First Thrills - Lee Child [13]
“Let him out,” she whimpered, trying to lunge past him to reach the latch on the box. He hauled her back. “He’s afraid of the dark.”
“And I’m afraid of dying. You can let him out yourself—once you two are in the meat locker.” He twisted the cord in his good hand, making her yelp but not cutting off her air. He shoved his weight against the gurney and rolled it into the refrigerator, then pushed her inside as well, flinging the tattoo gun in after her.
As soon as the door was secured, he collapsed against its cold steel and slid to the floor.
“Hey, man, where you’ve been all night?” Blake Crider, one of Andy’s fellow interns, asked him when seven A.M. finally rolled around. “You hear about the popsicle people they found in the morgue?”
Andy had kept himself busy in the suture room—once he’d finished cleaning and dressing his own wounds. Wounds he hid under a long-sleeved T-shirt and his lab coat.
“What happened?” A sense of dread roiled in his gut. Had the day shift let them out? Were Syrene and Dutch going to come after him now?
“Some chick and dude were messing around, got themselves locked in the meat locker,” Blake said. “The dude suffocated—couldn’t get out of a death box.”
Dead? No one was supposed to die. Andy swallowed hard, his arm throbbing in time with his pounding pulse, and tried to ignore the trickle of guilt that chilled him from the inside out. He had no doubt Dutch would have killed him, but still, he should have called the police, should have confessed everything, should have . . .
“What about the girl?” Had Syrene told the cops he was the one who let her in? If so, he could kiss his future good-bye.
“That’s where it gets even freakier,” Blake continued. “The chick must have been locked in there for hours—long enough that she tattooed a note on herself.”
Andy could barely swallow past the fist-sized lump in his throat. “A note?”
“A confession. Don’t know what it said, but apparently the cops are pretty interested.”
Andy found himself nodding as if agreeing to his guilt even as he backed up a step.
“Then the chick hung herself with an electrical cord. Freaky- deaky,” Blake said, wagging his eyebrows as if any of this was funny.
It wasn’t. The two men in suits who entered the ER and were talking to the charge nurse didn’t look like they thought it was funny either. They looked dead serious as the nurse pointed to Andy. He licked his suddenly parched lips, jerked his head, searching for an escape. Shuffling his feet, he finally sighed and gave up, slouching against an empty gurney.
Blake didn’t notice the men approaching Andy, their hands reaching under their suit coats, splitting up so that he was trapped between them. No, Blake just kept on talking. “You have to admit, it was convenient as hell. I mean, they’re already right there in the morgue. Saved someone some scutwork.”
*
As a pediatric ER doctor, CJ LYONS has lived the life she writes about. In addition to being an award-winning medical suspense author, CJ is a nationally known presenter and keynote speaker.
Her first novel, Lifelines (Berkley Books, March 2008), received praise as a “breathtakingly fast-paced medical thriller” from Publishers Weekly, was reviewed favorably by the Baltimore Sun and Newsday, named a Top Pick by RT Book Review, and became a national bestseller. Her second novel, Warning Signs, was released January 2009, and the third, Urgent Care, followed in October 2009. To learn more about CJ and her work, go to www.cjlyons.net.
LEE CHILD
Like everything else, the world of bodyguarding is split between the real and the phony. Phony bodyguards are just glorified drivers, fashion accessories, big men in suits chosen for their size and shape and appearance, not usually paid very much, not usually very skilled. Real bodyguards are technicians, thinkers, trained men with experience. They can be small, as long as they can think and endure. As long as they can be useful, when the time comes.
I am a real bodyguard.
Or at least, I was.
I was trained in one of those secret army units where close personal