Page 44 of Smoky Lake

Had some random passing junkie tossed it in the dumpster? Or was that Thomson’s assailant’s weapon of choice?

He didn’t have any rubber gloves with him, so he tore off a piece of black plastic from one of the garbage bags and used it to carefully extract the syringe. After a thorough check for anything else tossed in the dumpster, he jogged back into the hotel and took the three flights of stairs at a run.

In the short time he’d been gone, Ani had unbuttoned the sergeant’s uniform jacket and loosened her shirt. A damp folded washcloth lay across the woman’s forehead.

“I bet she’ll be furious when she wakes up,” Gil said. “I never met a soldier who liked being a patient.”

“Too bad. She has a fever of about a hundred and one, but that’s just my guess. Her heart rate is jumping all over the place. I can’t imagine what happened to her.”

“Does this help?” Gil showed her the syringe. “I found it in the dumpster.”

“You haven’t touched it, have you?”

“God no. Do you think it could be a drug of some kind? Meth or heroin, something like that? Have you seen an injection site?”

“I haven’t looked for anything like that.” Together, they examined Sergeant Thomson’s clothing, gently turning her onto her side to check her back as well. And there it was. On the side of her lower left pants leg, they found a tiny hole. The syringe had penetrated through all her layers of clothing and into her flesh.

“Any idea what they could have injected her with?” Gil asked Ani.

“Impossible to say without testing her. We need to get her to a hospital. How did anyone get close enough to her to inject her?”

“The hotel might have security cameras in the hallways. We can ask to look at them, but we’re not the police. I think her people should do the investigating.”

She lifted the washcloth and felt Thomson’s forehead again. “I think her fever’s coming down a little.”

She hurried to the bathroom to wring out the cloth, while Gil examined the puncture wound on Thomson’s calf.

He tried to reconstruct the noises they’d heard outside the door, but he’d been so caught up in Ani at that moment that he’d barely registered any of that. He’d heard a thump, but no voices. Sergeant Thomson wasn’t the quiet type; if she’d been able to, she would have called out a warning. Whatever was in the syringe must have been something that instantly knocked her out.

Ani came back in with a fresh washcloth. Kneeling next to the couch, she gently wiped the beads of sweat of the sergeant’s face.

“It must have been a fakeout,” he murmured, picturing it play out in his mind. “A guest came down the hallway, then pretended to trip over something and took a tumble. Thomson tried to help, but while the guy was on the carpet, he took out that syringe and emptied it into her.” Yeah, that made sense.

Ani’s dark eyebrows drew together. “But why? Do you think they were after us? Why didn’t they pounce when you opened the door?”

“Good question. Maybe they intended to, but Thomson did something to screw up their plan.” He scanned the sergeant’s unconscious form. “Her comms radio. She had it before, right?”

“I think so. Yes, I think I saw her use it.”

“It’s gone now. Maybe she tried to call for help, and the attacker panicked, grabbed it, and ran.”

“So, not exactly a smooth operator.”

He shrugged helplessly. “The hell if I know what happened. But I know one thing. We shouldn’t stick around here waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

She worried at her lower lip. “We can’t just leave her. She needs to go to a hospital.”

“Agreed. We’ll call nine-one-one and then skip out of here.”

“And go where?”

“Lachlan. Firelight Ridge. Home. You can finally get a full night’s sleep.”

He thought Ani would be happy with that plan, but instead she rose to her feet with a troubled expression. “There could be a problem with that plan.”

“What’s that?”

“Sergeant Thomson’s fever, the way she’s sweating, it’s a lot like how Victor looked when I saw him at the airport.”

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