a hard time focusing on the encroaching peril. His attention was absorbed by Valerie’s heartbeat drumming through her breast. By the rainwater scent of her hair against his face. The warmth of her thighs pressing against his.
Whatever she’d meant to him four months ago—friend or foe—he felt strongly tied to this woman who was risking her life for him. If anything happened to her, he’d never forgive himself.
Gil bit his lip to break the hypnotic hold of her nearness.
Then another stealthy sound brought their immediate danger into sharp focus.
His fingers instinctively tightened around her back, pulling her firmly against him as if the small gesture would protect her.
Creak!
The sound of the door opening between the reception area and the morgue penetrated the cooler’s insulated walls. Valerie’s body stiffened and Gil pressed his lips against her hair, as if to reassure her. He didn’t know how, but he would protect her from the stalker if it took his last breath.
“How did that guy get inside?” Gil whispered in exasperation. “You had to use a key card.”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s not him. Maybe it’s the janitor, or security, or—” She broke off as the soft tap-tap of leather-soled shoes echoed like the wings of death circling overhead.
Closer and closer still.
A sudden rush of warm air warned him that the killer had invaded the refrigerated cubicle. Gil poised his tender muscles, ready to pounce if he came too close. The element of surprise was his only advantage.
Gooseflesh rippled up his back as his every instinct went on full alert. The footsteps faltered, slowed, then paused as if the man was listening for an alien sound; then he took another tentative step.
A sheet rustled a few feet away and Gil realized he was checking each cadaver. Thorough. Professional. They didn’t stand a chance.
Moving with infinite slowness, Gil started easing from beneath Valerie’s soft form. He had to be ready the moment the man approached. The fake toe tag wasn’t going to fool this guy; he was an obvious pro.
Another step. The killer was only inches away; Gil could feel the heat of his body on his bare feet. The toe tag tickled against the sole of his foot as the man grasped the sheet covering their bodies.
Gil tensed, ready to shove Valerie aside when a man’s voice suddenly called from the outer room, breaking the taut silence.
“Hey! Who’s back there?”
The man in the cooler spat out an expletive and ran from the room, his feet slapping the concrete floor.
“What are you doing in here?” The newcomer’s voice reverberated throughout the cavernous space. “Let me see your ident—”
The man’s voice broke off abruptly, followed by a loud metallic crash.
A moment later dead silence claimed the morgue.
Pushing Valerie’s warm body from his, Gil struggled to his feet. He draped an arm around her trembling shoulders and tugged her toward the door. “Come on. We’ve got to get out of here while we have the chance.”
“You don’t think he’ll be back?”
Gil shrugged, then realized she probably couldn’t see the gesture in the dim light filtering from the autopsy suite. “He seems pretty determined to me. I’d say it’s a good bet he’s still hanging around.”
“Why? Why does that man want to kill you?”
“Damned if I know.”
“Don’t insult my intelligence!” She wrenched away and stood facing him, her fists jammed against her hips. “I’m not a fool, Gil. That man isn’t a homicidal maniac running through the halls shooting anyone he meets. He’s after you personally. And I’m not lifting another finger to help you unless you tell me why.”
Frustrated by the fallibility of his sporadic memory, he gnawed on his upper lip. He couldn’t give her an answ
er because he didn’t know it himself. “You’ve got to trust me. Just a little longer. Please.”
He reached for her arm and tried to urge her toward the door.
Valerie planted her feet, refusing to budge. “This is insane, Gil. We have to phone the police. That man has a gun!”
The logic of her words slammed him like a forty-pound hammer. She was right. Getting Valerie out of this mess had to be his first priority; the case would have to wait. The only way he could ensure her safety was to enlist the help of the Phoenix Police Department. He didn’t have a cover story ready for the locals, but he’d wing it.
“All right.” He squeezed her shoulder. “Let’s get to a phone.”
“Promise?” She cocked her head, her distrust obvious.
Her imploring tone made him feel oddly guilty, as if he had abused her faith before. “Yeah, I promise. Now let’s get a move on.”
He took two steps and staggered against a cart already occupied by a blue-sheeted corpse.
“You don’t have any business being out of bed,” Valerie snapped as she put her arm around his waist for support. Her gentle touch belied the harshness of her words.
“I’ll be fine, Doc. Where’s the nearest phone?”
“There should be one in the reception area,” she said as they made their way back into the morgue. Someone had turned on the overhead lighting and the fluorescent brightness made him lift a hand to shield his eyes.
“We should have called for help in the first place, instead of trying to handle this alone,” she said. “I’m sure the police will post a guard outside your room until—Oh, my God!”
He looked up and followed the path of her horrified gaze.
A man wearing the grayish-blue uniform of hospital security was draped, facedown, across an autopsy table. Blood dripped and pooled in a crimson lake.
Valerie raced across the room and gave the man a cursory examination. Her face was white with shock when she looked up. “He’s been shot!”