by J. L. Drake
He sat back, linked his hands behind his head, and grinned; he was proud of himself for hiding so well. He settled himself into the chair more comfortably, planning to be there for a while, but sat forward in surprise mere moments later when the elevator doors opened with a ding, and the blonde woman stepped out into the hall. She paused and glanced around, as if to see if anyone noticed she was there.
Their eyes met for a brief moment and he made a point of looking away first, like he was interested in something else. She seemed to believe his actions as she turned and walked away at a normal pace.
Chapter 39
Sonya sped down the hall and entered the nurse’s locker room. She quickly clocked in by swiping her badge in an electronic time clock by the door, put her phone in her pocket, ditched the rest of her stuff in her locker, and headed back out just as quickly. She knew if she rushed, she could make a quick trip down to the morgue before she had to be upstairs—they usually didn’t say anything if she was a couple minutes late as long as she’d clocked in on time; she planned to tell them she’d had to go to the bathroom.
The halls were clear and the elevator wasn’t busy, as usual. She stepped inside and pressed the button to take her to the basement. The ding of the elevator was barely audible over her phone as she checked her voice mail messages. Most of them were from Jennings. He was trying to get ahold of her to work out some final details for the family harvest. She made a mental note to call him later and moved on to the text messages. Most of them were from Jennings too, and she cursed the man’s impatience. Fleetingly she wondered if he’d found out about her and Lloyd’s banking adventure the previous day, but nothing in his tone or words suggested that he had.
When the doors slid open, Sonya glanced up and charged out of the elevator, heading toward the door leading into the morgue; she was surprised when the door opened as she reached for the intercom button. She looked up from her phone, startled, to see a very nervous Miles standing before her.
She looked from his shifting, uncertain eyes, to his sweaty forehead, and down to his shaking hands.
“What happened?” she asked right away, stepping through the doorway and into the enclosed room where he worked.
“They were here,” he muttered, looking through the windows, out into the hall, as if he expected the agents to instantly reappear.
“Who was here?” she asked, watching him with a frown.
He didn’t answer.
“Who was here, Miles?” she asked in a sterner tone, sliding her phone into her pocket and stepping forward to cup his face in her hands so he would focus on her.
His eyes met hers and he seemed to settle down a bit. He took a couple of slow, deep breaths.
“The FBI,” he said in a frightened whisper. “They were asking questions about smuggling. They have to be on to us.”
“Calm down,” Sonya said, inwardly cursing his cowardly weakness. “Tell me what happened—exactly as it happened.”
He nodded, swallowed hard, and took another deep breath.
“They just asked if anyone had asked me to smuggle anything and looked at my files for the last month,” he said, closing his eyes as if doing so helped him remember. “I told them no one had and didn’t argue about them looking—they had a warrant and everything.”
“That’s it?” she asked sharply.
His eyes flew open and he nodded.
“Odd,” she said, frowning and dropping her hands to her sides, releasing his face. “I would expect them to ask more questions.”
“Really?” Miles asked, shifting his weight from one foot to the other while rubbing his hands over his bald head. “Do you think it’s a good thing or a bad thing that they didn’t ask a bunch of questions?”
“I don’t know,” Sonya said, shaking her head in confusion. “When were they here? Yesterday?”
“No,” Miles said, shaking his head for emphasis. “They were here about twenty minutes ago.”
“What?” she all but yelled, stepping forward and putting her hands on his shoulders to hold him still while they talked. “You mean they were just here?”
“Yes,” he said in barely a whisper.
Sonya could see tears starting to grow in his eyes. He was scared and on the verge of breaking down completely, and she didn’t have time to deal with him at the moment.
Trying to settle him down a bit, she wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her body fully up against his.
“It’ll be okay,” she whispered in his ear, squeezing him tight.
He pulled her in to him, pressed his face against her neck, and whimpered.
Pathetic, she thought, but continued to hold him until she thought he had a grip on himself.
“Stay calm,” she said, stepping backwards, breaking their embrace. “There’s nothing to worry about. I’m sure they decided that you were telling them the truth when you told them you weren’t involved, and they moved on to another hospital.”
As he nodded, she hoped what she’d said was true. She didn’t know what she would do—how she would handle it—if the FBI was still in the building.
“I have to go to work now,” she said, and faked a cough, remembering she was supposed to be sick.
“Okay,” he said, then reached forward suddenly to grip one of her small hands in his large sweaty one. “How are you feeling?” He looked at her intently. “You look really tired. Maybe you should have taken a couple more days off work.”
“I’ll be okay,” she said, smiled softly, and squeezed his hand before she slid hers free and headed for the door. “I better get to my floor before I get in trouble.”
“Will you be back down later?” he asked in what sounded to Sonya like a desperate whine.
She clenched her jaw, closed her eyes briefly, and took a deep breath before turning and answering.
“I don’t know; it will depend on how my day goes.”
“Okay,” he mumbled, “call me later if you can’t come back.”
She forced herself to smile.
“I will,” she said, opening and walking out the door.
She rushed toward the elevator like she was being chased by something sinister, and, in truth, she was. Her brain was working overtime, taunting her with all the possibilities—few of them good. The likeliness of the authorities still being in the building was high, especially if Miles had made them suspicious.
She pressed the button beside the elevator door and stepped inside the small box when the doors slid open. After she pushed the button to go up to the next floor, the urge to text Lloyd or Jennings almost overwhelmed her. She knew she couldn’t though, because her hands were shaking too badly to even consider it. Besides that, she wanted to have some kind of solid information before she contacted them.
When the doors slid open with a ding—which grated on her nerves and made her clench her jaw—she stepped out into the openness of the hallway and looked around.
The only person she saw was a man that looked like he was in his late twenties or early thirties…in a suit…in the waiting room slightly down the hall. He looked familiar, but didn’t hold her gaze when their eyes met. Something about him bugged her—every hair on her body stood on end with alarm. She felt a strange sense of déjà vu about the man…like they’d met before. She couldn’t place where though.
Just in case her fears were playing tricks on her, she acted like she was fine and walked away calmly. But once she knew she was out of his sight, she double-timed back to the nurse’s locker room. She collected her stuff out of her locker and wiped down every surface she could ever remember touching.
Once she looked out the door to make sure the man wasn’t waiting for her in the hallway, she headed out, leaving the building through the main entrance, and circled around to her car parked on the other side of the building close to the ER.
She didn’t know if she was overreacting, but she was spooked bad enough that she wasn’t going to stay and take any chances. She didn’t want to go to prison.
<
br /> After she was driving down the road and she couldn’t see anyone following her, she started to calm down. That’s when she realized why the man was familiar. She’d harvested him in Los Angeles. She remembered because he’d been handsome and she’d actually liked him. That hadn’t happened but a few times.
“He can’t be alive,” she muttered to herself, frowning.
They’d definitely killed him.
She wondered if her stressed-out, overly tired brain had imagined the man. She wondered if she’d panicked and overacted for no reason. She also wondered if she should even mention it to anyone else—they might think she’d gone completely crazy.
***
David got up after he was sure the woman wasn’t coming back and peeked around the corner. He frowned when he noticed she wasn’t anywhere in sight.
“Damn it,” he said, rushing down the hall.
No matter which way he turned, or where he looked, he didn’t see her.
“Damn, damn, damn,” he chanted, trying to find her.
He pulled out his cell phone and called Croce.
“She just left the elevator, but I’ve lost her,” he said. “Can you guys see if you can track her? She exited the morgue elevator onto the main floor maybe a minute ago, if that.”
“We’ll look and I’ll call you if we find her,” she said.
While he waited, he headed back toward the ER, thinking that if she’d tried to run, she’d head back to her car. She’d entered through the ER, so she had to have parked close-by.
He was just stepping into the ER lobby when Croce called and opened the door of the security room at the same time.
“She just left through the main entrance,” Croce said, ending the call on her phone and slipping it into her pocket.
“You follow her,” David said. “I’m going to head out into the parking lot and see if I can catch her getting into her car.”
She didn’t ask any questions, but nodded and jogged off down the hall back the way David had come, toward the main entrance of the hospital.
David continued outside through the automatic ER doors to see a fluff of blonde hair disappear into a blue sedan halfway across the parking lot and three rows to his left.
He headed in that direction at full speed.
He wasn’t fast enough.
The car pulled out of the parking space and then out of the parking lot at the far end before he was even a third of the way to the parking space that had just been vacated. He had a strange sense of déjà vu.
He’d been in almost the same exact situation before with her, except last time she’d had his brother.
***
Roger smiled to himself when he heard Butch’s truck start; he wanted the bastard gone. He frowned, however, when Jennings came strolling into the building with a scowl on his face.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” the old man scolded.
Roger rolled his eyes.
“You’ve made that clear…” he said snidely, “…can we get past it now?”
Jennings glared at Roger for a few moments and then nodded; he looked around at the setup of the equipment.
“Everything looks good,” he admitted grudgingly. “You seem to have everything in good order.”
“Yeah,” Roger said sarcastically. “I’ve done this a time or two.”
“What’s with you lately?” Jennings asked, crossing his arms over his chest and watching Roger while he put away the few things he’d already unloaded from the truck. “Have you been spending a lot of time with Lloyd? He’s a bad influence…” He shook his head and sighed.
Roger laughed. “I’m a big boy. I don’t need someone else telling me what to do or what to think. Butch pissed me off. I’m just not in the mood to deal with anyone’s shit today. I’m human. I have bad days too, you know.”
“Okay,” Jennings said, frowning. “I know we’re all getting tense about everything. The family harvest is tomorrow and having the FBI breathing down our necks isn’t helping any of us relax.”
Roger nodded and kept doing what he was doing, hoping Jennings would go away.
“Did you need something?” he finally asked, pausing and looking over at Jennings when the old man remained silent.
“No, not really,” Jennings said. “I just wanted to see how things were going and I found you two acting like children.”
With a snicker, Roger turned fully to face the old man.
“Well, that bastard you hired deserved what he got,” he said.
“I’ve had about enough of your attitude,” Jennings said with a huff. “You can just burn up some of that negative energy unloading the damn truck and cleaning up at the old building alone.”
“Fine,” Roger said, shrugged, and resumed what he’d been doing. “Have a nice day.”
Jennings huffed again, turned, and left the building.
Roger didn’t look up again until he heard Jennings’ car driving away. He smirked and shook his head. He found all the drama amusing, especially since Jennings didn’t even know he was being played, or that he would soon be dead. Or that they knew he’d put a hit out on Lloyd. If he was a betting man—and sometimes he was—he would bet that Lloyd and Sonya came out on top, and he was glad he’d thrown his lot in with them.
Steadily, he worked on unloading the truck and setting up and putting away everything as he did so. When he finally looked at his watch, he was shocked to see that it was a little after ten o’clock.
“Shit!” he exclaimed and picked up his pace, locking up the new building so he could head back over to the old one to clean.
Chapter 40
David was frustrated beyond belief. They’d almost had the woman who’d taken his brother. They had a picture of her. He’d looked her in the face, for crying out loud, and she’d slipped away, right through his fingers.
Croce rounded the corner of the building as he stepped back up on the curb outside the ER.
“Where is she?” she asked breathlessly, having run the entire way.
“She got away,” David said flatly. “I saw her get in her car and drive away, but she was too far away for me to get there in time on foot.”
“Did you get her plate?” Croce asked, half-bent over trying to catch her breath.
“No,” David said with a sad shake of his head. “She was too far away.”
“I wonder if the building’s camera got it,” Croce said, standing. “If she’s been working here, surely she has come and gone quite a few times. Now that we know where she normally parked we can have Adam look for her car and get us her plates.”
“That’s going to take time,” he said, frustrated.
Croce laughed. “I know, but it will take less time than any of our other options. And we have the medical examiner, unless he was smart enough to slip away as well, which I don’t think he was.” She headed back into the building.
David followed, heading back to the morgue to ask more questions and make an arrest.
***
Roger was lost in thought as he drove into the abandoned industrial park where the old building was located. He wasn’t paying close attention to anything around him, because he’d never had to before—no one was ever around. But when he saw a police cruiser coming down the street toward him, he was slammed back into reality.
His heart started pumping double time and his palms began to sweat as he passed them. He didn’t know what to do.
“Think, think, think,” he muttered to himself under his breath.
He knew he had to pull some kind of misdirection trick so that if they were watching him, he wouldn’t lead them where he’d been planning to go. If he was lucky, they would just think he was lost and he could head away without them following. He wouldn’t get any cleaning done at the building, but if they didn’t know where to look, it wouldn’t matter.
The best idea he could come up with in mere seconds was to lead them to a different building and pretended disinterest in the area. He knew that the magnetic sign h
e’d put on the side of the van that gave a fake mechanical service’s company name and number might be enough for them to think he belonged there or was looking for the address of a client. He thanked his lucky stars he’d driven the team van back over and not the moving truck they’d rented.
He continued on and pulled into a parking lot half a block down and on the opposite side of the street from the building they’d been using. He used the lot to turn around in and pulled back out onto the street, heading back out of the manufacturing development toward the heart of the city.
The cop car had pulled off to the curb at the edge of his vision—he could still see them, so he knew they could also see him. Once he passed the cruiser once again, they pulled out behind him.
“Shit,” he grunted, and tightened his grip on the van’s steering wheel.
Roger wasn’t sure if they were following him or if they just happened to be in the area for some other reason; they hadn’t tried to pull him over or done anything overtly threatening. He didn’t want to take any chances though. He headed for the busiest section of city that he could think of and thanked his lucky stars, again, that it was close to lunch time; the increased traffic would work in his favor.
He watched the cruiser behind him as he changed lanes and went through a couple of intersections. They mimicked his every maneuver, which confirmed his fear that he was the target of their curiosity.
He knew he would have to lose them fast, before they had a chance to call backup and really cause him trouble.