Paula Graves - Secret Keeper

She took his hand, somehow calmed by the heat of his strong, firm touch. When she settled into the chair, he let go, leaving her fingers tingling and cold. “Then what?”

“We’ll wheel you down the tunnel, and then leave the chair there. Jesse’s gone to drive the car around to the exit. We’ll whisk you out of here and I’ll take you to my place until we can figure out what to do next.”

She wished he sounded more confident, but she could hear the thread of uncertainty running through his deep, calm voice. She had a lot of questions for him, since she was certain Wade Cooper knew more about her parents’ abduction than she did at this point.

But the first order of business was to get safely out of the hospital.

There were two other passengers on the fourth floor elevator when the doors opened. Annie smiled at them briefly, making a quick assessment. One was clearly a phlebotomist, carrying a rectangular plastic basket full of vials, bandages, rubber tourniquets and other blood-taking paraphernalia. The other was a haggard-looking man in his fifties in rumpled clothes who didn’t seem to have the energy to return the smile.

The phlebotomist got off on the fourth floor. The haggard-looking man stayed with them.

The elevator stopped at each floor, taking on new passengers. A woman with red-rimmed eyes. A man with a clerical collar who smiled back gently at Annie when he entered. A man holding a sleeping child tucked against his shoulder. Annie tried not to look at them all as potential dangers, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself.

She’d seen too much of life as a reporter to believe that all people were good. They weren’t. Many of them were, maybe even most of them, but there were enough bad actors to make the world a perilous place.

The elevator emptied at the lobby floor. Wade wheeled her out as well, taking a quick circuit around the lobby with her until their fellow passengers had all left through the front door.

Wade circled her back to the elevators and pushed her chair to a different elevator. He pushed the down button and the doors swished open. This elevator was narrower, not set up to accommodate the big, wide gurneys that the other cars were built to handle.

Wade wheeled her inside and hit the button for the basement on the panel.

“You engage in this kind of subterfuge often?” she asked with a wry half smile. Her voice seemed loud in the empty car.

“Not too often,” he answered. For a brief second, his big, warm hand settled on her shoulder. The touch had an electric effect on her nervous system, shooting sparks that lingered even after he removed his hand.

“Do you live far away?”

“About ten minutes from here. We’ll be there before you know it.”

“What if it’s not safe for me to leave the hospital?” she asked. “Medically, I mean.” After all, concussions weren’t anything to mess around with. The doctor had said he’d want to keep her another day, maybe two, just to be sure the brain injury wasn’t any more serious.

“We’ve already called the Cooper Security doctor on staff. If he thinks you need round-the-clock care, he’ll arrange it.”

“Just not in a public hospital?” she guessed.

“Right.”

“Cooper Security,” she repeated, the name once again niggling at the back of her scrambled brains. “You had something to do with Barton Reid’s most recent indictment, right?”

“Tangentially,” Wade agreed. The elevator hit the basement floor and dinged, the doors swishing open. He wheeled her out into a well-lit but featureless corridor.

The dingy white walls of the long tunnel were unadorned, save for security cameras spaced every twenty yards or so. “They’ll be able to see how I left,” she murmured.

“Won’t matter,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Because you’re not doing anything illegal, and my cousin is currently informing the hospital security staff that you’re being removed from the hospital under authority of the Chickasaw County Sheriff’s Department.”

“He can do that?”

“The sheriff can, and Aaron’s arranged it with him.”

“Won’t the sheriff want to know where I am?”

“Sheriff Canaday has an understanding with Cooper Security. We deal with a lot of high-risk security cases.”

“The real A.F.O.S.I. is going to want to talk to me,” she warned.

“I imagine the FBI will, too,” Wade affirmed as they passed the final security camera in the tunnel. “I have a cousin in the Huntsville Resident Agency—we’ll call him in a few days and see how they want to proceed.”

Annie’s head was starting to swim. “I feel as if I’ve awakened in the middle of a spy movie.”

Wade laughed softly, the warm, rich sound catching her by surprise. “Believe it or not, I know what you mean.”

The wheels of the wheelchair rattling on the dull tile flooring made a loud clatter that echoed off the walls of the tunnel, drowning out almost everything else. But not even the squeaky wheels could mask the loud ding of the elevator at the other end of the hall.

“Is that—?”

Wade paused a second, then suddenly started running. She felt his breath hot in her ear as they picked up speed and heard, when his steps quickened, that his limp nearly disappeared when he ran. Behind them, the pounding of footsteps on the linoleum echoed down the tunnel.

“Wade—”

“Almost there,” he breathed, his shoes squeaking on the floor. He sounded almost as scared as she felt.

The chair made it impossible for her to turn around and look to see who was coming behind them. But who else could it be? The men who’d come to her room to take her away had apparently figured out where she’d gone.

They reached the end of the long tunnel, where a heavy-looking steel door stood between them and whatever came next. Through the large square window set into the door, Annie glimpsed a concrete parking deck before Wade hurried around the chair and held out his hands. “We have to run,” he urged, his dark eyes meeting hers.

She let him pull her to her feet, daring a quick look behind them as they ran for the door. The two fake A.F.O.S.I. agents were gaining on them, only fifty yards back down the tunnel.

Wade pushed open the door and pulled her outside with him, emerging into a dimly lit parking garage at a sprint.

But there was no getaway vehicle waiting for them.

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