“Listen, I can explain. It’s not what you think.” He checked behind the nurse to make sure his memory served him right. There was no stairwell at the end of this hall. Only five more rooms and then the window leading out to the fire escape.
“I don’t think nothin’,” Nurse Brookes promised, her eyes full of tears.
“I want you to go into this room right here and just wait in there. Will you do that?”
“What are up to? Are you after Dr. Tremont?”
“No, Lucy,” Jack said in the most soothing voice he could muster. “I’m not going to hurt her. Please believe me.”
The nurse had stopped moving. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what you’re doing in my hospital with that gun.”
Jack decided he’d been too calm. He raised the gun and barked, “I don’t have time for this, Lucy. Either get in the room or I’m going to shoot you in the Goddamn leg. Now what’s it going to be?”
He knew he could never shoot her, but he counted on the nurse not knowing this fact. The threat and the sight of the barrel of a gun was enough to convince Lucy to give up her standoff.
With a shriek, she ducked into a room and slammed the door behind her. Jack went to the door to see if he could lock or wedge it closed somehow. As he approached the door he heard Lucy talking excitedly to someone. At first he thought there might be a deputy in the room but then he realized his mistake.
“Stupid. Stupid,” he cursed out loud to the empty hallway. Each room had a phone. The nurse had already let them know he was there.
The window to the fire escape was only feet away from him. He could easily escape in time. Even if they thought to send someone over to the fire escape, Lonetree had them pinned down inside. But then Huckley would still be alive.
Jack made the decision in a matter of seconds. He had to finish what he started.
He turned and ran down the hall, making sure that the safety was off the gun. He reached room 320 and threw open the door.
The room was dark, illuminated only by the orange glow of life-support monitors. He didn’t bother with the light. He didn’t have time. Without pausing, without thinking, he ran up to the bed and pulled the trigger.
The explosion of the .357 Magnum jerked the handgun back in his hand. He steadied it and fired again. Each shot so loud in the small room that he thought he might go deaf.
The entire bed bucked when each slug slammed into it. Pieces of shredded cloth flew into the air. Sparks poured from the electrical equipment hit by shrapnel and threw bizarre shadows over the carnage.
Jack fired all six shots into the bed. He screamed through it all. A release of the tension and the frustration of the last days welling up inside him and coming out as a primal yell.
Then silence. Out of bullets and out of emotion, Jack simply stared at the scene in front of him.
“Hello, Jack.”
When he turned, he felt like his brain turned in on itself.
There, standing in a row against the back wall, were Janney, Lauren and Nate Huckley. Huckley wasn’t in the bed. He was fully awake and dressed.
“Surprised to see me?” Huckley cracked.
Lauren pointed at him and shouted a warning. Too late, he realized she was pointing behind him. A flash of pain exploded in the back of his head. He felt himself falling. Then nothing.
SIXTY-SEVEN
“Wake up! WAKE UP!”
The words seemed to have solid form and beat against his brain like sonic chunks of concrete. The shouting was accompanied by a drum roll of dull metallic thuds. It wasn’t until he opened his eyes that he could place the sound. A police baton being dragged across metal bars. The fuzzy outline of a face drifted on the other side of the jail cell. Slowly it materialized into a smiling Deputy Sorenson.
“Hello, Mr. Tremont. I thought we might get to see each other again.”
Jack sat upright and groaned from the sudden movement. He swayed in place as he waited for the blood rush to pass so he could reclaim his equilibrium. The world slowed its orbit around him and he was able to focus enough to wish bad things on the deputy harassing him from the other side of the bars. An unexpected grunt behind him made him twist around to see who he was sharing the cell with. His worse fears were confirmed as he watched Joseph Lonetree roll over on the bunk in the corner.
Jack crawled over to Lonetree and poked him in the ribs. “Wake up,” Jack said, surveying the many cuts and bruises on his face. “Jesus, you look how I feel.”
Lonetree squinted and looked around the cell. “Is this the best room they have?”
“Great plan. We didn’t accomplish anything and now…now look at us.”
“Tell me you at least got Huckley.”
Jack quickly explained what had happened. When he was done, Lonetree shook his head. “I knew I should have done it myself.”
“Hey, looks like you’re in this jail cell with me, buddy. How did you get caught by some small town cops?”
Lonetree shrugged. “Must be getting old.” He pointed to Deputy Sorenson standing outside their cell. “That piece of shit got the drop in me from behind. Not much you can do when you have a gun pointing at your head.”
“This guy is the one who roughed you up like this?”
“That was when his buddies showed up. I guess they were a little bent out of shape from me shooting at them. They hit like pansies though,” Lonetree laughed and pointed to Deputy Sorenson. “Especially you, shit head. Complete pansy.”
Sorenson started digging in his pockets for the keys, “You son-of-a-”
“Sorenson!” Janney shouted as he entered the cell block. “What the hell are you doing?”
The deputy, looking like a whipped dog, stuttered, “N-N-Nothing… I was just…”
“Just about to open that door, get your ass kicked, and let these prisoners escape.”
“I—”
“Get out of here,” Janney growled, wrinkling his nose as if the deputy’s incompetence were something he could smell. He waited for him to sulk out the door before turning his attention to Jack and Lonetree. “So hard to find good help these days,” he grinned as he walked up to the cell. “What are we going to do with the two of you?”
Jack tried to contain the emotion in his voice, but still it came out trembling. “Where is Sarah? What have you done with her?”
Janney smiled. “Attempted murder. Assault against a police officer. Illegal firearms. Aggravated assault. So many charges, so little time.” He leaned in close to the bars, “But we’ll worry about that later. I brought a special visitor for you.”
Jack looked to the door, expecting to see Lauren. Instead, he saw a man dressed in jeans and a white dress shirt, with skin so pale that his neck and shirt seemed to run together. Blue eyes stood out from the white flesh of his face and two blood-red thin lines sufficed for a mouth. These two lines were twisted together in a wicked smirk as Nate Huckley strode into the cell block.
“Hello there. Good to see you again,” Huckley said, draping one hand over the crossbar that ran across the center of the cell wall and waving the other through the air in an accentuated gesture. He looked over to Lonetree. “We haven’t met. But I knew your brother well. He was…fascinating. I’ve never met a man with such endurance for pain.”
Jack turned to Lonetree, expecting the man to run at the bars, maybe even tear through them and rip Huckley’s throat out. But he stayed where he was. His chest heaved and his hands clenched at his sides, but he seemed to know that a lunge would be futile, probably even pleasing to his tormentor.