by Judi Lind
Where did Weingold take her? And why?
Obviously the man had been aware of his presence. He’d lured Valerie away from the relative safety of the cafeteria, knowing that Gil would follow.
Weingold was shrewd; take the chicken from the henhouse and the fox is sure to follow. Gil set his jaw in determination. When he caught up to them—and he would—Weingold was going to be one sorry bastard.
Spotting a familiar face at the information desk, he hurried over.
A well-padded older woman, whom her name tag identified as Mabel, smiled up at him. “Good evening, sir. How can I help you?”
“Do you know Valerie, I mean, Dr. Murphy?”
A wary look came into her eyes. “Yes, of course. Would you like me to page her?”
He considered. Would Weingold let her answer a page?
Maybe. But he didn’t want to draw attention to himself on the odd chance that Weingold wasn’t aware of his presence in the hospital.
Leaning on the counter, he dropped his voice, hoping to sound like an abashed boyfriend. “No, that’s okay. We were going to meet here this evening, but to be honest—” he shrugged and grinned “—I forgot where I was supposed to meet her. She’ll have my hide if I don’t show up, but I don’t want to interrupt her by paging her—in case she’s with a patient.”
The older woman gave him a conspiratorial smile and patted his hand. “I doubt she’d skin a foxy dude like you!” She winked broadly.
Gil felt the surprising heat of a flush creep into his cheeks. The feisty old gal had taken him by surprise.
“Oh, sugar,” she said with a deep laugh, “don’t be so shocked. A woman don’t ever get too old to dream! Why don’t you check over at the WomanCare clinic? I saw her headed that way a few minutes ago.”
“Was she with Dr. Weingold?”
The gray-haired volunteer frowned. “You know, I’m not sure. I was on the phone when she passed. I know someone was with her but...I just couldn’t say for sure who it was, sugar.”
“That’s okay. But they were definitely headed for the clinic?”
“Unless she had a strange yen to have some blood drawn. Nothing else down that corridor except the laboratory facilities.”
The relief washing through him felt sweeter than a spring rain. “Thanks, Mabel, you’re a peach.”
“Ah,” she said, waving away his compliment. “But if you ever find yourself craving some mature companionship...”
“It’s a deal!” he called as he raced down the corridor.
He passed through the breezeway that connected the WomanCare clinic to the main hospital structure. When he reached the clinic itself, he was startled to find the door unlocked. Had Valerie deliberately turned off the time-lock device? He hoped she still had that much latitude. That by now she wasn’t being held prisoner—or worse—by the corrupt doctor.
He slowly made his way through the empty spaces. The unoccupied clinic had a ghostly feel. The main lighting was still off, the only illumination being the dim reflection of the red exit sign over the door and the luminous glow that surrounded the tiny emergency lights spaced throughout the area.
He passed the main reception area, then Monica’s office. Rest rooms were next, followed by the counseling center, and finally, a half-dozen tiny examining rooms. The doctors’ private offices, he knew, were located down the short hallways on either side of the main area.
Suddenly he glanced to the left. Reflected light, almost blinding in the darkness, poured into the hallway. Keeping his back flat against the wall, he edged toward the illuminated area.
A wide glass window separating the corridor from another room was the source of the light. Taking a long five-count, he dropped onto his haunches and peeked up over the sill of the window.
The other room was some sort of laboratory, evidenced by the long expanses of stainless-steel countertops and assorted beakers and vials. A single goose-neck lamp illuminated an expensive-looking microscope, shedding ambient light on the surrounding white-tiled room.
To his surprise, the room wasn’t as harshly lit as he’d expected. In fact, it was dim, shadowy. The contrast between the lab with its single lamp and the much darker hall had led to that impression.
Something moved suddenly within his peripheral vision. Gil shifted his position so he could get a better view.
Two shadowy figures stirred at the far end of the laboratory. He inched forward, praying that one of the figures was Valerie.
The hesitant hum of muted voices reached his ears. Gil strained, but couldn’t catch their words. However, enough sound filtered through so he could tell the speakers were a man and a woman. Valerie?
At that moment the woman turned and walked directly into the narrow beam of light cast by the small lamp.
Monica Giesen!
After spotting him in the cafeteria, she must have rushed over here, passing him while he was talking with Mabel at the information counter.
Monica turned and gesticulated to the other figure, motioning wildly. Then, with a growl of anger, she stalked forward, disappearing from Gil’s view.
A moment later she returned, pulling something behind her.
From his vantage point below the window, Gil couldn’t get a glimpse of what Monica had dragged into the lab. Hoping that her more brightly lit environment would shadow him from view, he rose slightly to get a better look. Any moment he expected to hear Monica shriek an alarm, alerting her partner to his presence.
But for once, his luck held and Monica turned away, affording Gil a look at what she’d tugged into the lab.
Sterile gauze bound a frantic-looking Valerie to a black padded hospital gurney. Wide strips of adhesive bandage were taped over her mouth in a makeshift gag. Her luminous blue eyes darted around the room in obvious fright.
For the first time in his life, Gil was terrified.
Not for his own safety, but for someone whose well-being, he realized, meant more to him than his own life.
He reached into his jacket pocket, savoring the heft of his service revolver. As Monica moved into view once more, he suddenly wondered about the thickness of the glass panel separating them. Safety was so important in a hospital setting that the window was no doubt fashioned of safety glass. But would it also be shatterproof? Certain kinds of glass-acrylic compounds, he knew, would deflect the bullets from a small-caliber weapon.
Valerie’s safety was paramount.
If only there was some way of knowing exactly what was going on in there. What they were talking about. He had to find out if Valerie was in immediate danger, or whether he could bide his time and wait for a better opportunity to attempt a rescue.
Dropping again to his haunches, he duck-walked beneath the window and approached the door on the other side. The red light on the electronic panel told him the door was securely locked. No way in.
While he was deciding whether or not to sneak back into the front of the clinic and phone for backup, he noticed a steel control panel on the wall beside the window. Curious, he opened the small door. Several switches and dials controlled the air-conditioning, lighting and other physical aspects of the confined laboratory. Then he noticed a small toggle switch.
The light in the hall was so dim he had to squint to make out the tiny letters etched beneath the switch. “Microphone.”
Was it possible that throwing the switch would allow him to hear what was transpiring in the impregnable lab? Glancing up, he spotted what looked like a small speaker mounted on the wall just above the window panel.
Gil flipped the switch.
Immediately Monica’s strident voice could be plainly heard in the corridor.
“For once in your life, be a man!” she fumed at the male figure who was still hidden from Gil’s sight. “There are no options here. Unless you want to spend the next fifty years making license plates!”
The murmur of a masculine voice filtered out. Gil still couldn’t catch his actual words, but his tone was supplicating.
�
�Listen to me.” Monica waved her manicured fingers in the air. “Let me clarify our situation for you. We have to end our operation tonight.” She hooked a thumb at Valerie. “Her boyfriend has probably already reported his suspicions. He doesn’t have any hard evidence yet or we’d already be in jail. So we have to mop up all the loose ends tonight. Including the nosy Dr. Murphy here.”
Again the man spoke, but his words were still unclear.
Monica rolled her eyes, then punched her fists onto her slender hips. “It’s all worked out. You don’t have to do a thing.” Again she gestured toward Valerie. “As soon as she’s out of the way, I can start on the computer work. A few quick changes and Dr. Murphy’s name is going to appear as physician of record on all five births. Should have done that all along. An oversight on my part.”
A groan from the gurney attracted her attention, and she bent over and hissed in Valerie’s ear. “Stop whining. You’re giving me a headache.”
Straightening, she once more addressed her associate. “A careful leak to the media about the kidnappings will start a public panic. No one will think about the missing doctor for a few days. Once her ‘suicide’ is discovered, the police—and the hospital—will be so happy to have a scapegoat they won’t dig very deeply into her death. That’s a given.”
Her companion must have moved closer to the microphone. For the first time his voice clearly filtered through the speaker. “What about that FBI boyfriend of hers? He’s not going to believe she committed suicide.”
Monica laughed. A vile chortle that caused goose bumps to ripple along Gil’s flesh.
“Oh, he’ll believe it all right. Remember, our darling Dr. Murphy has been keeping a gigantic secret from him. When he finds out she was pregnant, he’ll be so stunned at her deception he’ll believe anything. And when the cops find out our little doctor had a bun in the oven, they’ll think that’s more motive. After stealing everyone else’s babies, she turns up preggers and her guilty conscience drives her to suicide.”
Monica’s accomplice responded, but his words were lost on Gil.
His ears were roaring. With all-consuming rage. With utter confusion.
Valerie pregnant?
With his baby?
He wanted to break through the glass and grab her with his hands, shake her until the truth rattled from her lips. Why hadn’t she told him? Why?
Sinking to the floor, Gil buried his face in his hands as he tried to swim above the bewildering feelings that were threatening to drown him.
Something had driven him to rush off in the middle of the night to Los Angeles. Something he’d found out. But it wasn’t about Weingold or Monica, he was sure of it. Something was wrong, out of kilter. Slowly but steadily bits and fragments of his shattered memory were returning. If only those memory chunks would arrive in an orderly fashion, instead of a jumbled mess.
Out of the confusing chaos of his mind, a single truth crystallized. All of these bewildering thoughts could wait. Valerie’s explanation—if she had one—could wait.
Right now he had to get a grip on himself. Had to don the cold professional detachment that had cloaked his feelings for the past twenty years.
These people were going to kill Valerie.
Going to murder his unborn child unless he did something.
He didn’t know exactly what the fiends had planned, some sort of lethal injection, probably. There was no time to summon backup officers.
He himself was the only barrier between the woman he loved and her death.
HORROR BUILT in Valerie’s mind with every evil word that Monica uttered.
How could she ever have considered the woman a trusted friend? A valued colleague?
How could Monica have hidden this wellspring of hatred and greed for so long?
Not that it mattered. According to the terrifying plan she had just outlined, Valerie would be dead within the next few minutes unless she could find a way out of her predicament.
Turning her head, the only freedom of movement she still possessed, she spied the metal cart of supplies a few feet away. She tried to ignore the gleaming hypodermic needle and the vial lying beside it. A sickening feeling deep in the pit of her stomach warned that those items would be Monica’s instruments of death.
But other medical paraphernalia was on the cart, as well. Encased in sterile paper and plastic liners were tongue depressors, tweezers, forceps and scalpels. If she could just reach one of those scalpels...
The cart was only a few feet away, but it might as well have been miles. She was so tightly bound that even wiggling her fingers caused excruciating pain in her wrists. Monica had taken no chances when she’d trussed her hostage.
Tears wetting her lashes, Valerie turned her head from her former friend’s mocking glare. If she and her baby had to die tonight, at least she wouldn’t give Monica the satisfaction of seeing her heartache and fear.
Glancing at the observation window directly beside her, Valerie’s pulse jumped at a sudden faint movement.
Was someone out there or was it merely wishful thinking?
As she watched a shadow moved. Gil? Oh, God, please let it be Gil. Please.
A strangled sob escaped her throat.
“What?” Monica screamed. “I told you to stop whining.”
“No, look at her face. She looks...relieved. Like she saw something. I’ll bet that FBI agent is here!” Monica’s accomplice stepped forward, a gun in his hand.
With his other hand he grabbed the gurney and hauled Valerie away from the window.
Panic welled in her chest. She’d given Gil away! She had to do something, anything, to take their minds off him long enough for him to get away.
Frantic, she cast her eyes around the small space, looking for something to create a diversion. Then she noticed that she’d been pulled right against the cart of medical supplies.
Using every last fiber of her strength, Valerie lunged upward and forward at the same time, jerking the gurney a few more inches. But the small movement was enough to jar the cart.
Monica leaped forward, but before she could reach her side, Valerie hooked the tip of her toe under the lip of the cart. Once more mustering her strength, she kicked. The cart overturned with a satisfying crash.
Suddenly the room erupted in chaos.
Something battered the door. Monica was shrieking like a fishwife. Her accomplice raced for the door just as the lock finally gave and Gil burst into the room.
He didn’t waste a second surveying the situation. As Monica’s confederate raised the gun, Gil heaved the fire extinguisher he’d used as a battering ram.
At that moment Monica shoved the gurney into Gil’s knees in a mad race for the door. Valerie could see Monica’s hand slap the small lamp off the counter. Then the woman leaped at the flailing men, got tangled somehow and all three of them fell to the ground in a thrashing heap at the exact moment the only light went out.
Hearing a mad scramble at the door as the threesome fought to extricate themselves from the pile, Valerie closed her eyes and prayed.
Then the deafening report of a gunshot filled the air.
Chapter Seventeen
The acrid tang of cordite filled his mouth and lungs.
A hard ringing noise, like cymbals crashing, resonated in his ears as the reverberation of the gunshot went on and on.
He couldn’t hear, couldn’t think. Yet somehow, Gil’s instincts, born from years of experience, kicked in. He wrenched the revolver from the other man’s hands and pressed it into the small of his back. With all his heart, Gil wanted to pull the trigger. Wanted to eradicate from the earth this plague of a human who wrought such destruction after taking a sacred oath to nurture and heal.
But Gil had taken an oath, as well. He’d vowed to protect his country, its constitution and its law. He couldn’t take that precious law into his own hands, no matter how justified it might seem.
Suddenly the man kicked backward, landing a solid blow on Gil’s shin. Cursing with pain, he
doubled over. Another sharp pain, like a karate chop, slammed into his wrist, and the gun went flying.
Ignoring the paralyzing pain, he dove for the floor in a mad scramble to recover the gun. Time stood still as he grappled with his foe. Before either could find the elusive weapon, Gil became aware of another sound. A sound more piercing, more urgent, than gunfire.
A woman’s scream.
Valerie!
He struggled to his feet. Vaguely aware of a movement near the door, he knew one, if not both, of the criminals was escaping, but he didn’t care. He had to reach Valerie. Had to help her.
Fumbling for the overhead-light switch, he winced as the brilliant blue-white fluorescent fixture came on. Then, he glanced down and saw Monica still lying in a crumpled heap at his feet.
She must have been knocked unconscious in the struggle, he thought with little concern. He nudged her inert body aside with his foot to clear a path to Valerie’s side.
Her eyes were clenched shut against the harsh light, but she was alive and battling against her bonds like a woman possessed. Reaching into his pocket for his penknife, he cut the gauze bandages holding her prisoner, then tore the adhesive that was wrapped tightly around her head and mouth.
“Ouch!” she yelped.
He gathered her into his arms. “Did that creep hit you? Where are you shot?”
“I’m not,” she said in a shaky voice as she struggled to sit upright.
“But I heard you scream,” he said in disbelief. She must be in shock, he thought, as he scanned her body for signs of injury.
She finally made it to a sitting position, even though the trembling in her limbs was testimony to her fright. “It wasn’t me. I...I think it was Monica. Help me.”
Knowing better than to argue, he wrapped an arm around her waist and helped her off the table and onto her feet. She took a couple of wobbly steps then shrugged off his arm.
She had just knelt beside the injured woman when noise erupted all around them. Several armed security officers raced into the room.
“Someone reported gunshots!” the leader shouted, pointing a gun at Gil.