Page 91 of Saint of the Shadows

“You have it on good authority?” Dr. Foster’s nose wrinkled high enough, Marisol could observe the doctor’s frontal lobe.

“I may be a pain in your ass, but have I ever been wrong?”

Dr. Foster stopped, slack-jawed. She looked at the stripped end of the cord she ripped out, threw the intercom down, and pulled the fire alarm. Pointing to another nurse, she ordered, “Get to the intercom in oncology and repeat the message.” She wiggled her nose. “You’re either right or a felon.”

Over her earpiece, Vincent said, “I have binoculars set on his location but no luck locating. The tracker is moving in strange zig zags.”

Unable to spot moving through the crowd? How had she and Tobias moved around undetected?

By going underground.

“He learned from us. He’s using the sewers!” That she said a little too loud before wheeling a wide-eyed patient in an oxygen mask toward the crowd at the elevators. Marisol felt torn in two as her body ran and cleared patients, her mind honed on Ruthven weaving ever closer toward the hospital.

“I programmed a home team advantage. Staci, enact hospital security.”

The computerized feminine voice, the same as the motorcycle, echoed through the halls of the hospital. “Security initiated.” The hospital rumbled as metal shutters covered the entrances and windows.

“That won’t keep him out, but it will slow him down until I get there.” The slow start of the helicopter pulsed in the background.

“We’re moving patients to the bomb shelters,” Marisol said.

“My computer can access the electronic locks. If you get patients behind the fire doors, that will keep him away from them.”

Boom! The shutters bent and crunched at the entrance.

Marisol swallowed. “Hurry.” She rushed over to stop Nurse Rossi. “Whatever patients we can’t get down in the shelter, you get them past the fire doors and far from here.” Rossi hugged her and took off with her oxygen patient.

Marisol jogged to an empty room and stuffed a scalpel into her pockets. Now she needed tranquilizers, anything to weaken the monster behind those shutters. Only this time, she didn’t have her brother’s gang for back up.

A hand touched her elbow. “What should I do?” Dr. Foster asked.

No, this time Marisol had her hospital gang. “Get me a handful of our strongest people and barricade that entrance with a hospital bed. We need to get ready for what’s behind that door!” Boom!

Marisol raced to the pharmacy, swiped her keycard, and filled a syringe with ketamine to its limit. She joined Dr. Foster, two orderlies, and a nurse at the hospital bed they dragged to the door. Her rocketing beats per minute qualified her for a tachycardia diagnosis.

Boom! And the skip in her heart, arrhythmia. Ruthven tore away the shutter like a piece of tinfoil. He burst through the last layer of glass.

But he had no place here.

“Ram him!” Marisol and the staff bombarded Ruthven with the bed, knocking him to the ground. They upturned the bed, and all sat on it to pin him to the ground.

He squirmed under the weight of the bed. Marisol jabbed the syringe in his neck and squeezed the plunger. Ruthven grabbed at his neck; Marisol reached into his EMT jacket and felt a small cylinder in his pocket. She ripped the nylon pocketand held up the cylinder. Strange to see something so sinister appear empty, but behind a thick canister, she had the weaponized influenza.

Ruthven’s squirming soon became thrashing. He had already metabolized the tranquilizer. “Run!” Marisol shouted to her ragtag crew, and they scattered behind the security of the fire doors. The doors locked with an electric click.

Marisol sprinted into the elevator and smacked the buttons for the door to shut. Too many buttons. She headed only to the third floor.

Ruthven threw the bed. He stalked toward the closing doors. She shut her eyes.

Ping! Ruthven’s fist dented the shut door.

She released her breath, having two floors to collect herself. “Vincent? I got the virus.”

“I’m almost there,” Vincent’s voice assured in her ear. “I’ll get you to the thirteenth floor. But first, a little help.” The elevator stopped and something metallic encased the car.

She scanned the panel for a button to push. “There isn’t a number thirteen.”

“It’s a dummy floor. It has a ladder to take you to the roof. How do you think I get around in secret?”

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