Nickel City Crossfire by Gary Ross (popular romance novels .txt) 📗

led to the information desk too but I couldn’t remember if there was a stairway someone could use to avoid check-in. The Gates Vascular Institute behind the main building also faced Ellicott but had less foot traffic to its security station. Checkpoints and keypads aside, there were at least six ways into Buffalo General, perhaps more. Also, I had no idea whether the nearest sister facilities—Roswell Park Cancer Center, and The Women and Children’s Hospital—had connecting tunnels underground. Maybe I could call someone for help—Jen Spina, when she wasn’t working, maybe even Jimmy, whose wheelchair wouldn’t look out of place in the lobby.

Finally, I opened my eyes and sighed. “There are too many ways inside for the two of us to watch alone,” I said. “The people I could call wouldn’t be able to give us the coverage we’d need.” Then I remembered something. “Maybe we need to have some faith here.”

“What do you mean?”

“How smart is Keisha?”

The answer came with no hesitation. “Very.”

“If she’s been visiting homeless shelters kind of in disguise because she knows people are looking for her, why wouldn’t she take the same precautions to come here?”

Oscar thought about that a moment. “The best place to wait for her is Mona’s room.”

“Right, Pop.” I gave him a beat to smile. “Let’s talk to Mom and Uncle Win.”

We went back inside and explained our new kinship without detailing the reasons someone needed to be with Mona at all times. Winslow accepted without question my lie that his house would be tied up by police for at least three days. After a moment of staring across the waiting room at nothing, he asked if they could go to Walmart for clothes and toiletries before going back to Oscar’s. Aware of the particulars of my hunt for Keisha, Phoenix shot me a sidelong glance full of concern but said nothing that might agitate Winslow. Louisa, however, put her hands on her hips and scowled at me. “Old as your ass is, I’m supposed to be your mother?”

“Stepmother?” I said, shrugging. “Married to a much older man.”

She laughed at that, as did Oscar, Phoenix, and, finally, Winslow. Seconds later I tried to estimate how much of that moment of broken tension Dr. Felton Markham had witnessed when he walked through the automatic doors of the ER and I wondered what he had made of it. In any case, the instant he reached us, he began to extract the oxygen from the room.

His brilliant smile only fleeting, he gave momentary hugs to Oscar and Louisa and embraced Winslow for a long time. Eyes skyward, he called upon God to grant us courage, especially Brother Simpkins, as we struggled on the patch of ground that stretched between good and evil. Then he insisted we all hold hands for a more formal prayer I’d have found too long and too loud on a busier day in the ER. He prayed for more strength, understanding, and God’s forgiveness for all our transgressions. He requested everlasting grace be showered upon Mona’s soul and the hands of the surgeons striving to save her life. My own hands could have used a drop of grace right about then—at least my left, which Louisa squeezed as if it were the last rung on a helicopter ladder rising away from a burning building. Phoenix’s grip on my right was gentler but there was still enough tension to betray her own fear.

When it was over, and blood began to return to my hand, Dr. Markham sat beside Winslow and put an arm around his shoulders. Oscar sat on Win’s left, and Louisa took a chair perpendicular to her husband. Phoenix and I sat on a bench directly across from her.

Trying to sound more curious than interrogational, I asked Dr. Markham how he had learned of the shooting.

“We got a phone call—or my wife did.” He turned to Winslow. “A neighbor lady of yours heard shots and called nine-one-one. She waited for sirens before looking out the window and seeing police cars stopped in front of your house. When the ambulance came and yellow tape started going up, she called Mother Brody. She said the person put in the ambulance looked a lot like Sister Simpkins, so Mother Brody called us.” The minister turned back to me. “Didn’t need the scanner in my car to find the nearest emergency room.”

Word hadn’t come from television or radio, but I was no less relieved. The nameless neighbor and Mother Brody from the church were likely still making phone calls, as were the various people they must have told by now. That meant Keisha would hear before the night was over and would almost certainly come to her mother’s bedside. As Dr. Markham shifted his attention to something Louisa mentioned, I whispered to Phoenix, “Bobby and Kayla are coming in on Jet Blue around six-thirty but I need to be here, maybe all night. Can you get them?”

“Of course. But we came in your car. You want me to take it or should I go home and get my own?”

I thought a moment. “I may need my car.”

Phoenix nodded. “I can get an Uber.”

“Or she can drop you off.” I angled my head a bit toward Louisa, not wanting her low threshold for hearing her name to draw her out of her conversation with the minister. Nor did I mention Oscar, for the same reason. “He’s gonna stay too.”

Phoenix hesitated before speaking, looking at Winslow and realizing that however softly we were speaking, one’s threshold for the name of a loved one was only slightly higher than for the sound of one’s own. “You think she might come here?”

“I do.”

“You think others could too. Looking—”

“Yes.”

“Then you—”

“I will. I promise.”

Phoenix squeezed my hand and rested her head against my shoulder. We sat like that for the next twenty minutes or so, mostly quiet and our breathing in synch as Dr. Markham alternated between listening to his congregants and trying to reassure them of the power