AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Put on your fucking patch!” Hobart yelled. The car screeched to a stop at the red light just in time. “Get yourself together!”
Mel fumbled for the Calitran-M. Hobart watched until he ascertained that the little red dot patch was affixed to her inner wrist.
“You’re wrecked, Mel,” he said. “We’re changing the plan. I’ll be the nurse. You be the drunk.”
“Bad idea.” Mel’s voice no longer wobbled. “Rosa Ranieri talked to me for a half hour in the baby store. She liked me. She’ll have a positive reaction when she sees a nurse she knows. Instant trust, in a box. Plus, you’ve done your face, and I haven’t.”
She was right. He didn’t like it, but at least Mel was sharpening up. Hobart glanced at himself in the rear-view. Not bad, for a rush job. He’d dyed his hair, re-shaped his eyebrows and shaved a new hairline days ago. He’d put a straggling dark wig and a ski cap over that, for the first act of their improvised melodrama. With brown contact lenses, a jaw prosthesis, cheek padding and the goatee, Rosa Ranieri would never recognize him. She’d had eyes only for the babies and Mel anyhow.
So back to the original plan, such as it was. He stuck his hand into his pocket, fingered the glass framed photograph he’d swiped from the desk in the office of the hotel manager, the tiny bottles of Jack Daniels he’d taken from the hotel mini-bar. They’d brainstormed madly in those last, fumbling seconds. Neither was satisfied with the plan, which was filled with uncontrollable variables. Too damn bad. They had counted minutes to execute it. They had to just go for it. Everything was at stake. Their lives, on the top of the list.
“You do know that if the nurse on duty in there is a man, we’re fucked, right?” he said. “It’ll be too late to switch roles. And if there are too many people on the nursing or the administrative staff? Or if someone sees us too soon? Or raises the alarm?”
She gave him a look. “We’re fucked anyhow, Hobart,” she said. “You know that. We have nothing to lose anymore.”
He opened his mouth, but she shushed him. “Sssshhh, they’re talking.” She concentrated, pressing the headphones to her ears. “Val Janos is giving the driver directions to turn left up Trevitt Grade,” she said. “We’re still ahead. By about four minutes. There it is.”
Water sprayed wide in a brown arc as Hobart accelerated through the puddle outside the hospital parking lot. He parked. He and Melanie looked at each other, and linked hands, squeezing hard.
They leaped out of the car, and headed towards the entrance.
* * *
Bruno tried calling Aaro,for the fifth time. Still busy.
Everyone was on edge since Edie’s phone call to Kev about Tam’s emergency run to Rosaline Creek. Kev and Sean were the worst, being not just worried and tense, but angry, too.
“I cannot believe it,” Sean repeated. “It’s hypocritical. After the shit she gives me, for taking risks? And off she goes, running back to Endicott Falls, today? Like, what thefuck?”
“To be fair,” Bruno pointed out. “You ran off to shoot people and blow shit up. She went home to go back to work at her bookstore.”
“What difference does the nature of the errand make, if there are killers out there?” The SUV swerved, hydroplaning on the oily asphalt.
Bruno cowered back into his seat. “Ah, yeah. Whatever, man. Just drive the car.”
Kev sat next to him, likewise grim, since his lady, too had committed the unspeakable crime of driving back to Seattle with Liv, Miles and Sveti. Davy and Connor both looked complacent, their own lady wives being safely at home in Seattle with assorted offspring.
Bruno was nervous. It had been painful enough to leave Lily in Tam’s fortress. Now she was a sitting duck in a hospital emergency room. The timing of this catastrophe was so bad. Meteors, flying out of the sky to hit you on the head bad. Bad with surgical precision.
“Aaro’s with her,” Davy said, reading his mind. “Aaro’s no idiot.”
Bruno declined to comment, not being personally convinced of that yet. Then Kev’s cell phone buzzed. His brother stared at it, puzzled.
“I don’t know this number,” he said. “Never seen it before.”
“Things are too strange not to answer it,” Bruno said. “Pick it up.”
Kev shrugged, clicked the button. “Yeah? Yes, I am…ah. I see. How did you get this number?” He turned, gave Bruno a look that made his stomach turn to gelid slush. “Yeah, he is here,” he said reluctantly, after a long, painful pause.
Kev passed him the phone. “For you,” he said. “Detective Petrie.”
Bruno winced, and held it to his ear. “Hey, Petrie. What’s up?”
“I can’t believe you have the nerve to ask that, you son of a bitch.”
Bruno was taken aback. “What? You’re pissed because I didn’t come in for questioning? I told you, man. I was running for my life. Still am. That’s the only reason I blew you off. Don’t take it personally.”
“Yeah?” Petrie said. “You’re wanted for triple homicide, Ranieri, and that’s just for starters.”
