C. Box - Endangered

“I told you I didn’t get a good look at him,” Lucy said.

“He’s got a deadeye stare. He had cold eyes. I got a bad feeling off him. But I’m probably wrong.”

Lucy thought Sheridan was doubting herself. She’d been wrong before, a few months ago, when she thought a fellow student was dangerous. She’d been wrong about the student and the result was tragic. Since then, no doubt, she’d not quite trusted her intuition as she once had. Lucy had never had that problem. She wished she could have gotten a better look at the janitor.

“Okay, never mind,” Sheridan said. “Let’s find Nate.”

“There’s some man who won’t let anyone in,” Lucy said. “Like a guard. I heard Mom and Dad talking about him.”

“We made it this far. We have to try.”

As she said it, a portly man in a sport jacket and tie appeared in the hallway. He was walking toward them, pulling on an overcoat. He didn’t look like a doctor or an administrator and Lucy thought: Oh no .

“Come on,” Sheridan said, sotto voce. “Act like you know where you’re going.”

Lucy fell in beside her. She hoped the man didn’t look at her too closely and notice her age. Casually, Sheridan reached up and flipped her ID badge so that the photo and name couldn’t be seen. Lucy did the same.

As the man got closer, he nodded to them. “Evening, ladies.”

Sheridan turned on a smile and said, “Dinnertime?”

“It sure is,” he said. Then he paused, looking hard at them. Especially at Sheridan, who stood with her head cocked and her mouth parted. Lucy was surprised how flirtatious and brazen Sheridan was being with him. It was a side of her sister she’d never seen before. Sheridan was drawing his attention toward her and away from Lucy, and Lucy was grateful.

While he looked deeply into Sheridan’s eyes, Lucy took a glance at his credential and saw the name Dudley.

He said to Sheridan, “I don’t suppose I could treat you to a quick bite?”

“What about my colleague?” Sheridan asked.

Dudley shot a glance at Lucy but she looked away as if embarrassed. She didn’t want him to study her face.

“I’m kidding,” Sheridan said. “I’m on duty. We’re on duty.”

“Maybe another time, then,” Dudley said. “Do you work on this floor? I haven’t seen you around.”

“We fill in wherever they need us,” Sheridan said.

“Well, I hope they need you around here ,” he said.

“Maybe.”

“I’ll keep my eye out for you,” he said with a wink.

When he was gone, Sheridan said, “Creep.”

“I think your instincts are right on about that one,” Lucy said.

Sheridan tousled Lucy’s hair as they walked down the hall. “Just follow my lead, little sister.”

—

NATE’S ROOM WAS DIMLY LIT and he was the only one in it. An empty chair sat next to the bed with a paperback novel opened and turned facedown on the cushion. Probably where Dudley sat, Lucy thought.

Nate’s eyes were closed and a plastic oxygen mask covered his nose and mouth. The covers of his bed were pulled up to his chin. His face was bruised and there was a bandage on his right cheek beneath his eye. Dozens of tubes and wires snaked up through the sheets, leading to monitors. His head was tilted to the side. If it weren’t for the sounds of the machines clicking and the EKG screen that showed a heartbeat, Lucy thought he could have been dead.

He was a big man and he filled the hospital bed from end to end. Lucy had never seen him laid out like that.

“My God,” Sheridan whispered. “At least he’s still alive.”

Lucy nodded, but stayed near the door while Sheridan approached him. Lucy could hear him breathing, in and out, through the oxygen mask. It was clouded with condensation.

Her sister said, “Nate, it’s Sheridan, your apprentice. We’re all up here to see April, down the hall. Well, Dad isn’t here yet, but he will be.

“Look, you need to fight and get well. We need to fly falcons together someday, and you’ve got a lot still to teach me.”

Lucy looked down at her shoes. Her eyes stung. Her sister sounded strong and sincere.

Then she heard Sheridan gasp, and when Lucy looked up, her sister had her hands to her mouth.

“What?”

Sheridan turned. Her eyes were huge. “He winked at me.”

Lucy looked from Sheridan to Nate. He was just as still as he’d been when they’d entered the room. His head hadn’t moved a half inch.

“He winked at me,” Sheridan said again. “He opened his eyes and winked.”

Lucy didn’t respond.

“Really, he did,” Sheridan insisted. She turned back to Nate and said, “Do it again. Show my sister I’m not crazy.”

Nothing.

“Nate, come on. Please .”

After nearly a minute, Lucy said, “Sherry, maybe you thought you saw something. I believe you thought you saw him wink. But—”

“I did ,” Sheridan said.

Lucy shook her head, her palms up. “I’m not going to argue with you.”

Minutes passed. Both Sheridan and Lucy studied Nate’s face for some kind of movement, some kind of recognition from him that they were there.

Finally, Sheridan said, “We better get back.”

Lucy agreed with her.

As they walked back down the hallway together toward the closed door, Sheridan said, “Maybe my mind is playing tricks on me.”

“Okay.”

“He opened his eyes for a second and he winked at me.”

“Okay.”

“Or maybe I just wanted him to so bad, I thought he did it.”

“Maybe.”

Sheridan reached out and pulled Lucy close as they walked to the storage room to change back into their clothes.

—

TIMBER CATES watched them pass by through a half-inch opening of the maintenance closet door where he’d found the cart.

He recognized the older one, although she’d been behind him in school by quite a few years. The younger one he’d never seen before, but they looked so similar they had to be sisters.

What were they doing wearing hospital scrubs? And did the older one know who he was?

He had two brothers and so had only known brothers. The Picketts had three girls. They’d all grown up together in the same county a hundred and twenty miles to the south, but except for Dallas and April, the families had never interacted in any way. He thought how strange that was, but he couldn’t really come up with how he felt about it.

The things he did for Dallas, he thought.

Or more accurately, the things he did for his mother . Dallas probably didn’t even know he was out of prison.

Timber was assured that everything was fine and that he hadn’t been recognized when the sisters emerged from the storage room. They’d changed from their scrubs to civilian clothing and they seemed to be joking with each other, the younger one teasing the oldest. They were good-looking girls, he thought. In any other circumstance, he’d probably make a run at them.

The mother, Marybeth, met them in the hallway, and the three of them went into the room of his target.

The ceramic knife was in his sock, hidden by the baggy right pant leg of his prison hospital scrubs. He hadn’t even passed through a metal detector to gain entry to the hospital, so the precaution had been unnecessary. The prison ID, which he wore on a lanyard around his neck, looked similar enough to the ones they used at the hospital that it wasn’t getting a second look.

Hell, he thought, he could have brought a gun. But the knife would do.

He’d wait. They’d all have to leave the room eventually.

28

Plumes of snow sprayed out from the tires as Joe barreled down the mountain in the foul-smelling cab of Bull’s Ford F-250 meat wagon. Brass casings that had been ejected during the fusillade danced across the dashboard.