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“What’s your name?” I asked him, raising my voice a little to make it clear I was talking to him.
He seemed to consider it a short while. Then, finally, “Thomás.”
“Well,” I said, to Hansen this time. “We might need some medical assistance with Thomás here.” I was not comfortable saying more than that. Hansen had become a little easier to work with when he’d stopped wanting to involve his colleagues and simply helped instead. But now? I knew what might have to be done. Knew the choice I might have to make at the expense of Andrea, maybe even the three trapped men. It would mean severely overstepping any rules he went by. I didn’t have the luxury of those rules. It would be best if he wasn’t part of this now, but Thomás was our only clue to Andrea’s whereabouts as well as to freeing his prisoners. No way was Hansen going to step aside. I got that. I gripped the steering wheel tight and drove on. I saw no other way than to deal with this as I went. I certainly couldn’t do nothing. The consequences would be worse to live with.
Chapter 16
“Bet you’reglad there are no cameras now,” I said to Hansen as we got out of the car at the back entrance of Ashport Hospice. Dr. Morris stood on top of the stairs holding the door open for us. It took some time getting Thomás both out of the car and maneuvered up the few steps. He walked in blindness after all, bloody pillowcase covering his head. The blood had dried at this point. I looked at the lining of my jacket. The blood there was also dried and I put it on again. This was not the time to be fussy. We all followed Dr. Morris up to the room where Michael Phillipson lay in the same bed as the day before. He lay a little on his side today, though, having been turned a little. I could only imagine the pained muscles and bed sores that would at some point make themselves known to the poor trapped souls in that hell. Even the boredom had to be torture.
Hansen made Thomás stand in front of the bed, facing the dead-eyed kid in it, while the rest of us positioned ourselves behind him. With a gun aimed at him, he didn’t make any trouble. It was the only good thing I had to say about him. I carefully loosened the pillowcase and removed it. What more harm could he do to Michael?
“Let the kid go.” Thomás didn’t move at the sight of the unmovable young man in the hospital bed, nor at the command I gave him.
“Are you listening?” Hansen chimed in. “You’ve done enough damage.”
“Do you know what these people can do?” said Thomás finally. His accent was difficult to place. Not Eastern European like the other kidnappers. That wasn’t a surprise, though. Yorov got the people they needed no matter where they came from. The south of Europe, maybe? His English was very good.
“How do you know?” I asked, feeling my patience run ever shorter as he dragged this out.
“I know,” Thomás began, unaffected by my tone. “Like I know you can indeed read thoughts, that your friend with the gun can do nothing, and that the doctor here should not be allowed among other human beings.”
“You sense it?”
He nodded. This information told me a lot. First of all, that he needed to be close to people to sense their abilities. If not, he would have known about Dr. Morris already. He must have met all his victims beforehand by pure accident. But two abilities in one person? That was rare. No wonder Yorov had recruited him…or more likely, acquired him as a child.
“Is it Yorov who’s ordered you to do this?” I asked.
He gave a short chuckle at that but said nothing.
I exhaled sharply and realized my fists were clenched. “Let these kids out of whatever prison you have trapped them in,” I told him, but he only shook his head.
“The world is safer without them,” he added.
“They have never hurt anyone,” Dr. Morris protested.
“They will.”
“For crying out loud,” I said. “You don’t know that. And anyway, if they do, we have ways of dealing with that ourselves.”
“This way they won’t even make that first mistake,” Thomás argued, completely missing my warning. He might think he was doing the right thing. It certainly sounded like it, but he was no better than what he claimed his victims were.
My patience had run out.
I asked him one last time to free them. He refused.
I set my eyes on Dr. Morris, who looked down at the floor first, but then nodded. She didn’t like this, either. But she knew what was demanded of us.
“Give me a second,” she said and left the room.
“Second for what?” Hansen asked. I didn’t answer him. Only looked around the room and saw the vases with flowers on a table by the window. I grabbed a bouquet of various lilies, daisies, and greenery and pulled them out of the white vase. Discarded them on the table where the water dripped down onto the floor. I stepped over to Thomás and simply clouted him over the ear, the porcelain breaking against his head as he grunted and fell to his knees.
“What the hell?” Hansen exclaimed somewhere to my right.
I didn’t care. I glanced at Michael who lay motionless, not even reacting to the noise. At least on the outside. No fucking way was I going to let him lay there like that if I could help it. I pushed any thought of Andrea out of the way. This guy wasn’t talking, but I might be able to help his three prisoners despite that. I hit him over the ear again, using my elbow this time. Thomás slumped over, trying to steady himself on his hands, broken porcelain cutting into his flesh. Small droplets of blood mixing with the water on the floor.
Dr. Morris came back into the room as I grabbed hold of tawny-colored hair, controlling where Thomás could turn his head and see. Dr. Morris sat a large basin of water in front of him on the floor, carefully avoiding his gaze. Carefully avoiding mine as well.
“Torturing me won’t help,” Thomás wheezed as he tried to regain some momentum.
