Solitude Creek (Kathryn Dance 4)

But he wasn't listening.

"Stop!"

She herself felt the growing strains of panic grip her. She began pounding the man's hand. Useless. Her head, sideways, was partway inside now, wedged completely still. She was feeling dizzy from the fumes and the dismal air. And that unbearable feeling of being unable to move. She tasted blood, dripping from the gash into her mouth.

Jesus...

No choice.

Sorry.

Dance reared her head back, wrapped her teeth around the man's thumb and, tasting blood and tobacco, bit down hard.

He screamed--a sound lost amid the pregnant woman's wailing--and he released her.

"I'm a doctor," said a pale middle-aged passenger, who seemed very groggy. "He needs a tracheotomy. Now."

"That man!" she called, pointing to the orderly. "Get him over here."

Several of the passengers grabbed the man's collar and waist and pulled him off the floor then together they all handed him overhead, mosh pit-style. Dance gestured for two medics from Emergency to help and together they got the man out.

"We'll get him downstairs." They placed him on a gurney and sprinted away.

Michael O'Neil came running up. "Fire's out in the basement. You all right?" He frowned, looking at her face.

"Fine."

Dance glanced back into the car. Brother. She shouted over her shoulder, "How long till we can raise the car?"

"Fifteen, twenty minutes, I'd guess," the maintenance man said.

"Okay, then we need an OB-GYN here. Now."

"I'll get one," a male nurse behind her called.

Dance added, "And make it the skinniest one you've got on

staff."

Chapter 65

Dance said, "I should've thought more clearly. This unsub...he's too fucking smart."

A modifier that rarely escaped her lips.

They were in the lobby of the hospital, waiting for the Monterey County Crime Scene Unit officers to report what they'd found in the elevator motor room, the car itself and the pit in the basement.

After the Honda had started to burn in earnest and the officers had raced into the inn, Dance checked two exit doors herself--found them unencumbered and then she paused. She looked over the establishment.

"No," she'd muttered. The inn was one story and, though built into a hill, the incline was minimal. To escape, all you had to do was pitch a chair through a window and step outside, safe as long as you minded the broken glass.

Then she'd noted the smoke wafting into the woods and saw, behind that, the hospital.

She'd said to O'Neil, "I don't think it's the inn that's his target."

"What then?"

"Hospital."