Authors: Shawn Grady
Naomi shivered. “What is it?”
“I lost something in the lake.”
“Hope it. Wasn’t. Important.”
“We need to get you out of those wet clothes.”
“Bet you’d. Like that.”
I smiled. “I won’t lie to you. Come on. Let’s get you in the cabin.”
“Uh-uh.”
“You’re hypothermic, Naomi.” I wasn’t doing too well myself.
She shook her head. “Hurts too much to move.”
“What if I carry you?”
She looked at me as if I had lost my mind.
Daylight. Was she still able to think clearly? For that matter, was I? “The temperature” – my voice vibrated – “is dropping by the minute. You’re injured and we need to get you warm.”
“I can’t take moving that far.”
I shifted my weight, searching for a solution. If I couldn’t bring her to the cabin, I’d bring the cabin to her. “I’m going to get firewood and see if Eli has spare clothes.” I drew the wool blanket together in front of her. “You going to be okay here?”
Her jaw quivered. “Yes.”
I circled my hands behind her ears and kissed her. “I’ll be right back.”
I ran toward the cabin, unable to differentiate between my feet and the ground, between my bare arms and the skin covered by my shirt.
Every shadow looked like Trent.
His gun had to be out of ammo. Mine was at the bottom of the lake. I had no choice but to focus on providing warmth. The helicopter would be back, but not before the temperature dropped below freezing.
The door to the cabin hung open, the inside dark. I found the kitchen drawer with the matches and lit the table lantern. The flame grew bright, a soft-cornered triangle. The slight warmth from it lifted my spirits. In the front closet I found two down jackets and beanies. I stripped off my wet T-shirt, buttoned up the jacket, and pulled a beanie to my ears. I tucked four logs from the fireplace hearth under my arm and from the front doorway squinted through the fading light to see Naomi. I could just make out her form sitting beside the tree.
I worked my way back to her, set the lamp and logs down, and fitted a beanie over her head. I held up the jacket.
She shook her head. “Fire first.”
Using one of the logs I dug a shallow hole in the duff and then set the wood up in a crib with pine needles in the spaces. I lit pine needles and twigs with the lantern flame and at first created little more than thick gray smoke. But zephyrs blew in off the water, fed the incipient fire, and it flashed bright yellow. We drew close to it, warming our hands.
Night enveloped us. The cabin disappeared.
“It’s okay,” she said.
“What?”
“You don’t have to go back to get anything. Just stay.”
I wrapped the jacket over her blanketed shoulders. “How’s this for now?”
“Good.”
I heard water lapping but couldn’t make out the lake through the trees. The landing zone was pitch-black.
“Naomi, I need to get more flares from Eli’s car.”
“What about the fire?”
“I’d have to build four separate ones. There’s no guarantee they’ll stay lit.”
“Don’t leave.”
“The moon will be even thinner tonight.”
She exhaled and stared into the darkness. “You’re right. They won’t land without it marked.”
I picked up the oil lamp. “It’s just up the hill. Couple minutes.”
Not wanting to end up in the trench like James, I trekked up the middle of the dirt road with eyes fixed on the ground in front of me. My lamplight soon reflected off the chrome on the Scout. I scanned the dirt in front of it. A long shadow bent across the road, and my eyes adjusted and distinguished the shape of the trench.
I heard the strike of a car ignition and the muted rumble of an engine. I lifted the lantern and peered through the Scout’s windshield.
Vacant.
No exhaust from the rear.
The engine sound grew louder with the sound of tires spinning over dirt.
Behind me.
I spun around. Headlights flipped on. Green halos danced. A Jeep barreled into view. The transmission shifted gears and roared head on.
I tossed the lantern at it and dove to the side. Glass crashed on metal with a burst of light. The Jeep skidded sideways and I rolled, the rear end swiping over my head. I collided with a boulder on the roadside. The Jeep rocked to a stop, half a foot from the trench, fire raging from the hood and the windshield. Knobby tires spun and engaged in reverse. I scrambled over the rock and jumped between trees. Metal struck the boulder behind me. Tires spun again. The Jeep reversed and took off down the road.
Naomi.
I darted between tree trunks and sprinted after it. No plan. I just chased the glow, running into the road, through a trail of smoke and exhaust and dirt.
Naomi screamed.
Metal crunched. The fire grew.
Helicopter blades beat overhead.
I came upon the scene, the Jeep mashed against a tree, its grill concave. Fire extended from the hood to the fabric top. Inside, the driver lay slumped over the wheel, flames spreading into the passenger compartment.
“Jonathan!”
Naomi lay in the dirt, sheltered on the opposite side of the tree.
I ran and dropped beside her. “Are you hurt?”
She shook her head. “No. No. I’m okay.”
I stood. “Hold on.”
The fire became a blaze, the heat so intense I couldn’t get close to the passenger door. I scuffled around to the driver’s side, blocking my face, coughing through the smoke. The door looked jammed, folded in from the impact. I tried the latch without success, metal burning at my touch. I tripped back over a stone, crashing to the dirt. Fire reflected and shimmered in the driver’s-door window. I palmed the rock, made my feet, and smashed the glass. Smoke belched out. I lifted the driver’s head off the wheel.
“Trent. Trent!”
The interior flashed into fire. I ducked low, scorching flames forcing me back.
The beating of the helicopter came from just beyond the tree line.
Echo appeared at the edge of the glow. “Naomi!”
“Over here,” I led her to the tree.
Her eyes were frantic. “What happened?”
“Take her other side.” I pulled Naomi’s arm around my shoulder and lifted with Echo. “Let’s just get out of here.”
AprisEvac descended on the rooftop of the Washoe County Medical Center.
Naomi, despite initial obstinance over not lying on the cot, acquiesced and rested her head back, falling asleep in minutes with a hanging IV bag tethered to her arm. I was sure that only a flight nurse could find repose like that in a helicopter.
Being a bit lighter than James, I found passage in the third jump seat, which sported an intact seatbelt harness. Had James been even thirty pounds lighter, Naomi could have ridden in on the first flight.
We neared the pad, and in the white roof lights I recognized two of three ER nurses standing with a gurney near the elevator vestibule – Sherri, a red-haired woman in her thirties, and Mitch, a bald man with a biker build and faded tats half hidden by his scrub sleeves. The third nurse was a skinny, bespectacled man with thinning black hair. The helicopter touched down. The pilot flipped switches and the engines shut off with a fading whistle. The nurses hunched over and approached.
Echo slid the door open by the cot. Sherri caught my eye with a look of surprise. I saw my reflection in the opposite door glass. Fat upper lip, soot marks across my cheeks, dried blood at my nostrils. Mitch glanced at me – an inquisitive expression on his face.
Naomi woke and groaned, returning a hand to her side. Spectacles and Mitch took one end of the cot. I helped Echo on the opposite side, stepping onto the skid with it and transferring Naomi onto their gurney.
She took my hand. I stroked her hair. “You’ll be taken good care of.”
They pushed her toward the vestibule and I lagged behind, feigning to search the helicopter cabin for something. The elevator doors opened and the four got in. With the gurney there wasn’t much room for another.
I sidestepped to the nose of the helicopter, careful to stay away from the hot steel tube Naomi had showed me, and waved them on. “I’ll get the next one.”
Echo hit the button for the ER. Spectacles squinted at me. The steel doors drew together.
The pilot wrote on a clipboard in the cockpit. I stood there, unsure what to do next, my legs bone cold with the rooftop breeze.
Digital numbers flipped in descending order above the elevator doors.
Naomi would be cared for. But I was a wanted man.
Security cameras angled from the rooftop corners. I brought a hand to my brow and walked to the vestibule. Hospital security would likely want to visit with me.
The helicopter rotors turned at merry-go-round speed. The pilot got out and rummaged through a rear compartment on the tail boom. I scratched my neck.
Now where?
I hit the call button for the elevator and patted my thighs.
In the original County Hospital – the old brick-and-mortar structure now overshadowed by the modern steel-and-glass towers – Dr. Eli kept a small office in the basement, one that had been designated decades ago for use by the mortician. It was tiny and so removed within the hospital that administration had kept it for the medical examiner’s use. But Eli, reclusive lab dweller that he was, rarely made it over, preferring to work in the glass-walled office adjacent to the morgue examination area.
If I could get to the old building, I’d have a place to hide.
The elevator dinged. I stepped inside and pushed the button for the Operating Room floor. If I was going to make it to Eli’s office, I would need a new outfit.
Anesthesiologist Dr. Flynn had been a great asset in my education, permitting me to practice intubations on patients down in the operating room. It was through him that I’d years ago acquired the elevator code for the OR, secured my own locker in the doctors’shower facility, and had easy access to surgical scrubs.
I strapped on a pale blue surgical cap and a face mask, complementing the scrubs I’d found. I exited the locker room and walked down the hallway between the operating rooms. Wearing a face mask in the hall was a bit unconventional but not outrageous. To be safe I snatched a clipboard from a break room and moved at a brisk pace, feigning a summons by the severity of information found on the clipboard paperwork. In reality, it told me that the seventeenth annual orthopedic luncheon would be hosted downtown next week. But people made way for me and the assumed authority I possessed.
The clipboard, mightier than the sword.
I progressed to the elevator, made the first floor, and snaked my way uninhibited through the narrowing corridors that led to the old hospital. I descended to the cool cellar that Eli had showed me years back, almost as a novelty. I remembered following his tour with the curiosity of one visiting the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose. Painted white plumbing hung low from the ceiling. HVAC ducting required one to bend beneath it. There were no security cameras. Dim-wattage incandescent bulbs lit the corridors. At the end of one hall stood a white door with a thin black plaque. I wiped a layer of dust from its title –
Coroner
.
The corridor remained empty. I tried the knob.
Locked.
Remembering Eli’s comment about keeping a key near places he didn’t go to regularly, I felt the molding above the door and found one. I blew the dust off and slipped it into the lock.
I pulled the brass chain on Eli’s desk lamp and closed the door behind me. Three bookshelf-lined walls stood in the lampshade’s green pall. I slumped back in the chair and tossed my surgical mask and cap on the desk. The room smelled of old plaster and stale air.
Trent had to have been working with Kurtz. They knew about the cabin. They knew we were going there. But more than that. Somehow they knew that Naomi was connected to me. Had Trent sabotaged her seat harness? She would’ve been killed had she been anywhere but over the water.
I pulled out my phone to dial Eli, pushed the on button twice, and groaned. Apparently it wasn’t waterproof. A Touch-Tone phone sat on the table. I dialed Eli’s cell from memory and waited.
It went to voice mail.
I hung up and tried again, with the same result. “Call me” was all I said on the message, forgetting until after hanging up that he would not be able to reach me.
What about Naomi? What made me think she’d be safe even in the hospital? We needed more answers.
I rested my neck on the chair back. I needed to find a way to get Naomi out of the ER once she was treated. I’d found a place of short respite. A hole in the ground. But I couldn’t stay.
I grabbed my forehead.
If I met up with Naomi, assuming she was well enough to move, I could get her a wheelchair and we could leave together and find a way to meet up with Eli.
It would look too strange to walk around with a full face mask in the ER. Instead, I strapped it on my chin and stood with clipboard in hand.
Off to the lion’s den.
Activity buzzed in the emergency room – EKG techs pushing carts, phlebotomists with trays of blood-draw vials, a host of nurses I knew too well. If I was going to be recognized anywhere in the hospital, this was the place. I remained deliberate in my movements, using the clipboard to shield my face. I examined the room-assignment board and searched for Naomi by her last name, Foster.
Farmer. Fenell. Foust.
No Naomi.
Sherri pushed a cart into a patient room. Mitch wrote on a chart at a counter. I needed to find out where she had been moved.
I turned and bumped into a nurse.
Spectacles.
I looked down. “Excuse me. Sorry.” I strode for the exit, only glancing back when I’d made the door.
Spectacles stared at me, a phone already at his ear.