White Night

Chapter 39

Late afternoon and Connors' shift at Michael's bedside was over. Banner had taken over and was settling down into the chair when she heard the raised voices outside.

"What's going on?" she asked.

Officer Gage was guarding the door and gripping an orderly's arm tightly.

"Doesn't have his ID," Gage responded.

Gage was sharp, quick, and tough. He was the kind of cop that let you breathe a little easier when he was backing you up. It didn't hurt that he was also nice to look at.

The guy he was holding looked at her for a split second, then scanned his surroundings.

"What's your name?"

"David," he responded with a thick Slavic accent.

It couldn't be a coincidence—Marco's attackers, Nikolai, now this guy with no ID. "Hold him here," she told Gage. "I'll check with hospital security—"

Before she could finish, David jerked his arm away from Gage and sprinted for the stairwell. "Stay with the witness and call it in!" she shouted at Gage and raced after the orderly as he burst through the stairwell door and disappeared. She reached the door just as it was slamming back, smashing through it like a linebacker.

Her fatigue evaporated as adrenaline raced through her veins, and the stairwell echoed with the sound of frantic feet pounding down concrete steps. It would've been smarter for Gage to pursue and she to stay with Michael, but she'd started the chase before logic or her leg crossed her mind. Each stair jarred through her knee as she descended, stabbing pain and weak tendons making her feel like her leg was coming apart, but she couldn't lose this guy.

David was fast, had two perfectly fine legs, and was desperate to avoid capture as he gradually inched a lead on her.

If she lost him, the captain would be all over her. She could already hear it: If you were fit for duty, you wouldn't have let our best lead on this case slip away.

Followed by her coworkers' whispers: Connors lost the guy. She shouldn't be on active duty.

Pushing herself harder, she jumped down two steps at a time, leaning hard on the handrail and half sailing down it as she started gaining on her suspect.

"NYPD! Stop!" she shouted. It didn't work, but you still shouted it. Lawyers in court asked pointless questions: Did you simply ask Mr. X to stop?

As expected, David raced on, two, maybe three flights remaining but still over thirty feet between them. Her legs hammered like pistons and her arm burned from the friction of the rail, but she was getting closer—one flight left and just over twenty feet between them.

The door at the base of the stairwell crashed open as he pushed through it, but this time she was close enough to get through before it swung back.

He bolted toward the main doors of the hospital, barreling through nurses and visitors like ninepins.

"NYPD. Get down!" she shouted. People scrambled into and out of her way, but she couldn't fire in a hospital reception—civilians were everywhere.

Looking back at her with bulging eyes, the suspect surged to the exit. She had to get him before he made it outside. Less than ten feet between them now, she could almost jump and grab him. A nurse wheeling a monitor blocked his path. They both ducked left, then right, trying to get clear of the other. He reached for the nurse and Connors couldn't hesitate...

She leapt forward and latched onto him, looping her arm around his neck. Abandoning the nurse, he grabbed the monitor and swung it into Connors' good leg, spinning them both to the ground.

Connors reached for her weapon as David scrambled to his feet, turning and delivering a kick to her stomach that felt like her intestines exploded and sent her stomach into her mouth. He swung his foot into her again, but she grabbed it this time and clung on like a barnacle.

Stamping on her arms with his other foot, he slammed them into the linoleum and weakened her hold, twisting his foot free. He darted through the main doors and into a waiting car.

She clambered to her feet, struggling to pull air back into her lungs as tires screamed on asphalt. The car swerved around an ambulance and disappeared into darkness.

A panicked citizen bolted past her, knocking her back to the ground. As she started to find her feet again, a huge hand clamped down on her shoulder.

"You okay?" a deep, melodic voice asked.

She turned to see a mountain of a security guard standing over her. The badge on his shirt identified him as Max. Without waiting for an invitation, he grabbed her by the shoulders and hauled her up. Max's size made him useless in a foot pursuit, but if he'd been there when she stopped the guy, he would've been the bomb.

"You okay?" he asked again.

She nodded breathlessly, reaching for her cell as Max gave her a way-to-go slap between her shoulder blades that almost knocked the phone out of her hand.

Ross poured through the doors of the hospital. "I heard the call. What the hell happened?" he asked.

"Orderly tried to get into the room without ID, then took off. Find out if security cameras got a plate, silver Mustang."

"You all right?" Ross asked, but he was the one that looked sick.

Before she could respond, Gage appeared—against orders.

"You were supposed to stay on the door," she snapped, ignoring the fact that she had no authority over him, anyway. TV detectives ordered officers around like pawns, but she could only request their assistance.

"Banner is there," he replied, unfazed. "This was on his cleaning cart."

He held out a silver .45 Sig. Michael had been feet from death.

Ross' hand went to his brow and he started to pace.

"I'll get it to CSU," Gage added.

She nodded at Gage, who flashed her a movie-star smile before leaving.

"We need to interview Maria," she said to Ross with a heavy sigh.

Sleep was all she wanted, a chance to clear her head and figure out which way was up on this case, but it would be hours before she could crash down on her mattress and wait for Merlin to curl up at her back.

Tejo and another officer had retrieved her car, and she drove back to the precinct with Ross beside her in complete silence, her brain spinning through possibilities like a Ferris wheel.

The men that attacked them in the alley near the warehouse knew they had Michael now and probably assumed he'd be taken to a hospital, one close to the warehouse, just as Banner had figured, but how did they know which room? Michael's name wasn't on the admittance form, and you had to be a cop to...

A chill trickled down her spine as she ran through the possibilities. Banner and Gage had both done guard duty at the hospital–they knew where Michael was recovering, but she knew them. Banner had been sitting across from her at the time Weston was shot and she'd known Gage for years. He was by the book. She'd have to check them both out anyway, but her skin went cold as a thought elbowed its way to the front of her mind. She'd been ignoring these leads for days: the expensive vomit outside the construction site, the disappearances while Ross "checked leads" that never went anywhere, and how he kept what he knew from her until she arrived at the same conclusion. Her heart jolted in her chest as she remembered the phone call Ross made just hours before the fake orderly showed up.

And tomorrow he would be there, her partner, behind her with his Sig, backing her up.

She was stuck between a rock and her partner's 9 mm duty weapon, but she still had nothing concrete on Ross. He wouldn't have made the calls to Nikolai from his NYPD cell, he wasn't stupid.

The captain would already be all over her for missing the chance to catch the fake orderly tonight. She couldn't go to her with lunatic suspicions about her partner.

In the morning, Ross would insist on taking a shift guarding Michael, but she couldn't allow him a chance to make his move.

Tomorrow, she would make her own move...