In Rides Trouble (Black Knights Inc. #2)(47)
Sharif glanced down to his wounded hand but could see nothing past the thick white bandages wrapped around the throbbing appendage.
“We’ve rehydrated you and cleaned out the infection. The last finger had to be amputated. There was no saving it; the infection had reached the bone.”
Hot bile climbed up his parched throat at the thought of being permanently maimed, disfigured. And the burning rage that quickly followed scorched away the ice that’d briefly filled his veins when the doctor mentioned the hijacked catamaran.
“We will have to wait and see how much nerve damage was done before we can determine how much mobility you will retain,” the doctor continued, completely oblivious to the dark thoughts of death and retribution flashing through Sharif’s fevered brain.
When the doctor finally left the room, he raked in a deep, steadying breath and pushed up on the narrow hospital bed. The walls slanted in on him as the floor bucked. It was like walking through a funhouse—only not nearly as fun. Taking slow, measured breaths through his nose, he managed to breathe away the dizziness. And when his head finally quit spinning, he surveyed his condition.
With his good hand, he grabbed one of the bags of fluid hanging from a metal pole beside his bed and read, “saline.” Gritting his teeth, he yanked the needle administering the fluid out of his arm. After flinging it aside, he grabbed the other bag. Nafcillin. An antibiotic. That one he unhooked from its metal pole in order to secure the cool plastic bag under his perspiring armpit.
He wasn’t taking any chances with the infection in his hand. Slipping his feet over the side of the bed, he tested his strength, found it pathetically lacking but firmed his jaw and took a step anyway. He couldn’t afford to waste one minute.
Pleased when he didn’t collapse on the floor, he shuffled to the little plywood wardrobe shoved in the corner. Empty—save for an extra blanket and pillow. Frustrated, he stumbled toward the door, carefully pulling it open. The hall was quiet and wonderfully vacant.
With a small smile of victory, he slipped from his room and padded to the next blue door. Knocking softly, he listened for a response and, hearing none, swept inside.
There was a man lying on the bed, hooked up to a great number of beeping, shushing, monitoring machines. The man’s dark skin hung over his face like a brown shroud, and the room reeked of astringent cleaning products, old urine, and the lingering putrescence of imminent death.
Sharif swallowed the overwhelming desire to gag, breathed through his mouth, and opened the small wardrobe.
Ah-ha!
He was pleased to discover the familiar red-and-white checkered cloth of a shemagh. A circular black igal lay on top of the carefully folded Arabic head scarf.
Most Kenyans, especially those living on the coast, tended to don western-style clothing, but Sharif was happy to see this man, whoever the poor dying sod was, did not. Hiding his injury and his bag of antibiotics in the billowing folds of traditional Arabic dress would be so much easier.
He couldn’t have picked a more perfect or comfortable disguise if he tried.
“Thank you,” he whispered to the dying man after donning the clothes. He shuffled to the door, once more peeking into the hallway. Still empty.
Stepping out, he wiped the cold sweat from his brow, lengthened his stride to conceal his weakness, and made his way quickly down the corridor.
It wasn’t until he pushed through the hospital’s wide front doors and out into the scorching African sun, that he dragged in a shaky breath.
His knees wobbled like they were made of spaghetti, his head pounded like a jackhammer, and his whole arm was ready to fall off, but he’d made it.
It was time to find a phone and get far, far away from the international police force that was sure to be hot on his trail.
***
Frank stood at the second-story railing and glanced down at the grease-stained shop floor below.
Dan “The Man” Currington had managed to crawl out of the bottle this morning and was diligently working on a production bike—the standard model of chopper the Black Knights built for purchase by the general public, as opposed to the one-off, custom-theme bikes they designed for corporations or the ultra-wealthy.
The assembly of a production bike was probably about all Dan, who’d been steadily trying to kill himself with Jack Daniels since his wife’s brutal death, could handle. And given that Dan had built so many of the damn things, he could probably do the deed ten sheets to the wind, half-asleep, and blindfolded.
This morning, gaunt and pasty pale, Dan appeared to be batting three out of three.
He was still drunk. He was certainly dead on his feet, stopping occasionally to rest his palms on the bike lift and let his head hang limply between his skinny shoulders. And even though the poor guy wasn’t blindfolded, he might as well have been. It didn’t take a genius of Ozzie’s caliber to see Dan was on cruise control, his motions smooth and mindless, his glassy eyes vacant.
It broke Frank’s heart to see one of his men sunk so low, but nothing any of them did seemed to make any difference.
So, all that was left was to watch and wait. Give the guy more time to mourn. And hope like hell Dan was able to pull himself together before his liver went tits-up.
What a goatf*ck…
The sound of playful bantering drew his attention to the other side of the shop, where Becky and Angel hunched over a large drawing board shoved against the east wall. Their heads were bent close together, their shoulders touching. Something Angel said had Becky throwing her head back, laughing that dark, husky laugh of hers that always hit Frank like a thousand licking tongues, making each and every one of his nerve endings stand up and salute.