Page 106 of Walking Red Flag

I nodded.

“Oh, did you hear that he was sick, too?” Pheobe asked. “He’s on his way here because he had a brush with a prisoner that arrived yesterday that we suspect has measles. Those are so contagious that we have to be super careful when we’re in a prison. We can’t have all that spreading around like wildfire.”

The two of us shared a look over her head.

“You look perfectly good now. I’ll go get a Band-Aid.”

She was gone seconds after that, heading to a big drawer-type thing in the middle of the room.

“I have some needles in this drawer,” she called out. “Syringes right beside the needles…”

Then she recited everything that she had before she came back to clean Copper’s arm up.

She’d done a pretty good job at cutting him open. There was blood literally everywhere.

He looked like a murder victim. Which would make sense if you called a family member if you thought he really was going to die.

“I’ll just give y’all a few minutes and go check on my other patients,” she said as she closed our curtain.

I pulled the syringes out of my pocket and placed them on the bed beside Copper’s leg.

Peeking out of the curtain, I headed toward the drawers Phoebe was just at and got two needles, then walked back to Copper.

After getting them onto the syringe, I looked at Copper and quietly said, “Lyle’s.”

He jerked his chin up and said, “You want me to hold him? Or you want to hold him?”

“I want to look in his eyes when I do this,” I said.

“Then I’ll hold him,” Copper quietly replied. “Let me borrow your phone.”

I shook my head. “Had to give it all up to get here. But…”

I jerked my chin toward Phoebe’s phone on the desk. “Code is 2224.”

Copper grinned and headed for it.

I didn’t bother to ask him why.

Instead, I stayed back and allowed him his phone call, peeking through the curtains to see when Lyle was brought in.

He was wheeled in with chains on his feet and hands, and he looked spooked.

Being exposed to a possible deadly virus would freak anyone out.

But Phoebe was really amping him up, talking about the worst possible side effects she could come up with.

“…then you could start bleeding from your eyes…” She pointed toward the bed. “Sit here.”

“Rome, you can stand outside.” She pointed to a spot right out of line of sight and said, “Thanks.”

She walked out of the room with Rome, and I jerked my chin to Copper.

He hurriedly hung up the phone while I snatched the syringes.

With the curtain partially closed, Lyle didn’t see us sneaking up on him.

Copper threw his arms over Lyle’s shoulders and pinned him to the bed just as I covered Lyle’s mouth with my hand.

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