A snapping sound echoed off the walls and Erickson let out a thunderous groan. His grip on Luke’s coat loosened for an instant.
It was long enough. Luke stepped inside, spun around, and arced his flexed elbow behind him and into the linebacker’s jaw.
Erickson’s eyes bulged from their sockets as he registered the sound of his teeth shattering. He spit a bloodied tooth onto the floor, then let out a roar and lunged at McKenna like a lion going in for the kill.
Luke sidestepped the attack and unleashed his cocked leg in an impossibly fast motion. His right foot went through the linebacker’s face like a wrecking ball.
The impact lifted Erickson off his feet. He landed on his back with a dull thud.
He wasn’t moving.
It was over. The skirmish had lasted less than three seconds.
People rushed out of exam rooms. A plump security guard rounded the corner, panting from what probably had been a very short jog. When he saw the hulking mass on the floor, the guard froze for a moment, then slowly tiptoed toward Erickson as if approaching an unexploded bomb.
Another doctor joined the guard. They knelt at the linebacker’s side, checking the enormous body for signs of life. “He’s breathing,” shouted the doctor, sounding out of breath himself.
Luke wasn’t paying any attention. He studied the floor around him, looking for the stethoscope that had flown out of his pocket during the clash. He glanced down at his white coat. There was a tear in the lapel.
The swarm of onlookers grew. The E.R. director, Dr. Keller, vaulted out of a room and took in the scene. “What the hell?” he yelled. “What happened to that guy?”
Still staring at his lapel, Luke said, “He’ll be okay.”
Suddenly remembering the intercom page, he turned and started toward the Trauma Unit. As he trotted away, he called back over his shoulder, “I’d slap some restraints on Godzilla once you figure out how to lift him onto a gurney. He may be a little restless when he wakes up.”
Calderon scanned the parking structure for a spotter, someone with overly attentive eyes marking pigeons for the pickpocket. No one fit the profile.
He watched as the pickpocket collided with a harried traveler who was pulling luggage from the trunk of his car. Calderon admired the thief’s skill. The hapless victim had no inkling that his wallet was gone.
“So what about the boy?” he asked his client. Calderon poked the air with a finger and shook his head as he walked along a parallel row of cars. To all the world, he appeared a man absorbed in his phone conversation, oblivious to everything around him, even as his eyes fixed on the pickpocket. Calderon realized he had been the perfect mark: a chauffeur standing near a crowded exit, looking for his passengers, desensitized by the occasional brush with a bag-laden traveler; his loose-fitting black coat, unbuttoned, assumed to be holding a wallet bursting with tips from wealthy clientele; his mind elsewhere, displaying the telltale signs of distraction.
“Let me worry about the boy,” his client replied.
The pickpocket, now forty feet in front of him, glanced occasionally to each side, probably watching for tails as he hugged a row of cars on his way to the rear of the structure. The money was of no significance to Calderon, and the driver’s license and credit cards described a nonexistent person. But that could also become a problem. False IDs were designed to stand up to visual scrutiny, not investigative inquiry. The police, responding to some overeager Good Samaritan trying to return the wallet to its rightful owner, would discover that the driver’s license with his picture belonged to a nonperson.
Questions might arise, his picture circulated and studied. He couldn’t have that.
“But I am worried,” Calderon said. “This is the second time I’ve had to go chasing after test subjects that — how shall I put this? — strayed from the herd.”
He didn’t need to remind his client of the girl who was still missing. After a moment, he added, “Maybe it’s time you let me deal with this problem, yes?”
The pickpocket glanced back, but not quickly enough. Calderon had crouched behind a van. A woman pushing a stroller paid little attention to a man retying his shoe.
“Perhaps you’re right,” his client said. “I’ll give it some thought.”
When Calderon rose to his feet, the pickpocket was gone. An exit sign flickered over a concrete archway.
Calderon rushed to the exit just in time to hear a muffled crunch—a footfall. He stood to one side and surveyed the darkness outside. A twenty-foot walkway led into an adjoining parking structure with wide unlit alleys on either side. He looked up and saw no security cameras.
He moved through the exit noiselessly.
Another sound, more distinct — a shoe stepping on a shard of glass — came from behind a trash container on his right. Then the faint beat of rap music. An Adidas shoe peeked out from the corner of the large metal container, tapping to the music.
He edged along the bin.
“The important work is going well,” his client offered. “In another two weeks, the project moves to full-scale production. There’re always problems. We’ll deal with them.”
Calderon stepped around the corner of the bin, making no effort to conceal his movements.
The thief was sitting there, thumbing through Calderon’s wallet. Another one was waiting on his lap.
“You mean, I’ll deal with them,” Calderon said to his client.
The swarthy man looked up. Oddly, his dark eyes showed little surprise, even as he sprang to his feet and unfurled a butterfly knife in one, smooth acrobatic move.
The man had very good reflexes, but not nearly good enough to react before Calderon’s iron-like fingers speared his throat.
The pickpocket’s grip loosened, his knife clattered on the pavement, his eyes finally showing the shock and bewilderment that Calderon had expected.
Calderon placed a finger to his lips and silently mouthed Shhhh, but it wasn’t necessary. The man couldn’t raise a whisper through his crushed windpipe.
The thief started clawing at the deep depression where his Adam’s apple had once been, desperately trying to reopen his airway. He began to wobble.
Calderon grabbed the thief’s neck in a viselike grip and steadied him.
The man’s eyes bulged. His feet thrashed the ground wildly.
Calderon’s right hand lifted the unlucky thief by the neck and held him against the concrete wall.
“I have a flight back to Guatemala in the morning,” Calderon said to his client. “You can reach me at the project site.”
“Cancel your flight.”
The swarthy man’s feet floated just off the ground. His legs twitched and spasmed, and his eyes soon drifted in different directions as his muscles went limp in death.
“Why?” Calderon asked.
“Tartaglia. She’s become a problem. I need you to take care of it — quickly.”
5
Luke berated himself as he jogged toward the Trauma Unit, knowing that, on some level, the only difference between the football player and himself was a thin veneer of discipline. In both men, a malignant capacity for violence simmered just below the surface.
He told himself every day that he wasn’t that person anymore, but it was a lie. Cutting short his military career and following his father into pediatrics hadn’t changed who he was. Burying his past in a dense grave of gray matter hadn’t put the warrior out of reach.
The pneumatic doors swung open with a loud hiss just as Luke reached the entrance to Trauma One. A transport physician appeared in the doorway, dragging a gurney behind him.
Luke pointed inside. “How’re we doing?”