2 Sisters Detective Agency(74)

A chair swung out of nowhere into his field of vision. He lifted an arm and blocked it. The attacker was not Vera. Some civilian hero in a pink shirt hoping to save the day. Jacob almost laughed. If there was one thing he knew, it was that a man who tried to separate two fighting dogs was going to get bitten. He reached out, grabbed the guy by his salmon-colored lapel, and landed a punch in his stomach that folded him in half like a deck chair. A plastic ID tag and pen clattered onto the floor as Jacob dropped the guy in the doorway. The badge crunched under Jacob’s boot as he walked on. Some kind of medical consultant, he guessed. A surgeon maybe. It didn’t matter. Everybody went down if you hit them hard enough. Jacob turned and shot the guy in the ankle to keep him down.

Screams came from behind a door marked as a nurses’ lounge. Jacob went inside and found Vera there, clutching a plump woman in scrubs around the throat, the teenager’s small arm a pale noose by which the older woman hung. Vera pushed a cutlery fork against the woman’s neck, jutting her chin at Jacob defiantly as she backed her hostage away.

“Think about it,” Vera said. “Stop and think about it. You won’t kill an innocent woman just to get to me.”

“Don’t be so sure, little girl,” Jacob said. He shot a trembling orderly in the chest. Vera dropped her hostage, staggering back as Jacob surged forward to fire again. The bullet entered Vera in the arm, sending her flying back. Jacob might have grabbed the girl then, but a pair of male nurses who had been huddling behind a table made a run for it, cutting between them, giving Vera the seconds she needed to shoulder her way through the lounge’s other door, back into the hallway.





Chapter 104



Ashton and Baby slipped into the guest bathroom on the third floor and shut the door as quietly as they could. The space was larger than most regular bedrooms but seemed impossibly small, their heavy breathing echoing off the ceiling. Ashton caught a glimpse of his face in the huge mirror. His cheeks were drained of blood, the whites of his eyes stark. Baby’s shaking hands fluttered over the sink, almost knocking over a bottle of perfume, which she grabbed just as it slipped over the edge of the counter.

“Under vanity,” she breathed, ripping open the doors under the sink. “This thing is called a vanity. But it’s not here. It’s not here. I don’t see anything.”

“How many bathrooms does your place have?”

“Six. But this is the room Rhonda has been sleeping in.”

“Doesn’t mean it’s the vanity she was talking about.”

“Shit,” Baby said. “But I know it’s not in my bathroom. At least I think it’s not.”

“Where are the others?”

“There’re two on the ground floor. We can’t go down there now.” As though to confirm her words, they heard a crash from the lower floor as one of the gang members smashed through something, a bookcase or cabinet. “There’s one on the roof, next to the pool. And my dad’s bedroom is on the next floor down.”

Baby ran to the door, slipped silently out into the bedroom. Ashton followed closely behind her, marveling at her fearlessness. She peeked out into the hall and crept down the staircase before even glancing back to make sure he was behind her.

She’s one of those girls, Ashton thought. The ones who just assume you’ll follow. The ones who walked ahead of him into parties like they hadn’t arrived in the same limo. The ones who tossed their handbags at him at the airport and expected him to catch. He was following Baby as though on a string. He was so distracted by his self-reflections that he didn’t even see the cartel guy with a cast on his hand and a gun tattoo on his face turn into the second-floor hall as Ashton reached the lower landing.

Ashton and Gunmouth faced each other, the cartel henchman so stunned he didn’t even lift the enormous shiny silver gun he carried at his hip.

“Hey!” the man said, raising the hand strapped tightly into a dirty fiberglass cast. Ashton leaped across the hall and threw himself into the bedroom with Baby, slamming the door shut.

“They’re here!” Gunmouth shouted from beyond the door. “Ellos están aquí!”





Chapter 105



A hospital is a busy place. At every hour of the day and night people sit in seats in hallways drinking coffee, crying, talking, chewing their nails, waiting for news. Orderlies mop floors, delivery people transport flowers, as nurses and doctors rush back and forth. Overhead, announcements are made in gentle tones, while machines bleep and screech and click in every room in every hallway.

So when I walked in to find the hospital seemingly empty, a sense of unreality gripped me, made me pause. The speakers nestled into the ceiling of the big foyer were playing a repetitive, high-pitched whoop sound. People had dropped bags and other belongings as they ran—a coffee spilled here, a teddy bear discarded there, telltale signs of panic. On a seat in front of the admissions desk, a cell phone was ringing, and the sound of another chimed from the bathrooms to my left. I followed the empty hall until I found two police officers, who swiveled and pointed their guns at me.

“Get down! Get down! Get down!”

“She’s with me.” Summerly appeared beside me, a troupe of officers at his side. He was trying to strap a bulletproof vest to his thick chest. “I told you to wait outside.”