Page 15 of Running Scared
Killers in the hospital.
Dead doctor in the crib.
Coming back, may see me.
L—
The door burst open, saving him from making a really embarrassing mistake, and at that moment he heard Sarree’s voice echoing down the corridor.
“Doctor Dodge!”she called.“Bailey!There is a four-car pileup coming in, and apparently we don’t get breaks!”
The door clicked shut, the footsteps receded, and moments later Sarree burst into the crib just as Bailey scrambled out from under the bed.
“Bailey!”she cried, for a moment only focused on her one goal.“What in the name of heaven are you doing in here while—Jesus Christ Almighty!”
Bailey gaped at her.“Sarree!”
“It’s not using his name in vain when you are calling on him in need,” she retorted, staring at Vlade in slack-faced horror.“What happened?”
“There were two men in here,” Bailey said, trying to hear his own voice over the roaring in his ears.“Did you see them when you came down the corridor?”
Sheforcedher square, lined face to turn toward him and away from the dead man in the crib.“No,” she rasped.“I mean… I saw the back of them.A really large man in a boxy suit and a smaller man wearing a little straw fedora, slacks, and a dress shirt.They had slick, shiny shoes, like the oil men.”
Bailey nodded, knowing she was talking about the guys who got rich quick by striking oil on their property.They were often the same guys who wrecked pricey cars on the local highways after drinking more than their limit.
“Okay,” he said.“Good.I… I texted Dean.Let’s get forensics up here, have them wait for Dean, and you and I go do our jobs.”
She nodded once, curtly, and then stared.“Bailey,” she said faintly, “please tell me you’ve got spare scrubs in your locker, or a spare lab coat.”
Bailey looked down at himself and grimaced.While he’d managed to keep his hands from the bulk of the blood dripping off the cot, his elbow, hip, and thigh were absolutely saturated.“Fuck me,” he muttered.“I’ll hit the showers, you throw me some scrubs.Give me five minutes to bag and tag this shit, and I’ll be out there before the ambulances pull in.”
In any other hospital it would make sense that the crib and the showers and the locker room would all be right next to each other, but the crib had been designed for something else—there was speculation that it had been meant as a conference room—and other speculation that the architects had gone “Wait, what do we put in this odd intersection when all the other rooms have a different purpose altogether?”
Whatever the reasoning, Bailey had to stride down the corridor covered in blood before he took another right to the locker rooms and the showers.Like Sarree, he was moving with purpose, his mind on his goal, and later he would marvel that he was so single-minded at being the doctor that met the four-car pileup when his team was shorthanded, that he didn’t see the two men striding down the corridor toward him until he took that right.
One of them must have gasped, and he glanced up in a preoccupied way and caught the eyes of the absolutely enormous man, pure brutal muscle and a face like slabs of meat assembled and roughly carved, as they passed each other.
As Bailey turned toward the shower, the man’s eyes began to change.From surprise to calculation to realization, and as Bailey kept his no-bullshit stride, he wondered when the killers would put together that Bailey had been there, had accidentally wallowed around in the puddle of blood, and could identify them both by their voices.
And now by their faces.
Oh fuck.Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck.
Falling as Opposed to Jumping
DEAN WASat the apartment, packing his go bag and giving Bumble one last chuck under the chin before he had to give the lint roller a pass over his clothes, when his phone, set to relay texts over his earbuds, began to tell a three-text horror story with Bailey as the star.
He hit Marcus’s number before the final text came through.
“What, you done honeymooning and ready to leave early?”
“Where are you?”Dean asked crisply.
“Leaving the coffee place you love so much.What’s up?”
Oh thank God, thank God, thank God, thank God, Marcus was just as big a stickler for being on time as he was.They’d been booked on a flight out, and Marcus had taken a Lyft from his nearby hotel room and grabbed the rental Dean had used for some last-minute errands.
But no errand was as important as the two of them being on time for their plane.That’s why they got along so well.
