AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Harris must’ve read her thoughts, because after gently laying him across the back seat of the rental, she got behind the wheel and took off toward the nearest hospital. Cassie stayed in the back, watching Bob fight for his life.
41
By the time they reached the hospital, Bob was unresponsive. His face pale and gray, and though he was still breathing, Cassie had noticed his heart rate slow dramatically as the rattling in his chest got more distressing.
Harris made it to the nearest hospital in record time, pulling to a screeching halt in front of the doors to the emergency room. Several nurses rushed outside with a gurney when they saw the two women pulling him from the car. Harris tucked a pair of Polaroids into his shirt pocket before he was whisked off to surgery, and they stuck around long enough to give one of the staff his name and information about what had happened to him. Once their backs were turned, the detective pulled Cassie back into the car and took off before anyone could stop them.
Cassie twisted around in her seat, waiting to see if anyone noticed what they were doing. “Shouldn’t we stay?”
“You positive you’re not injured?” Harris asked, taking her eyes off the road long enough to give her a once-over. “You need to tell me if you are.”
“I’ll have some nasty bruises,” Cassie said, touching a gentle finger to her face, “but I’m fine.”
Harris looked down at the clock on the dashboard. “We don’t have much time.”
“For what?” Cassie turned back around and settled into her seat, putting her seatbelt on just in time for Harris to whip out into traffic. “What’s going on?”
“After I noticed you were gone, I had to wait until the cops showed up to take away Thompson.”
“The janitor?”
Harris nodded. Looking over at Cassie, her eyes were full of regret. “I’m so sorry. I should’ve come sooner. I just didn’t want him to escape. I—”
“It’s fine.” Cassie put a reassuring hand on Harris’s arm, and she felt the other woman relax beneath it. “Really. I knew you would show up. I wasn’t worried.”
“That’s a lie.” Harris barked out a laugh. “But I appreciate it, anyway.” Turning back to the road, she switched lanes and flipped someone off when they beeped in protest. “Someone had already called the police, so it didn’t take them long to show up. But I had a few minutes alone with Thompson.”
“What did he say?”
“Tried to cut a deal with me. Said Reed wasn’t paying him enough to take the blame for everything. Told me if I let him go, he’d tell me everything I needed to know about Reed.”
Cassie put a hand to her mouth. “Did you?”
Harris shot her a look that said, you know me better than that. “Told him I didn’t trust him. Needed to know what he had before I considered it. He said Reed was playing both sides, and once Aguilar found out, he was a dead man.”
“Playing both sides? How?”
“Don’t know. As soon as the cops showed up, I handed his ass over. Snuck off before they could get ahold of me. They’ll probably figure out who I am. Security footage and all that. But I’m not worried about it. We’ll be out of here before they catch up to us.”
“Where are we going?”
Harris smirked. “The airport, of course.”
Cassie groaned, hoping Harris wasn’t suggesting they add another leg to their trip. “Why?”
Harris switched lanes, taking an exit at the last second and pinning Cassie to the door as she leaned into the turn. “Reed is running. We got too close to him. Thompson said he was headed to the airport. So, that’s where we’re going.”
“What, O’Hare? We’re never going to find him there.”
Harris didn’t take her eyes off the road. “We have to try. We’re so close to something, I know it.”
Cassie looked down at her hands in her lap. “You know how we saw the name Zephyr in the spreadsheet?”
“Yeah.”
“That was Zbirak.” Cassie felt like she had a rock in her throat. She couldn’t swallow around it. “He killed David.”
Harris stiffened but didn’t look over at her. After a moment, she whispered, “You’re sure?”
