Sonya sped down the hall and entered the nurse’s locker room. She quickly clocked in by swiping her badge in an electronic time clock by the door, dropped off her personal belongings in her locker (except her phone), and headed back out just as quickly. She knew if she rushed, she could make a quick trip down to the morgue before she had to be upstairs – they usually didn’t say anything if she was a couple minutes late as long as she clocked in on time; she planned to tell them she’d had to go to the bathroom.
The halls were clear and the elevator wasn’t busy, as usual. She stepped inside and pressed the button to take her to the basement. The ding of the elevator was barely audible over her phone as she checked her messages. Most of them were from Jennings. He was trying to get a hold of her to work out some final details for the family harvest. She made a mental note to call him later and moved on to the text messages. Most of them were from Jennings too, and she cursed the man’s impatience. Fleetingly she wondered if he’d found out about her and Lloyd’s banking adventure the previous day, but nothing in his tone or words suggested that he had.
When the doors slid open, Sonya glanced up and charged out of the elevator, heading toward the door leading into the morgue; she was surprised when the door opened as she reached for the intercom button. She looked up from her phone, startled, to see a very nervous Miles standing before her.
She looked from his shifting, uncertain eyes, to his sweaty forehead, and down to his shaking hands.
“What happened?” she asked right away, stepping through the doorway and into the enclosed room where he worked.
“They were here,” he muttered, looking through the windows, out into the hall, as if he expected McCoy and Franks to instantly reappear.
“Who was here?” she asked, watching him with a frown.
He didn’t answer.
“Who was here, Miles?” she asked in a sterner tone, sliding her phone into her pocket and stepping forward to cup his face in her hands so he would focus on her.
His eyes met hers and he seemed to settle down a bit; he took a couple of slow, deep breaths.
“The FBI… The cops!” he said in a frightened whisper. “They were asking questions about smuggling! They have to be on to us!”
“Calm down,” Sonya said, inwardly cursing his cowardly weakness. “Tell me what happened – exactly as it happened.”
He nodded, swallowed hard, and took another deep breath.
“They just asked if anyone had asked me to smuggle anything and looked at my files for the last month,” he said, closing his eyes briefly as if doing so helped him remember. “I told them no one had and didn’t argue about them looking – they had a warrant and everything.”
“That’s it?” she asked sharply.
His eyes flew open and he nodded.
“Odd,” she said, frowning and dropping her hands to her sides, releasing his face. “Usually they ask more questions.”
“Really?” Miles asked, shifting his weight from one foot to the other while rubbing his hands over his bald head. “Do you think it’s a good thing or a bad thing that they didn’t ask a bunch of questions?”
“I don’t know,” Sonya said, shaking her head in confusion. “When were they here? Yesterday?”
“No,” Miles said, shaking his head for emphasis. “They were here about twenty minutes ago!”
“What?!” she all but yelled, stepping forward and putting her hands on his shoulders to hold him still while they talked. “You mean they were just here?”
“Yes,” he said in barely a whisper.
Sonya could see tears starting to grow in his eyes; she inwardly groaned. He was scared and on the verge of breaking down completely, and she didn’t have time to deal with him at the moment.
Trying to settle him down a bit, she wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her body fully up against his.
“It’ll be okay,” she whispered in his ear, squeezing him tight.
He clutched her to him, pressed his face against her neck, and whimpered.
Pathetic, she thought, but continued to hold him until she thought he had a grip on himself.
“Stay calm,” she said, stepping backwards, breaking their embrace. “There’s nothing to worry about. I’m sure they decided that you were telling them the truth when you told them you weren’t involved, and they moved on to another hospital.”
As he nodded, she hoped what she’d said was true. She didn’t know what they would do – how they would handle it – if the police were still in the building.
“I have to go to work now,” she said, and faked a cough, remembering she was supposed to be sick.
“Okay,” he said, then reached forward suddenly to grip one of her small hands in his large sweaty one. “How are you feeling?” He looked at her intently. “You look really tired. Maybe you should have taken a couple more days off work.”
“I’ll be okay,” she said, smiled softly, and squeezed his hand before she slid hers free and headed for the door. “I better get to my floor before I get in trouble.”
“Will you be back down later?” he asked in what sounded to Sonya like a desperate whine.
She clenched her jaw, closed her eyes briefly, and took a deep breath before turning and answering.
“I don’t know; it will depend on how my day goes.”
“Okay,” he mumbled, “call me later if you can’t come back.”
She forced herself to smile.
“I will,” she said, opening and walking out the door.
She rushed toward the elevator like she was being chased by something sinister, and, in truth, she was. Her brain was working overtime, taunting her with all the possibilities – few of them good. The likeliness of the authorities still being in the building was high, especially if Miles had made them suspicious.
She pressed the button beside the elevator door and stepped inside the small box when the doors slid open. After she pushed the button to go up to the next floor, the urge to text Lloyd or Jennings almost overwhelmed her. She knew she couldn’t though, because her hands were shaking too badly to even consider it. Besides that, she wanted to have some kind of solid information before she contacted them.
When the doors slid open with a ding – which grated on her nerves and made her clench her jaw – she stepped out into the openness of the hallway and looked around.
She didn’t see anything out of place or suspicious – there were no armed men waiting to ambush her and take her to prison. With a sigh of relief, and a slight smile gracing her lips at her silly fears, she turned and headed down the hall toward the main corridor that lead to the elevators that would take her to her floor.
~ * ~
Franks watched the woman and sat still for a few moments after she charged down the hall. Once he was sure she wasn’t coming back, he stood and peeked around the corner to see which way she would go: she turned left and headed deeper into the hospital, away from the ER.
He set off down the hall after her when she disappeared from his line of sight, and again peeked around the corner to see where she was going.
She was boarding an elevator with a small group of people and he would have missed her altogether if he hadn’t seen the bright colors of her scrubs shirt through a small gap in the moving bodies.
“Time to call McCoy,” he muttered to himself, grinning.
He waited until the elevator doors slid shut before he stepped out into the main corridor; he didn’t want her to see his uniform. If she was indeed a suspect, he didn’t want to alert her to their presence at the hospital.
Officer Franks headed for the closest nurse’s station and waited impatiently for the nurse to get done talking to someone already standing at the desk – someone’s loved one, he assumed.
~ * ~
Roger smiled to himself when he heard Butch’s truck start; he wanted the bastard gone. He frowned, however, when Jennings came strolling into the building with a scowl on his face.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” the old man scolded.
Roger rolled his eyes.
“You’ve made that clear…” he said snidely, “…can we get past it now?”
Jennings glared at Roger for a few moments and then nodded; he looked around at the set up of the equipment.
“Everything looks good,” he admitted grudgingly. “You seem to have everything in good order.”
“Yeah,” Roger said sarcastically, “I’ve done this a time or two.”
“What’s with you lately?” Jennings asked, crossing his arms over his chest and watching Roger while he put away the few things he’d already unloaded from the van. “Have you been spending a lot of time with Lloyd? He’s a bad influence…” He shook his head and sighed.
Roger laughed. “I’m a big boy. I don’t need someone else telling me what to do or what to think. Butch pissed me off. I’m just not in the mood to deal with anyone’s shit today. I’m human! I have bad days too, you know.”
“Okay,” Jennings said, frowning. “I know we’re all getting tense about everything. The family harvest is tomorrow and having the FBI breathing down our necks isn’t helping any of us relax.”
Roger nodded and kept doing what he was doing, hoping Jennings would go away.
“Did you need something?” he finally asked, pausing and looking over at Jennings when the old man stayed silent.
“No, not really,” Jennings said. “I just wanted to see how things were going and I found you two acting like children.”
With a snicker, Roger turned fully to face the old man.
“Well, that bastard you hired deserved what he got,” he said.
“I’ve had about enough of your attitude,” Jennings said with a huff. “You can just burn up some of that negative energy unloading the damn van and cleaning up at the old building.”
“Fine,” Roger said, shrugged, and resumed what he’d been doing.
“Have a nice day.”
Jennings huffed again, turned, and left the building.
Roger didn’t look up again until he heard Jennings’ car driving away; he grinned and shook his head. He found all the drama amusing, especially since Jennings didn’t even know he was being played, or that he would soon be dead. Or that they knew he’d put a hit out on Lloyd. If he was a betting man – and sometimes he was – he would bet that Lloyd and Sonya come out on top, and he was glad he’d thrown his lot in with them.
Steadily, he worked on unloading the van, and setting up and putting away everything as he did so. When he finally looked at his watch, he was shocked to see that it was a little after ten o’clock.
“Shit!” he exclaimed and picked up his pace, locking up the new building so he could head back over to the old one to clean.
~ * ~
Roy answered the phone right away when it started ringing.
“Security,” he said, with his eyes still glued to the monitor in front of him; he listened for a moment. “Sure – here he is.” He stretched the phone cord in front of him so the handset would reach McCoy. “Call’s for you.”
McCoy took the phone and put it up to his ear.
“McCoy,” he barked.
He listened to Franks and started to get excited.
“You saw her outside the morgue elevator? Where did she go from there?” he asked.
Roy looked up at McCoy as he stood and poised his body like he was going to dart out the door at any moment; he had to jerk his head back and grab the phone cord with his hands so McCoy didn’t strangle him with it.
“I’ll have Roy check it out and I’ll meet you there in a couple of minutes – just stay put in case she comes back and tries to leave or something,” McCoy said; he moved to hand the handset back to Roy, but pressed it to his ear again quickly. “You did a great job, Franks!”
He nodded as Franks said thank you, and then he handed the phone back to Roy.
“She was just at the morgue,” McCoy said enthusiastically, “and then she headed to elevator bank C. Can you track her?”
Roy nodded, and started typing as soon as his hands were free of the phone and cord.
“Ah, there she is,” Roy said with a grin. “She’s really good looking, don’t you think?”
McCoy watched as Roy went through the footage from minutes before when the woman was in the elevator; he tracked her for a few minutes until she reached her destination.
“I guess…” he said, watching the woman on the screen.
In his mind he was unconsciously comparing her to Tiffany and decided she didn’t compare to the woman he’d shared a bed with the previous night. There was something cold and off about her that he could see even from the video footage; the blonde woman was hiding something – he could feel it.
