Читать книгу Killer Countdown - Amelia Autin - Страница 12

Chapter 2

Shane tried to chase after Carly, but the strap locking him in the bed held firm. “Damn it,” he cursed, tugging futilely at the strap. For just a second he thought about ringing for the nurse, but he knew by the time anything could be done to prevent it, Carly would be long gone. “Damn it!”

He lay back against the pillows, seething with frustration. He hadn’t liked being bound to the bed from the beginning. He understood why it was hospital policy. And as he’d said to Carly, if he lost consciousness with his seizures or even lost motor control, that would be one thing, because the strap would keep him from falling out of bed. But he didn’t, so he’d mentally railed against the restriction from day one. This was the first time he’d actively cursed out loud, however, and he suddenly announced to the empty room, “Sorry.”

“Not to worry, Senator,” answered the technician constantly monitoring him from the other room. “Believe me, we understand how frustrating it can be for our patients, especially the ones who think they don’t need protection.”

“Thanks.”

Shane punched up his pillow, then settled his big frame more comfortably in the bed, thinking about his recent visitor. Carly Edwards. He’d never actually met her before, but he knew who she was, of course. She’d been a fixture on the nightly news as a war correspondent and then reporting from Capitol Hill on one of the major cable news networks. She’d just recently moved to another cable news channel, one that had surged into prominence recently, surpassing most television news agencies for hard-hitting news coverage. Everyone said she was the next Christiane Amanpour.

He wondered why she’d cut their interview short. Carly had the reputation for being unstoppable where a news story was concerned. Once she got her teeth into something, she refused to let go. It wasn’t like her to cut an interview short, especially on an exclusive. And while he’d hoped she would agree with him this wasn’t legitimate news, he’d figured he’d have to tell her everything before she decided not to broadcast what he had to say. It didn’t make sense that she’d run out in the middle of an interview.

For a minute he also wondered what she’d been doing there without a camera operator, but then realized no way would they have been able to sneak the camera gear into the Mayo Clinic, past the various stations that guarded their patients’ privacy. Not to mention Carly didn’t have a reputation as an ambush journalist...although she had used subterfuge to gain access to him. By pretending to be his fiancée.

Shane smiled. Whether she’d intended it or not, Carly had been a bright note in his otherwise bleak week. His body hardened in a rush as he let himself fantasize about what it would be like if she was his fiancée. If he could peel that jacket off her, the one she wore that was not-quite-good-enough camouflage for a body that would tempt a monk. And Shane was no monk.

* * *

Carly was already in her car in the parking lot before she lost it. Before memories of Jack swamped her, bringing unaccustomed tears to her eyes. God, oh God, who knew?

She stared down at her engagement ring, the brilliant diamond shimmering through the haze of tears. When Jack had asked her to marry him more than eight years ago she’d been the happiest woman in the world. They’d been in love. Not just the crazy, Tilt-A-Whirl kind of love, but the solid, let’s-make-this-last-a-lifetime kind of love, with dreams of children in the not-too-distant future and grandchildren far down the road.

In mind-numbing slow motion the memory of the car accident replayed in her mind. The drunk driver weaving head-on into their lane. Jack’s desperate swerve to avoid the collision. Sliding sideways on the treacherous, ice-slick road. The sudden impact and the side air bag that failed to deploy. Jack’s head making sickening contact with the window—numerous times—as his body was flung side to side.

After a year of mourning, she’d taken off Jack’s engagement ring and placed it in the back of her jewelry box. Never to be worn again...until today. Until she’d used it as a prop to sneak into Senator Jones’s hospital room.

Carly didn’t believe in omens, good or bad. And she didn’t believe in fate—life was what you made of it. But guilt overwhelmed her now, as if by wearing Jack’s ring for a purpose he’d never intended, she’d somehow brought this whole sequence of events about. As if she was responsible for what had happened to Senator Jones the way she was responsible for Jack’s death.

* * *

Shane picked up his cell phone and hit speed dial for his executive assistant in Washington, DC, a grandmotherly type who reminded him of his own mother—not surprising since she’d been his mother’s best friend as long as he could remember. He still had difficulty calling her by her nickname, especially since she insisted on calling him Senator now instead of Shane. He was more inclined to call her Mrs. Wilson as he’d done growing up, but when she’d first gone to work for him when he was running for the House, she’d flatly told him to call her Dee-Dee, so he did...reluctantly.

When she answered the phone he said, “I want you to find out everything you can on a reporter, Carly Edwards.” He listened for a minute, a frown forming. “No, nothing like that. This is personal, Dee-Dee, not professional. So only work on this if you have nothing else to do.”

“Hah!” Dee-Dee responded. “As if I ever have nothing else to do.”

“I’m serious.”

“Oh, of course, you’re serious. That makes all the difference,” she said drily.

For the umpteenth time Shane wondered why he kept Dee-Dee as his executive assistant when she never gave him the kid-glove treatment he got automatically from the rest of his staff. Even though she called him Senator, she still acted as if she remembered him with a dirty face and untucked shirttails, sneaking cookies when his mom’s back was turned.

But then for the umpteenth time he remembered that was exactly why he kept her—she brought a touch of reality to the sometimes stultifying protocol he was usually surrounded with. She was a whiz at keeping him organized, too. And besides, she needed the job. Her husband had left her little but debts when he’d passed away years earlier...and his mother would kill him if he fired her best friend.

“Don’t worry,” Dee-Dee said, “I’ll have a complete dossier on Ms. Edwards by the time you get back to DC. You are coming back tomorrow night, right? That’s what you said. They’re discharging you tomorrow morning?”

“That’s the plan.”

“Good. I know you’ve been keeping up on pending legislation even in the hospital—your mom didn’t raise any slackers—but I’ve fielded calls from a half dozen senators, including the president pro-tem and both the majority and minority leaders, wanting to know how you’re planning to vote on their bills when the Senate is back in session. Especially that pipeline one—the news agencies are calling you ‘the swing vote.’ Not just because of your own stance on the issue, but because others will follow your lead and vote their consciences, not their pocketbooks—if you weren’t already aware. And since you haven’t clued me in on where you stand, Senator,” she added with a touch of acerbity, “I wasn’t able to answer for you.”

“As if you don’t know where I stand on every issue.”

“Yes, but you haven’t officially told me how you plan to vote, so my lips are sealed.” That had Shane laughing silently. Dee-Dee’s lips were always sealed...when it came to guarding him and maintaining the integrity of his office. Another reason he couldn’t possibly do without her. He was just preparing to disconnect when Dee-Dee said out of the blue, “You do know her nickname, don’t you?”

Shane was familiar with the way Dee-Dee’s mind jumped back and forth between topics, so he knew she was referring to Carly Edwards. He cast around in his mind but came up blank. “No, can’t say I do.”

“Tiger Shark.” Heavy silence. “Keep that in mind.”

* * *

Marsh Anderson walked outside the Mayo Clinic lobby and a little distance away before pulling out his disposable cell phone—one he’d bought specifically for this job—and punching in a number he already knew by heart. “Just checking in,” he said when the phone was answered. He listened, nodding his head in agreement even though he knew the person on the other end couldn’t see him. “Not a problem,” he said finally. “When will he be discharged?”

“He has plane reservations for tomorrow,” came the clipped response. “Whether the clinic is ready to discharge him or not, he’s flying out Saturday evening. The Senate will be back at work come Monday, and he has never missed a debate or a vote. He’s not about to let that happen now—especially not with what’s at stake this time around.”

Marsh grunted. He knew what was at stake, even though his contact thought him nothing more than a hired gun. He was a hired gun...as far as that went. But he was a very smart one, and he’d figured out a hell of a lot more than the men who’d hired him realized. He called them the Agenda Men, because they had a concrete agenda and would stop at nothing to achieve their goal.

He knew just how much money was behind the effort to push one piece of legislation through. Not bribes. You couldn’t call them bribes. Campaign contributions was the polite euphemism, and the Agenda Men were very good at it. But their money had availed them nothing where Senator Jones was concerned. He could not be swayed as other politicians were. So they had no choice but to contract Marsh’s services.

Marsh admired Senator Jones for his integrity. But that didn’t impact his willingness to carry out his job. One was personal. The other was business. And Marsh never put anything above business.

“So he’s leaving tomorrow, but you don’t know exactly what time he’s leaving,” Marsh said now. It wasn’t a question, but the voice on the other end of the phone answered anyway.

“No. You’ll just have to play it by ear.”

“Okay,” Marsh said. “I know what I have to do. Just make sure you do your part.” Then he hung up. My money, he thought to himself. You just have my money ready.

* * *

Shane was the happiest man in the world when the clinic finally got around to discharging him Saturday, right after lunch. So happy he didn’t even cavil at another hospital policy—wheeling him out to the waiting limousine in a wheelchair. God forbid I trip over my own feet walking out and hurt myself on hospital property, he thought with a touch of mordant humor.

The limo wasn’t his first choice for transportation because he hadn’t wanted to draw that kind of attention. But it made sense since it had to transport not only him to the airport but the four staff members accompanying him, as well—his deputy chief of staff, senior legislative assistant, legislative correspondent, and press secretary. So when Bobby Vernon, his deputy chief of staff, told him they’d arranged for a limo, he’d merely accepted it.

As his staff crowded into the elevator after him, Shane joked with Laney, the nursing assistant wheeling him out. He’d come to know Laney casually during his nearly week-long stay at the clinic—she’d even shown him pictures of her grandchildren. All his staff were dressed as casually as he was, in jeans and a Henley, because he’d been adamant he didn’t want to draw too much attention by making them look like Secret Service agents guarding a public figure. But his little group did draw eyes as they made their way across the multistoried lobby to the front door, and Shane mentally winced, hoping no one would recognize him. Not that he was ashamed—well, maybe just a little—but because he’d already dodged one bullet where Carly Edwards was concerned, and didn’t feel up to answering questions from the idly curious or from another reporter.

He’d just been rolled out the front door, where the limo was drawn up to the curb, when Carly appeared out of nowhere, across the curving drive to the right. “Senator Jones,” she called out, lengthening her stride to catch him before he entered the limo. “If I could just talk to you for a minute,” she began.

Shane’s eyes were drawn to her, but out of the corner of his left eye he saw something glint in the early afternoon sun from the brushy knoll in the center of the horseshoe-shaped circular driveway.

“Get down,” he yelled to his entourage as he leaped from the wheelchair, grabbed Laney and flattened her on the sidewalk just as rifle shots rang out, shattering the sliding glass doors behind them. Shane rolled Laney and himself toward the limo, using that as a shield against a further barrage of bullets.

Screams were coming from everywhere—from the people inside the clinic’s lobby and those who had been eating lunch on the cafeteria’s outside patio. Shane couldn’t see a damned thing from his position on the ground, but he was praying no one had been hit. Laney was whispering something in a breathy little voice, but it took him a minute to focus on what she was saying.

“Mary, mother of God,” she repeated over and over, and Shane knew it was a prayer.

Sirens could be heard in the distance now. Shane levered himself into a crouch behind the limo after making sure Laney was unharmed, except for the bad scrape on her elbow where it had made contact with the unforgiving sidewalk.

He peered over the limo’s hood. A stocky figure was running in the opposite direction, through the center island’s walkway, heading toward the far parking lot. Shane wanted to give chase, but knew that would be stupid. An unarmed man going up against someone with a high-powered rifle?

His staff members, who’d hit the ground when he had, stood and swarmed around him suddenly, as if they feared he would do just that. Then more people rushed outside from the clinic’s lobby—security guards and the morbidly curious. Shane quickly bent down and helped Laney to her feet, then brushed her off. He pulled a clean hanky from his jeans pocket and held it against her elbow, which was oozing blood.

“You okay?”

She nodded. “Thanks to you, Senator.”

A medical emergency team rushed onto the scene, and suddenly police cars were everywhere, although—thankfully—no TV news crews were on site yet. Then Shane remembered Carly, and he shot a quick glance over to where he’d last seen her...only to realize she wasn’t there. He scoured the parking lot for a sign of her. On the right he saw the back of a woman cutting across the drive, darting from one sheltered area to another. Moving in the same direction the gunman had been heading when he’d made his escape, but trying to stay under cover.

Shane cursed and took off running before the policemen could even exit their vehicles. He ignored the urgent cries of the people behind him in his goal to cut Carly off before it was too late. He sped through the circuitous sidewalk leading through the driveway’s center island, grateful the cactus and bushes shielded him from the gunman’s sight. He passed the statue of an American Indian woman, then a small waterfall, but he had eyes for neither. He took the stairs in three steps and was just about to exit the north side when he saw Carly. She was crouching behind a giant saguaro and a large agave plant, but peering around the one and over the other. She had something in her hand aimed at the running gunman...and she was right in his line of sight when he suddenly turned.

Shane made a flying leap and tackled Carly. The iPhone she’d been trying to use to film the sniper’s escape flew across the gravel and skittered into the roadway. He rolled her beneath him as the unmistakable crack of a rifle shot broke the silence. Then a door slammed. Tires squealed. And a white pickup truck fishtailed out of the far side of the parking lot as the driver gunned the engine.

A police car gave chase a minute later, siren blaring, but Shane wasn’t optimistic. Whoever had been shooting at him and then at Carly had too great a lead. The highway was only two stoplights and a few blocks away, and since it was the weekend, there wouldn’t be rush-hour traffic to impede the getaway.

Shane picked himself up off the ground and helped Carly to her feet, first making sure she wasn’t hurt. Then he grasped her upper arms and shook her. Hard. In a voice he hadn’t used since his Marine Corps days he demanded, “What the hell did you think you were doing?”