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

“Does she know what they meant by nosy?”

“About something she found by accident. She didn’t say what it was.”

“She tell you anything else?”

“Not to trust anybody. Not to tell anybody what she told me. Except you.”

28

After visiting hours ended, things were calmer and quieter, but nursing rounds continued as staff changed IV bags, administered scheduled medication, checked monitors, and tended to personal needs. Mona had two bedside visits, both from women: an aide before nine to help her into the bathroom and a nurse around eleven to check a med line as she slept. The nurse reminded me that coffee and snacks were available from a vending machine near the waiting room. By midnight, with most televisions off and most rooms lit by night lights, the corridor slipped into overnight quietude, with hushed voices at the nursing station and fewer audible squeaks of rubber soles on the floor.

Coffee from the machine sucked but kept me awake, more from a roiling stomach than a caffeine jolt to my nervous system. Having burped enough bitterness as I read through the magazines, I filled two plastic cups with cold water from the bathroom sink and slid my chair to the wall nearest the foot of the bed. There I plugged my charger into an outlet so I could check headlines and play games as my phone juiced up. Seated this way, I sipped water and passed the time, half-obscured by the privacy curtains. The only other light was the dim glow of a plastic panel above the bed

Mona slept on her back, snoring softly.

Shortly after one, a small woman in flowery pink scrubs stepped into the room. She had narrow shoulders and brittle-looking auburn hair. I saw her before she noticed me half behind the curtains. There was something familiar about her. But even after watching nursing station personnel go about their duties over the past few hours, I could not place her face. I thought perhaps she had come on during a shift change or was a floater covering for someone on a break. She stood just inside the door for a second and glanced back over her shoulder. Then she approached the bed with tentative steps, passing the wall-mounted box of nitrile gloves without taking a pair. From her pocket, she took out a hypodermic needle, uncapped it, and pulled the plunger. When I got to my feet, she saw me and stopped, her hand shaking. Her eyes widened enough to register both surprise and what I first thought was discomfort.

“Hello,” she said, voice deeper than it should have been in so narrow a frame. “Just some medicine for her SVC line.” The tremor still visible in her hand, she offered a nervous smile that, even in the diminished light, revealed blackened, crooked teeth and gaps where other teeth once had been. Then I knew why she looked familiar. This woman wasn’t Veronica Surowiec, the fallen physician I had met at Sanctuary Nimbus, but her unsteadiness and dentition suggested she was likely a member of the same methamphetamine sisterhood.

I moved toward her without speaking, and she shifted her hold on the hypodermic. Backing away, lips curling into a snarl that became a throaty laugh, she held up the needle as if it were a dagger, to frighten me into stopping. But I kept coming, grabbing the pink plastic water pitcher off the nightstand, removing the lid, and throwing the contents at her. Stunned by the water, she took another step back before she lunged at me with the needle. I swung the pitcher in an arc as if it were a baton, first connecting with her hand and disarming her and then backhanding her across the face harder than I intended. I heard the plastic crack. She went down, blood pouring from her nose and leaking between the fingers of her right hand as she tried to scoot backward into the corridor with her left. Her eyes glazed over with tears.

When I got to her and began to reach down toward her, she screamed, “Rape!”

In the millisecond that the nursing station five rooms away was completely silent, I unholstered my gun and pointed it at the woman still sliding away. “Don’t fucking move!” But she inched backward anyway, so I racked my slide. That stopped her, just as the corridor filled with people in scrubs and lab coats, even a few in hospital gowns. Many crouched or ducked into other rooms once they caught sight of my gun. Others simply froze.

“Call security,” someone said above the rising chatter.

A dark-haired young man in a white coat drew near, his hands at chest level, palms out as if to calm me. He stopped when I looked at him. “Sir, I don’t know what’s going on, but please put down the gun.”

“Call security!” someone else said.

“I just did!” came another voice.

“Does anybody know this woman?” I said.

Wet and bloody, the woman on the floor looked at everyone frozen near her, made a quick calculation, and took in a lungful of courage. “This motherfucker tried to rape me!”

“Sir,” the man who had drawn near said, “whatever it is—”

“Does anybody know this woman!” My shout silenced everyone. Some of them looked at the woman on the floor and then at each other. I heard some ask others who she was and noticed one woman shrug. “Nobody knows her? Then call nine-one-one.”

“He tried to rape me,” she said again, wiping her eyes. “Fucking bully tried—”

“You just tried to kill Mrs. Simpkins, in the room behind me.” After gasps, another millisecond of silence. Then I heard someone say, “The gunshot victim,” and someone else, “He’s that bodyguard they were talking about.” I gave a quick nod to the woman on the floor, to let her know that I too could play to the crowd. Her tears stopped, and her eyes—blue, I now saw, and intelligent—met mine with a fury that felt primal. Then she gazed about, her