Page 21 of Running Scared
Dean shuddered.“Good thing you showered,” he said, and if Bailey hadn’t seen his lips quirking with irony, he would have lost it right there.“God knows what’s on the floor in there.”
“I hate you,” Bailey muttered.“What was so fortuitous about that timing?”
“Easy.”Dean—steering Bailey like he’d been born and raised in the damned building—shrugged.“I was already packing.Just had to grab your suitcase.”
Bailey made a little squawk of protest, and Dean took him on another left.
“And your cat.”
Oh God.“Why my cat?”Bailey asked suspiciously.“I mean, why?”
Dean took him down a corridor that Bailey suddenly recognized.They were heading for the small maternity-ward entrance, which because in Texas irony was never big enough, was also where smokers used to go to indulge in their filthy habits.In a way it made sense.They got six to eight deliveries a day because usually pregnant women went to some of the bigger maternity hospitals in Austin.Given those odds, someone could sneak a five-minute cig and probably not see anybody waddling in to be checked, and if theydidget busted, as long as they weren’t working in L and D, nobody would ever know.
And most women in labor did not really give a rat’s ass if their doctors or nurses smelled like nicotine after they scrubbed up as long as the medical professionals were free with the painkillers and didn’t make the women stay on their backs.
“How did you evenknowabout this corridor?”Bailey asked, his voice rising a bit in panic.This seemedverywell thought out for an emergency rescue.
“Hello,” Dean said, “FBI!”
“Wait, is this how you knew where my apartment was?”Bailey asked, feeling stupid.Hadn’t that happened, like, three months ago?
“It was either that or stalking,” Dean replied absently.“Bailey, how oftendopeople sneak out here for a smoke?”
“A lot less than when I was going through med school,” Bailey told him, not wanting to think about those two years he’d been rooming with a bunch of smokers and had needed to feed his own fix.
“I don’t want anybody to see—”
Behind them, Bailey heard the clatter of hard-soled shoes and a thickly accented voice saying, “That is him!”
And Dean grabbed his hand and bolted for the door, pressing the Bluetooth earbud he’d been wearing and ordering, “Now, Marcus, now!”
They crashed outside the double doors, scaring a couple of orderlies, who scattered, and then leaped into Dean’s rental car, Dean in front, Bailey in back.
“Drive!”Dean barked, and Bailey stared out the window as the two goons who’d come back to Vlade’s body slammed outside after them.Marcus peeled away from the curb, pulling an abrupt right, and Bailey was left staring behind him.
“Do you think they caught the plates?”Marcus asked.
“No way of knowing,” Dean replied tersely.“Where’s your safety?”
“Two hours away, heading east.Yours?”
“Fort Stockton.We’ll meet Birdie between here and there in about three hours.”
“Birdie?”Marcus replied, a note of whining in his voice at odds with the big man’s debonair appearance.“Dean, do we have to?”
“Yes, we have to,” Dean muttered.“Did you not hear me make arrangements with Val not twenty minutes ago?It’s your own goddamned plan!”
“But I wasn’t thinking Birdie.I thought we could call in a favor from the Bureau!”Marcus retorted.
“That’s ridiculous,” Dean told him.“Val’s got an hour’s head start on us, coming from a closer direction on a clearer freeway.None of the Bureau airstrips are close enough to where Val’s going to be!”
“But Dean,” Marcus reasoned, and Bailey felt some satisfaction in the realization that he, Bailey, was not the only man on the planet who felt like Dean could be unreasonable, “that means Birdie has tofly back.I don’twantto jump out of an airplane today!”
“You don’thaveto jump out of an airplane today!”Dean retorted.“I’ll get clearance to voucher Birdie as an asset.You and I willlandin an airplane five miles outside of Sangrino del Corazón, the cartel’s compound in Mexico.Baileyis going to jump out of the airplane and be transported to safety along with everything he loves.”
“We’re going towhat?”Marcus demanded.
“I’m going towhat?”Bailey snapped, hard on his heels.
