Mount Mercy

43

Colt

EACH STAGGERING STEP down the concrete stairs sent a bolt of white-hot pain up my thigh. Blood was pumping steadily through my pants: moving was making it worse.

But the cops were right on my ass. And I wasn’t going to get caught, not when I was this close. I owed it to my wife. The CGF was our family’s legacy.

Our family. I still couldn’t believe the fire I’d seen in Seth’s eyes when I’d threatened to shoot his little blonde doctor. He’d finally stood up to me: I was almost proud. It meant the blonde was dangerous, of course. I should have killed her there and then. But I’d been weak. I couldn’t do it to him. I knew what it was like to lose someone you were crazy about. Deborah made me feel the exact same way, from the day we met right up until the end.

Deborah. Thanks to the government, she’d died alone while I rotted in a cage, unable to hold her.

They’d pay.

I gritted my teeth and struggled on down the stairs. The basement throbbed with the sound of a generator. There were drums of spare fuel and, at the far end, a gate that led through to the basement parking garage and freedom.

Footsteps pounded down the steps behind me. The cops. They’d cut me down before I was halfway across the parking garage.

I unscrewed the cap on one of the drums of fuel and heaved it over. Fuel glugged and spread over the concrete floor, sloshing up around the remaining drums. I fired two shots at the ground just as the cops arrived. On the second one, I saw a spark and then the spilled fuel erupted into flames. The cops dodged back, cursing, their way blocked. And I ran.

I’d failed to get our pilot back. Now I needed to get him and Seth. But I had a plan.

That red-headed surgeon...she was going to help me fix everything.

44

Amy

THE FIRST PERSON I checked was Rebecca. She was okay, thank God. But as we raced around checking each room, we found more and more injured. A man who’d been brought in earlier in the day, injured by flying glass, had been hit in the stomach by a stray round that cut straight through Exam One and Exam Three before hitting him in Exam Five. We were lucky the other exam rooms had been empty.

One of the bar staff from Krüger’s Tavern, who’d only come to the ER to donate blood and then had volunteered to stay and comfort the injured, had been hit in the arm. The bullet had gone straight through and she’d be okay but she was white-faced and shaking. What did I do wrong, her eyes asked me. I was only trying to help.

Of the staff, one nurse had been shot in the leg and another was unconscious after a bullet had grazed her temple: if she’d been standing even an inch to her left, she’d be dead. It was terrifying: all this from one gun battle that had lasted less than a minute. Lina and Adele had been in the ER but they were both okay. “Find Krista,” I begged Lina. “We need her.”

Lloyd returned from the basement. Colt must have gotten away, I realized in despair. He looked around wide-eyed at the disaster he’d helped wreak. “I was just—Oh God, I was just trying to—” He looked at me. “I’m sorry.”

I nodded. “It’s okay. Just help us.” And I put him to work fetching supplies.

Corrigan and I worked frantically to save the guy who’d been hit in the stomach. I could feel him looking at me and, whenever I glanced up, the look in his eyes took my breath away. Something had changed. He was bursting, desperate to tell me something and my chest kept switching between light and fluttery and cold and dark as I thought about what it might be. When we finally finished and stabilized the guy, he suddenly grabbed my wrist. Opened his mouth to speak—

“How could you?” yelled Taylor behind me.

I squeezed Corrigan’s hand. Later. Then I spun around to look. Taylor had been working on the nurse who’d been shot in the leg, desperately trying to save as much of the muscle as she could, and now she’d finally lost it and was railing at Seth, who was sitting handcuffed on the floor. “These are my friends!”

Seth stared at the floor. From the utter misery on his face, he was as horrified by the devastation as she was, and being torn apart by guilt from his part in all this.

“Look at me!” she snapped, tears in her eyes.

Corrigan patted her on the back and then walked over to Seth and hoisted him to his feet by the collar, then slammed him against the wall. Seth kept his eyes on the floor. “Time you told us what the fuck is going on.” His voice was low and dangerously cold. “We’ve got a whole ER full of injuries because of your dad. There are people lying dead tonight because of your dad. The only reason I’m not pounding your head against the wall right now is because you saved her—”—he jerked his thumb at Taylor—“—twice.”