Page 36 of Cross Down
We stare at each other for a few seconds, then she ducks down and retrieves my Glock 17 from her soft leather briefcase. She pops out the magazine, expertly works the action to eject the cartridge contained in the pistol, catches it, and hands over all three items to me.
“Please don’t reassemble your weapon in my presence,” she says. “If you do, I will take it as a threat and put a round through your large head.”
“No worries, Agent Wagner,” I say, holding the magazine, round, and unloaded pistol in one hand. “Any chance you could give me a ride back to the Drop Zone Café? That’s where I’m parked.”
She drops her pen on the metal desk. “Don’t push your luck.”
“Sorry, ma’am, that’s part of my job description.”
Chapter
41
She opens hereyes, feeling woozy as hell. She takes in her surroundings. A hospital room, curtains drawn around the bed, monitors tracking her respiration, blood pressure, heart rate. IV in her left hand, and in her right hand—
Something jingle-jangles.
She’s handcuffed to the bed railing.
Well, shit, then.
She tries to move her left shoulder and it feels like that entire part of her body has been replaced with stiff Styrofoam.
The curtain zips open, and a woman in blue scrubs who identifies herself as an anesthesiologist comes in holding a thick binder in her hands. After some blah-blah-blah, she leaves, and she’s followed a few minutes later by a male OR nurse in scrubs who gives her an additional blah-blah-blah about her upcoming surgery.
“Any questions?” the nurse asks.
Yeah,she thinks,got any ideas what I should tell my boss about how I screwed up?“No,” she says. “This isn’t my first rodeo. I’ll be fine.”
He leaves; a tall, thin woman enters and identifies herself as the surgeon. More blah-blah-blah about how hopefully she’ll be out of the OR and in recovery in two hours, blah-blah-blah.
The doctor says, “You’re lucky to be alive and lucky that the bullet didn’t do more damage. But this isn’t like television or the movies. You’re facing months of rehab before you’re fully recovered.”
“Thanks for the cheerful message,” she responds. “But now I feel like taking a nap. Why don’t you get the hell out and leave me alone?”
The surgeon’s face reddens and she leaves, but, damn it, only about a minute later, another figure enters, a woman wearing blue scrubs, and, damn it some more, the woman in the bed recognizes that angry face.
The angry woman takes a chair next to the bed, pulls out a pistol, points it at her, and says, “I’m Brianna Stone. You tried to kill my husband a half hour ago. Let’s chat.”
Chapter
42
Through luck andthe services of Uber, I get back to the Drop Zone Café, where I find a pleasant surprise. Mel Carr is standing in the parking lot, leaning up against my Grand Cherokee’s front left fender and sipping coffee from a cardboard cup.
He smiles as I approach. “Big John,” he says.
“M’ man Mel,” I say.
“Good to see you out and about,” he says. “I figured you’d be coming back here to fetch your wheels. How did you get bounced out?”
I say, “Agent Wagner was prepared, aggressive, and knew what she wanted. Unfortunately for her, she lacked jurisdiction over my ass. How about you?”
He lifts his cup in a salute. “I told you I have a friend in CID, the one who told me that those two suicides were really homicides,” he says. “I asked Agent DeGrasse to contact my friend, who happens to be her superior, and here I am. Free as a bird for the foreseeable future.”
I remember the parting words of Agent Ned Mahoney as I say, “Feel like a drive? We need to get some stuff squared away.”
He takes a final swig of his coffee, drops the cup into an overflowing orange and white trash bin, and gets into the passenger seat.
