The big man looked at him apprehensively. "Don't try anything crazy on your own, Doc. I beg you. You're angry as hell at us now, and Lord knows you've got cause, but working with us is still your best chance of helping her."
Richard fought the urge to scream at him again. "Just give me time by myself, Detective."
He released Richard's arms, but didn't budge.
"Look, McKnight, you can't keep me here—"A knock on the door interrupted him, and Gordon Ingram poked his head in, banging the door against the policeman's back. "Oh, sorry, Richard. I didn't mean to interrupt, but tell me what I'm hearing about Kathleen isn't true."
"Gordon, I need to walk, and would appreciate your company," he replied, not taking his eyes off McKnight.
The police officer shrugged, and stepped aside to let him pass. "You have my number."
Ingram looked quizzically at him, then at Richard, obviously sensing the tension between the two men. "I'm afraid I'm not much for hoofing it these days," he said, "but I'll buy you a coke, if that'll help."
"Let's go," said Richard.
Richard outlined his plan to try and substitute himself for Kathleen, if the killer made contact. Ingram listened patiently and offered little advice.
The call came before they'd finished off a second round of sodas. "Steele?"
There was no mistaking the high, whiny voice.
"Listen, you fuck. Hurt her and I'll send you to hell, the slow way—"
"Get to a window at the front of the hospital, then call me back. You don't call me in thirty seconds, or I see any sign of cops, I push a button, understand?"
"But where?"
The connection went dead.
He looked at the call display. It showed his old cell number.
"Come on!" he yelled to Ingram, and ran from the cafeteria, heading to a stairwell and the nearest window overlooking Thirty-third. His fingers shaking, he dialed while scanning the street. Five floors below, in a line of parked cars on the other side of the street near Second Avenue, he saw a plain delivery truck with no windows or logos and a man at the rear fender bringing a phone to his ear. He had frizzy black hair and a mustache.
He was the reporter who went off with Norris at the press conference, Richard realized. He was astounded at how well the broad face from the composite drawing had been disguised.
"See me?" the voice asked.
"Yes."
"Then look at this." He threw open the back doors, and climbed inside. It took no more than a few seconds before he closed them again, but it was enough time for Richard to have seen the end of a stretcher. "Now here she is," said Kathleen's kidnapper.
He heard her breathing before she spoke. "Richard . . . don't listen to him. . . . Call the creep's bluff. . . . Love the children for me—"
"That's it, Steele. You've got forty-five seconds to get down here and climb in back with your lady. I'll be within a hundred feet and able to see. If you're a second late or pull any funny stuff, up she goes."
"No, wait—"
Again the connection broke off. As he watched, the man with the frizzy black hair jumped from the back of the truck, closed it up again, and walked away.
Richard's head reeled. He hadn't time to tell McKnight or anyone else.
He started down the stairs, counting seconds in his head.
"Richard," Ingram called from where he'd just arrived at the entrance to the stairwell. "Where are you going?"
"To Kathleen," he called over his shoulder without slowing down. "I've got to get to her. She's in a truck out front wired to detonate. Tell Mc Knight what's happened. Maybe he can do something. But for God's sake make him and the cops keep out of sight. The guy's watching."
"What!"
"Do it." And he ran out onto the ground floor. He figured he had half a minute left.
He used up ten seconds to reach the front door. Darting outside and crossing Thirty-third cost him another three. Wherever the creep had retreated to, he couldn't spot him. Running full out with his white coat flapping behind him, he covered the half block to the truck in less than fifteen seconds. His throat burned the whole way, and drawing closer he grew certain the bomb would go off the instant he got there, that the killer had baited him.
He approached from the driver's side.
Nothing happened.
A woman with a stroller was walking away from him, toward First Avenue. There were no other pedestrians. But a steady stream of traffic flowed at his back. If he hesitated, the watcher would blow the bomb up, and the people driving cars and crossing the street were doomed anyway, he decided, practicing the cold logic of triage. Gingerly, he opened the rear door.
The first thing he saw were Kathleen's eyes glaring at him out of the darkness.
But no explosion.
He climbed in.
Still nothing.
Taped to the undercarriage of the stretcher he saw four gray pipes, each at least two inches wide and several feet in length. Quadruple what had detonated in his basement.
He thought of trying to grab her in his arms and run for their lives.
Stripped flesh beneath a halo of black hair flashed to mind.
He stayed put, closing the door as he'd been instructed, shutting himself and Kathleen in darkness.
"It's okay," he said. "Help's on the way."
A few seconds later a key turned in the lock, sealing them in.
Someone got in the cab, the motor roared to life, and they were off.
He felt his way over to the stretcher. "The police know we're here," he whispered, finding one of her arms and immediately undoing the tape that restrained it.
"You fool!" she wheezed at him the minute she could cover her larynx. "Now . . . we both die."
"No! Now we think of something."
"Think of what?"
He didn't have an answer. He'd been too big an asshole, raging at McKnight rather than working out some sort of contingency plan. Idiot! He took out his frustration on the tape. In an instant he freed her other arm and was working on her legs. The lurching of the truck to the left, then right every few minutes kept throwing him off balance. The driver must be zigzagging through one street after another, making sure they weren't followed. Hopefully McKnight had called in a helicopter.
He had her ankles unbound when the vehicle all at once slowed and came to a stop.
Then his phone rang.
As soon as he punched RECEIVE, the voice said, "You make any noise, I run fifty feet away, duck, and press, got that?"
"No, don't—"
"Same goes for any attempt to call up your cop friends. Keep our connection open, or else."
Wait a minute, Richard thought. Cell phones could be monitored. Surely McKnight had someone tuned in on them. "Where are we going?" he demanded, hoping to get the killer to start talking. Maybe the cops could triangulate where they were, or this guy would give away their destination. "Obviously you intend to kill us anyway. It didn't bother you before where the bombs went off."
A wheedling laugh came over the phone. "You'll find out where soon enough. Let's just say it'll be so noisy that no passersby will hear you as I mete out the Lord's punishment."
Oh, Jesus, Richard thought. Maybe it would be better if he goaded the son of a bitch into blowing them up right now. It would be quick, and they could take him with them.
The voices of people walking by blended with the noises of passing traffic.
Him and a lot of bystanders.
No. Not more flesh for this monster. "You're a fine one to talk about killing," he said instead, figuring it best to just keep the conversation going. "How many innocents have you slaughtered?"
"Casualties of war."
"But why come after Kathleen and me? We didn't have anything to do with Hamlin and the others."
"Oh no?"
"That's right."
"Not according to my information."
"What information? From whom?"
"I know what you did, or would have done, all to save
your geneticist friend there. How many embryos do you suppose died for her? Why should she or you deserve to live after agreeing to that?"
"Neither she nor I agreed to anything."
"Bullshit! You'd have gone on working with Hamlin and the rest of that bunch, covering up their mistakes, all the while giving them new cases, and the killings would have continued."
"Who told you this crap?"
More laughter came through the receiver, shrill enough to hurt his ear. "You'll find that out soon enough."
"Is it Francesca Downs—"
The click of the passenger door opening interrupted him, and the sound of the connection changed, went flat, as if the man on the other end had covered the mouthpiece with his hand. Richard heard muffled voices from the cab, and the truck creaked as someone climbed in up front.
"That's the person I heard him talking with before," said Kathleen, in a single rushed breath. "Listen to how ... he breaks up his speech . . . like me."
Before Richard could appreciate what she meant, the motor revved to life, and they were off again. Minutes later the truck lurched right, then came to another stop. The previous street sounds seemed to have disappeared, replaced by the racket of a jackhammer. A sudden metallic rattling followed, ending in a slam that echoed a few seconds, instantly muting the din from outside. The two front doors in the cab snapped opened almost simultaneously, but as far as Richard could tell, only the driver got out.
He had to find a weapon.
Untape the pipe bombs and clobber him with them when he comes in after them? There wasn't time.
He needed something quick.
"Excuse me, Kathleen," he whispered, slipping his arms under her and lifting her off the stretcher. The lightness of her body shocked him, despite knowing she'd lost so much weight.
"What are you doing?"
He laid her gently on the floor of the truck. "Getting a torpedo, " he told her, lifting her IV bags off their poles and nestling them in her arms. Next he snapped all the electrical leads off her, freeing her of the machines piled on top of the mattress. He put the catheter bags between her legs. Finally, he placed his cell phone in her hand. "As soon as the fun starts, dial 911."
"But I don't know where we are."
"McKnight's probably already outside. Just tell them, 'come in now!' "
A key sounded in the rear door lock, followed by a loud click.
"I love you, Kathleen," he said, grasping her head gently between his hands and giving her face a quick kiss. He sprung to his feet and released the foot brake on the gurney. Grabbing hold of it, he waited.
The rear doors started to open. "I've got a gun, so behave," said the whiny voice.
As soon as he caught a glimpse of the man's silhouette in the semidarkness of wherever they were, Richard rammed the stretcher with its load of equipment at him. It slammed out the rear of the truck, arched through the air and hit the driver squarely in the chest.
"Shit!" he screamed, reeling backward under its weight, all the monitors crashing down on him as well. The gun went sailing out of his hand to the popping sounds of video screens shattering.
Richard leapt for it, paying no heed if the second person was out of the cab and coming at him from behind. All that mattered was to reach the gun first or he and Kathleen were dead anyway. He landed on concrete a few feet short, letting out a bellow of pain as he scrambled toward where it lay.
"Do I call you Nappin or Nape, or just Robbie the creep?" he yelled, willing to say anything that might fluster the figure struggling to disentangle himself from the tubular undercarriage and win a few seconds' advantage. In the thin light he saw glittering splinters embedded in that broad face he'd so come to hate and blood pouring from around the eyes. The glass from one of the monitors must have smashed on the guy's head. He felt his odds soar.
But the taunt was a mistake.
The man exploded into a frenzy of shrieks and screams, extricating his legs and throwing off the remains of the debris that had felled him. He made his own dive for the pistol.
Richard grabbed it first, but before he could point it, his opponent gripped the barrel and wrenched it from his grasp, rage giving him the strength of five men.
"Look what I've got," he said, his mouth breaking into a bloodied leer as he started bringing the muzzle right way around.
"No, don't," screamed Richard, sure that he was about to die and leave Kathleen at this madman's mercy. "The police are on their way. You can't escape unless you run now. Get out fast—"
A shot, then two more exploded almost by his ear.
The burly man in front of him arched his eyebrows, swayed a few seconds, and managed to twist his face into a pained look of surprise. Richard stared at him in amazement, having so often seen that same expression in sudden death.
The wig turned crimson, then the familiar broad features disappeared under a fresh wash of red, and he pitched nose-first into a broken cardiac monitor.
Richard turned to see Ingram standing at the back of the truck, slowly lowering a gun.
Chapter 20
Relief made him dizzy. "Gordon! How on earth did you get here? My God, you saved my life."
Ingram swayed and leaned against one of the open rear doors.
Even in the bad light, Richard could see he was breathing with great difficulty. "Jesus, are you all right?" He started toward him. "Did the guy shoot you?" The gunfire had been so loud inside what looked like a large garage entirely lined with concrete it had been impossible to say if it had all come from one direction.
Gordon shook his head.
"Richard . . . what's happened?" Kathleen called from the vehicle's dark interior behind Ingram. "I can't . . . get a . . . connection."
"I'm fine," he replied. "Dr. Ingram somehow arrived here in time and managed to save the day. . . ." He trailed off as he got closer and heard the man wheezing. With little illumination creeping through grimy windows in the large sliding door, Richard drew closer to see Ingram's face. It was gray and gleamed from a sheen of sweat. "Christ, Gordon, what is it? Not another heart attack? "The man eyed him, his gun pointing in limbo between the ground and Richard's waist. "Guess I overdid it getting here," he said in a rush between breaths.
"Where's the second guy? Did you shoot him, too?" He started toward the cab to look.
"Dr. Ingram . . . the man who . . . fixed my throat?" Kathleen called.
"Yeah, the man who fixed your throat...."
He stopped midstride, his voice trailing off once more on seeing the empty cab.
He slowly turned and faced Ingram again.
Ingram had sunk to his knees and taken a tube of nitroglycerine spray out of his pocket, liberally squirting it under his tongue. "Forget the other man, Richard. . . . He ran off. . . shot in the arm. . . . I'm going . . . into pulmonary edema. . . . Help me."
Richard saw the veins in Ingram's neck bulging above his collar. The man's lungs were filling with fluid, his myocardium having been taxed beyond what it could pump. Nitro, on the other hand, would dilate his arteries, reducing the resistance in the circulation and lessening the heart's workload. That might be enough to reverse the process. But oxygen to help him breathe, diuresis with IV furosemide to makehim pee out the excess water, and a shot of morphine to reduce the volume of blood flowing toward the heart would increase his chances a lot more. Which meant getting him to an ER.
Yet Richard just stood there, taking his first good look at the gun in Ingram's hand. It looked identical to the one he'd been fighting over. "Where'd you get the weapon, Gordon?"
The man, desperate for oxygen, had begun to mouth-breathe, exhibiting what doctors call "air hunger."
"What are you bothering . . . about that stuff for? . . . Get those tanks off the stretcher. ... I carry . . . my own syringes." With his free hand he reached inside his breast pocket and took out what looked like a billfold. He laid it on the concrete, flipping it open.
Richard recognized the kind of case diabetics use, designed to carry four
prefilled insulin needles.
Ingram gestured at the contents with an open palm. "Furosemide and morphine . . . two of each." He gave a little grin. "This occasionally happens ... so I'm a man . . . who comes prepared." His gun remained vaguely pointed toward the ground between them. "Perk of being . . . my own doctor." A man with heart failure, Richard thought.
A man who had access to all the records.
A man who might have gone through Hamlin and Downs's charts "looking for trouble" after all and would have figured out what was going on as readily as Richard had.
Oh, my God, Richard thought, recoiling from where his mind seemed to be shoving him. But it pushed harder, dredging up the events of the last two weeks, connecting and reconnecting them into patterns that made sense despite not wanting to see them. His ideas slid inexorably toward a possibility that made Ingram as hideous as rot. No, don't go there. It can't be, he tried to tell himself. But he said, "Give me the pistol, Gordon."
The grin faded, and the direction of the muzzle became more definite, rising to take a bead on Richard's chest.
The movement confirmed all that Richard had been thinking.
"I knew such a lame set of lies . . . wouldn't work. . . . My original plan . . . was to let psycho Bob there . . . kill you and Kathleen . . . then I'd kill him. . . . But I hadn't counted on . . . getting like this either . . . and all at once . . . needing your services. . . . Couldn't let him ... do you in just yet." With his left hand he reached inside his jacket and pulled out a six-inch key chain attached to a small black box the size of a lighter. It had buttons on it.
Richard didn't need to be told what it did.
In a white-hot second his fury at Ingram swelled into rage. Despite the gun and detonator, every ounce of him quivered to leap at the man's throat, and only his determination to somehow save Kathleen's life stopped him. "I'm not doing squat to help you," he said instead.
"Suit yourself. Maybe I can inject the drugs, at least for now. But that might not be the case in a few minutes. What's up for grabs is how Kathleen dies." He gestured toward the truck with his gun. "Quick and easy, or slow and painfully." His thumb glided across the buttons on the detonator.
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