Page 21 of Every Last One
“What?” Gail screamed out, fear gripping hold of her. She should know, having been here before, but it was like her mind had left her.
The nurse remained calm, soothing her daughter, rubbing the hair back on her forehead. “It’s okay, sweetheart. Everything will be okay.”
“Why aren’t you doing anything?”
The machine continued to beep. The spikes had lower peaks, but the rhythm remained erratic.
“Do something!” Gail never felt more helpless in her life.
“She needs a defibrillator, and…” The nurse’s eyes widened, and jabbed toward the door.
“They’re out there?” Gail blanched. She never understood why one wasn’t always in the room near her daughter, just in case. Probably due to budget restraints. Money determined life and death.
Torres nodded. “But we can’t go out there.”
“To hell with that! Tell me where, and I’ll go get it.”
“I can’t let you do that.”
Gail got in the nurse’s face. “Tell me where to get one! Now!”
“They’re on wheeled carts next to the nurses’ station, but I told you,we can’t go out there.”
“I’m not just going to stay here and watch my daughter die.”
“You go out there and run into the gunmen, you could both die.”
“I don’t matter. Only Phoebe!” To hell with being swallowed by hopelessness. Her baby’s life was on the line. She stormed out the door, ignoring the nurse’s protests at her back.
Voices came to her ears from down the hall, transmitting scared, nervous chatter. Gail looked back over her shoulder at the room, and Nurse Torres was peeking out through a crack she made in the blinds. Spotted, she let the slots fall back into place.
Gail crept down the hall toward the nurses’ station, keeping a lookout for the gunmen. The voices she’d heard were coming from inside a room with a plaque on the door that readNurse Break Room. It sounded like there was an altercation inside. Was a gunman in there, just mere feet away, with only a door standing between them?
Not my problem, she told herself. She just had to grab a cart with a defibrillator and get it back to her daughter. She saw them next to the desk. Her hand was on one when there was a loud bang.
She ducked to the floor behind the desk, her ears ringing and her heart thumping furiously.Gunfire!
It came from inside the break room. The earlier chatter and scuffle transformed into screams and crying.
Not my problem, she screamed again in her head while she stood. She planned to just grab the cart and run. But there was a charging tray with three walkie-talkies on the desk, and she snatched one. She couldn’t call out on the phones, so maybe this would work.
She grabbed the closest cart and pushed it back to the room in a run. When she was within a foot of the door, Nurse Torres threw it open and swept her inside.
TWELVE
12:20 PM
Eric was used to multitasking, and leaving one suspect to speak to another wasn’t unheard of. Cross was waiting on his lawyer anyhow.
Brent Hartley’s place was a modest row house, painted purple. The street was lined with some cherry trees, their pink petals at their peak. By next week the ground would be littered with them, and they’d be blowing everywhere.
Eric banged on Hartley’s door. Stacks of boxes and totes blocked the front window. Hartley was a hoarder. Eric arrived with full clearance to enter the home, just as he had with Cross, and he was prepared to do that. He’d just have to find another way in.
Just as he went to step away in search of another entry point, the door was cracked open.
Eric froze. He hadn’t expected a response. The consensus was that Hartley was holed up on the sixth floor of the hospital. Eric’s hand hovered over his holster, prepared to respond with force.
A man in his late fifties tucked his head through, and it was Brent Hartley. The breathing version was a match to his license photo with some imagination. This one had greasy hair mattedto his head and beady eyes. Hartley and Cross had the latter in common.
