Page 112 of The Cajun Doctor

Nick picked it up, narrowed his eyes at her and Angus, then swung around back behind the desk, pulling out a drawer and a pistol, which he aimed at Angus. “Who’s on the other end of this wire?” he asked.

“No one,” Angus lied. “It’s just hooked up to my computer. I had a plan to get you on tape. Not to go to the police.”

“It would have been used as leverage so you would let Angus and Lily Beth go,” Samantha elaborated. “Honestly, Nick, can you see Nick and Lily Beth going to the police when they might be arrested themselves?”

Nick seemed unsure whether to believe them or not. He raised his weapon while he considered the situation.

Taking no chances, Samantha picked up an amber paperweight off the desk and threw it at Nick, which missed his fool head and hit his shoulder, but it caused the pistol to discharge. The bullet hit Angus, causing him to fall backward.

“Oh, my God! You killed him,” she shouted, rushing to Angus who lay prone on the floor, unconscious.

“He’s not dead. I just nicked his scalp.”

“How do you know that? Are you crazy? You’re a doctor, for heaven’s sake. Hippocratic Oath and all that crap! Come over here, dammit, and check him.”

Nick ignored her and picked up her handbag and its contents off the floor. He stomped on the wiring device, then walked over to her with the pistol still raised. “I told you. It’s just a scalp wound. A bleeder. He’ll live.”

She stood and glared at him. “What kind of doctor are you?”

He shrugged. “Give me the other device,” he snarled, holding out his free hand. “I know Angus would have put a wire on you, too.”

At least he was buying the story of Angus, not the FBI, setting up the sting. And hopefully, the feds and police would be descending on them shortly, having heard the gun shot.

She yanked the device out of her bra and handed it to him. He stomped on that one, too. Then, while she attempted to kneel and help Angus, noticing the flutter of his eyelids, Nick looped the shoulder strap of her handbag over her head and grabbed her by the upper arm, keeping her upright.

Angus made a surreptitious flicker of his fingers, signaling that he was, in fact, not dead, although there was a huge amount of blood, which would surely stain the precious carpet. Luckily, Nick didn’t notice. With the weapon pressed against the back of her head, he steered her toward the bookcase unit. And just like in the movies, he pushed a secret lever, and a part of the unit opened onto a dark stairway. The bookcase closed behind them.

“Holy freakin’ Alfred Hitchcock! Why would a doctor need a secret entrance to his offices?”

“Not a secret entrance. Just a quick way to go down to my private surgery suite. That way I don’t have to go through the halls in soiled scrubs, like I just did. It puts the patients off to see all that blood.” She couldn’t see his face in the dark stairway, but she suspected he was grinning at his ingenuity. “But you know why I really wanted this private entrance or exit. Angus must have told you. Because of my extra-curricular activity. But it also leads to the parking garage, which is next door, connected to my first floor by a corridor.”

Uh-oh! He plans to leave the building. With me. Are the cops watching the parking garage? Or just the ground floor entrances and exits of this building? Oh, crap! I am in over my head! “Where are we going?” she asked as he pushed her down the steps.

“To the bank, where we’re going to empty out your safety deposit box. You’re going to pay, and pay big for what you cost me today, bitch.”

What I cost him? How about what he cost himself? Did the jerk ever take responsibility for his own actions? Why was it always someone else’s fault that he was: a) born poor, b) had a professor who had it in for him just because he skipped five classes, c) messed up that one operation during his residency and had to repeat the whole year, d) had an overactive libido, e) couldn’t help but cheat with a dog of a wife like Samantha, f) drank too much at the hospital Christmas party and hustled the director’s daughter, g) etc., etc., etc.

But now she understood where they were going. Nick was still fixated on the gold bullion in her bank deposit box. Did he really think he could get away with that? “Nick, that gold has to weigh more than a hundred pounds. How in hell are you going to remove it without sticking out like the thief that you are?”

He pressed the revolver harder against her back, causing her to trip and almost go forward, flat on her face. Which would probably be a good thing, if he fell forward, too, except she might very well break her neck in the process.

“You’ll be with me, Sammie dear. All the bank employees will see is my lovely ex-wife who has reunited with me. And I have a small, wheeled luggage I keep in my trunk for spontaneous, weekend trips. A Louis Vuitton.”

“Spontaneous, as in getting lucky with some young bimbo?”

This time, he pinched her arm, hard.

She yelped.

They had gone down three flights of stairs by now, and Nick opened a door, shoving her into the tunnel-like corridor, where the overhead lighting, after all that darkness, blinded her, at first. Nick frog-marched her the short distance to the lower level of the parking garage. She fully expected . . . no, hoped . . . to have a SWAT team waiting for them with weapons raised. But, no, there weren’t even any people around. Just a couple dozen vehicles.

“Where does Angus have the computer that was receiving your transmissions?” he asked suddenly.

“Uh,” she hesitated. She couldn’t say her house because he had already been there. Or Angus’s apartment, which he’d probably also ransacked.

He pinched her arm again.

She was going to be black and blue . . . and purple. “At my office at Starr Foods,” she lied.