The Silent Widow

A single shot rang out. At such close range, Rodriguez’s skull exploded. Shards of bone and brain tissue spewed onto the walls of the stairwell. Nikki’s blouse, face and hands were all liberally splattered with blood.

Coolly stepping over Rodriguez’s corpse, Goodman walked down to where Nikki lay, curled up in the cramped alcove. He crouched next to her.

‘You killed him,’ she whispered. She was in shock, her breath coming in short, erratic gasps.

‘Yes.’ Reaching out, Goodman laid a hand softly against her blood-splattered cheek.

‘You didn’t try to arrest him.’

‘No,’ he said soothingly. ‘I didn’t.’

Nikki started to tremble violently. Then she started to cry, her body dissolving into long, shuddering sobs of relief.

‘Thank you!’ Reaching up, she put her hands around his neck and hugged him.

After a few moments clinging to him, breathing in his familiar scent, the scent of safety and normalcy and hope, she finally let go, sinking back weakly against the wall. Her leg was completely numb now, like a stone. She needed to get to hospital, fast.

‘You saved my life,’ she said gratefully, her eyes seeking out his own.

He looked back at her, and for a second Nikki was filled with confusion. His expression was exactly like Rodriguez’s had been. Evil.

‘You really are an incredibly stupid woman,’ he sneered, pressing his gun to Nikki’s temple.

Outside in the street, a seamstress heard another loud bang from the empty warehouse. Then nothing.

Quickening her pace, she hurried to her bus stop and hopped aboard.

She didn’t look back.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Fiona McManus loved her job at Good Samaritan Hospital. Not that Fiona saw nursing as a ‘job’ per se. In her view it was more of a vocation. A calling, to help others, to serve. ‘Just as long as it’s a calling that pays the bills,’ Fiona’s mother Jenny liked to remind her, wryly.

Luckily, it was. The wages were good, the doctors and nurses she worked with every day inspirational, and the patients … well, the patients were mixed. Some were incredibly brave. Many were also kind and respectful, grateful for the treatment and care they received from Fiona and her colleagues. But of course there were others too. Drunks and addicts who could be abusive. People who had a hard time with pain, or even discomfort. And then there were those made angry by suffering and grief, those who couldn’t be helped or whose injuries or illnesses were beyond treatment.

Pulling open the curtains to allow the sunlight into the room, Fiona glanced across at the bed where this morning’s patient was sleeping peacefully. Gunshot wounds could be notoriously difficult. Even following successful surgery, patients could collapse or suffer heart failure from shock hours, days, or even weeks after the event. The sleeping figure i

n the bed looked better to Fiona than they had yesterday, with more color in the cheeks and good oxygen levels in the blood. Although that might be the morphine.

Rearranging a vase of flowers on the windowsill, Fiona looked down at the milling crowd of reporters and television crews still gathered in the parking lot, like vultures waiting for a fresh carcass. Like the policemen stationed outside, in the corridor of the private wing, they reminded Fiona that this morning’s patient was an important person. Not because of who they were, necessarily, but because of the circumstances that had brought them here, circumstances that were still all over the news, forty-eight hours later.

‘Hello?’

A voice from the bed, surprisingly strong, made Fiona spin around.

‘Oh my goodness! You’re awake. Let me get Dr Riley.’

She started to move towards the door but a wail of distress from the patient stopped her in her tracks.

‘Why am I here? I shouldn’t be here.’

‘It’s all right. Try to stay calm now,’ Fiona said soothingly. ‘You’re at Good Samaritan Hospital. You were brought here after—’

‘NO!’ It was a shout. ‘I’M DEAD!’

The patient slumped back against the pillow, seemingly unconscious. A cacophony of beeping began as, one by one, the vitals started to drop.

Fiona pulled open the door and yelled down the corridor. ‘We need Dr Riley in here. Right now!’