Jeffery Deaver - The Kill Room

And she apologized to Lydia Foster a second time, for having this selfish thought.

Outside, she stripped off the overalls and deposited them in a burn bag; they were streaked with Lydia’s blood. She used cleanser on her hands. Checked her Glock. Scanned the area for any threats. All she saw were a hundred black windows, dim cul-de-sacs, paused cars. Each a perfect vantage point for the unsub to be standing to target her.

Sachs was about to hook her phone holster into place too but she paused. Thinking: I really want to talk to Rhyme.

She hit speed dial on her most recent prepaid mobile; it was his number. But the call went right to voice mail. Sachs thought about leaving a message but hung up. She found she wasn’t sure what she wanted to say.

Maybe just that she missed him.

CHAPTER 43

LINCOLN RHYME BLINKED. His eyes stung like hell and in his mouth were conflicting tastes, the sweetness of oil and the sourness of chemicals.

He’d just come back to consciousness and was, to his surprise, not coughing as much as he thought he ought to be. An oxygen mask was over his mouth and nose and he was breathing deeply. His throat hurt, though, and he guessed he had been coughing plenty earlier, when he’d been dead to the world.

He looked around, noting that he was in the back of an ambulance, excessively hot, parked on the spit of land where the attack had taken place; he could see the South Cove Inn in the distance, over the choppy blue-and-green bay. A stocky medic with a round black face was leaning forward, manning a flashlight, examining his eyes. He removed the oxygen mask to study Rhyme’s mouth and nose.

The man’s own face, very dark, gave away nothing. Finally he said in an American inflection, not British: “That water. Very bad. Runoff. Chemicals. All kinds of things. But it doesn’t look too bad. Irritation. It hurts?”

“Stings. Bad. Yes.”

As if the medic’s staccato syntax were contagious.

Rhyme inhaled deeply. “But please, you have to tell me! The two men who were with me? What—?”

“How’re his lungs?”

The question was from Thom Reston, who was approaching the back of the ambulance. The aide coughed once then twice, hard.

Rhyme squelched his own cough and muttered in astonishment, “You’re…you’re all right?”

Thom pointed to his eyes, which were bright red. “Nothing serious. Just a lot of crap in that water.”

Very bad. Runoff…

His clothes were soaking, Rhyme noted, and that answered several questions. First, that the aide had been the one who’d rescued him.

And, second, that the two shots he’d heard had been meant for Mychal Poitier.

I have a wife and two children I am supporting. I love them very much…

Rhyme was heartsick at the man’s death. After the corporal had been killed Thom must have dived into the water to save Rhyme as the attackers fled.

The medic listened to his chest again. “Surprising. They’re good, your lungs. I see the scar, the ventilator, but it’s an old scar. You’ve done well. You work out. And your right arm, the prosthetic system. I’ve read about that. Very impressive.”

Except not impressive enough to save Mychal Poitier.

The paramedic rose and said, “I would rinse them, your eyes and mouth. Water. Nothing else. Bottled. Three, four times a day. And see your own doctor. When you get home. I’ll be back in a moment.” He turned and stepped away, his feet crunching on the sand and gravel.

Rhyme said, “Thank you, Thom. Thank you. Saved my life yet again and not with clonidine.” The medicine to bring down blood pressure after an attack of autonomic dysreflexia. “I tried the ventilator.”

“I know. It was tangled around your neck. I had to pull it off. Wish I’d had Amelia’s switchblade.”

Rhyme sighed. “But Mychal. It’s terrible…”

Thom lifted a sphygmomanometer from a rack in the ambulance. He took Rhyme’s blood pressure himself. As he did this, he shrugged. “It’s not that serious.”

“The blood pressure?”

“No, I mean Poitier. Quiet. I need to hear the pulse.”

Rhyme was sure he’d misheard; his ears were still clogged with water. “But—”

“Shhh.” The aide was holding a purloined stethoscope to Rhyme’s arm.

“You said—”

“Quiet!” A moment later he nodded. “Pressure’s fine.” A glance in the direction in which the medic had disappeared. “Not that I didn’t trust him but I wanted to see for—”

“What do you mean it isn’t that serious, about Mychal?”

“Well, you saw: He got kicked and hit. But nothing too bad.”

“He was shot!”

“Shot? No, he wasn’t.”

“I heard two gunshots.”

“Oh, that.”

Rhyme snapped, “What do you mean, ‘Oh, that’?”

Thom explained, “The guy who kicked you into the water, in the gray shirt? He was shooting at Ron.”

“Pulaski? Jesus, he all right?”

“He’s fine too.”

“What the fuck happened?” Rhyme blurted.

Thom laughed. “Glad you’re feeling better.”

“What. Happened?”

“Ron finished up at the South Cove and came over here. You told him that’s where we’d be. He drove up in the rental just after you went for your swim. He saw what was going on and drove right toward the one with the gun, really floored it. The guy shot at the car twice but must’ve figured Ron was the first of the reinforcements and since there was only one way out they jumped in the Mercury and the pickup and beat it.”

“Mychal’s all right?”

“That’s what I said.”

The relief was immeasurable. Rhyme said nothing for a moment as his eyes took in the choppy water nearby, an arc of spray in the sunlight, low to the west. “The wheelchair?”

Thom shook his head. “That’s not so all right.”

“Pricks,” Rhyme muttered. He had no sentimental feelings about hardware, either professional or personal. But he’d grown quite attached to the Storm Arrow as a practical matter because it was such a fine piece of machinery and he’d worked hard to master it. Operating a wheelchair is a true skill. He was furious at the thugs.

The aide continued, “I’m borrowing one of theirs.” A glance at the medical team. “Non-motorized. Well, motorized by yours truly.”

Another figure appeared.

“Well, the rookie saves the day.”

“You don’t look too bad,” Pulaski said. “Damp. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you damp, Lincoln.”

“What’d you find at the inn?”

“Not much else. The maid confirmed pretty much what Corporal Poitier told us. A tough-looking American was asking about Moreno and suite twelve hundred. He said he was a friend and was thinking of throwing a party for him. Wanted to know who was with him, what his schedule was, who was his friend—I assume that was his guard.”

“Party,” Rhyme grunted and looked around the ambulance. The medic returned with burly assistants, one of whom was pushing a battered wheelchair. Rhyme asked, “You have any brandy or anything?”

“Brandy?”

“Medicinal brandy.”

“Medicinal brandy?” The man’s large face drew into a frown. “Let me think. I suppose doctors down here do administer that some—being a third-world island, of course. I’m afraid I missed that course when I got my emergency health services degree at the University of Maryland.”

Touché.

But the doctor was clearly amused, not offended, and gestured to the assistants, who got Rhyme into the battered chair. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in one that didn’t have a battery and motor, and he didn’t like the sensation of helplessness. It took him back to the days just after the accident.

“I want to see Mychal,” he said. Instinctively he reached for the chair’s controller before recalling it wasn’t there. He didn’t bother to go for the handgrip on the wheel to propel himself forward. If he couldn’t pull the fucking trigger of a gun he wasn’t going to be able to move his own deadweight over broken asphalt and sand with one hand.