That's it, Doc, Verran thought. Lay it on thick. Say whatever you have to say, just get them the hell out of here.
And then, behind him, through the door to the basement stairs, Louis Verran thought he heard a female voice shout No! But it was so faint he couldn't be sure he'd actually heard it.
No matter. Southworth and Crawford hadn't heard it. They were almost to the doors.
Keep going. Keep going.
A dozen or so feet and they'd be gone.
Half a dozen feet...
They were at the doors, passing through...
A sound behind him. A door opening. Verran turned and thought his heart was going to stop as his worst nightmare became reaclass="underline" The Cleary broad, her shirt flapping open, blood smeared around her mouth, bursting into the lobby. Verran made a grab for her but he was far too slow. And he was too stunned by the sight of her. Had that jerk Kurt tried something on her? And if so, where the hell was he? What had happened downstairs?
Not that it mattered. The end of his cushy job at The Ingraham, and no doubt the end of his life as a free man, was sprinting across the floor toward Southworth and Crawford, screaming at the top of her lungs.
"Matt! Oh, God, Matt! Matt, Matt, Maaaaaaatt!"
She leapt into Crawford's arm's and they hugged like a long-lost sister and brother while she babbled a mile a minute.
Suddenly Southworth was no longer low key. He grabbed Alston by the shoulder, turned him around, and shoved him back toward the security desk. Verran felt his stomach acid explode and wanted a place to hide.
"Seems we've got a little bit of a discrepancy here, Verran," Southworth said as he and the others reached the desk. He stood two feet back from the counter with his hand resting on the grip of his pistol—still in its holster, but the meaning of the gesture was not lost on Verran. "This young lady says she's Quinn Cleary—and Crawford here confirms that—and she says Tim Brown is being held downstairs as a prisoner. What the hell do you have to say about that?"
"Somebody call an ambulance," Cleary was saying as she buttoned the front of her shirt. "Tim's hurt. He needs help."
"Show me where," Crawford was saying. "Maybe we can—"
"Everybody stay put!" Southworth said. "I want some answers here."
The deputy was reaching for the radio remote on his left hip when Verran heard that sound again—the stairway door opening. Who was it going to be now? Brown himself? This was turning into a goddamn circus.
No. It was Elliot. And oh shit, he had a gun. He raised it in a professional two-handed grip and aimed it at the deputy. But Verran saw the way the barrel wavered and knew Elliot was on the edge of panic.
"Your gun, Southworth," Elliot said. "Take it out and put it on the counter."
Southworth remained cool, didn't move. "This isn't going to help," he said softly.
"Do it!" Elliot's voice cracked on the first word.
Southworth's face looked more annoyed than anything else as he removed his revolver from the holster and placed it on the counter.
"Take it, Chief," Elliot said, then he glanced at Alston. "And now I want to know what's gone down here. When I went up to Fifth a little while ago, everything was under control. I come back down and there's a dead guy in Monitoring"—Cleary moaned and began to cry on Crawford's shoulder—"and I find Kurt on the stairs with a chewed up ear and a broken neck. What the fuck's happening?" He glanced back at Verran again, then at Southworth's .38, still on the counter. "Go ahead, Chief. Take the gun."
"I don't want it." As Elliot stared at him wide eyed, Verran said, "It's over, Elliot."
"No way!" he said, shaking his head violently. "I'm not going back inside! We can..."
And then he ran out of words as he finally realized what Verran had known the instant he'd seen Quinn Cleary dash into the lobby.
"No," Verran said softly. "We can't."
Alston was moving. He reached around Verran and picked up the .38 by the barrel.
"Louis is right, Elliot," Alston said. "The dominoes have begun to fall." He turned to Southworth and lifted the gun. "I'm going to borrow this, deputy. You may have it back in a few minutes."
He strolled to the stairway door and made his exit.
Fright and confusion swirled across Elliot's face.
"What's he—?"
Verran jumped as a single gunshot from the other side of the stairway door answered his question.
"Oh, shit!" Elliot said.
And then he was running for the front doors.
Before Elliot was through them, Southworth had his radio in hand and was calling for back-up, emergency medical assistance, and putting out an APB on Elliot. As he returned the remote to his belt, he jabbed an index finger at Verran.
"Stay put."
Verran could only nod. His whole world was falling apart. He wished he had the guts to end it like Alston, but knew he'd never be able to pull that trigger.
Strangely enough, his stomach didn't feel so bad right now.
*
With Matt at her side, Quinn crowded close behind Deputy Southworth as he headed for the stairwell.
"We've got to get to Tim," she said.
He couldn't be dead. She didn't care what Elliot had said, Tim was alive. He was alive.
She kept repeating the phrase, hoping that would make it true.
The deputy opened the door, looked into the stairwell, then closed it again. His face was a shade paler as he turned to them.
"We'd better take the elevator."
Quinn clung to Matt as the deputy used her security card to take them down to the basement. A residue of the overwhelming joy she'd felt upon finding a familiar face in the Science Center lobby still trickled through her anguish for Tim. She couldn't get over Matt's being here. How had he managed to come so quickly? Not important now. She'd find out later. Right now she had to get to Tim.
"How was he when you left him?" Matt said.
"He...he wasn't moving."
Deputy Southworth's expression was grim as the car stopped and the doors began to slide open.
"Maybe you'd better let me—"
Quinn slipped through the doors as soon as the opening was wide enough to let her pass. She wasn't waiting for anybody.
She ran to the room where she'd been a prisoner and skidded to a halt at the door. Tim lay huddled against the angle of the wall and the floor, his back to her, one arm splayed out at an unnatural angle. He was perfectly still. She couldn't see his chest move. There was blood...
She screamed. "Tim!"
The body jerked, the limp arm stiffened, the thumb and pinky finger straightened, and waggled back and forth.
Quinn didn't know whether to laugh or to cry as she knelt beside him and slipped her arms around him.
"Oh, Tim."
TWENTY-FOUR
"Just a couple more questions," Deputy Southworth said.
Quinn fidgeted in her seat behind the counter. The police had taken over the security desk as a command center.
"Okay, but just a couple."
She was anxious to get over to the hospital and see Tim. The EMTs had wheeled him out of the basement on a gurney. He'd looked awful. She wondered how his x-rays had turned out.
Matt had gone along with Tim, and after they were on their way, the people from the morgue had removed the two bodies from the stairwell. The State Police led Louis Verran away in handcuffs. New nurses were brought in to care for the patients in Ward C. Things were settling down. Quinn had wanted to go with Matt and Tim but the deputy needed a statement.
"Now...is there anyone else you can think of who might be directly involved in this?"
"Only one." Quinn's throat constricted as the thought of him. "Dr. Emerson. He's over in the faculty building. Or at least he was."