Blood and Fire (McClouds & Friends #8)(122)

Aaro forced air out of his constricted lungs. “Do your worst,” he said. Things couldn’t get much worse. He did not look forward to telling Bruno about the day’s events. The guy already thought he was pus.

“A centipede,” Rachel mused. “Lots of creepy-crawly legs.”

“Speaking of legs,” Zia Rosa said truculently, fanning herself. “Get me a chair, Alex. I can’t stand on these legs much longer. Standing in one place, they swell up! Like balloons! And my varicose veins, madonna mia! See? Look!” She leaned on the wall and stuck out one thick, swollen ankle for his inspection.

He averted his gaze hastily. “Suffer until Lily is out of there.”

“Maybe I’ll turn you into a big, slimy slug,” Rachel suggested. “Or a spider. A big fat one, with hairy legs.”

Aaro was suddenly afflicted by a pang of longing for his quiet, solitary house in the woods outside Sandy. Where he would have been right now, blessedly alone, if only he’d kept his various protruding body parts out of this god-awful mess. He banged on the door of the suite.

“How are you guys doing?” he shouted.

Not a peep. The nurse was punishing him with silence. Or to be fair, maybe they were concentrating on stitching up torn human flesh.

The door of one of theadjacent medical suites opened down the hall. An elderly lady backed out, muttering querulous instructions. A tall guy in scrubs followed, pushing a wheelchair that held another old lady, this one slumped low in the chair. Her head flopped to the side, slack. Gray hair was matted against the nape of her neck. A stroke patient, maybe. The trio moved slowly down the corridor away from them. The lady on her feet clutched the wheelchair for balance. An oxygen tank accompanied them, rattling along on a rolling trolley.

Prickles shivered over his flesh as he watched the little triad. A goose walking over his grave. Unacknowledged fear of death, age, infirmity. Who knew. He hated hospitals. They made him tense. But then, he didn’t like introspection, either. There were enough threats coming at him from the outside to stress about. He didn’t have the stomach to entertain the ones from the inside, too.

Besides. Threats from the outside were easier to kill.

Rachel started dancing from foot to foot. “I have to pee.”

He stifled a groan. “Hold it,” he told her.

“I can’t! I’ll pee my pants!”

A door flew open down the hall. A middle-aged black woman in a white coat came out, looking harried. She looked to the right, the left. “Sylvia?” she yelled. “Sylvia!” She yanked out her beeper, punched numbers into it. “Angela? Goddamnit, where is everybody?”

“You looking for the nurse?” Aaro asked.

The woman gave him a sharp look. “Did you see her?”

“She went in there.” He jerked a thumb toward the suite. “Our friend got a cut. The nurse is stitching it up.”

The doctor’s brow furrowed. “For God’s sake. I’m already short-staffed, and now my nurse disappears on me!”

“I need to pee,” Rachel moaned, dancing on her toes.

The doctor pointed down the hall. “Bathroom’s there,” she snapped and vanished back into the room.

Rachel gave him an imploring look. He strode down the hall to the bathroom, jerked open the door, ascertained that it was an empty one-header. He held the bathroom door open for them. “Go for it.”

They went about their business. Aaro positioned himself between the two doors, and caught a whiff of . . . whiskey. Someone tippling on the job? Here? Not the bitch nurse. That chick was as sharp as a tack.

Maybe it was the ghost of Jamison, lingering in the air.

Still. He tried banging on the door again. “Hey! Lily?”

No answer. Maybe they’d gone into an adjacent room with an insulating door between them. Or maybe he’d just better stop being a chump *, listen to the hairy spiders and centipedes crawling on the back of his neck, and get a key for that goddamn door already.

He jogged up to the front, poked his head inside the enclosed space for administrative staff. “Hello? Anybody in here?”

No one answered. He stepped inside, saw the chubby legs in blue rayon slacks and sensible loafers sticking out under the reception desk.

Fuck. Fear stabbed, deep and fast. Oh no, no, oh Jesus, no . . .

He came at the medical suite door like a bullet, slamming a flying kick into it with all his strength. The lock held. He tried the next door. Same thing. The next was unlocked. He thundered through the interconnected rooms to the one where the nurse had taken Lily.

The smhit him first. Jamison’s whiskey-soaked coat, lying discarded on the floor. A name tag with a fluorescent nylon strap beside it. A wad of gauze, no doubt soaked with some knock-out drug. A young woman in her underwear, crumpled on the floor. Not Lily. The nurse. A torrent of filth in Ukrainian was coming out of his mouth as he lunged to touch her carotid artery. She had a pulse, thank God.

The old ladies. The male nurse. Of course. What a f*cking idiot.

He burst out. Zia Rosa, Rachel, and the doctor stared at him, wide-eyed. As if he’d gone crazy.

“Your nurse was attacked. The receptionist, too,” he yelled to them as he sprinted away. “They got Lily! Call the cops!”

He rounded the corner. The trio had been moving at a slug’s pace, so maybe they were still . . . no. Not in the corridor, nor the waiting area, nor the drive-up. He thudded out into the parking lot as a black Mercedes sedan accelerated toward the exit. A clean-shaven Jamison in scrubs was driving. The crone in the hat sat in the passenger’s seat.