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But…if they didn’t, how much time would pass before the night nurse found he was missing? And how exactly would they find him once they discovered him gone…wherever the hell he’d gotten to?
Why couldn’t he remember anything?
The last thing he recalled was that Talia had been visiting. They’d kissed again, and he’d been sporting a highly satisfactory hard-on. Despite his circumstances, Fleet smiled inside. Talia was one hell of a woman to have gotten that reaction out of him while he was pretty much down for the count.
He sighed. Now wasn’t the time to drift away from what was happening, reliving that hotter-than-hell memory.
Fleet continued scraping the bottom of his brain.
Right.He’d been nodding off when a new night attendant had come in to fiddle with his IV, then…nothing. Lights out. He couldn’t remember another freaking thing. Especially not leaving his room, which he must have done. How weird was that? Fleet had never, in his whole life, been a sleep-walker.
Had someone…relocated him? An unknown enemy? That bruiser of a night nurse?
Fuck. He shivered, and this time with more than the cold. His circumstances, if hehadbeen taken from the hospital, reminded him too vividly of a time in the past he wanted never to contemplate again. But considering he’d been embarking in some of the same behavior that had gotten him into hot water before, he had to weigh the possibility that he might be in the same kind of trouble, now.
Dammit.
He needed to get his body moving.
CHAPTERELEVEN
Mason was back in the command bus after issuing new orders to the searching squads. He and Talia had begun to review the stills Mase’s friend Quint had sent of every person who’d walked through the front door of the hospital from the time visiting hours began until the time Fleet had been discovered missing. There were over eighty, and that didn’t include staff, EMT’s, paramedics, uniformed officers, janitorial staff, or late-night delivery people.
The other thing Quint sent them was video his tech guy had obtained of all the cars leaving the hospital grounds after the alleged time of abduction. The task of going through all of the pictures and footage was going to be daunting, but Mason, realizing that, set Opal and Nolan on it, scouring alongside them.
Talia, however, was champing at the bit. She’d been sitting on her butt too long. Surveillance wasn’t her thing. She was ready to go out and join up with her squad to start scouring the woods instead of being stuck in front of a monitor.
She’d just asked Mason’s permission to put boots to pavement and, gaining his approval, was about to leave the bus when Mason’s phone rang again.
“What do you have?” he barked, not wasting time on any niceties with the caller.
Talia watched the Chief’s eyes narrow and his jaw harden.
Shit.This couldn’t be good. She steeled herself for the worst and waited not so patiently.
“Thank your friend for us,” Mason concluded. “It cements what we already assumed. Head back and join your squad.”
He turned to Talia after he hung up, an angry snarl on his face. “That was Welker. Forensics show rocuronium in Fleet’s IV bag.”
“Rocuronium?” Talia questioned. That was a new one on her.
“Yeah. It’s a neuromuscular blocker used when tracheal movement needs to be suspended for emergency intubation, or in the course of surgery to keep skeletal muscles relaxed. The normal dosage is .6 to 1.2 milligrams, which lasts in the patient’s system for between twenty and thirty-five minutes. The traces in Fleet’s IV bag shows a saturation equal to that of just over 2 milligrams. It’s not a recommended dosage, and in that potency it would keep a patient unable to move for almost two hours.”
“Shit,” Talia wailed. “Someone wanted him completely incapacitated, but…” She blinked, and slowly brightened. “…not killed. Think about it, Mase. They had access to his room and his IV bag, why not just overdose him right there and be done with it? They wanted him alive.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Mason agreed. “And it also points to the fact that whoever did this was, for some unknown reason, trying to terrorize Fleet. Imagine waking up and not being able to move a muscle.”
Talia shivered. “And not being able to be mobile enough to help yourself. It’s awful to think about, and that person could have taken Fleet, done anything they wanted to him, and dropped him anywhere when they were finished.”
“They could, but…”
Now she could see Mason’s brain cooking, and she waited anxiously to see what he was coming up with.
“…why risk it?” he asked. “Would you take the chance of your car being spotted on camera, then have it searched? Or would you use the perfectly handy wooded acreage that lay right behind the hospital to get rid of your problem?”
Talia’s hopes raised.
So far, the searchers had kept to the peripheries of the parking lot, with most everyone assuming—due to the cessation of blood droplets—that Fleet had been bundled into a car and taken away. Mason was now saying otherwise, and it made sense.
