Daylight (Atlee Pine #3)(69)

“We met a while back. Hung out. He’s cool.”

“And why do you have access to the penthouse if you’re not contributing to the cause?” said Pine. “It didn’t strike me as a freebie sort of place. What’s the price of admission?”

Sands shrugged and stared down at his coffee.

“You can understand our skepticism that you’re clean, Jeff, right?” said Puller. “Do you know who owns that penthouse?”

“No.”

“Who told you about it? Who said you could go there?”

“Some guys. I forget their names.”

“I doubt they’ll forget yours. Well, I think we’re done here, Jeff. Have a nice life, however short it might be.”

Puller rose, and Pine did likewise. Sands looked up at them.

“You’re just going to leave me here by myself?”

Puller looked at Pine and then said, “You said you’re clean, we have no grounds to hold you. What do you expect us to do? You said before you had someplace to go. So go.”

They moved toward the door.

“Look, hey, guys.”

They turned back.

A pale Sands, the jauntiness struck clean from him, rose and joined them. “I don’t want to die, okay?”

“So what do you do about it?” said Pine. “Because the only way we can help you is if you help us. You’re a college boy. You’re smart enough to grasp that concept.”

Sands glanced nervously around. A few of the customers were staring at him. “Can we go somewhere and talk about this? Maybe we can figure something out.”

“Sure,” said Puller as he laid some cash down for their coffees. He gripped Sands by the arm and nodded at Pine. “Check the back. We can’t take any chances with him.”

Pine cautiously exited out the back door, and did a recon of the area behind the restaurant. Her gaze took in all sectors, sight lines, and hiding places. Satisfied, she crept back to the door and called out, “Clear.”

Puller came out with Sands.

“We can go back to my place,” said Pine.

Sands said, “Where’s that—”

He didn’t finish due to the rifle round slamming into his head. It passed through the back of his skull and plunged right into Puller. Both men dropped to the ground.

“John!” cried out Pine.

Sands was clearly dead.

And it looked like John Puller might be, too.





CHAPTER





44





PINE HAD NEVER LIKED HOSPITALS ever since she nearly died in one as a child back in Georgia. She had been in and out of consciousness in the ambulance that had taken her there. Bright lights, masked people, tubes and lines being inserted in her.

Her anguished and sobbing mother.

The race down the hallway on the gurney, the white, antiseptic room, strangers hurtling around her, machines beeping, overhead lights like a cluster of suns, so intense they hurt, so she closed her eyes and then there was a prick of something, another something covered her mouth.

Dark.

Then she rose again, like Jesus, or at least her tired mind had remembered this little tidbit from vacation Bible school.

Her mother had been there. Her father. Others. A man with a white coat, a smiling nurse.

She would live, it seemed.

Now she sat in the visitors room at the hospital where the ambulance had taken Puller. She had ridden over with him, every memory of her own frantic ambulance ride coming back to her in waves conjured from thirty years ago.

She held his hand, whispered encouragement into his ear, unsure if he could hear her, whether he was actually conscious. But she had felt him squeeze back, however weakly. And then he was whisked off for emergency surgery.

When Mercy had vanished, six-year-old Pine had prayed every night for her sister’s safe return. She had prayed all the way until the eighth grade. And after that, she had prayed no more.

Until now.

She got down on her knees and pressed the palms of her hands together.

God, this is a good man. A just man. Please, don’t let him die. Please. We need him. I need him. Please save him.

She quickly rose when Blum bustled in. “How is he?”

“Still in surgery. They said they’d come in when they were done and let me know how it went.”

“Have you reached his family?”

“His father has dementia. I left word for his brother at a number I scrounged up. I don’t know if it’s good.”

“Do you know his father and brother?”

“His father is an Army legend and John’s namesake. His brother, Robert, is a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force, a once-in-a-generation talent with computers, according to Puller. I’ve never met either of them.”

“It must have been awful last night.”

“It was . . . pretty awful, yes.”

“Did you see the shooter?”

“No. I covered Puller with my body when he went down. I knew Sands was dead. Half his brain ended up on Puller’s clothes. I fired in the direction of the shot, but they didn’t return fire. By the time the police got there, it was way too late. The shooter was gone.”

“And did Sands tell you anything helpful before he was killed?”