Джеймс Паттерсон - Target - Alex Cross

“What the hell time is it?” he whispered grumpily.

Varjan held his gaze, smiled, whispered, “Little before five, sir.”

“Couldn’t this have waited a couple hours?”

The assassin acted sympathetic as she pumped the cuff. “I’m just following doctor’s orders.”

Varjan put on a stethoscope and took Jones’s blood pressure.

“Don’t tell me how bad my numbers are,” he grumbled. “Don’t mean a damn thing anyway, I’m going under the knife this afternoon.”

“People live through cardiac surgery every day,” she said, removing the cuff.

“That’s what they say. Where you poking me now?”

“Inner left arm.”

Without responding, Jones closed his eyes, adjusted the IV line sticking in the back of his left hand, and exposed the inside of his elbow. Varjan wrapped a length of tubing around his weak upper arm and felt for a vein.

She took a needle, attached it to a vacuum tube, and—

“Who the hell are you?” the woman in the chair said.

Varjan started, said, “Sorry, Terri Le Grand. The phlebotomist. You?”

“Eddie, the sister,” the woman said, studying her critically. “He had blood taken last night.”

The assassin gazed at her. “And I’d think there’ll be more drawn before surgery.”

Eddie sniffed. “You’ll drain him before he can get on the table.”

“Surprise,” Jones said, his eyes still shut. “Dear sister woke up on the positive side of the bed again.”

“They’re taking a lot of blood, Arthur,” his sister said.

“Some of it’s being stockpiled for surgery,” Varjan said as she slipped the needle toward his arm. “Little pinch.”

“Ow,” Jones said, his eyes flashing open. “That hurt!”

Varjan, flustered, said, “I... I’m sorry. That never happens.”

“Torture him, why don’t you?” Eddie said.

“Eddie,” Jones said, looking away from Varjan. “Please.”

His sister sniffed again. “Just saying.”

Varjan watched blood flow into the vacuum tube and got a second tube ready. This one was not a vacuum but the barrel of a syringe. She set it into the back of the needle and pressed the plunger. The syringe contained a high dose of propranolol, a drug used to slow the heart rate and lower blood pressure.

Once the full dose was in, Varjan tugged back on the plunger until it was partially filled with blood. She slid out the needle, put cotton on the wound site, and taped it in place.

“There,” she said, smiling brightly. “Not so bad.”

Eddie said, “Do you get off on sticking people like that?”

“That’s it,” Jones said. “Can you have the nurse call Rebecca, my wife? Tell her to come early before I’m driven mad?”

Eddie acted offended. “What? I slept in a chair for you, Arthur.”

Varjan did not know what to make of the siblings and didn’t much care.

“Well,” she said awkwardly, “I hope surgery goes well.”

“If I don’t die from my sister’s bleak outlook on life,” Jones said.

“Rational outlook on life,” Eddie said. “The cold hard facts.”

Varjan smiled halfheartedly and left. She could hear them bickering softly as she walked down the hall toward the nurses’ station, where the shift change was under way. Brita, the Filipina nurse, looked up from her chart.

“Good?”

“Better than good,” Varjan said. “Have a nice sleep.”

She walked directly to the elevator and pushed the down button. Several moments passed before alarms began to sound in the hall.

Eddie ran out of her brother’s room, yelled, “He’s not breathing!”

Nurses and orderlies from both shifts grabbed crash carts and raced toward Jones’s room. The elevator doors opened.

Varjan took one last look at the team racing past Eddie, who trembled at the doorway. She looked in at the doctors and nurses and then glanced down the hall at her brother’s assassin. “You bled him dry!” she cried. “I knew that would happen!”

Varjan vanished inside the elevator, keeping her face turned away from the cameras while the doors slid shut behind her.

I was drenched when I ran back up the front steps to my home. Inside, I didn’t bother taking off my jacket or watch cap; I just went straight to the kitchen and punched Redial on my cell.

“C’mon, Ned,” I said. “Pick up.”

I’d tried to call Mahoney six or seven times on the run home, but every call to his personal phone immediately jumped to voice mail. And every call to his work phone ended with a federal robot telling me his voice mail was not yet set up.

That was impossible. Mahoney had had the same work number for eight years. We talked all the time on the work phone.

Five assassins, I thought as I started making coffee. No, three. If Thomas was an assassin, he was a dead one. So was Romero.

Were there more than the three left?

It could have been just the three at that point, but that seemed unlikely to me. If there were three, there could be four or five or even six.

Five or six. I knew those numbers were a pure guess, but that didn’t matter. A prudent man should assume the worst and prepare for it.

Was five or six the worst-case scenario? Or were there even more than that?

Or was I just imagining this? A tired, frazzled brain searching for answers?

Pouring myself a cup of coffee, I decided to go with my instincts because I did not have enough facts. After trying both of Ned’s phones again, I poured coffee into a second cup and took it and mine upstairs to our bedroom, where I flipped on the lights.

Shutting the door, I said, “Bree, wake up.”

She groaned and pulled the pillow over her head. “Go away. I need to sleep.”

I walked over and grabbed the pillow away.

“Alex!” she shouted angrily. “Bree needs to—”

“I know Bree needs to sleep,” I said. “But I need to talk to Chief Stone. Or do you want me to leave you out of the loop and go straight to Chief Michaels?”

Her brow knitted and she squinted at me and some of the stiffness in her shoulders eased. “What time is it?” she grumbled.

“Just after five,” I said.

“You’ve been out running already?”

I put her coffee on the night table. “Couldn’t sleep, figured I’d go for a run and think some things through.”

Bree yawned and struggled to sit up. “Okay?”

“I think there’s a conspiracy going on,” I said. “A conspiracy of assassins.”

She sipped the coffee, listening and saying nothing as I tried to explain the fractured logic of my theory.

“Something bad is about to happen. I know this doesn’t sound like me, but I can feel it.”

Bree was quiet for several moments before saying, “This doesn’t sound like you at all, Alex. Seeing riderless horses. How much sleep have you been getting?”

“This has nothing to do with sleep, and I didn’t see the horse. I just remembered it. This really has to do with Senator Walker getting killed, probably by Thomas, who was then killed either by Varjan or whoever beat Sergeant Moon to death.”

“Alex, there’s a lot of conjecture in what you’re saying. Especially the idea that there are more assassins than we know about.”

“I’m saying we should be proceeding based on that assumption. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong. But I don’t think I am.”

Bree was quiet again but studying me. “What do you think these assassins are going to do?”

“I... I don’t know. But if they were part of a plot that begins with the killing of a sitting U.S. senator, draw your own conclusions.”

“I can’t draw any conclusions,” she said. “We don’t have enough facts.”