nurse continued to talk as she led the way back to the waiting room door, Ethan following. He’d leave it to Griff to explain the situation to Claire.
He only hoped the two women hadn’t chosen the same rest room in which to attempt repair to their shattered emotions. When the nurse searched the one nearest the ICU, however, she found it was empty.
“Maybe she decided to go down for coffee,” she said. “If you see her, would you tell her that her father is still the same. And that she was right. The problem was in the machine.”
“I’ll tell her,” Ethan promised.
He watched as the woman walked down the corridor and pressed the button that would give her admittance to the ICU. Standing there alone, he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong.
Raine had been determined to see the old man. If her visit had been cut short, then she should have been waiting around here to be readmitted.
Except she wasn’t. Knowing how furious Claire had been about the idea of letting her in to see her grandfather, he didn’t believe Raine would risk the family taking steps to prevent her from doing that again.
Claire’s departure from the waiting room had been her window of opportunity. He couldn’t see her giving it up to go down to the cafeteria for coffee.
And if not, then where the hell was she?
THERE HAD BEEN NO HESITATION in the gunman’s guidance. He was obviously very familiar with the hospital or he had explored this route before he’d come to wait for her outside the ICU.
As she’d followed his directions down the dingy, narrow corridors of a part of the building obviously frequented only by staff and maintenance, Raine had thought they would surely encounter someone. If they did, she planned to try to signal to them that she needed help.
The only people they’d passed, however, had been a couple of nurses, who hurried by them with their eyes downcast. Tellingly, they had both been carrying purses.
Coming in to work from the parking deck? If so, that must where her captor was taking her.
If this were like the parking facilities of most hospitals, it would be filled with cars and people at this time of day. He probably wouldn’t be willing to use the gun out there among them. That wasn’t a given, of course, but she thought a more likely scenario was that he would put her into whatever vehicle he’d driven here and take her with him.
The crucial questions were why he wanted to do that and where he intended to take her—neither of which she could answer. She couldn’t begin to speculate on what this abduction might be about—other than the Phoenix’s investigation, which also seemed to have precipitated the attack on her father.
Someone obviously believed the two of them knew something about the organization Ethan Snow had mentioned. Maybe her father did, but if so, why hadn’t he given that information to Ethan and Cabot when he had the chance?
As for her, she knew nothing about The Covenant. She couldn’t remember hearing the name before Ethan had mentioned it in her living room last night.
“To the left,” the man behind her directed.
His hold on her arm hadn’t loosened, nor had the muzzle of the weapon he held shifted. As they walked, she could feel it rubbing against her spine.
“Punch the up button,” he instructed as they approached a bank of three elevators.
As soon as they were in front of the doors of the first, she obeyed, reaching out to push the ascending arrow. The sign on the wall listed a color match for each parking level, four of which were above the floor they were on.
This might be her last chance, Raine realized, especially if he had parked on the top level, which in any deck was apt to be sparsely populated. The last opportunity to effect an escape before he got her alone.
If there’s someone inside when the doors open—
Two chimes signaled the near-simultaneous arrival of two separate cars. Still without any clear-cut plan, she tensed, preparing to take whatever opportunity presented itself.
Would he shoot me in cold blood with a witness present?
Her sense from the first had been that he would. Certainly if he was pushed.
If she was right about that, as soon as he got her into a deserted area, then he would kill her. But if he’d been instructed to take her somewhere instead of killing her here—
The doors of the elevator in front of her, as well as the ones on the one beside it, began to slide open. She took a breath, afraid that if she did anything more to prepare, she would communicate her intent to him.
The opening doors revealed an elderly woman and a man in a wheelchair. The man looked frail, but the woman was tall and raw-boned. Her white uniform seemed to indicate she was the man’s caregiver rather than a relative.
“Excuse us, please,” the woman said cheerily as she began to maneuver the chair out of the elevator.
Raine and her captor were standing so close it would be difficult for the caregiver to get the chair out around them. Despite that, the man behind Raine made no move to step aside, perhaps fearful that in doing so, he might reveal his weapon.
“Watch your toes, dear,” the woman warned as she attempted to roll her charge by them.
Taking advantage of the situation, Raine pretended she was forced to take a step to the side in order to get out of the way of the wheelchair. The move caught her captor by surprise, and the hold on her elbow loosened fractionally.
When it did, she jerked her arm forward as hard as she could. Incredibly, it slipped out of the man’s grasp.
She sprinted to the next elevator, whose doors, with perfect timing, began to close as soon as she ran between them. That didn’t prevent her from pressing the close-door button when she’d located it.
Outside there was an ungodly commotion. It sounded as if, in pursuing her, her captor had somehow become entangled with the wheelchair, maybe upsetting it. The female aide was shrieking something unintelligible. The man with the gun shouted an obscenity just as the elevator doors slid together.
Heart racing, her breath coming in audible gasps, Raine tried to think what she should do next. If she were right about her captor having deliberately parked at the top of the parking deck…
Frantically she punched the button for the floor below it. Her eyes watched the elevator’s climb while she prayed she’d been in time. A soft ping gave the answer to that plea.
As soon as the doors opened, she stepped out and began running full-out down a corridor that looked very much like the one she’d just left. She needed to find another set of elevators or figure out how to get back into the main section of the hospital as quickly as she could.
Once she’d done that, she would think about what came next. She wasn’t sure she wanted to go back to the ICU, since that’s where the man with the gun had been waiting for her.
And in all probability, it was where he would begin his search for her this time. If he were brazen enough to try to take her
