Читать книгу A Risk Worth Taking - Brynn Kelly, Brynn Kelly - Страница 12

CHAPTER FIVE

THE HELICOPTER SWUNG out over the wall, to the north. Gunfire popped. Beside Jamie, the glass dome of a streetlamp smashed. Bullets plinked along flagstones. He sprinted for the hospital wall, sheltered from view by the spindly canopy.

“Sorry,” he yelled to the bear. “I gotta draw their fire away.”

“Might be an idea,” the guy said, shakily. He had to be wondering what alternative world he’d been resurrected into. Just keep breathing, pal.

“I’ll send help. Just...take it easy, relax.”

“Relax. Sure.”

The shooters weren’t door gunners, just guys with assault rifles. Not as precise.

More ground fire, over the wall. An alarm wailed, echoed by another, farther off.

Jamie found a foothold and launched over the wall, under tree cover. As he landed, he skidded on wet leaves. No sign of Samira or the gunman. He’d royally fucked that up. Once in a while the first idea wasn’t the best idea... The smokers’ door was banging in the breeze. Don’t latch. Don’t latch. He peered up through the branches. He’d have to cross open ground but better that than the chopper spraying the trees and taking out the bear.

He launched into a sprint, pumping his arms, dodging cars, breathing hard. Gunfire plinked into steel, punched asphalt. As he bounded up the concrete steps, a gust swept the door. It latched. Shit. He hammered on it, turned, flattened, drawing his weapon—not that a Glock would take out a helicopter. The chopper veered toward him. He released the slide. A dozen alarms and sirens clashed.

The door fell away behind him. He stumbled back.

“Fuck me.” Mariya stood, hands on hips. “Is that a gun?”

Gunfire hammered the porch, tearing through the awning. Jamie pulled the door shut and shoved Mariya farther inside.

She shook him off. “Are you a good guy here or—?”

“Where’s Sa—?” he said. “Where’s my friend?”

“She ran down the corridor.” Mariya pointed. “Some guy followed her. He fired a fucking gun. I called security but they’re not here yet.”

Shit. Without an access card Samira would have run into a dead end. Jamie grabbed Harriet’s pass from the counter and looped it around his neck.

“Get out of sight and stay down,” he ordered. “Away from windows.”

“You just can’t help yourself, can you?” Mariya called as he rounded the corner of her desk and scoped out the corridor. Long and empty. At the far end, one of the double doors into Occupational Therapy hung open. He ran silently along the wall, gun down, pulse cranking, checking the empty bays either side. At the double doors, the security panel had been shot to pieces. A crackly voice sounded over the hospital loudspeaker. “The hospital is on full lockdown. Proceed directly to a refuge, as indicated by staff. Do not enter or leave the premises. This is not a drill.”

From ahead, a man’s voice trickled in over the recording and the alarms. A one-sided conversation, though Jamie couldn’t make out the words. On the phone?

He peeped between the doors. Nobody in view. Occupational Therapy would be empty on a Sunday. He took a longer look. The admin station was in an alcove halfway down the narrow wing, opposite a deserted waiting room. The guy had to be in there. With Samira? Jamie edged through the doors.

“...no idea where the fuck I am,” the guy was saying, in an American accent. “Place is a fucking maze. There are treadmills and shit in here—some hospital gym? I’m looking out a window at a courtyard with a tree in it... Yeah, I know that’s not very fucking helpful. Can’t you track me from the GPS on the phone or some shit?”

A window blind rattled. Jamie quietly lowered the rucksack to the floor.

“Why don’t I just shoot her and then the problem’s solved?”

Jamie’s forehead prickled. As he inched closer, he heard—or imagined—Samira’s breath wheezing in time with the ebb of the siren. He ran his gaze around the ceiling. No security cameras. He couldn’t count on help being forthcoming—and even if it was, Jamie could well end up taking a bullet.

“Hang on, man. She’s having a fucking fit or something.”

A clatter. Gasping.

“Lady, this better not be some trick... Nah, serious, man, she’s going purple. She ain’t breathing. What do I do? Well, someone’s gotta make a decision here! Where’s Fitz?”

Jamie exhaled and inhaled, like he was trying to do it for Samira. She would be fine. Terrified, of course, but nobody died from a panic attack. He pictured the goon’s position from his voice—looking down at Samira on the floor, facing the window? Gun in right hand, phone in the other? Doubly distracted.

“If Fitz is gonna interrogate her he better get here quick... No, I don’t fucking know CPR. Hang on. I gotta put the phone down a sec.”

Jamie launched around the corner. The guy looked up, fumbling to adjust his grip on a pistol. Jamie leaped, shoved the gun aside, wheeled and smacked his elbow into the guy’s forehead. The goon staggered back but gathered control of his weapon, swiveled and aimed it at Jamie’s forehead. Not so smooth, caporal.

Something blue flew across the alcove and clocked the side of the goon’s head. The impact rippled through him. He tipped sideways into a desk and crumpled onto the floor. What the fuck? A hand weight rolled off the desk and thudded onto the guy’s side.

“Oh my God, is he alive?” Samira’s voice, to Jamie’s right, barely audible over the alarms. She was kneeling in a corner, gray-faced, eyes huge. Over the loudspeaker, the recorded message repeated.

Jamie kicked the guy’s weapon across the floor. “You threw that weight?”

“It was sitting right there. It looked like he was going to... I didn’t think. Is he...? Did I...?”

Jamie checked the guy’s vitals. “Little groggy but okay. What happened to your panic attack? Were you faking?”

“No. But then I saw you and then the weight, and somehow I pushed through it.”

A tinny voice sounded. Merde. Jamie held a finger to his lips, and located the goon’s phone on an office chair. Still on. He picked it up, settling his breath.

“Nah, I’m okay. I’m fine,” he shouted, in his best imitation of the guy’s accent, muffling his voice with his hand. “Just some fucking security guard. Knocked him out cold. Listen, there’s some paperwork sitting here, says I’m in the...” Jamie stared at a concrete courtyard. What was on the far side of the building? “The...gynecology outpatient clinic. Shit, someone’s coming. I gotta go. You better get here, quick.”

Jamie hung up. The goon groaned. Jamie retrieved his rucksack, and drew out a syringe and vial from his white box of goodies.

“What is that?” Samira said, grabbing her sunglasses from the floor beside her.

“A sedative. Keep him in a happy place a while longer.” The guy wouldn’t be able to give much of a description of Jamie, especially with a concussion, but the longer they kept him quiet, the better.

“Where did you get it?”

“Would you believe a prescription?”

“No.”

He laughed.

“Let me guess,” she said. “You have a contact?”

“Traditional weapons are a little harder to come by here and a few people owed me—”

“Favors. I’m beginning to see a pattern.”

Not that this favor had come cheaply. Andy had charged him top dollar. But at short notice, with limited access to real firepower, Jamie needed every advantage he could think of. And if there was one weapon he knew how to wield...

After injecting the guy, Jamie tucked him into a bed in a private room in the evacuated orthopedics ward next door. Samira relieved him of a clip of pounds in his pocket.

“I wish they’d shut off that fucking siren,” Jamie said as they left the room, closing the door. “We’d better get out of here before security arrives—or this guy’s buddies. I’m afraid we’ve lost your shoes, Cinderella. You might want to put your boots back on.”

“I have an idea how we can get away,” Samira said a minute later, as she zipped up the boots.

“All ears.”

She led him back to Occupational Therapy. “There,” she said, pointing to a display box fixed to a wall. Inside, two dozen keys hung on nails. A sign read OT Pool Cars. Sign the log BEFORE you take a key. Return with a FULL TANK. NO exceptions.

“Crumbs, Samira! Are you suggesting we steal a car?”

“Just...borrow.” She stepped back, abruptly. “You’re right. What am I thinking? It’s a terrible idea.”

He caught her shoulders. “It’s a great idea. You’re more easily corruptible than I’d thought.”

The box was locked but he found the key in a drawer. They tidied up the nurse’s station. He took the logbook and buried it in a paper recycling bin two wards north.

Now for the staff car park. As they approached a blind corner in the corridor, Samira grabbed his arm. Footsteps. He pushed her through a door into a bathroom and drew his weapon. The footsteps passed.

“Good timing,” he said. “I’m needing to use the facilities.”

As they emerged, they nearly collided with a trio of local police, packing Glocks.

“Shit, you gave me a hell of a fright,” Jamie chided in his best Scouse, tucking his weapon into the back of his waistband and pulling his jacket over top, hoping it looked like he was adjusting his jeans after a bathroom break. He leaned slightly to make Harriet’s ID spin facedown on his chest. Hopefully they were searching for a chubby guy with black hair, from the description Mariya would have given. “Know where we’re supposed to be going for this bloody lockdown? I skived off to the pub in the last drill.”

They listened intently to the bobbies’ directions, and set off accordingly, Jamie loudly grumbling that this was the last time he was coming in on his day off. When they were clear, they doubled back and crept through corridors and tunnels to the parking building, skirting security cameras wherever possible, hunkering into their clothing when not. He might be a rat in a maze, but this was his maze.

They found the car in its allotted space. “There she is,” Jamie said. “Saint Jude’s finest piece-of-shit hatchback.”

He tipped his rucksack into the car’s boot, nudging aside a collapsed wheelchair. Samira checked the car for a GPS unit or tracker.

“You’re giving the NHS credit for a bigger budget than they have,” Jamie said.

“Can’t be too careful when you’re committing a felony.”

“It’s just a regular old crime, over here.”

“That makes me feel so much better.”

Samira hid in the footwell of the rear seat, covered in her brown coat. Jamie wrapped himself up in a football scarf and the cap.

At the hospital gates, a barrier arm guarded the exit. A parking attendant leaned out of her station. “We’re on lockdown. No one in or out.”

“It’s an emergency.” Jamie went with a Welsh accent.

The woman frowned. “That’s an OT car. What even is an OT emergency?”

“You can ask me that when it’s your grandmother who can’t get off the loo because her grab rail came off in her hand.”

The attendant blinked, like she was seeing a mind picture, then shrugged and lifted the barrier.

Outside the gates, they crept into a traffic jam. Rain peppered the roof. The windows fogged up. No sign of the helicopter—it’d probably scarpered after failing to take down Jamie, before local forces could scramble to respond. This close to Whitehall and Buckingham Palace, the police wouldn’t take chances.

“What’s happening?” Samira hissed.

Jamie rubbed the windscreen. The wipers beat like a crazed metronome. “Not a lot. Who’d be a getaway car driver in London?”

“Oh my God, Jamie. We just stole a car.”

“Technically, I stole it—though you did force me into it. But don’t worry. We’ll return it clean and with a full tank.”

As they crawled onto Westminster Bridge, a familiar blond head snaked around the umbrellas bobbing along the pavement. Wisely leaving the sinking ship, ready to regroup. Jamie would have to drive right past him, but with a dozen cops in view, the goon would be keeping his head even lower than Jamie’s.

Police were waving traffic by with barely a glance. He’d bet they had no idea what they were looking for but figured it wasn’t an NHS hatchback going two miles an hour.

Jamie hung a left after Big Ben and the traffic eased up. Union Jacks sagged from the towers of Westminster and the Abbey. He had to fight the urge to drive on the right-hand side, after so many years on the Continent. When they’d passed through the main tourist area into the neoclassical stone of Millbank, he gave Samira the all clear to climb into the front seat. She slid her sunglasses back on and adjusted her wig. Not that anybody on the streets had their heads up. And the dreich day and foggy windows would mess with CCTV.

“So, Putney, right?” he said.

“You know how to get there?”

“Aye. Got an address?”

She recited it from memory. “I just hope Charlotte’s there. I had no safe way of telling her I was on my way. I don’t even know what we’re collecting. This could all be for nothing.”

“Ah, it’s been fun so far. But you’d better hold your breath—we’re passing MI5.” He jerked his head to a stately building to their right, no doubt ablaze with activity beneath its imperial facade, given the morning’s alert. “Look at it, sitting there all fat and self-important while an enemy of the American people passes right by.”

“Is this you trying to make me feel less anxious?”

“Not working?”

“Not working.”

“Stick with me. We’ll be okay.”

Right. Because nobody who stuck with him ever came unstuck?

She doesn’t need to know.

Then again, she’d had intimate experience of coming unstuck in his company. Shite, they were going to be alone in a car for maybe half an hour. She wouldn’t want to talk about what’d happened between them, would she?

As they left the spooks behind and veered back to the Thames, she swore and pulled something from her coat pocket. The goon’s phone.

“I’d forgotten about this,” she said.

“We’ll chuck it in the river. You know how Tess is about phones being traced.”

She lifted the phone to the gauzy light coming through her window and tilted it left to right, like she was looking for a way in. “Believe me, I’m the same.”

“You’ve caught her paranoid tendencies?”

“You could say we contracted them from the same source.”

“Get rid of it, Samira. The guy said something about GPS tracking.”

She squinted at it. “This won’t take a second.”

“What won’t?”

“It might be useful to find out what this guy knows, where he’s been. If they can GPS-track it, so can I.”

“How long will that take?”

“A minute or two. I’ll download a backup app and sync everything to the cloud—GPS data, phone calls, texts... I can sift through it later.”

“Just you do that. It’s not password-protected, then?”

“Looks like a swipe pattern,” she said, pulling off a glove. “Which is only effective if you wipe the screen after each use.” She flicked a fingertip in a Z shape and the screen lit up. “You see?”

Oh, he did see. Nothing sexier than a smart brain. And the longer she used it for techie stuff, the less time for awkward after-the-morning-after conversations. With luck, they’d get through the next few hours with no chance to even reference their...liaison. Just so long as he didn’t go kissing her again. Self-control wasn’t his strong point but he could at least manage that, dopamine or not.

Right?