Chương 11
“Then what?”
“Barnes followed her.”
His face twisted.
“I told him to scare her.”
Sarah whispered, “Jesus.”
“I didn’t tell him to take her.”
“But he did.”
“Yes.”
“And you helped cover it.”
Crane looked at Tyler.
“By then it was too late.”
Tyler said, “It wasn’t too late to let me drive away.”
Crane’s mouth trembled.
“I wasn’t there.”
“You knew.”
“I didn’t know what Barnes would do.”
“You knew enough.”
The stairwell door opened behind Crane.
He spun.
Two hospital police officers stood there with weapons drawn.
“Drop it.”
Crane grabbed the nearest thing he could reach.
A nurse.
She had stepped from a supply room at exactly the wrong moment.
He hooked his arm around her neck and pressed the handgun beside her cheek.
Everything changed.
The officers stopped.
The nurse made a choking sound.
Crane dragged her backward.
“Guns down.”
No one moved.
“I said down.”
One officer lowered his weapon slightly.
Crane’s eyes found me.
“You did this.”
“No.”
“You kept pushing.”
“Let her go.”
“Back up.”
I did.
The nurse’s shoes slipped on the polished floor.
Crane tightened his grip.
Then the lights came back on.
Full white fluorescent light flooded the corridor.
Crane blinked.
So did everyone else.
The nurse dropped her weight.
It was not tactical.
It was panic.
But panic sometimes creates opportunity.
Crane stumbled.
His gun swung away from her face.
I crossed the distance before I had time to think about being fifty-four.
My left hand caught his wrist.
My right drove into his elbow.
The gun fired.
The sound inside the corridor was enormous.
Sarah screamed.
Crane and I hit the floor together.
Pain tore through my shoulder.
The handgun skidded beneath a chair.
Hospital police were on him before I could get up.
Someone pressed a knee between his shoulder blades.
Someone else shouted for the weapon.
The nurse crawled away crying.
I rolled onto my back.
For a second the ceiling spun.
Then Sarah appeared over me.
“Are you shot?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“I think so.”
“You think so?”
“My shoulder.”
She struck me once in the chest.
Not hard.
“You idiot.”
“I know.”
Then she grabbed my face with both hands and kissed my forehead.
Behind her, Tyler was laughing.
Not because anything was funny.
Because the drugs, fear, and absurdity had collided somewhere in his seventeen-year-old brain.
Sarah started laughing too.
Then crying.
I sat up carefully.
Crane was handcuffed.
Price came running from the stairwell with Cho behind her.
She took in the shattered phone, the gun under the chair, Crane on the floor, and me sitting against the wall.
Her face became absolutely expressionless.
“You stayed at the hospital.”
“I did.”
She closed her eyes for one second.
Then Crane began talking.
Not to Price.
To me.
“Renner took her to the old county radio station.”
Price turned.
“What?”
Crane lifted his head from the floor.
“The repeater site on Black Ridge.”
Cho was already moving.
Price crouched beside Crane.
“Is Emily Carver alive?”
“She was when Paul left.”
“When?”
“Maybe forty minutes ago.”
“Why there?”
“No one uses it since the new tower went up.”
“How many people with Renner?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is Barnes there?”
Crane hesitated.
Price grabbed the front of his jacket.
“Walter.”
“He was supposed to meet Paul.”
My body went cold.
Price released him and stood.
“Cho, alert state patrol and county tactical.”
Cho was on the radio before she finished.
I got to my feet.
Sarah saw it.
“No.”
“Sarah.”
“No.”
Price looked at me.
“She’s right.”
“I know that site.”
“So do we.”
“No, you know the address.”
Price’s jaw tightened.
I continued.
“The main road washes out near the upper switchback every spring.”
“It’s August.”
“It washed out in May and they never repaired the lower edge.”
Cho looked over.
“He’s right.”
Price glared at him.
He shrugged.
“I drove it last month.”
I said, “There’s a maintenance road from the west side.”
Price stared at me.
“How do you know?”
“I used to clean the radio building before they shut it down.”
Sarah made a sound somewhere between anger and disbelief.
“Of course you did.”
Price looked toward Crane.
Then toward Tyler.
Then back at me.
“You are not coming on an armed operation.”
“I didn’t ask to.”
“Good.”
“I can draw you the route.”
That surprised her.
It surprised Sarah more.
I found a hospital notepad.
My hand shook slightly as I sketched the ridge, the washed-out section, the service gate, and the narrow access road that climbed behind the abandoned radio station.
Price watched.
“No heroic detours?”
“No.”
“No calling Marcus?”
“I’m calling Marcus.”
She gave me a look.
“To tell him to stop.”
That earned the smallest nod.
When Price and Cho left, hospital police took Crane away.
The corridor filled with people again.
Nurses.
Security.
Administrators.
A maintenance worker replacing a ceiling tile damaged by the gunshot.
Ordinary systems rushed in to cover the hole violence had made.
Sarah sat beside Tyler.
I stood at the window with my ruined phone in my hand.
It no longer turned on.
Tyler looked at me.
“Dad.”
“Yeah?”
“You broke your phone.”
“Technically Walter broke it first.”
He smiled weakly.
Then his face became serious.
“They’re going to find her, right?”
I looked toward the stairwell where Price had disappeared.
For once, I did not promise something I could not control.
“They know where to look.”
Tyler stared at the blanket over his legs.
“And Barnes?”
I pulled the chair closer.
“What about him?”
“If he’s there.”
“He’ll have to decide what he does next.”
Tyler looked at me.
“And if he shoots at them?”
“Then they’ll deal with it.”
“You’re really staying here?”
Sarah looked at me too.
I understood the question beneath the question.
Not whether I was staying in the hospital.
Whether I was staying with them.
I sat down.
“Yes.”
Tyler nodded.
A minute passed.
Then Sarah’s phone rang.
May you like
Unknown number.
All three of us looked at it.
