Phantom's Baby: A Mafia Secret Baby Romance (Mob City Book 3) (30 page)

E
llie

I heard a knock at the door, and it was accompanied by a familiar voice that brought a smile to my lips. "Miss Francis?"

"Alice, you can call me Ellie, you know that!" I laughed, swinging my legs over the side of the bed.

"Sorry, Ellie," the friendly, plump nurse chuckled. "I know, it's just we don't get many patients like you…"

"Patients like me?" I asked, surprised by her almost reverential tone.

"Yeah. I shouldn't tell you this really…" Alice trailed off.

I shot her a piercing glare. "Come on, you can't start a sentence like that and not finish it!"

The nurse leaned in close, almost conspiratorially and spoke quietly. "We're not really supposed to tell patients while they're in rehab, because it can mess with the motivation to keep going, but a recovery like yours… It's almost unheard of. But I guess, with you,
nothing's
impossible."

"What do you mean,
with me
?" I repeated, at a loss to know what she was talking about. "I just woke up, is that so unusual?"

"From a coma like that? After all those months?" Alice cried, her voice rising and falling in a crescendo of excitement. It was almost as if she was recounting a miracle. "And besides, it wasn't the waking –."

"The waking what?" I pressed. I'd endured weeks of coddling, and every single nurse and doctor in this joint seemed to be afraid to startle me, as if they might say something that would set my recovery back.

I wanted to scream,
I'm a big girl!
But I figured I shouldn't. Whatever was going on today, I guessed I was about to get some answers. I hoped so, at any rate.

Alice's eyes were wide open, with a caught in a cookie jar grimace plastered across her face. She couldn't have looked any guiltier if she'd actually tried. "No, it's
definitely
not my place to say. Doctor Mullen will go through everything."

I cocked my head and stared at her, trying to figure out why the hell she was being so opaque, and then shrugged. Whatever it was, I'd find out in due course. Being in hospital was a lot like being in the Army, I thought. There was a whole lot of hurry up and wait…

"Ready?" Alice said, offering me her arm.

"Um, do you mind if I, I dunno, have a crack at doing it myself?" I asked, stumbling over my tongue. "I've been practicing in my room, and I think I'll be okay…"

"Ellie," Alice chided. "You
know
the physio told you not to overdo it!"

"No," I said. "Honestly, it's fine. I've felt so much stronger this week."

"Well," Alice said, looking me up and down doubtfully. "If you think you can handle it…"

I lent over and squeezed her tight.

It's crazy
, I thought.
A few months ago I was an investigative journalist for the Herald, now I'm happy
just to be allowed to walk down the corridor
…

"Hey!" Alice exclaimed. "That was pretty strong!"

I stuck out my tongue cheekily. "Told you…"

"I guess with you, Eleanor Francis, I should get used to expecting miracles." Alice said obscurely.

Again with this miracle talk.

Every nurse on the ward waved and smiled at me the second I came into sight as I walked, unassisted, down the corridor. I'd been doing it in my room every night for days now, pacing up and down, but this was a whole new ballgame. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Alice hovering a stone's throw from my arm, ready to catch me if I fell. "Alice," I whispered. "Why's everyone staring at me?"

The nurse who I'd come to see as my friend over the past few weeks, ever since I woke up from a nine-month coma, looked at me like she was holding something back from me. "Oh, you'll find out soon enough," she said secretively.

"You know, Alice," I said, turning to face her. "Sometimes I feel like kicking you, you know that?"

The middle-aged nurse held her hands up and frowned with mock irritation. "Hey, I'm just the messenger, all right?"

"A messenger without a message," I grumped. "What good is that?" I sidled up to her. "Come on," I pleaded, "you can trust me, can't you?"

Alice smiled warmly, pushing the treatment room door open and gesturing me inside. "Of course I can, dear. But honestly, it's really not my place to say. I'll have to leave that up to the doctor."

"Fine," I muttered, a sullen look on my face. “But this better be good…”

“Oh,” Alice grinned, “it will be. I’ll be around, once you’re done. I’ve got a feeling you’ll want to talk. The doctor will be along soon.”

I wish
, I grumbled in the peace and quiet of my own head as the door swung closed.
That people would stop treating me like a damn child
.

If I’d known what I was asking for, I might have reconsidered that thought…

R
oman

She screamed.

I wasn't worried about anyone hearing her, because it seemed as though the rest of the hospital was screaming now, too.

They've found the bodies
.

"Who the hell are you?" Ellie squeaked, putting her hands up above her head, like she thought she was in a movie. "And why've you got a gun?" Then, looking shocked at her own stupidity, or temerity at confronting an armed man, or both, she clamped her hand across her mouth. She fell silent, quivering in her chair and watching my every movement through terrified eyes.

"You don't know who I am, do you?" I remarked, unable to prevent a quick, almost disappointed frown from scouring my face. I'd thought she would at least remember my face, if nothing else but it was like her mind had simply been wiped clean.

It's true, then
.

"Should I?" She asked. Her nose wrinkled with confusion as I stared at her, gun still clenched in my right hand. I dropped it to my side. I needed her calm, not startled, and the last thing I wanted was for her to try and run off. Neither of us would last a moment if I had to chase her down.

"No, I guess not," I lied. "Come on, it doesn't matter anyway. We've got to go, fast."

"No," she moaned. "No, they're supposed to be releasing me today. That's why I'm here, isn't it? Please, just leave, I won't tell anyone I even saw you."

"Lady, you think I'm here to rob the place?" I asked with disbelief. "You think I'd risk going down for armed robbery to rob a god damn hospital?"

"Um, I guess not," she stammered before stopping half way through her sentence and clamping her hands to her forehead. It looked like a sudden, intense migraine had flashed through her skull. I began to worry. The papers hadn't lied about her condition – that jackass ex really had done a number on her.
What the hell do I do if she collapses?

I realized I didn't have a choice. Either I got her out of here now, or the men making their way up the stairs would – and that was a risk I knew I couldn’t take.

I pulled a black rucksack off my shoulders and swept every single scrap of paper from the doctor’s desk into it. I decided to take it all, and worry about what was hers. I quickly ransacked the doctor's desk, and stuffed a brown document folder into the bag as well.

I heard sirens in the distance, and far more worryingly, the sound of booted feet running up a nearby flight of stairs.
They're coming
.

"Come on," I grunted. I wasn't in any mood to get into a philosophical argument, and besides, I didn't know how many more of Victor's men might be close behind.

"I'm not going anywhere with you," she squealed. "I don't have any money, if this is about that.

E
llie

I
woke
up with my eyes still closed, and panicked. I didn't have the faintest idea where I was, what time of day it was, or even the month. I felt like my brain was operating through a thick, heavy fog. Worse still, I was even afraid to open my eyelids, in case I didn't like what I saw.

M
y brain kicked into gear
, screaming to through a series of mental checklists the like of which I'd never experienced before, almost as if the adrenaline pumping through my system was activating parts of my mind that normally lay dormant. Parts of the brain that had to do with survival.

W
here are you
?

How did you get here?

Are you being threatened?

How are you going to escape?

T
he circumstances
of my newfound situation were still a mystery to me, but one thing was absolutely clear – wherever I was, I hadn't arrived under my own steam. And that was all kinds of concerning. I began to scan the room, but with my eyes still firmly clenched shut with the same cold, terrified distrust that a child has of the dark, I had to use the only senses left available to me – sound, touch and smell. Taste was out, unless I wanted to lick the sheets for information…

I
was alone
, in the room at least – as for the rest of the building, I couldn't say. Or, if I wasn't, then the other person must have been almost statuesque in their silence, unbreathing, unmoving, and barely alive. The prospect was terrifying.

T
he craziness
of the past few hours began to come back to me in the form of a cold, chilling realization that gripped my gut in an iron fist of fear. I'd been at the hospital. I'd been about to find out… something. An alarm had gone off, the sound of bodies hitting the floor, and then the doctor stepped out mid-sentence. And then
he
came in. And now I was here, somewhere, but wherever it was, it sure as hell wasn't Alexandria General Hospital. In short, I realized that I'd been kidnapped.

M
y eyes finally sprang open
. I glanced around the room, not looking for details at first, just to check that I was alone. I was. Everything seemed a blur, my heartbeat was racing in my ears and my lungs were blowing in and out ten times harder than they'd ever done before, and getting faster. I felt as if I was running a race, a greyhound down at the track, and the mechanical rabbit was just getting faster and faster, and my legs were pounding away faster and faster in turn just to stay in place.

P
anic
.

I
t was rising inside me
, gripping my stomach in its grasp, causing every neuron in my brain to fire a hundred times a second, my breath to speed up and my senses to close in.

G
et a grip
, Ellie
. I begged myself. I searched around for something, anything to hold onto, like a tree trunk in the midst of a raging, swelling river. And then it struck me – the four questions my brain had already asked…

W
here are you
?

A
bedroom
.

H
ow did you get here
?

I
was taken
.

A
re you being threatened
?

N
ot right now
.

T
hat left just one question
:
How are you going to escape?
And that was the most telling one, because I knew that escape was the one thing I positively
had
to do. Whoever the crazy bastard was that had kidnapped me, he was obviously unhinged. After all, why the hell else would anyone kidnap a recovering coma patient? Especially a recovering coma patient who was also a broke ass investigative journalist who hadn't worked in
months
.

A
n idiot
, I thought. Or worse, and my blood ran cold.
A psychopath
…

I
leapt into action
, grateful for the physical therapist's constant hounding over the past month, as well as my own extracurricular pacing. My legs still didn't feel as powerful as they had before my accident, whatever the hell it was, but they were strong enough that I could move around. I didn't understand why the doctors couldn't just have told me how I ended up in hospital in the first place. Alice's constant refrain echoed in my ear – "we’re afraid you're just a bit too fragile right now." I snorted under my breath with disbelief. Fragile!

T
he bedroom was pleasant enough
, if bland – identikit dark gray IKEA furniture, gray sheets, cream carpet, cream walls. It had a hotel's business like sterility, but no en suite bathroom, which indicated that it must've been an apartment. Whoever owned the apartment, I thought, had less personality than the worst office drone. There wasn't a single personal item in sight, and the tops of the bedside tables were bare and sparkling clean, not even adorned with something as trifling as an alarm clock.

I
padded quietly
over to the built in wall-closet, grateful for the fact that I was clothed, but somewhat drowned in a sea of cloth. I was still wearing the Alexandria General jogging bottoms, complete with the white snake on a cross logo, but someone had carefully placed me into a black T-shirt. A man's black T-shirt, and it was half a dozen sizes too big. As I closed the short distance between the bed and the closet, I felt the unfamiliar feeling of a tiny weight of hair on the top of my skull, and realized that someone had caringly pulled it into a ponytail. I hadn't done that in years.

W
hat the hell's
going on?

I
pulled
the closet door open, only letting my arm move an inch at a time so I didn't make a noise, but I needn't have. The hinges were well oiled, and it barely made a sound. I was more and more confused, if this was a prison, it was a five-star prison, and one that had hired someone to tie up my hair…

T
he closet was dark
, and I began to curse under my breath. I didn't want to turn on a light switch, in case my captor somehow realized that I was awake, but equally, I didn't want to miss finding something that I could use as a weapon.

A
baseball bat
sure would come in handy right now
…

J
ust as I
began to consider whether I would be able to open the window's shutters an inch or two to let in some, but not too much, illumination, I heard the familiar electronic hum of a pair of incandescent lighting tubes springing into life. The contents of the mirror-backed cupboard quickly came into view. Far from revealing anything useful, the revelation simply plunged my situation ever deeper into mystery. On the left-hand side of the closet hung six identical charcoal gray men's suits. On the right-hand side hung six crisp, pressed white shirts. There was a chest of drawers in the bottom of the closet, but no baseball bats, that was for damn sure.

I
sighed heavily
, and felt the now familiar driving drumbeat of panic beginning to rise in my throat. I bit down on it. If anything was going to help get me out of here, it sure as hell wasn't giving up entirely. I wasn't that kind of girl, and I wasn't going to start now.

I
pulled open
the top drawer, only to reveal twenty odd pairs of identical black boxer shorts. I was beginning to sense a theme. Unless there was another room somewhere else in this joint, this was a guy's place. A very
particular
guy, it seemed by the painstaking choice of clothing. I pushed it back in slightly harder than I'd intended, pausing for a second as the wooden drawer clattered. My entire body tensed as I waited for someone to storm in, slap me around the face and tie me to the bed.

I
t didn't happen
.

I
pulled open
the next drawer. Socks.
Christ
.

T
here was one left
. I crossed my fingers and held my breath, just in case someone up there was looking out for me – not that I'd seen much evidence of that so far. I pulled it open.

C
ash
. Thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars of cash, all bundled up in stacks, and tied with holographic paper bands which read "$10,000". There must have been hundreds of them, all brand-new, piled up almost to the top of the drawer.

"
H
oly Shit
," I mumbled under my breath, briefly forgetting that I was supposed to be staying quiet. It was more money than I'd ever seen in my life, and probably more than I'd ever see again. I asked myself the question for the second time.

W
hat the hell's
going on?

S
till no answer
, not that I was expecting one. I stuffed five or six of the bundles into the jogging pants pockets, just in case. Almost two years salary, and tax-free to boot. Whoever's place this was, they must have been into some crazy shit. Normal people just didn't have tens of thousands of dollars in cash lying around for a rainy day. No, normal people used banks. There was only one explanation for anyone to have a stash like this on hand – crime. I'd spent the last decade investigating exactly this kind of behavior for the Alexandria Herald, but now that I was plunged in the middle of it, it just felt surreal.

I
stood back up
, and I was about to make the door when I noticed something… Unusual.

T
he shiny
, mirrored back of the closet seemed to be loose, almost as though it had been knocked ajar, or like a bathroom closet that had been improperly closed. Whatever the reason, it didn't fit, especially in a room that was otherwise so carefully manicured to perfection, without so much as a charcoal gray suit out of place. I pulled back, and it swung open and outward easily, revealing a secret cupboard. My breath caught as I opened it, revealing what seemed like a small arsenal of ammunition. As the first few inches of the closet came into sight I was overjoyed, thinking I'd found my ticket out of there. But as the mirror swung backwards to completely reveal what it had been hiding, my stomach fell through the floor.

S
ure
, there were plenty of bullets, in boxes and scattered around, and dozens of fully-loaded magazines.

B
ut no actual guns
. There were clips where perhaps half a dozen handguns might once have rested, but the weapons themselves were gone, as if the ammunition was just there to taunt me.

A
s if I needed it
, it was another reminder of exactly how dangerous the situation I found myself in. I needed to tread carefully. I walked over to the door, grateful that the thick cream carpet soaked up every single wave of sound that I made. I tried the brass handle, and just like the closet door had been, it was well-maintained and recently oiled, and opened without so much as a click. I pulled the door back carefully, peeking through the crack to make sure I didn't find a nasty surprise waiting for me. But there was none.

I
stepped
out into the corridor, tense, jumpy and ready to run at a second's notice. I couldn't believe that I'd been left unattended. My mind was still casting around for the reason why I'd been taken in the first place, and not coming up with much in the way of answers. I could only think that it had something to do with my job at the paper, that perhaps someone thought I knew something, and wanted to silence me. It wouldn't be the first time a thing like that it happened in Alexandria, that was for sure.

I
wished
they'd just checked with my doctors, though, it would have saved everyone a whole lot of bother. I could barely remember a thing before my accident, and I definitely wasn't in a fit state to write a hard-hitting report on police corruption, or whatever.

A
ccident
. Something niggled in my brain, as though it wasn't the right word, but I shook it off. My mind had been playing up enough recently, to the extent that sometimes I barely knew what was real and what wasn't. The nurses all said it'd go away in time, if I rested. I don't think they expected a situation like this.

T
he bedroom's
carpet gave way to rough, unvarnished wooden floorboards, and the corridor was strewn with the detritus of recent construction: pots of paint, loose screws and nails, and enough sheets of plasterboard to build a house. All in all, it was basically an obstacle course. I trod carefully, like a misbehaving child breaking out of their bedroom late at night, and walked as close to the walls as I could, so that I didn't disturb a loose floorboard. The last thing I wanted was for an errant creak to give me a way to my captor.

T
he apartment
, if that's what it was, was a helpless mishmash. It didn't feel like a block of condos, more like someone had found a warehouse and decided to turn it into a home. It had an old, middle of the century industrial vibe, with old brick walls and original wooden rafters poking from the material.