Death Glitch (10 page)

Inside, she went to the stairs, stopped. Something wasn’t right, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. A smell seemed out of place. A hint of mint. An imaginary spider as real as any she’d ever been afraid of crept up her spine, stinging her back with every frozen footfall.

She made herself into a statue, ears attuned to the house, eyes getting used to the dark. She heard not a sound, save her shallow breathing. Her heart was racing, threatening to thump out of her chest. Cold sweat trickled from under her arms. Her hair felt like it was on fire. She wasn’t alone in the house.

Her first instinct was to turn and run back the way she’d come, lead the intruder into Hunter’s jaws. But she fought it. Whoever was in here with her was being silent as granite.

Why?

She strained her ears. Heard nothing and now even that smell of mint seemed to be gone. Could she have imagined it? She inhaled the night. No, it was there. Barely, but it was there. But did that mean there was somebody inside with her?

No, she was sure there was nobody in the house, because if there were, they’d’ve surely struck by now. More than likely somebody had been and gone, leaving his minty smell behind. She wanted to call out, find out for sure, but she resisted the urge.

Instead, she started up the stairs, went straight to her bedroom, then to the closet where she saw that her shoes, which had been neat little soldiers at parade rest on the floor in front of the safe, had been pushed aside. Somebody had been here, had found the safe, not hard to do as it was a two foot square thing on the closet floor. She hadn’t needed to hide it, as she had no jewelry to speak of. She’d only needed it to keep her back up hard drive and important papers safe from a fire. And to keep the guns safe. Her shoes had been in front of it, her winter sweatshirts had been folded on top of it. They too had been thrown aside.

She dropped to the floor, trained the tiny LED flashlight she kept on her keychain at the dial, dialed in the combination. Safe open, she took out a small Ruger. Officially called a lightweight compact pistol or LCP, Izzy had given it the name Elsie Pee. A couple weeks after she’d confiscated it, she’d gone to Shields, just about the largest sporting goods store on Earth, and bought a box of the new Buffalo Bore 380 Auto +P Jacketed Hollow Points. If she was going to have a gun in her safe, she needed to know if she could rely on it if the day ever came, though she never imagined it would.

Izzy wasn’t a fan of hollow points, because of the damage they could do, but she didn’t trust any of the other ammo on the market made for the little gun. She never wanted to fire it, never planned on firing it, but if she ever did, if she ever had to, she wanted to stop whoever she was shooting at and the ninety grain jacketed Hollow Points made by Buffalo Bore would stop any man. Not like the Glock would. That would rip an attacker a new asshole, make him dead fast, but the little Ruger could be carried in a lot of situations where the Glock would be impossible to conceal. Especially with the wallet holster her nephew had made for it.

She put a magazine in the weapon, racked the slide, chambering a round, then she ejected the magazine, slid another round in it, then reinserted it. That gave her seven shots, six in the mag, one in the chamber. Satisfied, she slipped the gun into the wallet holster, stuck her finger through the hole in the center of the holster, fingered the trigger. Perfect. The weapon would look like a wallet in her hip pocket, but instead of money it held seven rounds of hurt.

As she was left handed, she slipped the wallet gun into her left hip pocket. Then she got out the Glock. It was a death making machine, a Glock 23, the official service pistol of the FBI. It held thirteen rounds of 40 caliber ammunition, yet only weighed about two pounds loaded. And though it was just shy of seven inches long, it was too big for her to conceal, unless she had it in the purse, where it would be hard to get at.

As she had with the small Ruger, she chambered a round, giving her fourteen rounds. She was an anti-gun nut, but she wasn’t stupid. Lila Booth was on the warpath, wanting her granddaughter dead and someone, probably Lila, had shot her last night. Plus, there was the problem of her new found youth. People were going to be after that. She needed protection.

Armed, she felt safer. With the Glock in hand and now with her eyes used to the dark, she looked around her closet, her clothes were neatly hung, just as she’d left them. Whoever had broken in either didn’t have the time or wasn’t inclined to rip the place apart in his search for who knows what, but he did think she might have something of value in the safe. Why else clear out the space in front of it? And why clear off the top of it? Had he been planning on carting it away, to open later? A strong man could do it, she supposed, or maybe two, or a man with a dolly. It wasn’t bolted down.

Maybe he wasn’t so strong. Maybe he was coming back with help or with a dolly.

Time to go.

She glanced around her bedroom on the way to the hall and the stairs, saw that it was undisturbed. Did that mean whoever had broken in was good at his craft or that he’d known about the safe and had come right to it?

She was still trying to work it out when she got to the stairs. If the man had known about the safe, how come he hadn’t had the ability to take it away? Was it bad planning? At the bottom of the stairs, she was still working on it when a horrible thought struck her. What if he had come equipped to take the safe? What if he had a dolly? Or worse, what if there were two men and they had planned on carrying it out, but then she’d interrupted them?

What if they were still in the house?

Out of nowhere a fist wrapped around the Glock, ripping it from her hand.

She smelled mint on his breath as she dashed back up the stairs.

She was at the top, when he grabbed her by the foot, jerked her backward. She fell on her stomach, used her hands and elbows to protect her face and chest as he pulled her down the stairs.

“
Don’t resist, Izzy.” It was Shaffer. After years of the man’s ass kissing, she’d know his voice anywhere. “It’ll go much easier if you cooperate.”

The man with mint on his breath flipped her over as someone turned on the light. The bright light stabbed her eyes and that—combined with the shooting hurt radiating out from the back of her head, caused because Minty Breath turned her hard, twisting her legs as he did it, smacking the back of her head into the bottom step—had disoriented her for a flash of a second. Thank God she’d gone for carpet on the stairs, because had she listened to her designer and gone with hardwood, the bastard could have cracked her skull.

She was about to let out a scream, when he’d slapped her.

“
Stay quiet!” His voice was rough, like he’d smoked too many cigarettes. Squinting against the light, she saw it reflecting off Minty’s shaved head, almost as if he’d oiled it. Recognition hit her like a wrecking ball. It was Eric Ackerman, the cigar smoking wise ass who worked for hospital security. She hadn’t seen him since she’d retired, over five years ago, but she’d know that oiled head anywhere. He’d been the butt of many jokes.

“
It’s best if you do as he says,” Shaffer again.

“
Where’s your red-faced girlfriend?” Izzy said to Ackerman, spitting the words between gritted teeth.

“
I’m right here,” Niles Lundgren said.

“
Did Aaron tell you girls that breaking and entering is a crime? Not to mention assault.” Though Ackerman and Lundgren tried to project tough guy images, they were lovers and everybody who’d worked at St. Catherine’s back when she was on staff knew it. Izzy was surprised they were still there. They were both cop wannabes and talked incessantly about how they were going to get on the Reno Police Department as soon as there were openings.

“
Smart mouth gonna get you in trouble.” Lundgren grabbed her left arm, Ackerman took her by the right and they more dragged, than lifted her into the living room, where they deposited her in one of the antique wing chairs she’d had facing the sofa. She never did like those chairs and she liked them even less right now. Her designer had insisted they were the perfect compliment to the room. White suede Chelsea wing chairs, they were as ugly as they’d sounded, but she’d been pulling seventy and eighty hours a week at the hospital back then and didn’t have the time or inclination to argue, so she’d been stuck with them. Time and again she’d promised herself she’d get rid of them, but like so many things in her life, she hadn’t found the time to get around to it.

Shaffer took a seat on the sofa, facing her, the gay guards stood behind her, with Ackerman holding the Glock. She wanted to spit in Aaron Shaffer’s face, tell him where to get off, but Lundgren had been right, her smart mouth would only get her in trouble. She needed to calm down, wait for an opening, an opportunity to get her hand into her back pocket.

“
You can understand why we’re here, can’t you?” Shaffer said.

“
No, Aaron, I can’t. I told you I’d call you and you gave me your word you’d keep quiet about what happened to me.”

“
Too many people saw you in the OR. They knew you weren’t on staff and they’d heard us talking. It was only a matter of time before someone put it together.”

“
Nobody knew me.” Izzy clenched her fists. “I told you I’d be in touch, that we’d figure this thing out. Didn’t you believe me?” She had to gain his trust.

“
Everything that goes on in the OR is recorded. Like I said, it was only a matter of time before somebody figured it out.”

“
You’re in charge of the hospital. If anybody could make those tapes disappear, it’s you.”

“
Water under the bridge,” he said. “We are where we are and we’re running out of time.”

“
Oh my God, what did you do?”

“
I was worried something might happen to you. I wanted to make sure you were protected.”

“
Who did you tell? Besides your gay lapdogs, that is.”

Ackerman slapped the back of her head with an open palm.

“
Ouch.” She really was going to have to watch her mouth.

“
Don’t anger them. It won’t help you.”

“
You didn’t answer my question.” She knew if she kept at him, he’d tell her. He was a weak man. Izzy had been surprised when they’d made him CEO of the hospital. They could have done much better and they couldn’t have done much worse.

“
I had Dr. Romero call somebody he trusts on the Reno PD.”

“
So Romero knows? You told Romero? Christ, why didn’t you just call a press conference?” Romero was a good doctor, but he was a gossip.

“
That may have been a mistake on my part.”

“
Who else knows?” She had to keep at him, keep him talking, until she got a chance to make her move.

“
The young doctor who worked on you in the emergency room, the hospital lawyer.”

“
And the cops, so what you’re saying is everybody knows. I wouldn’t be surprised if the men in black are on their way as we speak.”

“
Which is why we have to get you to the hospital ASAP and run some tests. We need to figure this out before they take over.”

“
I’m not going to the hospital,” Izzy said. “They’ll lock me up, stick needles in me, run tests ad infinitum. They’ll test me to death.”

“
We won’t tell them you’re there,” Shaffer said. “That’s the beauty of it. Everybody will be out looking for you and you’ll be right under their noses. Hiding in plain sight, so to speak. We’ll figure this out and once we do, you can quietly disappear, go to Mexico or South America, someplace where they’ll never find you.”

“
And who’s going to know I’m in the hospital, besides you and tweedledum and tweedledee here?”

“
Watch it!” Ackerman said. “Wouldn’t want another slap.”

“
Aaron is that how you plan on getting me to cooperate, by letting this goon smack me around?” Damn, she wasn’t being smart. She had to think of a way to get the goons behind her to relax, to maybe come round front, so she could see them.

“
Who’s going to test me, Aaron?” Izzy said. “Who’s going to keep quiet about this?”

“
I’ve got someone I can trust.”

“
What about them?” She raised a hand, pointed over her shoulder, back at Ackerman.

“
We can be trusted.” He laughed. “The doc’s gonna take care of us.”

“
What did you promise them, Aaron, immortality?”

“
Something like that,” Ackerman said.

“
What choice did I have?” Shaffer said. “I had to get a jump on this thing.”

“
Because?” Izzy said.

“
Come on,” Shaffer said. “Somehow you’ve stumbled onto the secret of the ages. It’s worth billions. People won’t grow old. Better, old people can become young again. Think of it.”

“
Is that the kind of world you want, one where nobody dies, where everybody stays young forever?” Izzy sighed. “There’ll be a population problem pretty quick, don’t you think? Food shortages. Riots. Perhaps this is a door best not opened.”

“
Don’t be obtuse!” Shaffer said. “This isn’t going to be for everybody.”

“
You’ve really thought this through, haven’t you?”

“
Yes, but sadly not quickly enough.” Shaffer smiled. “That’s why time is so important. We have to move before others can.”

“
And you have the advantage, because you have me.” It wasn’t a question.