John Shirley - Watch Dogs - Dark Clouds

The cops didn’t pay much attention to a grimy twelve year old boy running through the streets with a back pack. If they’d looked in that backpack, they’d have found it packed with cash from dozens of dirty deals. Out of all that cash, Wolfe had gotten only five dollars a delivery.

Wolfe’s father, Colin, had intervened with Pearce, asked him to take him out of the life. Pearce had gotten Mick off the street and back in school.

But not before Wolfe had learned the gang’s basic code words… including the five words that Pearce used, back then, for his own operations. Deep in the Back Yard. It seemed he remembered them. Because here was Pearce.

Was it curiosity that had brought Aiden Pearce here?

Wolfe noticed a van behind Pearce, a gray van trolling the street, coming up slowly behind the vigilante. Was the van a vehicle protecting Pearce—or something else?

Pearce paused on the corner and turned to look narrowly at Wolfe. They were ten paces apart. Wolfe could tell Pearce was trying to remember who Wolfe was.

“Aiden! It’s Mick!” Wolfe called. “It’s been years but…”

Then his peripheral vision caught a flicker, at that van. He turned to look and saw the van’s side door opening, a man leaning out. And the man was aiming a silenced pistol at Aiden Pearce.

“Aiden—get down!” Wolfe shouted.

A hissing gunshot, then another, as Pearce reacted to Wolfe’s shout and threw himself down. But even from here Wolfe caught the flash of splashing blood.

Wolfe dug under his coat, pulled his .38, aimed it at the van—but it was speeding away. The license plate had been removed. It was roaring off down the street and if he fired he might hit one of the other cars.

Wolfe put the gun away, got out his cell phone instead, and dialed 911 … and frowned. His phone was crackling, the call not going through. The screen on it said no signal .

No signal—now? Here?

Wolfe ran to Pearce, and went down on one knee by him. “Aiden!”

Aiden Pearce was sprawled face down on the sidewalk. A small pool of dark scarlet was spreading around him. There was blood all over the back of Pearce’s head. And he was just lying there, completely still…

Wolfe got to his feet and tried his cell phone again. Still no good. He looked around, saw people in cars staring as they drove past. He waved his arms at the drivers. No one stopped.

Got to get help for Pearce. How?

Then he heard a siren. Maybe someone else had seen the attack, called an ambulance . Sure got here fast, even for ctOS.

The ambulance was screaming around the corner, screeching to a halt on the street close by the fallen Aiden Pearce.

It was barely stopped before the medics were out, two burly black Emergency Medical Techs in blue and yellow uniforms—on their shoulders patches read CFR: Chicago’s Fastest Responders.

A third man jumped out of the back of the ambulance—a lanky white guy in an ill-fitting uniform. The EMT rushed up to Wolfe, a hand outthrust like a football block, making Wolfe step away from Aiden.

“Stay back, sir—”

“He’s been shot, he’s going to need a compress, blood clotter, quick! They fired twice—”

The man was still backing Wolfe up. “Thank you, sir. If you have any more information, give it to the police, they’ll be here pretty soon…”

“Sure, sure. But…”

This medic sure had dirty fingernails for a guy who worked in an ambulance.

There was a name tag on his uniform. P. COLLINGSWOOD, it said.

“What hospital are you taking him to?” Wolfe asked.

“Lakeside Hospital, just a few blocks away, sir.”

Wolfe looked past the EMT and saw the other two already had Pearce on a portable gurney. They were wheeling it toward the back of the ambulance, lifting it in. Pearce was still lying face down. He had a cell phone clutched in his hand. Had he called these guys himself somehow?

Wolfe had seen a lot of medical technicians at work, here and overseas in Delta Force—he’d never seen anybody go about it this fast. They didn’t seem to be following procedure.

The first two Emergency Technicians got in the front of the ambulance; the third EMT was jumping in the back, slamming the door from the inside—and the ambulance was moving away even before the door was completely closed.

Wolfe made a mental note of the number on the side of the CFR vehicle: 103.

The vehicle did a tight, tire-burning U-turn and then drove away, careening down the street at top speed.

He heard another siren—a police siren.

Wolfe stared at the puddle of blood on the sidewalk and thought, No way I’m staying here to answer police questions.

He had an unregistered gun—and there were a whole lot of questions he didn’t want to answer. He turned and strode away, not too fast, slipping between the nearest buildings at the first opportunity.

He looked around the corner of the buildings, back to the site of the shooting. A cop car was just pulling up. Officers were getting out, gesturing at the blood, then looking around in confusion.

Then an ambulance drove up, and stopped in the street by the patrol cars.

Wolfe watched as an EMT got out, and he could read the body language of the EMT and the two cops pretty clearly.

Puzzlement. They seem surprised to find no one there.

“But you’re sure this is the hospital they’d have come to?” Wolfe asked.

“Yes, I’m sure of it,” the Admissions Nurse told him. She was a squat, thick-bodied woman in a pink-white uniform with a lot of dyed blond hair piled up on top of her head. She sniffed a lot as she talked to him. Allergies.

Wolfe glanced nervously around the admissions lobby. “This place is only, like, three blocks from the hospital… why would they take him anywhere else? You’re saying he’s not here at all?”

“That’s what I’m telling you, sir! No gunshot victims have been brought in, no one of that description. No one like that at all…”

Ishould get out of here. Fast.

Wolfe knew instinctively that his witnessing the shooting made him a target as well. And this hospital lobby was too exposed.

He turned and walked across the lobby and out the door into a slight drizzle of cold rain. He looked around for that van, for anyone who seemed a threat. And for a moment… everyone seemed like a threat. That black mailman who was glancing at him as he walked by; that taxi driver pulling up, probably just waiting for a patient leaving the hospital; that lady walking her dog. They all seemed inexplicably sinister in that moment.

Wolfe chuckled at his own nervousness, going quickly down the steps to the sidewalk. He glanced around again, and saw no one else except an old lady with a walker—and decided he probably didn’t have to worry about her.

Still, he was going to have to watch his back awhile.

He set off down the sidewalk, thinking.

So if Pearce isn’t here… where is he? What the hell is going on?

The EMT had told him that Pearce would be taken here, to this hospital. But no one had been brought here by ambulance for more than half an hour. And last time someone had been brought in, they’d had a broken leg, not a bullet wound. And no one Pearce’s age, or color had come in by ambulance. The lobby admissions nurse had been the fourth hospital worker Wolfe had asked. He’d asked the nurses in the ER, he’d even asked a guy mopping up the ER waiting room.

No one named Pearce—no one fitting Pearce’s description. No gunshot victims at this hospital. Yet the ER routinely got patients in through the CFR ambulance company.