If there was another way out, Aiden couldn’t think of it.
Chapter Seven
Two police officers entered the medical center through the main entrance and looked around the waiting room.
Charlie stepped back out of sight around the corner. “We have to get out of here.”
Aiden hung up. “The dead cop was wearing a body camera on his torso. The footage should exonerate us. It’ll show that we didn’t kill him.”
“We don’t know what it’ll show. There was a lot of smoke and he was hunched down behind his door. But they will have clear footage of me checking to see if he was dead. On the remote chance that it did clear us of his murder, it doesn’t help us with Torres. Any time we spend in handcuffs, answering questions, is time lost to find Albatross before it’s too late.”
Aiden popped out the battery on his cell and tossed the phone in the trash bin. “We won’t get far.” He gestured to their vests and rifles.
They stood out like sore thumbs.
“Yes, we will.” Determination fired through her veins. Surrender was not an option.
They’d been ambushed on an isolated strip of road where there hadn’t been any CCTV. The two black vans had disappeared. There was an alleged eyewitness accusing Charlie and Aiden of collaboration and murder.
Only two people could clear their names. One was in a coma. The other was alive, but not for much longer.
They had to save Edgar. But first, they needed to get out of the medical center.
“Find the employee locker room and get us something to blend in,” she said to Aiden, her pulse quickening. “Then meet me at the employee entrance.”
No questions asked. No hesitation. He just nodded and took off.
That level of complete trust he had in her, and she in him, she’d never known with another soul, and she cherished it.
She went down a different hall back to the emergency room. When Sharon had been brought in, one of the nurses had run from the treatment room in the direction she was headed in now and returned with medication.
Another squad car with flashing lights pulled up to the ambulance entrance and parked behind the police vehicle they’d left. Officers rushed inside.
The emergency room buzzed with activity.
Staying close to the wall, she looked for the room she needed.
The officers were working their way in her direction, searching the emergency ward, pulling back curtains in the bay area. An infuriated nurse jumped in their path and read them the riot act about patient privacy.
The first room was no good—a janitorial closet. Neither was the second room. Nor the third.
One cop with a beard strode around the nurse and moved in the direction of the treatment rooms, with his head on a swivel.
Her chest tightened. Any second, he’d spot her. As his head turned toward her, his hand on the hilt of his weapon, a large orderly stepped into his line of sight.
Charlie turned the next knob, opening the fourth door, and ducked inside. She breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, it was the one she wanted.
There were two refrigerators. Through the clear doors she saw vials of medication. Moving past the regulated drugs, she hurried to the shelving unit with medical supplies.
She quickly rifled through things and grabbed what she needed. Sterile gloves, gauze, saline solution, antibiotic ointment, topical anesthetic spray and a suture kit. Aiden’s wound still needed stitches. They’d left all their supplies back in the SUV.
Once they had a moment to catch their breath, she’d patch him up properly and make sure it didn’t get infected.
She went to the door and pulled it open.
On the other side stood the bearded cop. He drew his sidearm.
Charlie shuffled back into the room, forcing him to follow her inside.
The officer stepped across the threshold, the gun leveled at her head, and let the door close.
A mistake. On his part.
“Hands in the air!” the cop said.
She dropped the supplies and did as instructed. Her small gesture of compliance emboldened him, made him think her arrest was in the bag.
“Turn around and put your hands on the back of your head,” he said.
She didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. Didn’t blink.
“Now!” His second mistake was getting close enough to touch her. He put his hand on her shoulder and tried to force her to turn around.
Charlie moved fast.
She snapped her hand up, catching the body of the pistol while shoving the muzzle sideways to keep her head out of the line of fire in case he pulled the trigger. Then she twisted the gun hard, not enough to break his wrist, just the right amount to sprain it badly.
The gun dropped to the floor.
The cop yelped, clutching his wrist.
Charlie kicked the gun, sent it sailing into a corner and threw her elbow into the side of the officer’s head. A follow-up punch to the side of his neck and he fell into a boneless sprawl.
The neck was a vulnerable spot; you could crush a larynx or, as she’d done, deliver a sharp strike to the vagus nerve. At a minimum, it would cause disorientation. In the case of the cop, unconsciousness.
The emergency ward was crawling with police. For Charlie to get out, she needed to make herself less conspicuous.
Taking off her rifle, she grabbed two hospital gowns from the shelf. She threw one on like a coat, completely covering her back, and the second on the right way.
She took another, using it as a makeshift sack for her rifle and the supplies, and put on a white face mask.
Cracking the door, she peered into the hall. An officer was walking past the nurses’ desk. She slipped out of the room and turned right, heading away from the cop.
Quickening her step, she shoved through a set of double doors and hustled down the corridor.
She glanced over her shoulder. The cop hadn’t noticed her and was checking the rooms. Three more doors and he’d find his partner unconscious.
Charlie faced forward as she rounded a corner and slammed into a hard wall of muscle.
Aiden. Her throat loosened.
She hadn’t heard any movement coming in her direction. His stealth never ceased to amaze her.
He was wearing scrubs over his clothes and carrying a gym bag that must’ve had his vest and rifle inside. “The cops have the employee entrance locked down,” he said.
No. They had to get out of the medical center.
If they were arrested, no one would listen to them. Even Draper was ready to think the worst and he had known them for over a year, had witnessed firsthand their work ethic and integrity.