With a somewhat disgruntled look, she motioned in the other direction. “End of the hall, past the chapel, turn left. Stairs’ll be on your right.”
“Thank you.” I showed her the photo of Kayla Tatum. “Have you seen this woman come through here? Maybe with a man about six feet tall? A stocky guy, might have been wearing a blue parka?”
She shook her head. “Nope. Been here since 7:00.” Then, looking toward the doors again, she added, “On the news they’re saying more snow’s coming tonight, but it’s supposed to warm up and maybe hit ten degrees-a heat wave, y’know.”
I couldn’t tell if that was supposed to be a joke or not.
“Thanks.” I turned to go.
“’Course with the windchill,” she said still contemplating the weather, “it’s gonna feel a lot colder.”
As I left, I noticed her eyes following me all the way across the lobby until I was past the vending machines.
At the end of the hall, I unholstered Lien-hua’s Glock, pressed open the door.
And entered the stairwell.
57
I descended the stairs.
My senses were dialed up the way I like it.
Sharp.
Focused.
At the base of the steps I slowly opened the door and saw a long, bone-white hallway stretching before me the length of the hospital where it ended in a T.
Nobody else in sight.
Gun ready, I eased the door shut behind me.
Alexei’s text had only told me to meet him in the lower level of the hospital. No room number. No details. Although this wasn’t a large facility I noted at least a dozen doors in this corridor.
Rather than call his name I decided to start searching for him in the rooms closest to me and systematically work my way to the far end of the hall.
The first door was to a radiology lab. I pressed it open, and as I was leaning to look inside, I heard a voice behind me in the hallway. “Patrick.”
I spun, Glock raised. Alexei stood beside a door fifteen meters down the hall.
“Hands where I can see them, Alexei.”
He lifted his hands, showed me they were empty.
“Where’s Kayla?”
“I’d rather not talk here in the hall. We might get interrupted.”
“Where is she?”
“She’s safe.”
Careful, Pat. This guy’s the real deal. He killed two people yesterday. “ Stay where you are.” I approached him warily, scanning the hallway for other movement in case he wasn’t alone and this was some kind of trap, but the hall appeared to be empty. “You’re going to pay for what you did to Bryan Ellory and to Bobby Clarke.”
“The truck driver.”
“Yes.”
“I have no doubt.”
Just a few paces away now, I motioned for him to back up. “Into the room and don’t make any sudden moves. I’m not having the best week, and shooting you would probably be good therapy.” Not something I was planning to do, but he didn’t know that and, honestly, it felt a little therapeutic just to say it.
We entered the nondescript administrative office: a desk with a flat-screen monitor, an overstuffed bookshelf, a few chairs, a filing cabinet. I closed the door. “Turn around.”
He complied.
A common misconception among civilians, probably because of seeing too many cop movies and TV shows, is that you read someone his rights when you arrest him. That’s not true. You read him his rights before you question him back at the station.
Mirandizing could wait for the moment.
After talking with Trooper Wayland, I knew that Alexei had turned his back on him as requested, then attacked him. I wanted to see if Alexei would try the same thing on me. “Hands against the wall.”
He placed his hands against the paneling.
Attentive to the fact that he might go for my weapon, I holstered the Glock before frisking him. I found no knives, no guns, just a small handheld device that appeared to be a medical instrument, the very weapon Wayland had told me about.
As I was removing it from Chekov’s pocket, he spun, lightning quick, leading with his left elbow and bringing his right arm over my shoulder to reach for the device, but I was ready. I shoved him backward, brought my forearm up, pinning his neck against the wall-with my other hand I swung the device up, planted the tip against the bone just below his left eye socket. “What’s this, Alexei?”
It took him a moment to answer. “It’s a spring-loaded bone injection gun.” His Russian accent slipped into more of the sentence than usual, and I realized that might be his tell when he was under stress.
“Sounds like it might hurt.”
“It does.” He didn’t struggle. I thought I saw a flicker of admiration in his eyes. “You have quick reflexes, Agent Bowers.”
“Where’s Kayla, Alexei?”
“As I said, she’s safe.”
I held him in place, locked eyes with him, didn’t look away. “So where do we go from here?”
“You have the bone gun and a Glock, I have no weapons, so I suppose that’s up to you.”
That doesn’t mean he’s not dangerous, that he still couldn’t take you out.
“I’m tempted to bring you in right now,” I said.
“Would you risk a woman’s life just to get an arrest?”
I didn’t answer.
His gaze flicked to the bone gun, and I felt a sense of assurance that he wasn’t going to chance moving abruptly and allowing it to engage. “I needed to know,” he said. “That’s why I went for it.”
“The bone gun.”
“Yes.”
“You needed to know what?”
“If you were as good as my sources tell me.”
“What sources?”
“I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to say.”
“Of course you’re not.”
Somewhere down the hallway I heard footsteps approaching the room. I hoped we weren’t going to be interrupted.
After a moment, I released his neck and stepped back, still jacked on adrenaline and ready, ready, ready to respond if he made another move.
Slipping the bone gun into my jacket pocket and gesturing toward the Glock, I said, “I’ll drop you if you try anything like that again.”
The steps in the hallway came closer.
Alexei rubbed his neck. “I believe you.”
“Where are these people, the ones you say killed Ardis and-”
But before I could finish my sentence, the door behind me flew open and Jake Vanderveld burst into the room with his weapon drawn. “Don’t move!” he shouted at Alexei. “Or you’re a dead man!”
58
“Jake,” I yelled, “lower your gun!”
He ignored me, hollered to Chekov, “Hands away from your body!”
“Easy, Jake,” I said. “He’s unarmed. Lower your weapon.”
But Jake just leveled his gun at Alexei’s chest. “Hands up!” He was wound way too tight. “Now!”
“Jake, stop.” I stepped between him and Alexei so that now his gun was pointed at me. “Listen to me. He’s got a woman. A hostage.”
“What are you…?” My words finally registered. “Where?”
“I don’t know. Now lower your weapon.”
Jake finally lowered his gun and yelled past me, at Alexei, “Where is she, you scumbag?”
More footsteps in the hall. Hurried.
“Who’s that?” I asked him.
A small grin. “Backup.”
No, no, no!
Two state troopers muscled their way through the doorway, guns drawn. “Step back!” the larger man yelled at me.
“I’m Agent Bowers. FBI!”
“He’s with me,” Jake said.
They accepted that and strode toward Alexei.
Jake spoke to me, “Who’s this woman, Pat? Who are you talking about?”
I made the mistake of looking his direction. “Her name is Kayla Tat-”
But the two troopers must have recognized Alexei from the APB as the person who’d killed Deputy Ellory-a local man they undoubtably knew-because as soon as my back was turned, I heard the sound of someone being thrown to the floor. I spun and saw the two of them, expandable batons out, leaning over Alexei.
“No!” I rushed to stop them but they still managed to land half a dozen brutal blows and kick him twice in the face and abdomen before I was able to pull them off.