Targeted (Firebrand Book 1) (18 page)

She smiled, hoping her face didn’t portray her true feelings. “Yes, I wondered if you have time to talk to me a minute?”

He hesitated. “Well, Reese and I are. . .”

Reese held up a hand to stop him. “We can check those things out later. Go on and get Lainey and Max settled.” He turned to Lainey. “I’ll see you at dinner.”

“Thanks, Reese. And thank you for all you’ve done for Max and me.”

He turned and walked back to the stairs and headed down. Ash frowned and took a step toward her. “What is it, Lainey?”

She motioned for him to come inside. “I’d like to talk to you in private, please.”

He paused as if trying to decide whether to enter her room or not. After a moment, he walked inside. Lainey shut the door, then turned and leaned her back against it. “I’ve been thinking about our argument, too, Ash, and I don’t want you to hate me because I didn’t tell you about Max. Please try to understand. You were gone. I couldn’t find you. I had to take care of our baby, and I did the only thing I could think of.”

His hands dangled at his side, and he clenched them into fists. “Everything except wait for me to come back.”

Tears flooded her eyes. “I don’t think we’ll ever understand what the other one was feeling at the time, but the important thing now is Max. I don’t want him hurt.”

“I agree.”

She took a deep breath. “Do you want to tell him the truth?”

He shrugged. “It’s too soon to know. Let’s try to get through this business with Eduardo Diaz and then decide what we’ll do about Max in the future.”
      

She tried to say something, but no words came so she only nodded. He was right. They had more important things to think about at the moment—mainly how to stay alive.

Ash reached around her and put his hand on the door knob. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some things to do. I’ll see you at dinner.”

She stepped out of the way, and he walked from the room. She couldn’t move for a moment and then rushed over and sat down on the bed. His words about Eduardo Diaz reminded her of what had happened earlier today, and she didn’t want a repeat.

Right now, that’s what she needed to concentrate on. If running DeHan Enterprises for the last five years had taught her anything, she had learned she could be a formidable foe when someone tried to take advantage of her.

She and Ash needed to work together if they were to stop this killer. After that they could work out their problems concerning their son.

Chapter 10

Victor tossed the butt of the cigarette he’d been smoking out the window of his car into the hospital parking lot and glanced down at his watch. 10:30PM. He’d been waiting patiently for the last half hour for the next shift of nurses and aides to arrive, and it shouldn’t be much longer.

The fake mustache coupled with the two-day growth of beard he sported made his face itch, and he scratched at it, careful not to displace the mustache. It wouldn’t do for the thing to fall off while he was inside the hospital. As soon as he could get this loose end tied up, he’d head back to the motel where Sophia waited, and they could get on with their plans to spend a relaxing evening together.

The thought of Sophia reminded him again of how she’d bungled the kidnapping earlier today. It wasn’t like her to let something like that happen. In all fairness, though, she was just as upset about the turn of events as he was. And just as determined to make Ash DeHan pay. Maybe they had underestimated the man. Even if he had stopped them today, nothing had changed. They were still going to bring down the DeHan family. That had to wait, however, while some other problems were taken care of first.

One of those problems was Leo. How could he have been so careless to get himself shot? Now he posed a problem for them, and there was only one thing to do if they were to remove the possibility of his talking to the police.

The sound of a car door closing jerked him from his thoughts, and he glanced across the parking lot. A woman in a nurse’s uniform stood beside her car and watched several other vehicles turn into the lot. Within minutes a small group of uniformed people who he assumed to be employees of the hospital had gathered beside her. They stood in a small circle underneath one of the streetlights in the parking lot and chatted for several minutes before they started to walk toward the building’s entrance.

Victor waited until they were nearly to the door before he climbed out of his car and followed them into the building and into the ER waiting room, right behind the chattering nurses. The clerk at the desk glanced up from her computer when they passed, her gaze first taking in the gaggle of nurses then drifting to him and over the scrubs he wore. Apparently seeing nothing that seemed out of the ordinary, she directed her attention back to the screen.

He couldn’t help but shake his head in disbelief. It never ceased to amaze him how he could blend into a group and not be noticed. If the ER clerk were asked later if she’d seen any suspicious persons enter the hospital tonight, she would only remember seeing employees as they came on their shifts.
      

As the group he was following approached the elevators, he ducked into a restroom across the hall and watched as they waited for the doors to open and then entered the car. When the elevator doors slid shut, he pulled on a surgical cap he’d brought with him, stepped into the hallway, and entered the stairwell. If the information he’d received was right, he would find Leo on the third floor guarded by a police officer who sat in a chair outside his room.

At the third floor landing, he eased the door open and smiled when he spotted an empty wheelchair sitting in the hallway. He took a deep breath and sauntered into the hall toward the abandoned wheelchair. He had just gripped the push handles when a female voice spoke.

“What are you doing?”

He glanced around to see a nurse’s aide, perhaps in her mid-twenties, standing in the door of a patient room. Her hair was pulled back in a pony tail, and she looked tired, despite her fresh-scrubbed complexion. She held an armload of linens. Victor smiled. “We were missing a wheelchair down in the ER. I came to find it.” His gaze swept the sheets and towels she held. “Are you getting a room ready for a patient?”

She nodded and frowned. “Yeah. It’s almost time for me to go home, and the supervisor told me we have a patient coming in from the ER. I have to get this room ready.”

“Yeah, I heard we’d be transporting somebody, but it’s going to be a while. I can spare a few minutes if you’d like for me to help you. I’m really good when it comes to making up hospital beds.”

The young woman hesitated and glanced at the wheelchair. “Don’t you need to get that back downstairs?”

He smiled and shook his head. “No, like I said, it’s going to take them a while. They’re still waiting on some lab results. I know how it feels to pull some late duty when all you want to do is go home. I don’t mind helping out so you won’t have to stay late.”

She breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s very kind of you. I really appreciate it.”

She turned and walked into the room. Victor glanced up and down the hallway and, satisfied no one had spotted them talking, he entered and closed the door. He walked up behind her, and as she turned to face him, her gaze drifted over his shoulder to the closed door.

“You didn’t have to shut the door,” she said.

He cocked an eyebrow as he wrapped his fingers around her neck. “Oh, I think I did.”

Her eyes bulged, and her fingers clawed at his hands as Victor tightened his grip on her throat. She struggled for a few seconds before her body went limp. He didn’t release the pressure but waited until he was sure she had stopped breathing. Then he picked her up and laid her on the unmade hospital bed.

As he stared down at her, he wondered who she was. Such a slight little thing to be working a job that required heavy lifting of patients and equipment. And pretty, too. And such a tragedy that she had the misfortune of crossing his path when he was on a mission.

He walked to the door and glanced back at her once more. Then he turned off the light, stepped into the hall, and pushed the wheelchair toward the nurses’ station.

As he approached the central command center for the third floor, he studied the activity at the station. Everyone seemed occupied with updating records or briefing the incoming staff on what had transpired on their shift. No one looked up or even noticed as he walked by.

Just past the nurse’s station the hallway veered to the right. As soon as he turned the corner, he saw the police officer sitting in a chair outside the room he’d been told was Leo’s. The man held a magazine and appeared to be lost in some article as Victor approached.

He stopped next to the man and smiled. “Hey, how’s it going tonight?”

The officer looked up and shrugged. “Kind of quiet. But I like it that way.”

Victor nodded. “Yeah, me, too. It’s slow right now in ER, but it changes in a hurry down there. I have a feeling things may get busier in a little while.”

The officer glanced at his watch. “I’m about ready to go home. My replacement should be here any minute now.”

“Is that right?” Victor said as he stepped over beside the man. “What’s that you’re reading?”

“Some magazine. I found it in one of the waiting rooms. There’s an article in here about the stars in that new action movie that’s about to release.”

Victor’s eyebrows arched. “Really? Let me see.”

He bent over, and before the officer could blink, Victor pulled the hypodermic needle from his scrubs’ pocket and plunged it into the man’s neck. A gurgling sound rumbled in the officer’s throat, and he stiffened in surprise, his eyes wide, and gasped for breath before he slumped lifeless in his chair.

Victor straightened the body into a sitting position and eased the door of Leo’s room open. Only one light burned in the room, and the machines attached to Leo’s body hummed as he entered.

He moved across the room, came to a stop next to the bed, and stared down at the wires and IVs attached to Leo. His informant had said Leo hadn’t regained consciousness yet, and that was good. Better if he never did.

Reaching into the other pocket of his scrubs, Victor pulled out another hypodermic needle and stuck it in Leo’s neck. The reaction was the same as the officer’s. The breath left his body in a last gasp.

In the semi-darkened room, the heart monitor beeped once. Then the pulsing wave dissolved into a straight line, and a blaring warning signal from the machine filled the air. There was no time to spare. He had to get out of there.

He ran to the door, peered into the hallway, and then hurried to the stairwell exit a few feet past where the dead officer sat. He had just pulled the door to the stairs open when he heard  a commotion at the other end of the hall, and the sound of running feet could be heard for a few seconds before the door closed.

Careful to make no noise, he ran down the steps as fast as he could. On the ground floor, he headed for the first outside exit he saw and burst into the dark night. Within minutes he was in his car in the parking lot and roaring away from the hospital.

He glanced in the rearview mirror as the image of the hospital receded in view and smiled. He’d been right. Things should be getting busier in the ER about now. He sighed with relief as he drove along, careful not to exceed the speed limit.

It had been a successful night. In fact it couldn’t have gone better. It felt good to have another job completed.

<><><>

Ash still couldn’t believe that one of Diaz’s hit men had been able to sneak into a hospital and kill three people. He’d been on edge ever since Sam had called two nights ago to tell him about it and hadn’t left Lainey and Max alone since. Reese had put the center on high alert, and he’d tried to downplay how seriously they were taking this latest threat. But the sight of his armed brothers patrolling the grounds constantly had everyone on edge.

Now with Max and Casey watching a movie and Lainey talking with William Mason, the DeHan
company attorney, it was the first time since the attempted kidnapping he’d had a minute to himself. The sun was just beginning to set as he Ash trudged from the administration building and stopped at the bottom of the steps, closed his eyes, and inhaled a deep breath. It was good to be outside. 
      

As much as he hated to admit it, he was becoming more unnerved with each passing hour. With the killing of the wounded kidnapper, a police office, and a hospital employee in addition to Joe and Lisa in Colorado, his guilt had grown larger. How many more deaths would there be laid at his door before this nightmare was over? They needed to find Eduardo Diaz before something else happened, but so far there had been no leads.

John Steadman hadn’t called back with any updates on Diaz’s whereabouts, and Ash was worried he might still be in the states. But he knew enough about Diaz to know that he never did his own dirty work. He had hit men on his payroll for that, and whoever they were they were biding their time before they struck again. There hadn’t been any attempts to breach the security at the center, but he wasn’t naive enough to think that they had given up.

What puzzled him, though, was how much they seemed to know about his life and his family. Somebody had to be feeding them information, but who. He’d made lots of enemies through the years, and many of them would probably be glad to put a bullet in him, and Eduardo Diaz had as much reason as any of them. And now Ash knew the reason he wanted to kill Lainey and Max, too. Diaz must know that Max is his son.