My Client's Former Best Friend | MEANIE/MINWON

Chapter Twenty.

Around the time Mingyu was startled by Minghao and his thugs, Wonwoo waltzed into a hospital, dressed in a commandeered white coat and unfashionable blue scrubs. The unitard had been a joke, but this get-up was hardly better. Seungcheol had a plan. A terrible, simple plan that grew worse and worse the closer she got to the front desk. But it was the only one they had, and this was their one shot, so it had to work.

The security guard behind the desk barely looked up from his computer as Wonwoo passed, though his footsteps echoed in the empty hallway. It's working. He thinks I'm a doctor. The thought had him feeling almost giddy.

He sobered up as he reached the elevators, faced with an array of lettered wings and numbered floors. If he were a real doctor, he would know whether he wanted A7 or B13. Unlike the staff entrance, where he'd scanned his stolen ID card and strolled through undetected, this area wasn't empty. There were people constantly moving. Even in the late hours of the night, the hospital never slept.

Wonwoo stared down at the clipboard he was carrying, pretending to consult it as he waited for the elevator. "Which floor?" he hissed into the tiny microphone on his collar.

Seungcheol's voice crackled in his ear. "I'm working on that."

Wonwoo sighed and closed his eyes. He had a dozen retorts at the ready, but he was exposed in his current location, and arguing with Seungcheol would only slow him down. Instead, he stared more intently at the blank chart in his hands.

A couple of nurses passed him, chatting together. One of them looked at him with a frown but turned back to the group and continued talking. The elevator arrived. Wonwoo got in.

"The D wing. He's on the third floor," said Seungcheol in his ear.

Wonwoo nodded to no one in his empty elevator. When the doors opened again, he stepped out and headed to D, a wing in the back corner of the giant complex, its doors barred from general admittance. The swiped badge got him through and he was inside, standing in the eerie dim light of the psychiatric ward.

***

Mingyu was shoved into the back seat of a car. There was a sack over his head and his hands were tied behind his back. Like on a crime show where they find the kidnapped person bound and gagged. Only on those shows, they usually don't reveal said person until they're being saved, and by then the kidnapped person is so grateful, they forget what the hours of bag prison were like. Hot and stuffy was what they were. And smelly. And itchy. The sack they'd put over his head was some sort of old feed bag, the kind used for horses in the movies. It smelled like something earthy and grainy. It itched against his skin, but with his hands bound behind him, he couldn't do a thing about it.

Unfortunately for them, they hadn't gagged him. "Minghao, where the fuck are you taking me?"

Silence.

"Hello? Minghao. This is your cousin Mingyu. The one you just kidnapped? I repeat, where the fuck are you taking me?"

Silence. Then a deep voice, one of the men who'd "helped" him to the car. "Mr. Xu Minghao isn't in this vehicle."

"Great. Just great. So where are you bozos taking me then?"

"You'll find out soon enough," the voice replied.

Mingyu tried to slouch back against the seat, but his hands were in the way. This was doing nothing to ease the pain in his shoulder. He was supposed to be keeping it in the sling in front of him, not twisted behind him. He debated telling his captors this but, considering they wouldn't tell him simple information like where they were going, decided against it.

They were smooth drivers, he could give them that. Not once was he bumped or jostled. He might not have even been in a moving car at all if his heightened hearing hadn't picked up the hum of the engine.