Читать книгу Classified Baby - Jessica Andersen - Страница 7

Chapter Three

Ethan walked the hospital corridors with no real destination in mind. He simply thought better when he was moving. He always had.

Nicole’s child might have half his DNA, but he knew as well as anyone that biology didn’t make a father. Character made a man a father. Honesty did, and integrity. Wholeness.

And though Ethan considered himself a logical, honest man, he was anything but whole.

Seeing a knot of people in the hallway up ahead, he detoured down the next offshoot corridor. If he’d still believed in the religion his mother had tried to instill in him, he might’ve thought it no accident that the hallway dead-ended at the hospital chapel. Since he’d long ago renounced faith in a higher power, he thought only that it was a quiet, empty space with padded benches.

He sprawled in one, let his head fall back with a thump and closed his eyes.

Just that morning, everything had been normal. True, the TCM investigation was way beyond PPS’s usual cases, but that was work, not personal. Over the past five years he’d done his best to insulate himself against letting things get personal. If he wasn’t involved, he couldn’t be hurt.

More importantly, he couldn’t hurt anyone else.

“Ethan?” Evangeline’s voice said from nearby. “Is everything okay?”

Though he normally enjoyed her company, his first thought now was oh, hell.

He cracked his lids and watched her sit in the pew across the aisle from him. She was wearing the top half of a set of scrubs, along with her own pants and shoes. Her right arm was bandaged from shoulder to elbow, and a Band-Aid above her left eyebrow was several shades darker than her pale skin. But she looked steady enough as she said, “What’s wrong?”

“Where’s Robert?”

“Why, because you and he are both Neanderthal enough to think it’s his job to keep me under control?” She sent him her trademark give-me-a-break look. “For your information I’ve been treated and released. No hospital room, no observation period. I’m fit and ready to get back into the fight.” She flexed her good arm, showing a decent muscle, but he noticed that she didn’t try it with the bandaged arm. “And to answer your other question, Robert is on the phone with one of his police contacts, trying to get an update on what the crime scene analysts and the bomb squad think about the office.”

“Still, you shouldn’t be walking around alone,” Ethan said.

She sent him a sharp look. “I ran PPS by myself for more than two years, during which time, I might add, I hired you. Just because Robert rose from the dead doesn’t make me incapable of defending myself.”

He shook his head. “I didn’t say you were, but your name is on the hit list and your office took the brunt of the attack. You have to be careful. We can’t afford to lose you.”

If Robert had begun to reemerge as the leader of PPS, Evangeline was the glue that held them together. She had drawn Ethan into the organization, giving him the base of support he’d so badly needed, along with the freedom to take short-term protection assignments that suited his short-term attention span.

“I can take care of myself,” Evangeline repeated. “I’m not going to do anything stupid, though. And don’t think I didn’t notice you changing the subject. So give. Why’re you sitting in here alone?”

“I like being alone.” But the question brought his mind circling back to Nicole.

She was going to have a baby. His baby.

What the hell was he supposed to do about that? Nothing, he knew. It would be better for everyone involved if he did nothing. His own father had been a sperm donor, his stepfather a savior. Nicole and the baby would be far better off finding a man to complete their family without living the hell his own mother had suffered through to find her Prince Charming.

Besides, a family meant commitment and emotion, neither of which were rational choices for someone like him.

Evangeline waited for him to continue. When he didn’t, she said, “It’s an open-ended offer with no statue of limitations. So if you need a friend to talk to, come find me, okay?”

Ethan dipped his chin in a nod. “Thanks.”

She stood, mostly covering her wince. “Robert and I are headed over to the Vault.” Her eyes glinted with determination, along with rising anger. “PPS will be run from there until this thing is finished.”

“The Vault?” Intrigued despite himself, Ethan climbed to his feet and followed her out of the chapel. “I thought that was an in-house urban legend.” Rumor had it that PPS maintained a secret underground location, and had spy ware in place to duplicate every piece of information that came and went from the PPS offices, sending it to the Vault.

“It’s real,” Evangeline said with a small smile. “It’s located in an old Cold War bunker outside the city. With the main office destroyed, we’re going to move operations there. A couple of the guys are organizing the support staff, figuring out who we absolutely can’t do without, and getting them set up underground.” Her lips thinned. “It’s coming down to the wire, Ethan. Either we take out whoever is behind that list or they take us out.”

She pushed through the door leading to the hallway, with Ethan right behind her. Just then, heavy footsteps rang out around the corner, the sound of a big man, moving fast.

Ethan stepped in front of Evangeline, tensing for battle, then relaxing when Robert appeared.

The other man’s expression was tight. “Is Miss Benedict with you two?”

“She’s in her room,” Ethan said. “Second floor, 201A.”

Robert shook his head. “Her bed’s empty. And it wasn’t a bomb that took out the office. It was a surface-to-air missile, only it wasn’t fired from ground level—it was an aerial attack from a dark helicopter with no markings. None of the witnesses were close enough to catch any details. With the way the windows are set up, Miss Benedict is the only person who might’ve seen the chopper.”

Blood roared through Ethan’s veins, and he turned and sprinted up the hallway with Robert and Evangeline at his heels, spurred by the knowledge that the TCM conspirators didn’t leave witnesses alive.

NICOLE FLICKERED in and out of awareness, sometimes able to process her surroundings, sometimes not.

At first she saw hospital corridors rolling past as her captor wheeled her along. Then she was in an elevator. Another hallway. Then a plain room with gray-green walls and a palpable chill in the air.

The next time she surfaced, she was still in the gray-green room, still strapped to the gurney, but the man in the white lab coat was gone and the room was seriously cold. She shivered, realizing that the room wasn’t just somebody-turned-up-the-AC-too-high cold, it was all-the-way-to-igloo freezing.

Like a meat locker, she thought, panic kindling as she twisted her head, trying to get a good look around. She didn’t see any dead bodies—she wasn’t in the morgue, thank God—but she didn’t see much else. The insulated walls of the bare room were painted gray-green, and the shiny white door bore a freezer handle and a small, fogged window. A refrigerator unit bolted to the ceiling above her hummed, blowing cold air.

“Hello?” she said, her words emerging on a puff of vapor as her breath met the chilly air. She raised her voice. “Can anyone hear me?”

The echoes bounced off the walls and door, faint beneath the refrigerator’s hum.

Breath clogging in her lungs, she tugged frantically at the straps securing her to the gurney, but succeeded only in pressing her body into the thin mattress beneath her. She felt very small and weak and scared. Worse, she realized she’d stopped shivering, and when she exhaled, the vapor was faint, warning that her core temperature was falling. She was probably only minutes away from hypothermia, maybe an hour away from death.

She sucked in a breath and screamed, “I’m in here! Somebody! Anybody, get me out of here!”

Her only response was the hum of the cooling unit.

ETHAN STOOD at the main admittance desk, cold anger pounding in his veins. “She’s not in the hospital. The bastards took her.”

Robert clasped his shoulder briefly. “We’ll find her.”

But they both knew that by then it could be too late.

Around them, the admitting area bustled with normal hospital activity, plus the tension of an organized search. All free personnel were on the lookout, and security officers had spread throughout the complex. If she’d been transported somewhere else, though, the effort was useless.

“Call the cops,” Ethan said, possibilities flickering through his mind in a gruesome slide show. “You’ve got friends there. They’ll look if you push them.”

“Already done,” Robert said. “Given that she’s the only witness who might have seen—”

“Mr. Moore, Mr. Prescott!” A woman’s hail interrupted and Ethan turned to see Dr. Eballa rushing toward them, followed closely by a tall teenager wearing blue scrubs and a volunteer’s badge. “I may have something.” When she reached the men, she urged the teen forward. “Tell them.”

The dark-haired youth looked at a nearby uniformed security officer, flushed and stared at his feet. “There was a guy in the back stairwell.”

When he fell silent, Ethan was tempted to grab him and shake the story loose. Instead, he stepped closer and lowered his voice. When he caught the faint scent of pot, he said, “Look, kid. Nobody cares what you were doing or where. Just tell me what you saw.”

The teen glanced from Ethan to the guard and back, then mumbled, “Promise?”

“You won’t get in trouble for smoking in the stairwell,” Ethan said. “At least not this time. After that, you’re on your own.”

“’Kay.” The kid nodded. “So listen, I was in the back stairwell, okay? And this guy came up from the basement wearing a white coat, okay? Only he wasn’t a doctor—his clothes were all wrong and he didn’t have a badge. Besides, why would a doctor be coming up from the basement? Ain’t nothing down there but empty rooms. And he was using a phone, and that’s not allowed in here, right?”

Robert interjected, “What did he say?”

“Something like, ‘Make up your goddamn mind already.’ I didn’t hear the rest because I took off before he saw me.”

“Are you sure he didn’t see you?”

The kid bobbed his head. “Positive.”

Ethan turned to Dr. Eballa. “Where are these stairs?”

“I’ll take you.” As they hurried through the hospital corridors, she said, “He’s right, there’s not much down there. Mostly empty storage rooms we use as overflow during disasters.”

Something chilled inside Ethan. If the white-coated guy in the stairwell had taken Nicole, he might have hidden her down there.

Or he might have dumped her corpse.

He swallowed hard. “What sort of overflow?”

Dr. Eballa pushed through a doorway marked Stairs, then glanced back. “Bodies. Two of the rooms are set up as temporary morgues. We only run the refrigerators when we need the space, though.”

They reached the bottom of the stairs and pushed through a set of heavy doors. The corridor was dimly lit. The cement walls were painted a muted green and the floor was white laminate, like much of the rest of the building. But down in the basement, the color scheme didn’t seem soothing. It felt swampy. Ominous.

Tension vibrating through every fiber of his being, Ethan shouted, “Nicole? Are you down here?”

When there was no answer, he strode down the corridor, checking doors as the doctor hurried in his wake. The first two rooms were dark and silent. The window of the third was blurred with condensation, and when he felt the door handle, it was cold to the touch.

Robert and a handful of security officers appeared at the far end of the corridor. Ethan shouted, “In here!” He worked the door handle and shoved through, gut tight with apprehension. “Nicole?”

His heart stopped, simply stopped when he saw the motionless figure strapped to a gurney. Dark curls fanned out from a too-pale face, and her lips were the same blue as the thin blanket that covered her body.

“Nicole!” He skidded to her side and yanked at the straps holding her down. When she was free, he felt for her carotid pulse and nearly shuddered at the feel of her corpse-cold flesh. Then, miraculously, he felt a faint flutter beneath his fingertips. Another.

“Move!” Dr. Eballa hustled him aside. “We’ve got to get her upstairs, stat!”

She turned the gurney toward the door. As she did so, Nicole’s eyelids flickered open. She looked around wildly for a moment, then her eyes fixed on Ethan. Her lips formed the words, Thank you.

Then she was gone, whisked away by the doctor, who snapped orders about heating blankets, warm-water lavages and an ultrasound. Ethan followed, but Dr. Eballa barred him from cramming into the car with the gurney and the security officers. “Meet us up there, you’ll just be in the way.” Then she paused, and said, “I’ll put a guard on the door, and she’ll get the best medical team in the state. God willing, she and the baby will both be fine.”

Then the elevator doors slid shut, leaving Ethan behind. He wasn’t alone, though. He could hear Robert in the cold room, ordering the security officers to seal the scene and call in the PD, and Evangeline stood in the hallway nearby. He saw the knowledge in her eyes when she said, “Let’s head upstairs. You’ll want to be there when they’ve got her stabilized.”

It’s not what you think, Ethan wanted to say. I can’t be a father.

Instead, he turned and headed for the stairs, rubbing absently at his chest where an ache had gathered.

Robert emerged and fell into step at his side. “They’ll secure the room and I’ll make sure the pothead sits down with a sketch artist. I’ll put some men on Miss Benedict’s room. Once she’s conscious, we’ll want the artist in with her, too.” A flicker of satisfaction crossed his face. “This could be the break we’ve been waiting for, our chance to nail these bastards.”

Instantly furious, Ethan grabbed his boss and slammed him up against the green-painted wall. He crowded close, levered an arm across Robert’s throat and got in his face, growling, “Stay the hell away from Nicole. She’s not a break in your case, she’s not bait, and she’s not a pawn in one of your spy games.”

The big man didn’t give him the satisfaction of struggling. He merely narrowed his eyes. “Then what is she?”

Ethan didn’t hesitate, knowing the lie was a necessary evil. “She’s mine.”