The hospital service door was locked. Jet worked the picks and had it open in under a minute. She adjusted the black knit cap on her head and listened for any signs of movement. It seemed deserted. After looking around to ensure that the parking area was still clear, she pulled it open. Thankfully, there was no alarm on it. She stepped inside and, glancing through the glass window on the interior door, confirmed that there was nobody nearby. She closed the exit softly and then turned to the stairwell, taking the steps two at a time.
At the third floor she paused, listening. It was quiet.
She swung the steel door wide and stepped into the hall. The lights were on dimmers, set low for the night, and she heard a single nurse at the staff station at the far end of the wing talking on the phone in hushed tones, an occasional giggle punctuating her exchange. Festive decorations of dancing ponies and singing birds decorated the colorfully painted corridor, confirming that she was in the pediatric wing.
Jet moved silently to the doorway of the first room and peered in. It was empty. The second housed a little boy sleeping on the bed, maybe six years old, a heart monitor beeping at a low volume on a stand by his side.
The two adjacent rooms were also empty.
The next one had a small form curled up on its side, covers half off, facing away from her. She stepped into the room and approached. The child rolled over, sensing a presence.
It wasn’t Hannah.
Another titter echoed from the nurse’s station, and she slowly inched back into the hall, pausing to listen again before moving to the room across from her.
Empty.
She heard a rustle from the corridor and turned.
“Hey. What are you doing here? You can’t go in there…” the nurse exclaimed.
Jet started to stammer an explanation and then slammed the side of her neck with an incapacitating strike. The nurse’s eyes rolled into her head, and Jet caught her as she collapsed, pulling her into the room and closing the door. The woman would be out for a few minutes, but time was Jet’s enemy now.
She darted from room to room and, in the one closest to the nurse’s station, came across another slumbering toddler. She sidled to the side of the bed and peered down at the sleeping face.
Hannah.
Jet’s nostrils filled with Hannah’s essence, and a surge of adrenaline coursed through her as the little eyelids opened groggily and regarded her. Jet saw recognition, and Hannah smiled before closing her eyes again and snuffling.
She gently lifted Hannah and held her to her breast, murmuring to her as she vaguely remembered her mother doing when she was a baby. Hannah snuggled closer, and Jet’s heart nearly burst.
A part of her could have stood like that forever, but she forced herself out of the spell and moved back into the hall, then speed-walked back to the stairwell. The exit was empty, so she pushed through the door and crept onto the landing, a draft blowing up from the street level ruffling the tips of her hair. Hannah shifted against her and made a soft sound of sleepy susurration, then resumed her drowsing.
Moments later, Jet was strapping Hannah into the new child’s seat in the Explorer, readying her for the short drive to where the RV sat waiting. A police car rolled by on the street in front of the hospital, and her breath caught in her throat. It hit its brake lights as it neared the intersection, slowing. Jet pulled the Beretta free of her jacket as she eased the driver’s door open.
The squad car picked up speed and continued on its way.
Jet exhaled with a sigh and then climbed behind the wheel. She took another look at Hannah in the child’s seat, her small head cocked to the side, eyes clenched shut as she slept, and then cranked the ignition and put the car in gear.
~ ~ ~
“It’s over,” Jet said into the cell phone as she backed the RV out of the driveway, the headlights off so as not to wake the couple in the house.
“All of them?”
She described her night’s activities in clipped sentences.
“And Hannah?”
“Sleeping next to me.”
“What’s your next move?”
“You’ll be the first to know as soon as I figure it out. First thing I need to do is get as far from Washington as I can. I’ll call you in another couple of days. What about you? What are you going to do?”
“I guess I need to think about that some. Can’t see any reason to hide out in the jungle if the bad guys with the grudge are history. Can you?”
“Not really. Unless you’re a nature nut or something.”
“I’m really not.”
“Then you thinking maybe you’ll buy yourself an island and hang out a hammock?” she asked.
“You make it sound like a pretty attractive proposition.”
“Right now, it sounds great. I envy you.”
“I’ll let you know what happens. You got the fifty in stones?”
“Of course.”
“Then you have a good reason to come back.”
She glanced at Hannah in the seat next to her, still asleep.
“I suppose I do.”
Chapter 37
Jet sat at a weathered table across from a heavyset Latino man, Hannah by her side, watching as he took a photo with the elaborate digital camera and then inspected it on his computer.
“Perfect. I can have the passport finished within two more days. It’ll pass cursory inspections, but you don’t want to use it anywhere they have an automated scanner. Those are typically linked to a central computer, and it will come up as an unrecognized number,” he advised.
“I need a few of those photos myself. Can you send them to this e-mail?” She handed him a piece of paper with a cutout e-mail account on it.
“You betcha. I’ll do it right now.” He moved his mouse around and typed in the address with excruciating slowness, then hit return. “Still not completely comfortable with these damned things. Technology. Although it’s made the business easier. Used to be a passport would take two weeks, not three days. But now you just press print and the machine does the work for you.” He shook his head. “But why a Mexican passport? Most of my customers want a U.S. one. If you don’t mind my asking.”
“I like Mexico.” She smiled sweetly.
“And the name on the passport?”
She’d thought about it a long time.
“Lawan Nguyen.”
“Spell it.”
She did.
“Good Mexican name. You sure you don’t want something like Maria Perez? Just saying…” He spread his hands wide, palms up.
“Nope.”
“Fine. Now to the mundane part of our transaction…” He looked at Jet expectantly.
She removed three thousand dollars from her purse and counted it, then sat back, studying the display cases on the walls filled with stamps and obscure currencies.
“And the balance when it’s done. Any problem with that?” he asked.
“No. I’ll be back in three days.”
She pushed back from the desk and stood, then held out her hand for Hannah, who joyfully grabbed it and slid off the chair. Hannah had decided that she hated strollers and was hell-bent on walking everywhere, her fierce determination to be independent reminiscent of her mother.
“What do you want to do now that your photo session is done, Hannah?” Jet asked.
Hannah pointed at the two-year-old Toyota Highlander she’d recently bought from a private party, parked twenty yards away in the Santa Ana sunshine. Hannah loved riding in the Highlander more than anything in the world, which was a good thing, because soon they would be doing a lot of driving.
The trip from Washington, D.C., had taken a week, and they’d slept at rest stops and campgrounds every night, avoiding the formalities of hotels. Once they’d made it to southern California, she’d put out feelers among the immigrant community and quickly found someone who could create good quality papers for her. If all went well, by the end of the week they would be in Mexico, where she planned to travel down the coast while she decided what to do next.