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“I promise.”
Drex hugged her tightly, too.
He relieved Mike and Talia of their concern immediately upon reentering the waiting room. “He looks poorly, but he’s doing well. His condition has been upgraded to stable.” They were on the verge of asking questions when his cell phone vibrated in his pocket. “Hold on. This may be Locke.” He looked at his phone. “It is. He’s sent a text.”
Warning! Rudkowski here. On our way up.
Drex read it silently and then out loud. “Dammit.” Gif’s emergency had temporarily distracted him from the other crisis. This jerked him right back into the thick of it.
“He’s still typing,” he told Mike and Talia, then read the new message aloud. “‘Take fire stairs. Look for M.’”
“Menundez,” Mike said. “Go!” He shooed them toward the door.
Drex said, “I can’t leave Gif.”
“He’ll never forgive you if you don’t. Go!”
“What about Rudkowski?”
“I’ll be the sacrificial lamb.” Then, rubbing his hands over his extensive midsection, he said, “Sacrificial ox.”
They hurried down the fire stairs to the ground floor. Menundez was waiting for them where the stairwell opened into a lobby. “How’s Lewis?”
“Out of surgery and in ICU.” Drex gave him a concise update. “I can’t thank you enough for getting word to me.”
“Sure, man.” Menundez called their attention to the unusual amount of activity in the lobby. “As you can see, there’s a large police presence.”
“For us?” Drex asked.
“Busy night. Two assaults, one fatal, in the same area within hours of each other.”
“Mike Mallory stayed behind to stall Rudkowski, but he’ll be demanding to know where Talia and I are.”
“Hear ya. Keep your heads down,” the detective said, and started threading this way toward one of the entrances. Glancing around, he lowered his voice before continuing. “Rudkowski is an idiot. After this thing with Lewis, Locke brought me into the loop.”
“You and he talked to witnesses who were near Gif when he went down?”
“Yeah, but didn’t get much. Boatload of people had just gotten off one of the harbor tours. Word spread about the deadly assault of a woman. The crowd began migrating toward the scene of the crime. Lewis must’ve got caught up and swept along.”
“No one saw the attack?”
He shook his head. “One guy we talked to said that at almost the same time Lewis dropped, he noticed a man making his way through the throng in a hurry. He didn’t think anything about it at the time.”
“Description?”
“He only saw him from the back, and all he remembers is that he had on a rain poncho. And it could have been just a man in a hurry. Security cameras may have picked him up. They’re being checked.”
“I’ll appreciate any information you can pass along.”
“You got it. Locke and me will do what we can to help.”
“If you’re called on it, I swear I won’t let them hang you out to dry.”
“Mr. Easton,” he said grimly, “if it means catching Ford, I wouldn’t mind if I was.”
They were approaching an exit where two uniformed policemen were standing together, chewing the fat more than being vigilant. “Just keep walking,” Menundez said out of the side of his mouth. “We’ll be in touch.”
He veered off and headed toward the officers, saying to them as he walked up, “Hey, guys. Menundez from CID. That second emergency near the wharf? It was an assault.”
