Under the Knife(40)

I don’t know how, but I’m going to find a way out of this. Even if it kills me.

She snuck past the C-arm and into the hallway.

But first, I need to operate on Mrs. Sanchez.

With the auto-surgeon.





SEBASTIAN


He saw Wu emerge from the alcove, her cheeks red and blotchy. She’d probably been crying. She looked around. He wasn’t expecting that, and inadvertently he allowed his eyes to lock with hers.

Dammit.

He’d gotten too close.

Stupid. Unprofessional.

He forced himself not to react and started to stroll toward her, frowning as if in concentration, and bending his head over his cell. He did all this while still watching her through the top of his eyes. She greeted a coworker, and then headed purposely in his direction.

Uh-oh.

But then he felt the breeze in her wake as she passed him without so much as a glance.

He relaxed and turned slowly to mark her progress.

“Sebastian. She just walked by you.”

Does he think I’m a goddamn idiot?

“I see her, boss.”

“This is a critical juncture. How does everything look? Any cause for concern?”

Other than the amount of goddamn juice you’re dumping into her brain?

“No. None that I can tell.”

“Best to keep a close eye on her.”

“Agreed.” He waited until she was nearly out of sight before padding after her. “What about her sister?”

They hadn’t expected Wu’s sister to wake up so early. When he’d broken into Wu’s house that morning and implanted the device, Sebastian had dosed her (he’d thought) with enough sedatives to practically put her into a goddamn coma.

He’d never liked involving Wu’s sister. It had complicated the logistics—

(The teenager in the cell)

—to have him rush from the hospital, to Wu’s house, then back to the hospital.

(Wu’s sister reminded him of the teenager in the cell)

Finney had insisted. The sister, he’d argued, provided them with additional leverage and was the perfect backup plan should Wu not respond to the embedding.

Sebastian suspected there was more to it than that.

(The teenager in the cell.)

Much more.

But he’d kept his mouth shut.

Because he needed to finish this job. This one last job.

For his niece, Sierra. For his nephew, Sammy.

Sammy.

Who reminded him of the kid who’d killed Alfonso.

“Leave her to me,” Finney said. “For now.”

Sebastian didn’t like the sound of that.





SPENCER


The rowdy atmosphere of the male surgeon’s locker room invoked memories of a high-school PE class. Men stood in various states of undress in front of their lockers, talking and laughing. Spencer withdrew a laundered, pressed set of scrubs from an ATM-like dispensing machine and snaked his way to his locker, exchanging greetings and backslaps with fellow surgeons en route.

He traded his blue polo shirt and grey slacks for the scrubs, and his loafers for a pair of sneakers he kept in his locker. As he stood up from tying the sneakers, somebody tapped him from behind.

“Spence! How they hangin’, compadre?”

He turned around and looked down. It was one of the other surgeons, Ray Lorenz.

Ray clapped him on the shoulder, and said, “Careful how you answer that one, compadre. I’m always prepared to offer my professional opinion about your balls. Hah!”

Spencer forced his lips into a tight smile. Ray was a urologist. The personalized license plate of his late-model Porsche (for which he normally helped himself to two adjacent parking spots in the crowded garage, with the middle of the undercarriage straddling the center white line between the two parking spaces) read PP DOC. They must have loved that one down at the DMV.

“Hey, Ray. What’s up?”

Ray patted down his slicked-back, ink-black hair (maybe a shade too black for a guy Ray’s age) and cracked his neck. His beady eyes reminded Spencer of the opossum he’d seen this morning in Rita’s front yard. He was an East Coast transplant, originally from somewhere in New York or New Jersey—Spencer wasn’t sure.

“Terrific. Freakin’ balls out outstanding. You?”

“Good.”

“What are you up to this morning?”

“Short day. Just a quick stereotactic brain biopsy on a probable GBM.”

“GBM, huh? That sucks.”

“Yes.”

“Yep. Most definitely sucks.” Ray rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. His smile didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“And you? What’s going on in your room today, Ray?”

“Three penile prostheses and a vasectomy reversal.”

A beat.

“What can I say, compadre?” Ray said, breaking the ice with a brisk clap to Spencer’s shoulder. He had to reach over his head to make it that high. “I make a few old geezers feel like they’re eighteen again. Give ’em a few more laps around the track, a few more pokes with the stick. Hah! For old time’s sake. Know what I’m sayin’? Besides, it pays the college tuitions. Hah!”

“I’m sure it does.”