Page 41 of Every Last One
“No.”
Brice nodded.
“The woman on the eighth floor has people holed up in the boardroom.”
“Wait a minute, how do you know…?” On the laptop screen, Mickey was looking around. He smirked. “You’re spying on us. Well, keep watching.”
Mickey slammed the receiver down and left the nurses’ station, slipping out of view into the nurse break room.
“What’s he doing?” Monica asked.
Sandra didn’t answer, and neither did anyone else. Everyone was captured by the screen on Luis’s laptop.
Just seconds after he left, Mickey returned to the nurses’ station. This time he wasn’t alone. He had a hold on Jordon Maddox and a gun pointed at his head.
TWENTY-ONE
1:50 PM
Eric took a deep dive into Stevie Cross’s financials, and nothing there suggested a payoff. Whatever had Cross breaking the law, it wasn’t about money. A search of his home hadn’t yet turned up anything linked to today’s events. His phone records were also clean. So what made a forty-something man with a decent job throw his life away? Was it linked to this mysterious man who infected the hospital’s mainframe? And if so, what influence did this man have over Cross that he’d protect his identity? Was it fear or loyalty?
Eric pushed one of the pictures Neal had sent over across the table. And so much for it being some guy in his fifties. This kid in the picture was in his twenties. “Who is he, Mr. Cross?”
“I never got his name.”
Eric could call bullshit on that response all day, but it wouldn’t do any good. “You’ve got a chance to clean up your mess here, earn some credit, even get yourself a deal.”
Cross knotted his arms and looked away.
Eric laid out the other two photos and met with the same response. He gathered them up again and pushed out from the table. “Suit yourself. I’ll find that young man, and once I do, there’s no room for a deal.”
Cross remained stoic, and Eric left the room even more frustrated. But at least Eric would get a little break from Cross. When Neal sent the pictures, he also asked if Eric would have time to talk with Wyatt Beal. Eric said he’d make time. It was more productive than spinning out here, that was for sure. And having learned about a four-year-old girl who would die without her heart transplant was fueling him. Eric didn’t have children of his own, but he didn’t need to be a father to know that the world lost out when a child was taken.
Since Wyatt Beal was the managing partner at a prestigious law firm downtown, Eric headed straight to their offices.
Walking through the door, there was no mistaking the dense energy, not alleviated any by the decor. Dark wood, hunter green, and brass. It recalled images he’d seen of gentlemen’s clubs from a bygone era.
“Good afternoon.” The receptionist, a young woman in her mid-twenties, possibly thirties, was watching him from the front desk.
As he made his way through the sitting area, he considered a man like Wyatt could have plenty of enemies himself. It was possible someone with an issue against him was going at his wife. Eric shook the notion aside, blaming it on his overactive detective mind.
“How can I help you, sir?” the receptionist asked.
Eric held up his badge. “It’s urgent that I speak with Wyatt Beal immediately. There is an issue involving his wife.”
“Be that as it may, Mr. Beal isn’t in the office at the moment.”
“Then let me know where I can find him, and I’ll go there. As I said, this is an urgent matter.”
She looked from him to her monitor, to her phone, back to him. “Let me try to reach him.” She picked up the phone and avoided eye contact while she waited for Wyatt to answer. Which he did not. Eric heard the ringing, followed by Wyatt’s voicemailgreeting. “He’s not picking up.” She slowly returned the receiver to its cradle.
“I need to know where he is.Right now.”
Her cheeks flushed. “Ricardo’s.”
Eric hustled from the firm, and seven minutes later was entering the upscale restaurant with its dark-wood tables and chairs and richly painted walls.Beal knows what he likes…
“Good afternoon. A table for one?” The young man at the host stand preemptively grabbed a menu from the holder.
