lips worked against the tube down his throat as if he were crying out, and his fear
touched her: There was such an animalistic edge to his desperation, like the way a wolf might
look at you if his leg was caught in a trap: Help me and maybe I won't kill you when you set me
free.
She put her hand on his shoulder. «It's all right. We don't have to go that route. But we need that
tube-«
The door to the room opened, and Jane froze.
The two men who came in were dressed in black leather and looked like the type who'd carry
concealed weapons. One was probably the biggest, most gorgeous blond she'd ever eyeballed.
The other scared her. He had a Red Sox hat pulled down low and a horrible air of malevolence
about him. She couldn't see a lot of his face, but going by his gray pallor, he seemed ill.
Looking at the pair, Jane's first thought was that they had come for her patient, and not just to
bring him flowers and yak it up.
Her second thought was that she was going to need security, stat.
«Get out,» she said. «Right now.»
The guy with the Sox cap completely ignored her and went over to the bedside. As he and the
patient made eye contact, Red Sox reached out and the two linked hands.
In a hoarse voice, Red Sox said, «Thought I'd lost you, you son of a bitch.»
The patient's eyes strained as if he were trying to communicate. Then he just shook his head
from side to side on the pillow.
«We're going to get you home, okay?»
As the patient nodded, Jane didn't bother with any more Chatty-Cathy, you-need-to-leave shit.
She lunged for the nursing station call button, the one that signaled a cardiac emergency and
would bring half the floor to her.
She didn't make it.
Red Sox's buddy, the beautiful blond, moved so fast she couldn't track him. One moment he was
just inside the door; the next he'd grabbed her from behind and popped her feet off the floor. As
she started to holler, he clamped his hand over her mouth and subdued her as easily as if she
were a child throwing a tantrum.
Meanwhile, Red Sox systematically stripped the patient of everything: the intubation, the IV, the
catheter, the cardiac wires, the oxygen monitor.
Jane went ballistic. As the machines' alarms started going off, she hauled back and kicked her
captor in the shin with her heel. The blond behemoth grunted then squeezed her rib cage until
she got so busy trying to breathe she couldn't soccer-ball him anymore.
At least the alarms would-
The shrill beeping fell silent even though no one touched the machines. And she had the horrible
sense that nobody was coming from down the hall.
Jane fought harder, until she strained so hard her eyes watered.
«Easy,» the blond said in her ear. «We'll be out of your hair in a minute. Just relax.»
Yeah, the hell she would. They were going to kill her patient-
The patient took a deep breath on his own. And another. And another. Then those eerie diamond
eyes shifted over to her, and she stilled as if he'd willed her to do so.
There was a moment of silence. And then in a rough voice, the man whose life she saved spoke
four words that changed everything… changed her life, changed her destiny:
«She. Comes. With. Me.»
Standing inside the nursing station, Phury did a quick hack job on the hospital's IT system. He
wasn't as smooth or flashy with the keyboard as V was, but he was good enough. He located the
records under the name Michael Klosnick and contaminated the findings and notes pertaining to
Vishous's treatment with random scripting: All the test results, the scans, the X-rays, the digital
photographs, the scheduling, the postop notes, it all became unreadable. Then he entered a brief
notation that Klosnick was indigent and had checked out AMA.
God he loved consolidated, computerized medical records. What a snap.
He'd also cleaned up the memories of most if not all of the OR staff. On the way up here he'd
swung by the operating suite and had a little tete-a-tete with the nurses on duty. He'd lucked out.
The shift hadn't changed, so the folks who had been in with V were all present and he'd scrubbed
them. None of those nurses would have distinct recollections of what they'd seen when the
brother had been operated on.
It wasn't a perfect erase job, of course. There were people he hadn't gotten to and maybe some
ancillary records that had been printed out. But that wasn't his problem. Whatever confusion
occurred in the wake of V's disappearance would be absorbed into the