Unshakeable Pursuit (Christian Romantic Suspense)

Chapter 2b

Geoffrey instinctively stepped in front of Maylin and Monica. John started and grabbed his broom tightly.

"Roy." Maylin's hand was in front of her mouth, and the name came out muffled.

Monica's hand holding the cell phone shook, but then the sound of a man's voice coming from the phone brought her out of her temporary shock. She pressed the phone to her ear. "Horatio, come to the clinic quick! We just heard a gunshot."

"Stay here." Geoffrey kicked off his Doc Martins and headed down the hallway toward the front of the clinic, his socks whispering against the industrial tile floor. He stayed low to the ground since the doors up ahead that led to the front lobby had windows on their upper halves. Instead of opening the swinging doors, he cut right into the open doorway to the nurses' station. He heard the sound of breaking glass. He crawled behind the desks until he could peek out behind a corner.

The two men at the front of the clinic had shot a hole in the glass doors and were now smashing a larger opening so they could reach inside to unlock the deadbolts. They were the same two Asian men who had come to the clinic earlier that afternoon.

Movement caught his eye and he eased out further, hoping the shadows in the waiting room would hide him. Roy sat on the floor a few feet away from the door, clutching his arm. Blood ran down through his fingers.

Roy turned and saw Geoffrey, and began shuffling toward him. Aside from the shot to his arm, he looked to be all right.

When he got to the edge of the nurses' station desks, Geoffrey whispered, "Come on, to the back of the clinic." They'd need to lock themselves in a room in order to buy time to patch him up. By now, even if Monica hadn't been on the phone with Detective Carter, the clinic's silent alarm had been triggered when the front door glass was broken. However, the clinic was on the outskirts of Sonoma, and it would take the police a few minutes to get here.

"Wait." Roy got to his feet using his good arm, and dashed to the nearby security office door, pulling it shut. It automatically locked.

"Where's the key?" Geoffrey asked as Roy slipped behind the nurses' station.

"Inside the security room."

Geoffrey helped Roy crawl back to the open doorway, but then Monica appeared with three plastic water bottles in her hand. She cracked open the main doors to the waiting area and rolled the bottles out into the room, toward the two men, who had just entered the building.

"What are you doing?" Geoffrey mouthed to her.

She beckoned to them. Before they could reach her, they were startled by a loud bang! from the waiting room. There was a stunned moment of silence, then the sound of men's voices.

"Dry ice bomb," Monica said to him. "To slow them down."

The clinic, like many hospitals, had a dry ice chest that was constantly refilled by a dry ice service. The dry ice was used to keep frozen samples from degrading during transport. Geoffrey remembered making a dry ice bomb or two as a prank in high school and college, but he'd never have thought to use it to surprise the two men entering the clinic.

The other two bombs must have been made to delay in going off. They were out of the nurses' station before two more bangs! echoed down the main hallway behind them. A sudden gunshot made the three of them flatten to the floor, but then one of the men began haranguing the other in Chinese.

Maylin came running down the hallway toward them, also without her shoes on.  She had two hot water bottles in her hand, both bulging and full.

"Go back," Geoffrey started to say, but she ran past them, crouching behind the main door. She pulled a pocket knife from her slacks and punched holes in the two water bottles. Immediately smoke began to curl from the holes. She cracked the doors and sent them sliding into the waiting room.