by Matt Lincoln
“I don’t disagree,” I replied, “but if we did go straight to Aruba, we wouldn’t know what to do from there. All we know is that there’s an apartment somewhere there the traffickers are using as a stopping point. That’s so vague it would be impossible for us to find anything. If we go to California first and track down someone related to the group, we’ll have a better chance of actually finding this place.”
“That’s a good point,” Holm conceded as he gulped down the rest of his coffee. “Man, I feel like I’ve been inhaling this stuff non stop since we got this case. Heck of a difference from that month off while you were out of commission.”
“I know what you mean,” I replied as I looked down at my own coffee cup. As much as I’d missed the action of the field and craved the chance to get back out there, being on desk duty for so long had left me out of practice. “Anyway, let’s go run it by Diane. She might have some input on what we should do.”
“Alright,” Holm agreed as we both got up to head into her office. The door was closed when we arrived, so I knocked.
“Come in,” she called from inside. I pushed the door open, and Holm and I walked in.
“Everything okay?” she asked as she looked up from the papers she was reviewing at her desk.
“Yeah,” I replied as Holm and I sat down. “We just weren’t sure where we should go from here. We’ve managed to establish with near certainty that the drugs came from Aruba, but we also have reason to believe that the people behind this, at least on the US end, are based out of California.”
“And you want to know where to go?” Diane correctly guessed.
“That’s right,” I replied. “So, what do you think, boss?”
“Well, which lead do you have more information on?” she asked as she drummed her fingers along her desk.
“Honestly, both are pretty vague right now,” I answered. “According to the surviving victim, the traffickers made her swallow the drugs during the Aruba stop. Aside from that, we don’t know all that much about what’s going on in Aruba. She also told us that she’s from California, which happens to be where one of our suspects lives and the location that the cruise ship departed from. That’s about the extent of it.”
“Okay,” Diane replied as she thoughtfully flipped a pen around in her fingers. “Well, it sounds to me like the biggest source of all the info you have right now is the surviving victim. Why don’t you go talk to her again before we make a decision? See if she knows anything else about either location?”
“We can try that,” I replied, albeit with a bit of reluctance. “I’m not sure how it will go, though. She was pretty traumatized, and it was like pulling teeth to get her to speak with us the first time.
“I see.” Diane frowned as she set the pen down and clasped her hands together. “Well, go over there and see if she’s up for it. If she’s not, don’t push and just come back here, and we’ll figure something else out. Obviously, we don’t want to upset a victim just to get some information. I’ll call the hospital to let them know to expect you.”
“Got it,” I replied as I stood back up. “We’ll head over there now then.”
“Let me know how it goes,” Diane replied before picking her phone up off her desk.
Holm and I walked back out of her office and into the main bullpen.
“You think Gabby will want to talk?” Holm asked as we made our way through the office and toward the doors.
“I think so,” I replied optimistically. “She seemed a lot calmer by the time we were done last time, and she said she wanted to help.”
That was my sincerest hope, anyway. Trauma recovery wasn’t a straight line. Victims could relapse and regress, and it was possible that Gabby wouldn’t want anything to do with us when we got there.
The drive down to the hospital was quiet. I could tell that Holm was thinking deeply about things, as I was. As I pulled the car into the parking lot and turned it off, I got a strange sense of foreboding, and I hoped once again that Gabby would be willing to speak to us. We’d be able to continue the case with or without her input, but it might save us some time if there was something she knew that could point us in the right direction. For all we knew, the people behind this were planning to do it again, which meant that there were more potential victims out there.
The lobby of the hospital was more crowded than the last time we’d been here. Off to the left, a baby was crying in his mother’s arms. His face was red, and he flailed his little arms around. I wondered what was wrong with the poor little guy.
“Hello,” the receptionist asked us cheerfully as we approached the front counter. “Can I help you?”
“I’m Agent Marston,” I replied as I pulled my badge out of my pocket. “This is my partner, Agent Holm. We’re here to see a patient.”
As I spoke, the cheerful smile slowly slipped off her face, replaced instead by one of confusion.
“Oh, but…” She looked back and forth between Holm and me a few times, the expression on her face quickly morphing from confusion into horror. “Are you talking about the patient in room three-sixteen? The one from the ship? Someone’s already here to see her.”
“What?!” I exclaimed, a cold shiver running down my spine as the sense of foreboding I felt earlier grew stronger. “Someone’s with her now?”
“He said he was a detective,” the young woman stammered as she got up on unsteady legs. “We got a call saying that some detectives were coming by to see her. I thought it was fast, but… I didn’t know!”
I swore as I took off toward the elevator, Holm right behind me, before changing my mind at the last moment and rushing toward the stairs. That would be faster. I couldn’t believe that the hospital had messed up like this. My heart was pounding so painfully I swore I could hear it as I shoved the stairway door open and burst through. Whoever was up there with her obviously didn’t have good intentions if they’d lied about being law enforcement in order to gain access to her room. Who could even know that she was here?
My mind reeled with a thousand different questions and possibilities, but everything came to a stuttering halt as we broke through the door on the third floor, and I heard an ear-splitting scream.
“Help!” a nurse in a colorful set of scrubs called out at the other end of the hall. She was frozen in shock, staring into one of the rooms.
Gabby’s room.
I was so focused on the nurse that it took me a second to notice the dark lump at her feet. It was a uniformed police officer who had been guarding her room, crumpled on the ground, facedown, and completely still.
“Dammit,” I hissed as I sprinted as quickly as I could down that hallway. I shoved the nurse aside as I made it to the doorway, more roughly than I would have under normal circumstances, but she was completely blocking my entrance.
I froze, however, at the gruesome sight that awaited me inside. Gabby was on the bed, limp and covered in blood. A man stood over her, brandishing a knife that had been dyed completely red. He was about to bring it down again when I entered the room.
“Stop!” I yelled as I drew my gun. I stopped myself before I could pull the trigger. We were in the middle of a hospital, and a single stray bullet could lead to disaster. There were countless ways that setting off a firearm could go badly in here, not the least of which was the massive amount of oxygen that was likely being pumped all throughout the rooms. If I hit the wrong thing, I could cause a huge explosion.
I gritted my teeth as the man lunged at me. I jumped to the side, unable to do anything else, and just barely managed to avoid the knife as he swung it down toward me. I expected him to attack again, but instead, he suddenly turned and fled out of the room and down the hallway.
I got up and chased after him. Holm was kneeling just outside the door, checking on the officer.
“He’s alive,” he informed me, “but his pulse is weak. He needs help.” He turned to the nurse, who was still standing off to the side, her eyes wide and her hands shaking.
&nb
sp; “Hey!” I yelled loudly enough to knock her out of her stupor. She blinked at me before looking down at the officer. In an instant, it was as though whatever spell she was under was broken, and her expression became serious at once. She snatched the walkie-talkie at her hip and held it up to her mouth.
“I need two crash carts up in LTAC now!” she yelled into it. Someone on the other end responded, asking about a gunshot, but I didn’t stay to listen.
I turned on my heel and raced down the hallway after the man. There wasn’t anything I could do for either Gabby or the police officer. We were, after all, inside a hospital, and there were medical personnel here much better equipped to help them than I was. The most important thing I could do right now was to catch the suspect.
The suspect was already at the other end of the hall, about to make his way into the stairwell. I ran after him, the muscles in my legs burning as I forced myself to run even faster after him. Even though he had only brandished a knife at me, I couldn’t be certain that he didn’t have a gun. Unlike me, I had a feeling he wouldn’t have any qualms about firing it off in the middle of the hospital.
He was fast, though, and by the time I made it to the stairwell, he was already half a flight down ahead of me. He looked up as he heard me behind him and sneered. The moment he did, I recognized him as the same man that I had chased along the docks a few days ago.
Andre.
He probably came back to make sure she wouldn’t talk, I thought angrily to myself as I chased after him. Of course, it was already too late for him, but the fact only made me angrier. It meant that he had brutally attacked Gabby for nothing.
He came to a stop on the next floor down and frantically attempted to open the door, but it wouldn’t budge. He looked back at me once before yanking on it again, his eyes now wide with panic. I recalled what I’d heard over the nurse’s walkie-talkie, something about a gunshot. This must have been some kind of security measure set in place by the hospital in case of an active threat. By now, the nurse who had witnessed the altercation had undoubtedly raised the alarm and alerted the rest of the hospital to what was going on. Andre seemed to realize as well that he wouldn’t get inside because he looked back up at me with furious eyes and gritted teeth.
I was only a few feet away now and would have easily caught him moments later if he hadn’t suddenly decided to leap over the stair railing and down to the main floor.
His reckless action shocked me enough that I froze for a moment before rushing to the banister and peering over the side. Andre was on the ground, slowly getting back up to his feet, still very much alive. We were only one and a half floors up at this point, and apparently, the fall hadn’t been enough to injure him seriously.
He’s limping, though, I noted as I continued down the last few flights of stairs after him. There was no way he was getting away now, even with the slight advantage he’d given himself by leaping down the rest of the way like that.
I heard the door open and shut below me just as I made it to the last flight of stairs and drew my weapon. Surely, by now, everyone would have evacuated or hidden in response to the shooter alert, which meant that there would be very little chance that I’d accidentally shoot any civilians.
As I pushed open the door that opened into the lobby, I was immensely displeased to find that this wasn’t the case. Over by the entrance, toward which the suspect was rapidly hobbling, the receptionist was still by her desk, arguing with a couple.
“Please, sir,” the receptionist pleaded. “We need to leave. I just received a warning that--”
“I don’t give a crap about your problems!” the man snapped back. “My wife is in labor, can’t you see that? She needs to see the doctor now!”
The receptionist’s back was to the suspect, so she couldn’t see him approaching. The pregnant woman who was standing beside the angry man saw him, though, and I saw her expression morph into one of fear as he got closer to them.
“Oh my--!” she gasped as the suspect turned to look at me.
“Run!” I yelled at them. Even if the suspect was injured enough that he was limping, he still had a knife, and I somehow doubted that the pregnant woman could move very quickly.
Andre seemed to think the same thing because he suddenly looked between the woman and me before lifting his knife and lunging toward her. The man, who had just seconds prior been yelling at the receptionist, dove in front of his wife just in time to block the knife, which Andre sank deep into his shoulder.
I swore again and doubled my speed as the woman screamed. Andre yanked his knife out of the man’s shoulder and lifted it again, blood spraying in an arc over them as he did. Before he could bring it down again, I tackled him to the ground, closing my hand around the wrist holding the knife, and crushing it until I felt something inside creak and pop. He dropped the knife and yelled in pain, but I didn’t let up. I was burning with fury. First, he tried to kill Gabby, and then he went after a helpless pregnant lady? Just what kind of monster was this?
I tried to bring his hands behind his back to cuff them, but he was surprisingly strong, and he swung his arm out of my grip and then forcefully up, elbowing me in the ribs as he did. I hissed with pain, and my grip went slack. Not for very long, but it was enough for the suspect to push me off and jump to his feet.
He ran for the knife, but I got to my feet and grabbed his arm before he could. That forced him to react. He spun around to face me and threw a punch at my face. I slipped the blow, but his fist just barely managed to graze my shoulder. It hurt, but I fought through the pain and delivered a punch of my own, strong enough that his nose instantly started to bleed.
He growled with anger and lunged at me again, swiping at the side of my head with his fist, but I was ready this time. Catching his arm, I used his own momentum to flip him around, slamming him onto the reception desk behind which the receptionist was still standing. The receptionist was holding her phone to her ear and talking to someone, and she yelped and scrambled backward as Andre hit the counter, computer equipment and baskets full of paper fliers fluttering to the ground.
The impact was hard enough to daze the suspect, and I wasted no time in dragging him to the ground so I could pull his hands behind his back and cuff them together. Andre struggled as he regained his senses, but it was too late. I’d already clipped the cuffs into place.
“You’d better help him,” Andre taunted as he nodded toward the man who was on the floor, bleeding out as his wife pressed her hands to his injured shoulder. “It doesn’t take very long for a person to bleed out, especially not a scrawny little man his size.”
“That ‘scrawny man’ jumped in front of a psycho to protect his wife,” I retorted as I kept him pinned to the ground. “Which is more than I can say for a coward like you who goes around assaulting defenseless women.”
Andre snarled up at me and attempted to push me off, but my hold was too firm. That being said, the man did need medical attention, so I looked up at the receptionist.
“Is someone coming for him?” I asked as I nodded at the injured man.
“Huh?” the receptionist muttered as she looked over at the couple. “Oh, right. Sorry, I was calling the police. Um…” She looked down at her computer, but the monitor was currently on the ground, several feet away and shattered. “I’ll call someone!” She set the cellphone down and pulled the walkie-talkie off her hip with a shaking hand.
“Marston!” Holm’s voice suddenly rang out from the direction of the stairwell. I looked up and was seized with fear as he turned the corner that led into the lobby. He was covered in blood. His shirt, his sleeves, his hands were all dark and heavy with it, and for a moment, I genuinely worried something horrible had happened upstairs.
Then I realized that he was running at full speed and didn’t seem like he was in any pain. The blood must have been someone else’s.
“About time,” I ribbed him as he ran up to check on the bleeding man. “Where have you been?”
“Helping the
last two people this piece of crap stabbed,” he replied as he shot Andre a vicious look. “There was some confusion because of the lockdown. It took a minute for help to arrive for Gabby and the officer.”
“Are they okay?” I asked, anxiety welling up inside of me. It was understandable that doctors might not want to rush around the hospital if they thought there was an armed assailant wandering around. The idea that either Gabby or that officer who was just trying to do his job might be dead because of this idiot was too horrible to imagine.
“They’re fine,” Holm replied, to my intense relief. “They’re both still alive, amazingly. Gabby’s a fighter. She’s a lot stronger than he is.” He glared at Andre again. “Sorry to have to tell you this, but you didn’t manage to kill her.”
“Go to hell,” he muttered as he twisted his head around to sneer at Holm.
“Stay still,” I barked at him as I put more pressure on his back to ensure he stayed down. “Don’t give me a reason to hurt you.”
Just seconds later, the elevator opened with a chime, and several pairs of feet came rushing toward us. Doctors and nurses decked out in scrubs raced down the hall toward us before coming to a stop next to the wounded husband.
“The police are coming too,” the receptionist spoke up above me.
I looked up at her. She was pale, and her eyes were wide. She was obviously shell-shocked. Frankly, I was angry at her. She’d been the one who let Andre up in the first place, mistakenly assuming that he was one of the agents she’d been told would be arriving. Hadn’t she bothered to check for an ID?
Nevertheless, now didn’t seem like the best time to tear into her. She looked like she might be sick at any moment, and I had bigger things on my hands to contend with. Literally, as Andre was still fighting to break free of my hold.
“Just stop it already,” Holm grumbled as he came to help me. “It’s over. You lost. Quit squirming around like that.”
The blood all over Holm’s clothes looked even more alarming up close. I realized that it must have been Gabby’s blood, or the officer’s, or both if he’d been helping to keep them alive until the doctors arrived. As that thought flitted across my mind, I thought about Gabby again. The moment I walked into her room, all I’d seen was red. All over the sheets, all over her, even on the floor. It was so bad that I’d been genuinely shocked to hear from Holm that she was still alive.